But In All Chaos, There Is Calculation [Closed]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Venus and Mouse, Venus and Jean and Kankri
WHERE| Anywhere in the museum
WHEN| Towards the end of week 3
WHAT| Venus tries to accelerate the end of the Arena by killing off strangers.
WARNINGS| Death, mental illness (dissociative), some description of gore

Venus doesn't have time to feel alone. Or rather, she has all the time in the world, but she's moving too slowly to hold on to the back of such a powerful emotion. Time sprawls out in languid hours tucked into the minutes before her. Everything is slow motion, especially her.

She's well-aware she looks like a monster from a horror movie now. The slash across her face is blood-crusted, purple and pink with unhealed gore. Her limp is impossible to hide, but the worst part is how disconnected she is. When she looks in the mirror, it's as if she's inside herself behind glass. There's a deadness in her eyes of someone not quite attached to the mortal plane at the moment.

The waterways of her mind whip and twist through rapids and eddies, pool in swamps and mires, plunges over waterfalls she never reaches the bottoms of. Knowing she isn't okay isn't enough to pull her back to the surface.

But she's aware that the only way to get her medicine is to kill for it, and she knows the only way to keep Kankri safe is to guide him. It's with the twin aims of murder and rescue that she ventures deep into the organs of the museum, dressed in hot pink sweatpants from the giftshop and a sweater with the her own name emblazoned over the front. She'd have to be dead to forget how to brand herself.

She thinks she agonizes more over the act of killing now that she's sick than she ever did while stable. The knife is heavy in her hand. Kankri's absence is a void at her side. She only wants to push past her bodily constraints long enough to ensure a victory for someone worthwhile, and then she can figure it out from there.

Comments

[relatability]

That does it. He has no time or the strength in his feet as blood rapidly rushes to his wound to dodge, and he catches her but that causes his side to bleed some more. He's unable to throw her off, and he tumbles to the ground onto his back, trying still to wrestle her off.

[celebrityskinned]

She pummels at his face, until between the two of them a viewer would be hard-pressed to decide who's more beaten up. She grabs his collar and slams him back against the ground, even as his struggling rips over her own stitches and paves the way for ugly bruises. Then she grabs her flashlight.

It's heavy, laden with batteries, made of metal. It's better as a club than it is for light. She raises it above her head and brings it down like a hammer.

[relatability]

That looks like a blow he wants to avoid. He jerks to the side again, blinking away stars from his initial contact with the ground. The flashlight crashes into the floor by his ear, the sound deafening at close proximity, and he tries to kick at her again. If he gets hit by that too many times he's not going to last.

[celebrityskinned]

"Ah!" The flashlight almost falls from her hands as the weight of it cracks her knuckles against the ground. She takes the hit to the gut but steadies herself, refusing to let him shove her off him.

"Just die!" She strikes again with the flashlight, this time to the neck.

[relatability]

That's not an order he can accept. Not on the menu. Definitely not. But a blow to the neck is harder to avoid. Impossible, really, pinned down the way he is, and he's hit by hard metal and excruciating pain, breath catching in his throat as he falls into a fit of coughs.

[celebrityskinned]

He's struggled hard enough that she can feel breathlessness getting to her. The world smears across her vision, receding into darkness in the corners. Were she in perfect health, she'd just be winded, but with her broken ribs she can't draw in enough oxygen.

If this goes on much longer, or if he gets another hit in, she just may pass out.

She's tell him that it'll hurt less if he stays still, but she can't find the air for that, so she just brings the flashlight down again and again and again, until she keels over to the side and lays on her back, barely conscious and trying to breathe.