thearena | [Closed] He's alive! Wait he's not? What?

R starts being careful around doors after he gets killed.

His throat still hurts and talking is torture, but overall he feels he's doing pretty well for a murder victim. Never been murdered before. In a way, R's glad he can't remember most of it: what he recalls is panic, hitting the wall of the elevator with his face. His chest on fire. But aside from that, it's mercifully blank and for once he'd like to keep it that way.

Thanks to Joel and Ellie, his neck isn't bleeding anymore. The bandages probably need to be changed but he's had enough time back on his feet to wonder if it'd matter at this point whether it got infected. He died. The way Joel was reacting, he must've died. And yet here he is, stumbling around in the dark with his feet dragging. It's uncomfortably familiar.

Maybe you're not really cured, whispers the ugly voice in the back of his head. Maybe it's just temporary.

When he tries to check in on Julie's hideout, he finds she's gone and he's too illiterate to write a note. His crowbar's still there. R takes that, curling his fingers around the iron and wishing he'd had it on him in the elevator. He'd tried leaving a note, holding a pen in his hands and scrawling on the paper. It probably doesn't read I'm alive, I'll find you - R, but he hopes the intent's clear. If he's lucky, it won't spook Julie into thinking someone else found her camp.

Him, on the other hand. He makes no promises he won't spook. R makes it to the third floor without getting killed. The idea of eating and drinking fills him with nausea what with with the injured neck, but still. His body needs it. So here he is. Passing rows of tables and trying to make out if that shadow is just a shadow or -

Perry. R jumps at the voice.

"Perry!" He blurts, his own voice hoarse as he swings toward the shadow. Seriously, he'd thought he had that one pinned as Inanimate Object; Don't Worry About This. "I'm...uh, I'm," R stutters. Their last meeting hadn't gone that well. "Please don't rip my face off again."

Edited 2014-01-28 08:16 (UTC)

He already knew that corpses could talk. Or, really, that this corpse could talk. If talking was the word for that weird, sort of muttering, growling thing that he'd said when he said 'Julie'. That still got him upset, just thinking about that. It was one of the reasons why he couldn't find the corpse out, once they were back in the Capitol. Perry didn't know what he would have done if he saw him again, so fairly soon after what he did.

Shit, he was actually talking. If anyone came behind Perry right then, he wouldn't have even noticed them, not even if their hands were about to wrap around his neck.

"I won't." Immediately he cursed inwardly. What was he even saying? "So you can talk normally now? Did they give you new vocal chords?" How did that even work?

There was so much he wanted to ask, and he slid off to the side, the crowbar on his shoulder. Ready to swing if necessary, but he's keeping a table between the two of them.

R had to make a very real effort not to skitter to the side after spotting the crowbar. His old body was slow to react, if at all, and in comparison this new one's constantly on edge, constantly doing stuff. He feels the pulse of his veins at times, the way his injured throat closes up. The blood that's finally stopped welling into the bandages. The other day someone killed him. Strangulation by garrote, supposedly.

He shouldn't be here and yet here he is.

He swallows, the gesture painful. He owes Perry a full explanation whether or not it hurts to speak. "Cure. They gave me a - a Cure," R stumbles on the word. A week ago he would've said it's permanent. Now he wonders if he's cured at all. "So the short answer is I'm not rotting and I want to...carry my weight."

Help Perry out. It won't make up for cracking his head open like an Easter Egg, but maybe it'll keep Perry alive a little bit longer. R stands there aware suddenly of their height difference. He's even taller now that he's (sorta) alive and Perry's just a naturally stocky guy in comparison. He holds up his hands to show he's unarmed. No blood on them, see? Nothing on his face, either. Proof I haven't fed goes unsaid.

Still holding them up, R's eyes glance around the dark table, the shadows he's going to assume aren't any of Perry's buddies, if he bothered to make any.

"I'm sorry. About what happened in the lab," R blurts.

Perry automatically assumes that when he says 'cure', he means cure. The Capitol has created a cure, to bring the dead back to life. He has to wonder why it took them so long to do it; didn't they do that every arena? People who died here got revived, or whatever it was that they did to bring people back.

Maybe they just hadn't had enough test subjects when it came to actual zombinism. His hands tighten on the crowbar before relaxing.

"Carry your weight." He repeats. The newly living dead guy wants to carry his own weight, and there's something so morbidly funny about it. The corners of his lips turn up, the barest of smiles there. But it still is one.

And then it's gone. "Check the pantries first. The fridge goes last, if there's anything in there." He turned his head, jaw clenching. "You did what I wanted. It's what I did that I can't forgive." He glanced back.

"I blamed you for... I'm sorry, about the last arena."

Edited 2014-02-02 06:45 (UTC)

R nods, eager to prove he's not just a mouth and a decomposing stomach.

It surprises him how much he wants Perry to like him, to like anything at all, actually. It's not even that he'd been inside his head. There's that, sure, but he'd felt like he understood what it was like to stare at the world and feel it matter less and less. Granted, he (probably) hadn't gone so far as to kill himself via zombies, but he understood on a visceral level, at the very least. And he wanted to tell Perry he did. That he isn't alone even in a crowd. He struggles to work out the words as they head to the counter in the back, passing rows of cash registers, Perry's flashlight playing over the silent soda machine. It's covered in a splashy red and white sign that should look familiar, but he still can't make heads of tails of it.

Perry's apology comes out of left field, R swinging his head in surprise as they reach the counter.

"What?" He says. Oh. Yeah, that. Guess he must've found Julie. "It made sense? I mean, you look at a zombie and you'd just assume."

It's how it's always been, actually. Zombies eat the Living, the Living generally doesn't like it. He crouches down and checks the shelves, opening cabinets. They're all brushed steel; easy to clean, modern. R glances over his shoulder at Perry's shadow. Unlike Julie, Perry's much harder to read despite eating his brain. He's more...still. Quiet. He didn't used to always be that way. It just kind of happened somehow.

"Um," R reaches in and pulls out boxes of mustard packets, sleeves of cups. "I'm sorry. About...everything. Your dad. All that."

Might as well be open about the brain thing. It's not like the Living haven't had their theories. As close as Julie is to Perry, it's tough to beat the direct route to stepping in his shoes the zombie way.

Edited 2014-02-02 07:11 (UTC)

"I should have finished it completely. Not just what I did." You did look at the living dead and assume that they were going to eat you. That's what they do after all. It's the part that he didn't expect, the part that made it all the more worse. This guy, even when he was dead, he still talked. He didn't just groan and whatever else Perry had seen them do before. He said words.

Perry watches R as discreetly as possible, not wanting to come off even more odd then he actually is. He didn't want to openly stare. It didn't put anyone at ease, and now that R was human, it was easier to tell when he was and wasn't.

"How did you know that?" He frowns, brow furrowing in thought. "Did Julie tell you that?" Perry didn't know how much she had told him, but he guessed if, they were talking about him, then it would be this. He turned back to go through the one of the cupboards, and then turned back, foraging for food almost forgotten.

"How much about me did she tell you?"

When R sneaks a glance at Perry, he can tell he's distracted: his scavenging isn't as military-precise as it usually is. "She, uh. She said she was upset you were gone."

Said aloud like that, it seems pitiful, like she didn't care. But R can't put into words that look that passed on her face while she'd talked about Perry, how she'd gotten quiet and still and her eyes had glistened. It wasn't just sadness. R shrugs as he moves toward another cabinet. He recognizes the chip bags inside even if he can't read the labels. That counts as food. Perry likes the green bags, from what he remembers of his stolen memories - he'd been partial to sour cream and onion. Nora and Julie scrounged up a stale bag of those for his birthday once. Perry had stretched those out as long as he could, a chip at a time.

R sets those aside.

It'd be easy to pretend like everything he got, he got from Julie. But there's the other things he knows, the little moments that are Perry's and Perry's alone, and it doesn't feel right to keep those to himself.

"You used to zombie-watch. Back when it wasn't so bad," R says in a whisper. "You had theories. Some of them were right."

Hopefully it'll jog Perry's memory of life a few years earlier, back when his Dad was still alive and before they'd thought working on the wall was the solution. Before that. Before Julie and Nora and the City. When he had the luxury of wondering just what the corpses stumbling out in the field were. What was going in those skulls as they tottered in the distance, lonely shapes that couldn't reach Dad's car.

R doesn't need to expand on that. When he says that Julie was upset, Perry knows she was upset. He can see her upset. Tears forming, but not falling, because she was and wanted to be strong. Hunching in on herself, because there wasn't anyone there for her to hold onto. Perry can see it, see how she would have been sad. It had been that thing that had almost broken his resolve in doing what he did.

But the feeling overpowered his for Julie, and once he knew that, he surrounded to the inevitable. He goes back to looking through the cupboard, finding a prize of pretzels. The little kinds they give out to kids, in sticks, with their lunch. It's not much, but there's a full bag of it, and Perry wonders if R would like these, before coming back to himself and setting them aside.

"Jesus. That was so long ago, watching them. I'd talk to my dad... not much, but I had so many ideas that could never..." His voice trailed off. "How--" Cutting himself off, Perry got up off the floor and came over to R. Standing a respectable distance, but a lot closer. He wanted to see his eyes.

"Julie didn't tell you that. How do you know these things about my life?" His voice got lower. "How do you know me? Don't say Julie."

Suddenly Perry feels too close despite being a few feet away – out of both lunging and biting distance, he notices – and R sits there in an awkward half-crouch, staring back. It surprises him Perry’s dead-set on eye-contact right now. You’d think he’d be a little more…leery around his killer.

R doesn’t pale at the question: he’s already pale from getting killed and besides, he’d been expecting this question to come up eventually. If not now, it would’ve been in the Capitol. “Because of this.”

He hesitates, than points at his teeth as he bares them almost shyly. They’re not straight but they’re not jagged or blackened from old gore. He used to be pick at his teeth sometimes, on the days he was feeling his lowest as a zombie: trying to clean out the latest murder victim while M pretended he didn’t see because the other Dead just didn’t do that. Watching the expression on Perry’s face, he then points at his head. That theory, Mr. Kelvin. The one that got your Dad to stop the car at some 7-11 that must have been looted months ago. Dad hadn’t killed the engine, but he had given a flat look, his mouth carved into a straight hard line.

“No more of that, y’hear me? It doesn’t matter why they eat – they just do.”

He’d started driving again. Even allowed Perry to use the A/C that day, almost like an apology for snapping at him. Didn't breathe a word about their limited gas.

R drops his hand, nervously looking over at the other man and wondering if any good will that might have been forming will wither.

Edited 2014-02-13 04:44 (UTC)

He didn't want him to lie. He wondered if he could lie, and then shot that down; of course he could lie. Everyone and anyone could lie, no matter what they were, or weren't. But one thing you couldn't do with a zombie was make eye contact. It was an unconscious test, to see if he was now human enough to do it.

His eyes look to his teeth. Regular teeth, not black, not perfect, just teeth. When R's finger then points at his head, he stares at it, a small frown of confusion on his face.

Perry's body understood before his mind did. A small tremor built in his hands, moving up to his shoulders. That same conversation plays in his mind, and he can hear his dad's voice, the one that said that this conversation is over. And it was. And he'd put it out of his mind, because he had to. Had to.

"You eat us and know us." A question that is also not a question. His throat is closing up, voice hoarse, because oh god. He was right. Another question pops into his mind, and he stumbles back to a safer distance.

"Holy... shit." Perry starts laughing. "Holy shit. I. Shit." A table between them now, and he has to put his hands on it to hold him up as he laughs. "Did I-- did it-- you know?"

He nods, ashamed but relieved that he doesn't need to spell it out now that Perry gets it. R struggles not to hurt when he stumbles back. As if he could lunge at him suddenly all over again.

The laugh shocks him. It comes out of nowhere, a little desperate and harsh and yet it's familiar. Could be because he validated a theory that's been bothering Perry in the back of his mind for years, like a dull itch. He stands there with the table in between them like a barrier and while it doesn't beat a good wall, it's better than nothing. It would've still taken a zombie time to get over or around.

R pretend he doesn't notice. He wishes they were checking the fridge instead.

"'Did it'?" he repeats, half to stall for time, half because there are a lot of Its in Perry's life he didn't do, wished he did. Or did do and regretted it after. "What do you mean?"

He tries to search Perry's face. There's some lighting from the emergency exits, red glowing that doesn't do much more than wash out the other guy's face and flatten his features. It slowly dawns on him what he actually means - it's been a long, long time since Perry bothered to crack a joke, even with his particular brand of humor. Even R had forgotten what it looked like and he'd eaten the guy. Ashamed, R shrugs.

"I guess? You were - are physically fit and you remembered when it was better," R mutters.

Edited 2014-02-16 09:52 (UTC)

"That's... good." Every time that Perry thinks that something in this place couldn't get any weirder, it does. He's having a conversation with the guy who ate him, about how he knows him because he ate him, and also getting told that yes, you were delicious, since you asked.

He covers his mouth with his hand, letting it hide most of his face as well. It's a real laugh, and it almost scares him. A real laugh. I'm sorry, he thinks, but can't say it; shouldn't they have gotten some weird sort of telepathy with this? No? That would have been helpful.

Slowly, he drops his hand, taking a deep breath. "You do... know everything about me, then." Perry looks down and the table. "That's unnerving as hell." He mutters, before coming back around. He pauses, then nods to the upper cabinets to the right.

"Check those cabinets, you'll be able to see them better then I can." And he'll check the bottom ones, next to R. Nothing between them. Not close, but still progress; he's still not too sure about the 'cure' deal, but he's pretty sure he won't rip his throat out.

"So, uh. Do you have any memories of your own?" Perry glances to him, trying for conversation, but it's odd, and he can't really ask about the Knicks.

Everything, except it never comes up at once. And it's the freshest when he's feeding. If he could've relieved all the memories he ate any time he wanted, he probably would've stopped hunting Living a long time ago. R shrugs, his mouth a pursed line.

For a moment he almost expects to see the laugh go to Perry's eyes, as black and flat as the taxidermied animals he saw earlier. Hopes for it, even. But Perry seems to realize he's starting to look more alive, his voice leveling out to that business-like tone that grated on Julie's nerves. Back to scavenging. Perry acknowledges the height difference without making any digs about the whole lab/murdering thing, R ducking his head and heading to the cabinet obediently.

He tries not to worry too about the height difference. In a way, that's what had made Perry easier to take down - he was smaller, and once you had a zombie actually close enough to grapple, there wasn't much you could do. R can remember the lab just fine, remembers the sick crack Perry's head made when he jerked him off the counter like it was yesterday. He wonders how conscious Perry was at the time. Hopefully not a whole lot.

R rifles through the cabinet. He reaches up and pulls down a few water bottles, dusty because they've been shoved in the back. There's a box of plastic knives he's not sure if Perry wants. They'd probably snap before they actually broke anyone's skin but you never know what can be a weapon. He almost drops the box at the question.

"Um," R shrugs again, a little embarrassed because it's a little bit of a sore point. "I've got...impressions? I know what stuff is but, uh, not if it's mine. I'm hoping they'll come back if I'm Cured, though."

He flashes Perry an awkward smile.

"Let's check the fridge," R changes the subject. He keeps thinking of waking up a zombie near that river and he's not sure he's ready to share that one memory he knows is his. Not yet. Not even to Perry, who he knows he owes at least that much to.

Perry had never been the tallest guy out there. Tall enough in comparison to some, but compared to R, he was small. Not that it bothered him. Height was something that just was. You can't change it, but it was still something that he was aware of as they looked together.

Still, he could look at him and know that he could take him. It was sad when you appraised almost everyone by the fact of whether you could survive an encounter or not with them, but that's how it was.

He busies himself by looking, and he actually finds a can of potatoes at the very back of the lower pantry. He holds it up in victory for a moment as he shuts the door.

"At least we came away with one thing, if the fridge doesn't pan out." The fridge better pan out. For now, Perry will put the can in the make shift bag he has. They'll split what they get after they've gotten in. He'll give him his word on that.

Heading over to the fridge, he looks back at R. If he was fully human, if they had met, would they have become friends? It's a question that has no answer to it, because saying no feels wrong, but saying yes does as well.

It was a feeling as he went and rested his hand lightly on it. Feeling the cold surface, before opening it, eyes closed as the last of the cold air dies. Whatever they take now, they better take it all. No one will have a chance if they find this stuff later.

Perry looked to that feeling and gave him a slght smile. A smile that could be more. But a not-crazed one, as well. This is Perry trying.

"We'll take out what we find, and then leave what we don't want, but will be good enough when someone else finds it." Perry nods, starting to open the fridge and walks in. Have to love these fridge rooms.

"Cured here, or cured back home?" He asks carefully. "There's no cure back home." And he sounds so defeated at that. There is no cure.

Perry has a better idea of what to do than he does. R follows him to the fridge, trying to pretend he doesn’t see the way Perry glances back to study him. What’s he thinking? Is he having any more regrets? Is he sorry he came back despite the lab? Sure, R’s been in his head but that doesn’t mean he can read his mind. This is a new Perry Kelvin, one who shouldn’t have lived past that day but did. Somehow.

It’s new territory for him, too.

R recognizes the heavy fridge door like he recognizes plane; coffee cup; car when he’d been a zombie. He knows what stuff is. It’s the next layer of meaning, the ones that should tell him if this specific plane is special or just a random one, if he ever had a favorite brand of coffee, if he drove or walked home – that next layer of context are still blanks. So empty they used to sear into his mind. These days he’s started to fill them with memories of Julie and Howard and the Cure. The smile he catches from Perry makes him wonder if maybe hope isn’t a post-apocalyptic pipe dream after all.

“I know,” R says quietly. It’s cold enough in here that their breaths come out in small white puffs, R distracted as he tries it again. Cool. That never happened in his zombie days. Glancing at Perry, he goes on. “They have a Cure here. Maybe we,” he slips in the “we” without realizing it, “could bring it back.”

And not just him. R has daydreams of taking that Cure back home, setting it on the hives of Dead like the best kind of epidemic. Seeing M the way he really is, flushed face and no more stuttering.

R roots through the boxes and metal shelves. Most of them are empty, but others have frozen packages. Some of them have freezer burn. Others are better off and he sets those aside. There’s even a quart of ice cream. It won’t last too long once it's out of the freeze, not unless Perry’s planning to drink it (and he might – he’s got the survivor thing going on).

That's where he can't understand him that well. Because he seems to know him, he does. But he holds back. Perry feels like R is waiting for him to say something, or do something, which correlates to whatever he's had in his mind.

But he doesn't know it. And here he is playing the same game on him. Waiting for something that he knows, that he recognizes.

"Maybe you can." The we may have slipped out, but Perry's clear refusal of what would happen if they went back is clear. I Perry as sent away from here, he's dead. Full on dead. Julie, and hell, R here: they were the bringers of the cure.

"That would be... really cool, though." Says it as casually as possible, after looking at R for a long time. He breathes in harshly, contemplating before he talks again, frozen food set to the side for one moment.

"Give me your hand." Perry put his hand out for R's.

R's eyebrows knit together briefly at the request. It's Perry. He knows (mostly) how his mind works in the most intimate way possible. But Perry's also a zombie-killer and he's a Living-killer. There's blood on both their hands. It would be easy to jerk him forward and drive a crowbar through his skull.

He holds out his hand palm up to Perry, the gesture nervous, ginger.

He hopes he doesn't get killed for this. It seemed like it had been going surprisingly well, if you asked him. He'd had high hopes that trend would continue. That the successes he has had with humans like Julie and Howard would continue with Perry. Maybe there's a part of him that has a personal investment in this. That wants to see that Dead look slip away.

He knows without touching that Perry's hand will be callused, unlike his. There's a finger that was broken and reset. The special thing about that one was it was pre-zombies, when proper medical care was expected, not a pipe dream.

He doesn't know why, exactly, he wants to do this. It's not a cure, what he's about to do. It's not a balm. And it sure as hell isn't a bandaid. It was like sitting back and waiting until the wound stopped bleeding, a scab started to form. Perry has no doubts in his mind that he won't be getting out of this arena alive.

It's what he counts on. It's what he wants, what he told Mindy he wants, what she agreed with. There's no point in doing something that will force you to stay in the Capitol like that. Perry didn't want to be in the arena, but he sure as hell didn't want to be there.

Perry takes his hand, gripping it tight. For the briefest of moments, he thought it would be cold. Like someone who's dead. But it's not, and they're kind of soft. Not like his hands. They're the hands of someone who hasn't held a gun. Held a bat for baseball. Used a shovel to dig into the dirt, to plant a tree.

"It's nice to meet you." Perry says it softly, and then drops his hand, waiting a beat and then looking back to the fridge.

Somehow the handshake is the last thing R expected, his hand limp and unresponsive in Perry's hand until he remembers he's supposed to do something with it. Perry's palm presses against him, callused from weapon training and thinking he'd follow in Dad's footsteps until he got himself killed out on construction.

"Me too," R says, stunned, and he can't remember if that's even the right thing to say in return or not. This is how they were supposed to meet, shaking hands like people instead of ripping out the meat of Perry's arm.

Lot less screaming involved.

R follows the glance at the freezer, which looks like it's picked pretty clean, nevermind the fact they only have two pairs of arms. He gestures with his thumb out the door. "I'll start moving stuff out."

He grabs as much as he can carry of the frozen food, the cans of olives and peaches, and walks out the door, knowing it's heavy but feeling light as air. This must be what second chances feel like. R walks into the cafeteria main with his shared loot, dumping it on the table and forgetting to watch that exit. He starts to turn, his chest wide open to the Tribute that hadn't been there a few minutes ago.

Edited (typo fixing) 2014-03-02 08:24 (UTC)

Sure, he was certain the routine resupplies were coming from Shion, but sitting back and waiting for things to come his way had never been his style. But he was still wounded, so he had to tread carefully.

He always kept the crossbow loaded and cranked. He wasn't the most familiar with this kind of weaponry, and he was not going to let fumbling with a bolt and crank be the death of him. By that same token, he only had one easy shot. The second would be harder.

There were two guys in there, judging by the voices. He arrived late into their conversation. Once they'd separated, he'd be able to do this a bit more easily.

Then, finally, one of them came out, practically gift-wrapped for his shooting pleasure. Well, not that he took any pleasure in this, but at least the force of the bolt would make for a swift kill. He hid most of his body behind the wall, and took aim. This was his first real shot with it, so he aimed for the chest. If it dropped at all in flight, it wouldn't be by much at this distance.

The thing wasn't as silent as a normal bow would be, but much quieter than a normal gun. There was a dull snap and the faintest whistle as the bolt flew through the air to find a home in R.

He didn't obviously hear the bow go off, but he heard the bolt when it hit something. He'd had an arm full of cans, and for a split second he almost dropped him. His brain kept his body from doing something as stupid as that, though.

More noise meant more people, and more people meant higher chance of getting killed. So when he rushed out, he did take the time to set them down on a table. Not noiselessly, but not clattering to the floor.

And he had to find where that came from. Without a second thought, he ran out, keeping low with a hand on a knife, and the other on the crowbar, looking for whoever made that arrow appear.

"Did you see him!?" R didn't have to answer for him to keep moving.

The strangled sound coming from R's direction and the dull thump said what it needed to.

R's been shot before, he's been stabbed and almost lit on fire, none of which had hurt. But the crossbow bolt hits like all the bullets in the world didn't, slams into his chest split seconds before pure agony follows suit. He has the time it takes to fall backward to register it hurts before he tumbles onto his back with a whuff of air expelled from his lungs.

His head cracks against the floor as he sprawls there in a broken heap, blood welling around the arrow as he fights to stay conscious.

So no, Perry Kelvin, he didn't see him.

He ducked back behind the wall when he heard Perry coming into where his position would be extremely obvious. Though, considering the general direction the bolt had to have come from to be on that side of R's body, and the possible entry points, it could only have come from one door.

He pressed his back against the wall and had a decision to make. He could get some more knifework in, or he could try to reload in time. The second was a bigger risk, but he had no idea what his victim's friend had with him. Said friend would be coming through this entryway in no time at all.

He decided to stick to what he knew. He slipped his knife out and opened the blade silently.

If R was gone, he was gone. If he was down, he was down. Perry wasn't going down with him, and he wasn't going to let this pass. Maybe it was something stupid, like 'don't kill my zombie killer'. But it was something he couldn't quite explain.

It was good that he was fast. He was at the only possible place it could come from quickly, and he swung the crowbar as hard as possible, right hen he crossed the threshold.

Perry wasn't even trying to be silent at this point. If another bolt had come flying, it would be different. But whoever this was? Was just too slow on getting that second one in, in Perry's mind.

Rat's senses were still keen as ever, and he ducked under that swing quite easily. He sprang forward and onto Perry as quick as he could, knife coming up to stop against Perry's throat.

If he was more flexible, maybe he would have been able to do something cool, like slide down or something. The best he could do was fall down onto his back, looking up.

But. But.He'd already brought his own knife out from under him. Perry held it pointed up, ready to slide into his heart. He stared up at this guy with the obvious look of 'now what?'.

He felt the end of Perry's knife on his chest. He didn't think these knives were long enough to actually get to where Perry wanted it, nor did he really have the leverage. But Perry was in better shape than Rat was, so he had to find a different solution than just being a quicker knife.

"Oh~ You're quicker than you look," he smirked. He was faking at being stronger than he was. It was only what he had to do to survive. "Do you still think you're faster than I am?" He pressed the knife up a bit more firmly, still not quite drawing blood on him. "Or would you prefer to work something out?"

He'd trained for things worse then this, and it was that that kept him in the right state of mind. Zombies didn't wait and talk to you, try to talk you out of hurting them. They came at you, and you better hope you're either strong, or fast. Preferably both.

So he pressed his arm up, ripping the tiniest of holes in the shirt of his opponent. "Not faster, but a dying man's strength can't be measured." He looked up at him, no smirk. Just a face, completely devoid of all emotion, and eyes of a dead man. He's already dead on the inside.

And yet he's fighting to stay alive. And to kill the person who killed the person who killed him.

"I'm willing to work something out."

That was a face he knew well. He'd seen it on a lot of people's faces. If he had his way, it would never appear on his own. He didn't really respond to the cheek provided in return.

"You let me get what I need and go on my way. You'll be able to provide a little show for the folks back home and see off your friend before the robots sweep him up," Rat laid out his terms simply. "And then we both go on our way."

"What do you need?" That was really the thing, wasn't it? He didn't really care about providing a show, so long as it didn't end in his death. But he also had to respect the need to do it. That was how it all worked, especially how it worked to get food and gifts in here. Entertain people enough, and they'd feed you.

Still, he wasn't going to let this guy go with half of his food stash or something. At that point, he'd rather fight.

He shrugged. "You're just going to have to sit there and find out," is all he said. He stood, finally getting his weight up off of Perry. He still stood over him, knife in hand. "Roll over onto your stomach and keep your hands flat on the floor. Move an inch before I tell you and your food supply is going to be the last of your worries."

Perry stared up at him for a moment in disbelief, before giving a laugh. A laugh that was harsh, and didn't have any feeling in it besides the possibility that he was not entirely sane.

"You've got to be fucking kidding me. No. Go take a can from the bag, and get out of here." His grin was sharp, more bared teeth then a smile. "Kill me, and I'm taking you out of this arena with me." He still had his knife in his hand, pointed upward. R was going to get cold on the floor, and Perry needed to speak to him before the intercom went off.

[Closed] He's alive! Wait he's not? What?

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Let's start gearing up to get R in sniping range? Rat can snipe now?

Re: Let's start gearing up to get R in sniping range? Rat can snipe now?

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I guess he wants to fight it out a little? Reach a stalemate and they both go on their way?

This works!

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