thearena | open;

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Who| Joel, Ellie, anyone else!
What| Joel shows up and gets tossed into the ring. Let's see how he does!
Where| I can put him just about anywhere in the museum you need - he'll be scoping the place out.
When| Mid-Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Joel is a highly suspicious dude and may assume anyone he meets is hostile until proven otherwise. This means he might punch first and ask questions later! I'll update this if anything else comes up.

Finally, please specify if you would like to meet Joel before he finds Ellie or after - if before, he'll be on his own, really worried about his baby girl, and slightly more prone to violence. If AFTER, you will probably get Joel and Ellie (two for the price of one!), and a lower chance of Joel trying to throttle you immediately.

"Put your hands in the air!" "She's not breathin'."

He woke with a start, phantom pain in his head and surrounded by - military? They were clearly military, but not any military he was familiar with. When they grabbed him, all sense went out of his head - normally, Joel would go quietly, because struggling tended to get people shot, but all he could think, all he could remember, was Ellie, her body so still. She's not breathin'.

"Where is she?" he demanded, over and over, landing a few punches but never able to break free. The pajamas they made him wear, the explanation given, all barely registered as he had only one thought in his head - find Ellie now. "What the hell did you bastards do to her?" he demanded yet again, attempting to yank his arm free when they came at him with a needle. Still, nothing. His shouts and struggles were in vain, and the next thing he knew, he was... in a parking garage?

With no one around to confront, and the knowledge that he was here to kill, or be killed, Joel quickly shoved his feelings to one side, dropping low and seeking a stairwell to climb to higher ground - it would take him a bit to realize the only way up was via elevators that actually still worked. They were far too slow and noisy for Joel's taste, but it became obvious that they were his only option, and he needed to get to higher ground, if he was going to find anything. Especially Ellie.

Joel moved quickly, quietly, and with one singular purpose: find the girl, and get the hell out of here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Ellie had gotten distracted, wandering over to a display that showed two large, vicious tigers, and pressed her hands to the glass, seemingly oblivious. This was way better than the last arena, she decided. A real actual museum with (mostly) intact exhibits and now Joel was here.

The best.

"Yeah they have some crazy footage," Ellie called back, suddenly aware that Joel would soon have access to video of her being horribly murdered.

Woops.

"I would just avoid it if you can, really. It's pretty fucking bizarre. They have basically everything they could ever want and what they want is to watch a lot of foreigners and aliens kill themselves over and over."

She made a face at the tiger.

They past a pair of buffalo, trapped forever at mid-charge, great shaggy heads lowered, horns gleaming dully in the uncertain light. Wyatt could almost hear the thunder of their stride, feel it again in his chest as they raced with him to the cliff's edge.

"They call it a punishment," he said, reaching out to touch the glass - almost curiously - rubbing the grit that came away between his fingers. "There was a war some time back, between the Capitol an' the Districts. The Districts lost an' to make sure they remembered, the Capitol took their kids an' made 'em do this."

Wiping his hand on his increasingly grimy pants, he turned back to Joel.

"'Cept they never brought kids back."

Joel mostly just listened to the information they were giving him, while the rest of his attention was on their surroundings, taking stock, mentally mapping the place. If they were going to be stuck here for a while, he should get the layout memorized as best he could, after all. Knowing major landmarks, good hiding spots, high ground, likely places for ambush - all of that could be the difference between life and death.

But something Wyatt said gave him pause - as messed up as this was, he wasn't quite sure what he meant by his last statement.

"Brought back from what?"

Dammit. She'd been avoiding this part. She flashed a look at Wyatt as she turned around.

"From uh... From Death, Joel. This isn't my first arena. Or Wyatt's."

Wyatt's brows veed, slanted a look back at her.

How was he supposed to know she hadn't told him?

"When somebody dies in the arena," he added, taking over for Ellie, "they don't always stay that way. Most of the time the Capitol brings 'em back, so they can fight again in the next one."

Most of the time.

That brought Joel up short. Back from the dead? No way. No fucking way. That was impossible.

He thought of Tess. He thought of Sarah. Of all the wasted lives over the years, uselessly fighting against the infection, fighting each other for whatever was left, and his gaze landed squarely on Ellie.

His first thought - is this some kinda sick joke? But Ellie would never, never make a joke like that. Not to anyone, and certainly not to him. They'd both lost far too much. He couldn't wrap his head around it, but somehow, it had to be true. He saw it in her face.

A kind of sick anger roiled low in his gut at the thought - killing people for fun, but not just that - having the ability to bring the dead back to life? And using it for their sick idea of entertainment?

"What kinda fucked up place is this?" he heard himself ask the room at large, his voice low with that anger. It wasn't really a question he expected an answer to, but he had to say something. Had to get it out there, somehow, or he might otherwise explode with it.

Ellie looked a bit miserable - she hated lying to Joel, and she hadn't exactly lied but she had definitely intentionally left out a good hunk of the truth.

"It'll make a lot more sense when we're back in the Capitol," She said, carefully, her voice calm but low. "They only do it for people who die in the Arena, Joel. They don't give a shit about people who die on the outside. The resurrection is just for us, just so we can keep playing the games."

Wyatt understood his anger, his disgust... but he couldn't also help but appreciate - just slightly - being believed so readily. He was so used to the disbelief, to being called it liar - it was rather nice to be accepted.

If only it weren't for something so awful.

"An' they don't always do it," he murmured, drawl more pronounced as his voice grew heavy. Weary. "There's always some, every arena, that get left behind."

It was less about believing Wyatt and more about believing Ellie, but it amounted to the same thing and Joel wasn't going to argue with it. It was beyond belief, but so was a girl being immune to the Cordyceps.

"So how do we know who's gonna get left behind?" he asked, trying to make sense of it all, work it all out in his head.

"You don't." Ellie said simply. She glanced back at Wyatt as if to check if she was right.

"I-- This is only my second arena, Joel, but Wyatt's been here for a long time."

"The more they like ya, the better chance ya have, but there ain't any guarantees." He glanced at Ellie, then away, sighing heavily. His shoulders slumping beneath the weight. "This is my eighth."

Joel's eyes narrowed at the man - he was relatively close to his age, actually, something Joel wasn't all that used to. Not many lived to middle age, anymore, where he came from.

"Are you tellin' me you've died - and been brought back - eight fuckin' times?"

He wasn't - quite - ready to deal with the implication that this was Ellie's third.

He nodded wearily.

"This is the ninth arena, since they started bringin' in folks from other worlds. I've been in 'em all 'cept for the first one." He sighed a breath out through his nose. "There's only a couple others that've been here as long as me."

Joel's fists clenched reflexively, as he glanced between Wyatt and Ellie. Shit.

"So they keep bringin' us back, as long as they find us entertaining? And then when they get bored of us, they kill us and leave us dead?"

"... Yeah. That's pretty much it," Ellie said with a slow shrug.

"I don't get it either, Joel, but that's where we're at."

"Yer new, an' Ellie ain't been here that long. If I were a bettin' man I'd say you'll be alright, however it ends for ya," Wyatt reasoned softly. It wasn't the most comforting thing he could offer, but it was all he had.

It was more than he could say for himself.

Shifting the shining canister in his arms, he turned away, moving toward a bench in front of a display featuring half a dozen brightly colored parades posed in a false jungle. He set the can down on the wood and started to open it.

"An' if ya win, ya shouldn't have to worry 'bout it."

Joel studied the other man, reading in him the weariness, the kind of weight on his shoulders that Joel himself held. It fit. It was absurd, but it all fit.

"Well, then I guess we'll just have to survive," he said, like that was easy, like that had ever been easy. But he'd found Ellie, at least. That was the important thing. He tried not to think about the rest of it.

"Do our best, anyway," Ellie said. She's made a pretty good run of it last time, she was pretty sure she could do it again.

The cockiness of youth.

She sat down on the bench next to Wyatt and kicked her feet. "What'd you get?"

Wyatt busied his hands with the gift, digging out the small note as Ellie and Joel made their promises behind him. Doing his damnedest to ignore the way the hallway seemed to grow darker. Colder.

A tomb.

"...It's from Timeaus," he replied, glancing at Ellie as she perched next to him.

Dropping the note back into the can, he pulled out the thick bottle, amber liquor sloshing gently.

"Whiskey." Of all things.

Joel, for his part, didn't care all that much what Wyatt got - he was on alert for any signs of danger. He'd let Ellie and her friend talk, if they wanted, up to a point.

"Not very useful," he commented of the booze. Drinking would just get you killed faster. Maybe make a molotov out of it, though it wasn't ideal.

"We shouldn't stick around here much longer," he pointed out, glancing at the nearest exit.

"We're fine, Joel. There's no food or weapons or shit in this section so people don't really stay here much." She turned back to Wyatt.

She was having the same thought as Joel.

"Whatever you do, don't make a fire with it. They've got this fucked up fire alarm system that rains down this-- I don't even know what the fuck it is. It's like water kind of only it's so cold that it feels hot and it burns your skin where it touches."

She pulled back her bangs to show a couple marks on her forehead where drops had hit. Luckily most of the liquid nitrogen had hit her onesie rather than her skin.

Shrugging to himself, he shifted his bag to tuck the bottle inside. He'd find something to do with it, one way or the other.

"I heard," he said, returning the bag to his shoulder. "Bumped into Ian after he tangled with it. If ya got a medicine kit from the Cornucopia, the stuff in the tube'll help."

Burning? Great. Burning water from the sprinklers. Joel hadn't encountered a working sprinkler system in years. That sure as hell would put a damper on any plans he might've had for planting some homemade explosives around potential campsites.

He supposed it made a sick kind of sense, to find weird ways to kill people. Probably had more entertainment value.

"Good to know."

"Only shit I got from the cornucopia was two fire starting kits," Ellie said mildly.

"You can booby trap with the sprinklers just make sure you're well the fuck away from them before you set them off." She may or may not have been playing with them before.

Woops.

He arched an eyebrow, imaging what it would be like to go out like that, and then trying not to. He could think of several ways he'd rather meet his Maker.

"You give me a head's up too, huh? Can't say burnin' alive is quite the way I'd like to go." Reaching out, he patted Ellie's shoulder, then turned to Joel.

The man hadn't said it, but Wyatt could sense that he wasn't keen on having somebody hanging around. The two of them against the arena... Wyatt couldn't pretend he didn't understand.

"There's a man in here," he told him, eyes steady on Joel's. Hoping he would trust in the importance of what he was telling him. "Goes by the name'a Aunamee. Tall fella, dark hair. Smile's like a snake and slithers one too. He will kill the both'a ya, or worse, jus' as soon as look at ya."

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