thearena | (no subject)

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Who| Kain and OTA! (Allies or enemies welcome!)
What| Encounters, dealing with his first arena...
Where| Sixth floor creepy tribute wax museum and roof
When| Later half of Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Depends on who he encounters!

Early in the week, Kain spends his time mostly around the cultural exhibits. Since he'd been injured, he couldn't move around too fast, so was stuck mostly keeping a low profile and being on edge for potential threats. But this actually has also given him a good chance to observe some of the exhibits and find out some things from them, when he's sneaking around to get food and water. He has no idea what to believe about this world, but it's at least given him some kind of background to go on.

Once he gets his first aid kit, he patches himself up as best as he can and gets at least enough strength to move on. He's still not too fond of the confined space. It's also just as he'd been warned about: Cornucopia aside, it's been more of a survival game than a combat one. Frustrating, but at least he's managing that much.

So with a little more energy restored, he makes his way up. On the sixth floor, he slowly makes his way through the wax statues, eyeing them and hoping he doesn't encounter anyone familiar there. Eventually he discovers the way to the roof, and sighs in relief the moment he steps out into the open air...

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Like Kain, Iskierka has largely been making her way up to the top levels of the building. She doesn't really expect that they'll let her simply fly out of the Arena, but she means to at least get some use out of her wings, since she actually can this arena.

(And she's not sure she's pleased that both this and the last arena have conspired to really keep her from flying. It's hard enough to find space as it is, and the arenas really should take that into account.)

She's not sure quite what to make of the wax statues either, when she comes across them. It's the first time that she's seen anything like them at all, and she spends what might have been an embarrassingly long time making sure that they won't suddenly come alive and attack her, if she'd been at all inclined to embarrassment.

It's the process of figuring out what to make of the wax figures that she runs across Kain, and for a brief moment she thinks he's another of the statues, right up until he actually moves and there's a sudden hissing of escaping steam to go with her surprise.

Rooftops and Batgirls go hand in hand – Barbara was hanging out with her legs over the wall, staring down at the ground below and wondering what it would take to scale down the surface. She wondered what sort of security they’d use to fry her if she tried.

It wasn’t until she heard Kain coming out that she really thought about what sort of trap it would make. Six stories up, too high to simply jump out. No other rooftops to move to. So much for a place she could feel safe.

Kain doesn't trust those statues, either, but after a while it becomes apparent that they're no threat. Possibly. He can't stop looking over his shoulder at ones that he passes, wondering if they'd somehow changed position... Ugh, he'll drive himself mad on this floor. All the more reason to move onward and upward.

That's when the dragon shows up. Kain raises his spear defensively, at first thinking one of those huge creatures has come to life from one of the displays below.

But no. It's the dragon he'd met in that dream, the crowning of the last arena's victor. Kain watches closely for a moment, cautious. He wants to be able to trust her, but it's difficult in this situation. At least right away. "I hope you don't intend to attack?"

The open air is a relief to Kain. Finally. His thoughts are of getting down too, of jumping. It's just natural habit, to think he could easily get away by one simple dragoon jump. But of course, that's not going to work here, not in this world. His feet feel so heavy, landbound.

That doesn't stop him from seeing the rooftop as a refuge of sorts anyway. The open sky is still his natural environment, powers or no. He's just starting out, about to find himself a potential area to perhaps set up as his main camp, when he realizes he's not alone.

Cautiously, Kain raises his spear and takes up a defensive position. It's not so much that he intends to fight on sight, but he knows better than to drop his guard. He doesn't recognize Barbara, so he can't be sure either way if she means harm. "I should have known there might be others."

Barbara still feels like she could fly - leap off the roof and take to the skies. If only there was any place to land but here.... she regards the edge wistfully, remembering her time roof-hopping in Gotham before she turns her attention to Kain. Her expression hardens, and her stance shifts to defense.

Barb was still heavily in the no-kill camp. It felt like the only barrier her old life, and the Capitol's ultimate victory over her at this point. That said, she's also fully for beating people up and leaving them unconscious and out of her way. Difficult to do when you have no muscle, but she'll improvise if he makes a move. Or she'll just leap over his head and go for the stairs.

"If you're going for a flight, you might want to look for force fields."

"Do they have them in place here? I suppose they would, so that we couldn't escape. A pity." Not that it would be as easy to escape, without his abilities. He'd be willing to risk climbing, even, but if that barrier is in place here, then there's not much he can do at the moment.

Still, Kain takes another glance toward the edge, downward. Sigh. It's so frustrating, feeling so close to escaping and yet nowhere close to being able to do that. He glances back toward Barbara, still cautious, but not making any move to attack. He has his own opinions about who deserves to be impaled with his spear.

No immediate threat, anyway, and they don't look very hard at all to destroy, if they do decide to attack. Not that she expects they can, mind. They're only statues and Kain is far more interesting in her opinion anyway. She doesn't even mind that he doesn't seem to trust her right away. The Arena is mostly for making sure that there's only one survivor. But this is a face she recognizes and that is worth at least a moment of consideration before getting right down to the various businesses of actually attacking.

"I would have already done so, if I'd meant to."

Edited 2014-01-28 22:36 (UTC)

Barbara had no idea. She assumed they would, though - they wouldn't be careless with their precious tributes. Kill them laugh, or let them fall to their deaths - doable. Let them walk away? Barbara wasn't buying it. Some form of safety check was in place to make sure no one walked away from this place.

When he glances toward the edge, her muscles tense, and she sees a chance. She doesn't take it just yet, though. It'll take a running start if she's going to flip her way over his head, and he could turn her into a shish kabob at any part of the route. Maybe if she used his face as a platform, instead, disoriented him and took the stairs running. Yeah. She could work with that.

...But she probably shouldn't do that until after he made the first move.

"Is that why you're in front of the stairs?"

It's good enough for Kain, who quite frankly would prefer to have a dragon on his side than anyone else. He lowers the weapon, showing that he doesn't have any intention to start a fight, either. At least for now, he's not really planning on being the aggressor in anything that should happen.

He won't hesitate to attack anyone who attacks him, though. He's constantly glancing around, keeping an eye on things, listening for sounds of someone approaching. He won't drop his guard.

"Then it seems we're in agreement. You seemed reasonable when we spoke at that party, after all..." So at least his instincts had been right.

"Hardly. I was hoping I would find a means of leaving, up here..." Though by the stairs was, for now, a pretty good position to be in, just in case. He's still not at his best, and while he could probably manage a one on one battle, if it came to more joining in... then there would be problems. "I can't be the only one wanting to find a way out of their control."

But that's so much easier said than done, he's come to realize. He'd not been sure what to expect from an arena, but he'd certainly not anticipated the indoor environment they'd ended up in.

Iskierka has never had much of a guard to speak of. There's not really much of anything that would dare to attack a dragon back in her own world, and a lifetime's worth of habits isn't going to disappear after a scant few arenas, no matter how much it might have helped.

"Oh, it is ever so easy to be reasonable," she agrees without even so much as batting an eye. "And besides, whyever should I not have been."

"I guess it's easier for you than some of us." Kain had to not only keep his guard up, but he'd been pretty much keeping to himself, keeping to the usual tough front. He can't afford to trust just anyone. However... he wants to be able to trust Iskierka.

"How have you been faring so far in here?"

"Oh, well enough, I suppose," Iskierka answers without much of a pause. There's still not nearly enough of what she prefers to eat but it's much better than the last arena. At least here she can sort of make do on what little is left around the place. Plus it probably wouldn't be terribly hard to make off with someone else's supplies, if she absolutely had to.

"It is only unfortunate there isn't more space, here."

"I know the feeling, about space. Fighting within such enclosed quarters is hardly my preferred environment..." Even though they'd taken his powers, his fighting style was still so much more suited to an open sky. Even so... "But I'll make do with the situation we've been put in. It's not like I have much choice."

"I think they prefer it if we do not," Iskierka answers. "And it is ever so irritating. I have hardy been able to fly in these arenas at all. It is only once I am free of them that I can do so."

And well, it would be nice, to be able to actually be able to fly above people, for a change.

"Then we must find a way to make that happen somehow." It was wrong trapping all of these people in this endless bloodbath... but something about it being done to a dragon is almost worse to Kain. Dragons deserved far more respect than this. But clearly the people of this world wouldn't understand that. They didn't care that removing their powers was taking away an essential part of a person. "Regaining what's important... perhaps that should be what I'm truly fighting for."

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