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.

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Where I come from, Joel thinks, but pointedly doesn't say, kids get shot in the street for no reason at all. Tell your sob story to someone else.

His arms cross over his chest - it's not a friendly gesture, by any means, but it at least says I'm not pulling a weapon. The troll... thing... whatever... is obviously not hostile, despite the startling appearance. It's Venus that Joel has his eye on. Even injured, he recognizes that protectiveness.

"Nobody's gettin' stabbed," he says gruffly. He keeps within arm's reach of Ellie, though, his posture making it clear that if he thinks she's in danger, he'll step in as necessary.

Venus relaxes a little. A little. "I'm not going to stab anyone. Give me a little credit."

She crosses her arms too, fingers drumming over his bicep. "I'm a little short on account of broken ribs."

Kankri pats her Venus's arm gently before scooting away a few inches. "Pleased to meet you both, circumstances notwithstanding," he says with a little nod.

He pulls out half of a very dry cinnamon roll from his pocket, nibbling at it delicately. Might as well occupy himself as Venus and her friends (or friend at least) get caught up, now that the awkward introduction is out of the way.

Ellie hasn't really relaxed at all, though she's at least fairly sure now that Joel was listening to her, and Venus seemed a little more relaxed.

"Broken ribs?" She asked, looking worried. She knew Venus was beat up, she hadn't realised how bad. "You going to be alright?"

Well, at least the troll seems to eat food and not people. That's a big point in his favor. His focus swivels back to Venus pretty quick, though, as he mentally files away her injuries. "How'd it happen?"

Because knowing who or what beat her up could be valuable information.

"Some bitch put me through a car window, and then one of my roommates took initiative and decided to kick my chest in." Venus shrugs one shoulder and picks at her stale cinnamon roll. "Not everyone here is as cute and cuddly as we are."

She takes a seat on the edge of a diorama. "But I'll be okay. I'm tough. Have a little faith in a sister."

Kankri sits next to Venus, letting her handle the talking. If she's friends with Ellie then she should be doing the talking now that things have calmed down, right?

He sets a napkin and a danish on Venus's lap, then hands another to Ellie, and finally offers Joel a croissant. Stale, but better than nothing. And surely Venus can't object to him sharing with her friends.

"She's doing better than she was when I initially found her," he observes as he nibbles his pastry. "It wasn't a pretty sight. But we've been all right since then."

"Hey, I have plenty of faith. Faith is my middle name." It was only a little sarcastic. She blinked when Kankri offered her a danish, but offered him a smile as she took it, only giving it a brief sniff before biting into it.

Yeah, this kid was okay.

"Well at least it must have made for good television," She adds, still a little sarcastic, but she's relaxing. "I'm sure being thrown through a car window made the highlight reel for a week."

Sharing food was, for Joel, a pretty big gesture of trust. One didn't share one's food with others lightly where he came from, that was for sure. Food was scarce enough, so caring about someone enough to share what little there was - that was a big deal.

He watched Ellie's reaction closely, then sniffed at his own croissant. He still wasn't quite sure what to make of all these pastries - he hardly noticed how stale they were, mostly because he hadn't had anything like them in a very, very long time.

He'd forgotten how much he liked them.

He looked up, almost nervously, at Ellie's words. He knew they were being filmed constantly - she'd told him, of course. But the thought was still really disconcerting. "Highlight reel," he said, almost contemptuously. The whole thing left a bad taste in his mouth, croissant notwithstanding.

Venus rolls the danish around in her hand. She doesn't seem especially hungry. Her appetite's been lackluster lately, but she doesn't want Kankri to fuss, so she takes a few nibbles of that and the cinnamon roll.

"Probably." She gives Ellie a smile. "I'm getting loaded down in Sponsor gifts. I must be doing something right."

Kankri is eyeing Venus a touch suspiciously; he's noticed she's only picking at her food, and there will definitely be fussing once they're alone again. For now he sits down beside her, trying not to look around for the cameras he's just been reminded are there.

"I forget, sometimes," he mutters. "That it's only entertainment for them. I don't know how this can be so...so meaningless to someone."

Ellie only shrugged - she didn't get half of the things that the Capitol did, and television was entirely new to her otherwise. She hadn't gotten to watch the games live, last time, had only seen the highlight reels.

She'd been almost the last to die, after all.

"I don't know. They say a lot of bullshit about it, but it seems to be important to them. Takes up a lot of their fucking time, anyway."

She wasn't really aware that things like The Sopranos used to, as well.

Joel made a disdainful kind of snort. "Bored, rich assholes," he said. He'd known the type, back before the outbreak, anyway. Most of them didn't seem to have survived the infection, at least, but there were always the soldiers, too. The ones on duty inside the QZ, with itchy trigger fingers, excited at the prospect of putting down the Fireflies and other agitators, then got bored when things were too quiet.

Bored soldiers were dangerous soldiers.

These bored people just preferred not to do the killing themselves, apparently.

"Probably got tired of watchin' the fake stuff."

"It's not meaningless. It's something they can believe in."

Venus knows she's in the minority in this conversation, but she finds herself protective not of the system, which she's come to sour on, but of the idea. Of taking meaning through the vicarious lives of others.

When she was a little girl, sometimes it was all that would get her through. And sometimes it wasn't enough and she'd wake up in the hospital.

"The people watching aren't the ones who pull the strings to make this happen. They're just watching a fairytale with real props, as far as they're concerned."

"Nevertheless, they enable it," Kankri mutters in discontent. "Their inability to see us as people does not make us any less so. They may believe as they like, but forcing others to participate for their own satisfaction is simply - wrong. Disgusting. We aren't props."

He takes another, rather more savage bite of his pastry as he glances over at their guests.

"I'm sorry you both have been pulled into this, for what it's worth. I wish you luck in surviving or in escaping this arena, whichever is your priority."

A pause, and then he pokes Venus in the side. "You need to eat, not just pick at that, you know."

"Look, there's no point arguing about it," Ellie said quickly, holding a hand up. "Not here, anyway." Not where everyone was watching.

"We're here, and it's shit, and it's going to keep being shit. And thanks, Kankri. You guys, too."

Joel rolled his eyes rather emphatically at Venus's comments, but he didn't say anything to it - Ellie was of a similar mindset. He saw no point in arguing about the ethics of putting people unwillingly into a death match. Anyone who honestly thought it was okay on any level wasn't someone Joel felt like dealing with. At all. But arguing about it was stupid.

"Thanks for the food," he said, addressing Kankri directly for the first time since he'd made his appearance on the scene. It was probably the closest thing to an apology he'd get, for the way Joel had reacted.

"I'm eating, I'm eating, Christ on a cracker..." Venus puts another hunk of cinnamon roll on her mouth and swallows it, looking like she wants to spit it out the whole time.

"All I'm saying is that you have to be the change you want to see in here. That's Gandhi, right? We're in a morality play, and what message they get out of this is partly based on what we do inside the Arena. We can live by their rules or we can tell them what rules they want to live by." She looks towards where she's convinced a camera is hidden and gives it a rather intent stare. She's not really talking to Joel, Ellie and Kankri right now.

"Anyway, stay safe, Ellie. I'll know if you aren't." It's a threat to Joel, too. Watch over her.

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