thearena | open;

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 arches her eyebrows. "Woah, are you fucking kidding? I didn't hear about that! What the fuck!"

But she lets it go for a second. "Yeah, that's where I got these fuckers," she says, pointing to the little burns on her cheeks. "We were trying to cook up some meat we found in one of the kitchens, and started the fucking sprinklers..."

"Guess they like poetic justice," Joel remarks absently. Everything he hears about this Capitol place just further engrains the idea that they're all sick sons of bitches.

If the whole death arena thing didn't cement that enough.

"It would have been less trippy, but the girl telling me it is actually a comic book character AND in my district to boot," she said. "Also she's crazy, but in the fun way. When you meet her, you'll know what I mean."

Mindy paused, moving closer to inspect the girl's cheeks. "Shit, you're right. Did he get hit too?"

"Yeah but we got out of there pretty fast. Lost all the meat." Ellie looks honestly grieved at the idea of losing all that food.

"You have a comic book character in your district? Who?"

"Oh boy, here we go," Joel says, almost affectionately. Well, he did go to the trouble of finding all those comics for her back in their world, after all.

"That sucks," Mindy said, as she could certainly sympathize losing something that would definitely have helped you survive, not to mention she'd been near starving the last time.

"You ever read any Batman comics? His arch nemesis was this sadistic madman guy, The Joker. Joker had kinda a sidekick: a former psychiatrist turned crazy, Harley Quinn."

"No, I haven't," Ellie said. "That's-- that's fucking intense. I love comic books, but I mean, there aren't exactly a lot of them left, you know? Who would fucking think that someone you'd read about could actually show up here."

She looked back at Joel and grinned. "What if Dr. Star showed up? That would be fucking awesome!"

Joel huffed a little. "I'm sure she'd find a way to set things right pretty quick," he said genially. He hadn't really read any of those comics, just glanced at the back covers, flipped through one or two, but hey. Ellie liked them. He'd go along with it.

"You guys make her sound like Superman or something," she said, laughing. "I'm kinda curious about these comics now. What the hell is this Dr. Star all about?"

"Dude, she's only the kick ass commander out to save the universe," Ellie said, as if amazed that Mindy didn't already know, but she was mostly teasing.

"There are like these crazy aliens invading and she has to go kick the shit out of them and it's awesome."

"So basically your run-of-the-mill comic book about aliens," Joel said, gruffly but still with that almost-affectionate undertone to his voice.

He sort of made a mental note that when he got to this Capitol place, he needed to see if there was a comic book store somewhere.

"Sound awesome, I can see that," Mindy said, wondering why she was called a Doctor. Then again, Lady Death existed.

"They better have comics here as good as the ones we know back home then!"

Ellie stuck her tongue out at Joel for calling Savage Starlight 'run-of-the-mill'.

"I fucking well hope so. I didn't really look for them back in the Capitol, but when one of us win, we totally should."

Joel just grunted faintly - yeah, definitely filing away that mental note to try and get her some comic books, next chance he got.

He always gave her crap, but never meant anything by it.

"They'd better have something. The Capitol have fucking kids, don't they? You can well bet they don't put THEM in the games so they have to entertain them somehow, right?"

It just better not be some comic about how the Capitol was always right or some shit like that.

"You saying I'm not entertaining enough?" Ellie teased, raising her arms in the universal gesture for 'bring it'.

"I'll have you know I'm super entertaining. I will pun you right out of this arena.

Joel's eyebrows went up at that.

"Kiddo, you couldn't pun yourself out of a paper bag."

Mindy laughed. "That was fucking awful, Ellie. As in, super shitty."

And yet she felt better already. "You are plenty entertaining. In fact maybe we should figure out what to do after this weirdness is over."

Assuming she died, of course.

She stuck her tongue out at Joel but then laughed.

"Fine, guess I'd better come up with another win strategy," She teased.

"Come on, I'm hungry, let's find some grub."

"Sounds like a good idea to me," Joel muttered. "We shouldn't stick around here, anyway."

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wrap?

asdjhad YEAH sounds good