thearena | It's Hard Out Here for a Bitch [Open]

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It's Hard Out Here for a Bitch [Open]

WHO| Venus, Ellie and Calico; Venus and OPEN
WHAT| Venus tries to get her some fresh victims.
WHEN| Week 4 (week 2 thread with Cal and Ellie backdated).
WHERE| The jungle, anywhere.
WARNING| None yet.

"This Arena is the worst fad diet ever," Venus grumbles as she hoists her pants back up around her waist and buckles her belt back up. "Literally the worst."

It's been a few weeks and sponsor gifts have been few and far between for her. The hunger is starting to take its toll on her - her reactions are slower, and her once slim physique can now only be described as shrunken. Dehydration has made circles out of her eye sockets. Her lips are starting to chap. All in all, it's not a good look. She tries to make it work with the supplies on hand but berry juice can only take you so far, especially since she found out that getting it too close to her eyes gave her some sort of rash along her tear ducts. Awful.

She isn't scared, however. She trusts that the Gamemakers will force her into combat with someone else before they let her just starve to death. She knows full well that her murder streak last Arena earned her some serious airtime. They won't waste a combat-ready acrobat like her.

So she sings as she goes through the jungle, hoping that everyone else is as desperate as she is. Hoping they think she's got something worth stealing. She recorded an album once, back with the X-Statix, and while they autotuned her to hell she can still carry a tune on her own. Right now she's working her way through 'Ain't No Sunshine'.

She stops when she hears noise. She tenses and clenches her fists; she's the bait and the hook.

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Orc had wandered a bit too far from the lab today, and was having a hard time working his way back.

Shuffling through the trees he held a spear over his shoulder with a bag hanging from it. In his other massive stone hand he held a beer.

That could be why he was having trouble getting back.

Venus stops when she sees the spear. It takes her a moment to realize that it is, apparently, attached to a moving quarry pile. Her eyebrows lift and her lips purse into a delicate 'o'.

"Hello?"

Orc has to look around for a moment before he spots her. He lifts his can of beer in a polite greeting.

"Hello."

"Where'd you get that?" She wraps one hand around her other elbow, looking demure and a little cheeky as she stays just far enough out of his range. "Did you get it at the Cornucopia?"

"No...got some there. Drank it already." He brought the can to...well it was what passed for lips on his face, and poured the rest of the can into his mouth, slugging it down before crushing the can like it was a dead leaf in his massive hand. He tossed it over his shoulder and gave an impressive belch.

"Someone sent it to me. You know...from up there?" He pointed at the sky. "They must like me better drunk." Rummaging around in his bag he produced another can and fumbled with the tab till it made a familiar hissing sound.

"Lucky for them, I like me better drunk too...most the time."

"For giving you good times or drowning out the bad ones?"

She rubs her lower lip with her fingertips, quirking her eyebrows up at Orc.

"Look, if I get close to you, you're not going to break my neck, right? I can't really defend myself against someone like you."

"Bad ones." He grunted in acknowledgment.

He looked like he had to consider it for a moment. Tired eyes looked her up and down as he sipped his drink. There was a feeling that was once familiar and normal for a boy his age. But he'd spent so long in his own haze of sorrow and in a body that felt alien to him that he almost didn't recognize it.

She was hot.

"No you're fine." He finally decided.

Venus gets the feeling she used to get when trying to get into a club, getting sized up by the bouncer. Before she was famous.

"You wanna talk about them?"

After all, conversations about deep secrets tend to play well on TV. Airtime, baby.

"Not really." Orc denied and finished off his can of beer crunching it flat in his hand before tossing it over his shoulder.

"I'm a murderer. And now a monster." He explained without going into detail. "And now I'm here."

"I'm a murderer and a supernova," Venus says, shrugging one shoulder (and making sure a bra strap slides off with it). "Well, was a supernova. Got to admit it has its benefits at times."

That was enough to make Orc blink confused (The bra strap was enough of a distraction and now this?

"A superwhat?" He knew the word sounded familiar but he couldn't place it. Maybe it was the name of a CD or something.

"Nevermind." Venus waves a hand. She's getting a feel for how smart Orc isn't. "All I'm saying is that I'm good company for the sitting around and commiserating about murder thing."

"Comizza...what?" Orc wondered. Still he got the point. She didn't want to fight.

Taking another can off his significant stack he rolled it across the grass to her. A peace offering.

Venus smiles and touches it with her foot before stooping down to get it. "Thanks. They must really like you, to be sending you all this. Even if you're a fun drunk, you must have friends in high places."

"I think they just like me better drunk." Orc grunted and watched her accept the can "I'm not fun. I'm dangerous." Someone as big and heavy as he is, being clumsy and drunk would be worth watching.

"Who's saying they can't be the same thing? Fun and dangerous?" She pops open the can. "What, you've never seen Fear Factor?"

"That show's fake." Orc argued. "My old man says so all the time. All those shows were fake." He didn't stop to consider how she was the first person outside of Howard and Diana to reference a TV show he knew.

"Hey, I was on one of those shows. They're anything but fake." Venus shakes her head. She doesn't sound angry or defensive, just as if she's explaining a fact. " What does your old man know, anyway?"

"Alot." Orc lied, sounding too exhausted to fight the truth that he suspected and had for a year or so now.

"He'll tell you himself too. Or he would if he was here."

But there was a flicker of pride in realizing even his old man probably wouldn't last long around here.

"Well, he ain't here, and he doesn't sound like he knows much to me." She runs a hand through her hair and winces at the taste of the beer. Lukewarm. Gross. "You got a name?"

"Orc." His name comes out like a grunt and he finishes off another can. They're easier to carry if he has less of them to take back to the lab.

"you?"

"Venus." She takes another sip of her beer. "That a code name?"

Orc shrugged his massive shoulders. "It's a nickname. I've always been big and when some nerd explained what it was I liked how it sounded."

Another minute and he added "My real name is Charles. But that was before I looked like this." He didn't feel right about using his real name anymore.

"Always big or always like," she waves a hand at his physique. "Sturdy?"

"I was always big." He corrected "But god punished me for murder, and when I died he turned me into this."

By the time this arena was over he felt like everyone would know.

"He punished me for murder by blowing me up and turning me into dark matter. It's no big." She reaches over and pats him on the shoulder. "Could be worse, you know?"

Even if they don't talk much, Venus likes the company. It keeps her from drifting off into the parts of her head she doesn't enjoy visiting. Footsteps beside her are a lullaby for fears that she's going crazy.

But two's a party, three's a crowd, so when she finds footprints in the mud, she stops and puts a finger to her lips. She gestures that Ellie come over.

"Let's hope this person got take-out," she mutters.

Usually Ellie loves to talk but there wasn't a lot of call for it while actively hunting, and she was hungry enough to focus pretty solely on that. She didn't have much in the way of weaponry but she'd found a good stick and that would suit her well enough for now.

She stops when Venus gestures, and then she quietly saddles over to get a look at it.

"Can't be too far away, these are pretty fresh," She replies in a murmur under her breath.

Venus picks up a rock and weighs it in her hand. "You stay behind me. I got combat skill."

And Ellie doesn't look like a wimp, but she'll still a scrappy little kid by Venus' standards. Venus starts to follow the tracks, lips pressed close together, gesturing that Ellie follow until she stops, hearing something moving not far ahead of them.

Cindy really had no idea how she'd lasted as long as she had. Truth be told, she didn't think she'd make it through the first bloodbath at the cornucopia, but not only did she make it, she'd managed to escape with a ton of food. Most of which was gone now, but Cindy had learned to eat in small portions. Very small portions. It made her weak, and tired, and cranky.

But there was no way she was going to be able to go for anything else, and no one could survive without any of it. The only real reason Cindy was still here was because she'd stayed out of everyone's way. Maybe if she could hide long enough, she'd win this thing.

No such luck, when she heard someone singing. "Don't you know any other songs?" She called out from behind a tree. Might as well give this a shot. She'd either be taken out, would take someone out, or make an ally. Cindy really hoped it would be the second one.

Venus stops in her tracks, lower lip going flat as she tries to assess the situation. Doing so requires hurtling through that cloud of hunger and loneliness, which is no easy feat. "What, no respect for Bill Withers?"

Somewhere out there, a bird calls. Venus raises an eyebrow, and her hand drifts towards - and past - the knife in her belt. She can grab it if she needs to, but she likes knowing it's there.

If Cindy leaned a little to the left, she could see who was out there. She was sure she couldn't be seen from where she was when she did that, but wasn't one hundred percent sure. But she only needed a quick assessment to see who it was, before she could go back to hiding.

"Not one single ounce of respect." Cindy tried to figure out if she could find a way to move behind another tree. Make it harder to figure out where she was. When the bird call sounds, she looks up, as if she could see it.

No go. "Maybe you wouldn't strike out with some Diana Ross?"

"'Cuz you don't really love me," Venus sings. "You just keep me hanging on."

She walks around the tree she thinks the sound came from, giving a wide enough berth that she's got a few long steps to reach the trunk. She tilts her head and listens for footsteps.

"You giving me Diana Ross because you're racist? What next, Whitney? Aretha? I can do Shakira too but no one ever asks about my Shakira impersonation."

Cindy hears a few of her steps, and takes a few more of her own before stopping. They could play this whole running around the tree game for awhile, but she wasn't planning to do that. Cindy bent down, picking up a few stones.

"Absofuckinglutely I'm racist. You know how us blonde, white females are. Anyone with skin darker then the tan that we got on the private beach at Monte Carlo is just too different for our taste." Cindy started throwing stones in each direction, a step each time a stone landed, to mask the sound. If it worked, she could be behind another tree, and if she got that far, then her voice could be that whole haunting everywhere voice deal.

If it worked. "No one likes Shakira for her singing anyway."

"That's okay, because no one likes me for my singing either," Venus yells. She tries to think of the blonde white girls she knows in this Arena. It's not Glinda's voice. "Man, you must be real scared of me to keep running. Promise I'm unarmed."

Harley, Julie or Cindy. Venus wouldn't recognize any of their voices.

Venus reaches a tree and starts to climb it, moving quickly, trying to get a vantage point.

Cindy doesn't hear anymore footsteps after awhile, and it takes her by surprise. Maybe she's lost her touch, because she can't think of how it happened, and she flattens herself against the new tree she was at.

"Bullshit you're not armed, who really believes that when someone says it?" Cindy yells back, waiting a second. Still no footsteps.

"So what's the score? I haven't been checking lately."

"Okay, you got me there. But you can have my knife if I can see you, alright? Talking to voices out here..." Venus takes a deep breath. "It creeps me out, okay? Do a psych patient a favor?"

She slinks through a tree and sees the blonde head beneath her. Ah-hah! And pulls the knife from her belt and tosses it so it'll land flat a few yards from Cindy.

"That's what I do on my days off, go to Golden Boroughs." Cindy muttered under her breath and then she heard some leaves rustle up near her right before it settles.

When the knife gets thrown down to the ground, but doesn't hit her, she doesn't yell. Give her some credit. She instantly froze, shoulders tight with tension before she blows out the air she was holding in.

"Holy shit, did you have to do that anymore dramatic?" Cindy asked, moving away from the tree, eyes on it as she moved backwards, towards the knife. "Okay. You've seen me. Now what?"

"I could have thrown it at your head." Venus starts to climb out the tree, unfurling like a banner.

"There. Now I'm unarmed. So we're even."

She supposes the fact that they're probably going to fight now has slipped by unspoken, but heard nonetheless.

"This is a holdup. Do you have food?"

They're going to fight. It's obvious they are, but it doesn't have to happen right this second. In fact, Cindy would like it if they actually got to talk. Kind of.

It put off the whole possibly dying thing for a little bit longer. "Thanks for making me feel better." Cindy couldn't help but grin. It's all she has going for her right now, that bravado. And the bag she had with her.

"I think I have a little bit left. Are you going to kill me no matter if I give it or not? Just so we get that put out into the open."

"Depeds on what you have, I guess." Venus drops down and lands on her feet. Cinderella looks about as malnourished as Venus herself does. Venus leans on her elbow against a tree. "I can be bought off."

She was going to look like shit when she got out of here. Beautiful and perfect, yes, but also like shit. If they tried to give her padded clothes, she was going to kill someone.

If she didn't die right here. "Yeah, you know, I'm not sure if I'm comfortable buying someone off, if I'm not getting anything in return." Like hell was she parting from even her meager supplies.

"Maybe some empty wrappers that have already been licked clean. I could part with those, they're taking up space." Sarcasm and being a bitch was all she had left. And a knife. She did have that.

Venus shrugs and holds a hand out as if serving an invisible platter. Then she closes it into a fist. "Your loss."

She lunges forward, grappling for the knife she so recently gave up. Her knee sweeps up, looking for Cinderella's gut.

Fuck. She wasn't as fast as she normally was, but she could have been okay. Really could have made a fight for it, as she threw her bag to the side.

But she got her right in the stomach, and that was her weak point, so. "Fuck!" This was sad, the way she just went down, just like that. She was weak, and she felt weak, and she hated it. Her leg shot out to try and trip her, but it wasn't as good as it could be, considering how she was curled up and holding her stomach.

The knife gets lost somewhere in the undergrowth. Venus' knee comes up again, and she keeps her balance without tripping, then throws her fist in a body blow for Cinderella's torso again.

When Cinderella's down, she starts kicking.

She's down. It won't be much longer, not the way that this is going. It's already there when she coughs, blood bubbling from her mouth as she struggles to take that breath.

Another breath. Another and another and ano-- the kick to the collarbone area, after the rib blow, and she can do this, she's breathing, she can bre--

That had done it. At the end, she couldn't even talk from the pain, blood, and sheer inability of being able to. The last thing she sees is Venus' shoe hitting her head, the final blow that kills her.

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It's Hard Out Here for a Bitch [Open]

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Backdated Thread: Ellie and Calico

Re: Backdated Thread: Ellie and Calico

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/end?