thearena | there is nothing more deceptive

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there is nothing more deceptive

His first thought is that the entire situation is ludicrous. The outfits, the setting, the very premise. After entering the arena, Sherlock’s first thought is to wrap his head around the entirety of the situation, but that proves easier thought of than done. He takes to rubbing his forearm where the tracker had been implanted, a gesture he knows comes off as a nervous tick but one that he can’t help.

The need for cover doesn’t seem real to him, yet, but he bets on the fact that the explanation he was given was true. So when he finds an overturned car in the basement, he ducks around it for a moment. He tries to take stock, listens carefully. If he hears anyone approach, he’ll try to observe them before making himself known. He isn’t much of a runner, but he’s counting on his ability to distract if it comes down to it.

--

A little while later he can be found at one of the doors to the staircases. He knows that the elevators would be faster, but they’re also more easily controlled. He doesn’t have any of his lock-picking tools with him, but he’s good at improvising. So for several long minutes, Sherlock toys with the locks with bits of thin rubble, trying to rig them open.

He looks as though his concentration on the lock is absolute; he doesn’t turn his head or even pause. But his senses are acute, trained to notice if anyone comes at him. He knows of his own tendency to get lost in his own head, and so tries his utmost to be as alert as he can.

--

And finally, he’ll grow tired of the door’s lock and abandon it. That’s a tough pill for him to swallow—failing at something—but compared to all else going on around him, it’s the smallest on his list of grievances. Instead, now, he turns to the elevators and picks a random number once he’s inside.

He ends up on the fourth floor. He lifts a brow, as he prepares to exit the elevator. A museum. He supposes that’s fitting, given the atmosphere of the arena. A museum is a place of past spectacle. They’ve just now combined it with a live, present one. It’s almost too fitting, in a campy way that makes him feel like he’s being mocked. But he takes a deep breath, rubs at his arm again, and prepares to explore.

( ooc: feel free to encounter him at any point; i'll edit things if anything major occurs. i have a permissions post for deductions here, if there's anything you think i/sherlock should know. and if you'd like any more specific scenarios or want to plot a bit further, please let me know. )

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Venus finds him while she's patrolling. She's been doing so less this week than she did the last, despite the fact that her leg is no worse now than it was then. She's just finding herself low on energy, which she knows but isn't about to tell anyone is the result of coming off of a hypomanic episode. It's much easier to blame her fatigue on stress and the fact that she hasn't had anything but stale pastries and popsicles to eat for the last four days.

Still, when she gets up and goes, she walks confidence that masks the limp. She cases the entirety of the east wing of the fourth floor. She stops at a water fountain and looks around, and puts her head against the wall so she can hear where people are walking around upstairs. About that point she hears Sherlock.

"I'm not looking for a fight," she says, rote with how she's announced herself to plenty of people before him as she turns a corner and sees him. Thirty-something white guy, a bit gangly, maybe athletic but certainly not bulky. Her nose wrinkles and tugs at the stitches across the slash on her face as she decides if she thinks she could take him in hand to hand, and decides she likes her odds if she has to. "But this is our territory."

He’s just left Kankri a few minutes ago, working his way further into the territory of this floor. The things he’s learned, by now, would alarm most anyone—but Sherlock finds himself processing them from a distance. Resurrection seems improbable at best, and his mind is constantly supplying alternative explanations. The dominant one, at the moment, is that the deaths aren’t deaths. That the Tributes are incapacitated, but then retrieved before the life actually slips from their bodies. Everyone he’s spoken to seems convinced that the murders are actually occurring, but Sherlock justifies that they don’t have as much practice with doubt as he does.

These thoughts circle around in his head, but he still notices Venus a moment or two before she announces herself. At a glance, he can see her injuries—knows that’d be where he’d want to aim a strike, if he was feeling particularly homicidal. But he isn’t, and her words tell him something more interesting than her appearance. Our territory.

He holds up his hands in what would be an innocent gesture if it wasn’t so mocking. “I’ve already met one person with that claim, today. If he’s your ally, then you should know that I’ve left him quite alive. That’s a show of good faith, is it not?”

The flash of fear in Venus' eyes is unmistakeable. She doesn't turn her head, but she looks down the hall to where Kankri is, realizing that during her patrol there's a few minutes where she leaves the gap near the elevators open. Kankri wasn't asleep, he could have screamed, she would have heard him...

"You'd better be telling the truth." Sherlock may find that to be a show of good will, but Venus takes it as a threat, as a reminder to where she's vulnerable. Her hand slips into her pocket, where there's a knife she only intends to use if things go south.

But Sherlock has no candy-red blood on him, doesn't appear to be laden down with food - and honestly, the location she and Kankri have taken is good enough that anyone who killed Kankri without knowing who she was (and how dramatic her kill count was) would probably keep it. Would wait for her in turn. Would stake out the pantry and wait for Venus to come in looking for her ally.

"If not, I'll just let you know right now that I'm not the kind of person you want hunting you down."

“I don’t particularly want anyone hunting me down.” His voice is still blasé, and he doesn’t mention that he’d be good at hiding his tracks from most people. But perhaps not her—she exudes confidence, competence, despite her emotional attachment and physical injuries. He wonders, idly, if this is what this game does to people. Bares their vulnerabilities and turns them into strengths. A part of him might find it a fascinating social experiment, if it wasn’t so horrible.

“And I have no reason to lie to you. You are clearly more ready to kill me than I am you. I am unarmed, and death at this point would be an inconvenience.” He nods, trying to believe what Kankri had told him—that resurrection awaited them, that death was impermanent. But he just can’t accept that.

“I left him safer than I found him—you’re free to go check. I won’t pursue you.”

"I'll believe you." The image of Kankri bleeding and whimpering on the floor makes more than a single pass through Venus' mind, but she brushes it away. "And I'm not afraid of you pursuing me."

She exhales and lets the hot air cast over her lower lip. Sherlock's a wild card to her - unlike so many people here she studies the Games after each Arena, taking note of people's strengths and weaknesses. He's new, which means he's an unknown. Her time is best spent here getting a read on him.

The fact that he's not a terrified wreck after getting tossed into a death match is an interesting sign. In fact, he seems rather put together.

She walks up closer, so she doesn't have to raise her voice so much to talk to him.

"So what's your name, stranger? Mine's Venus."

He’d seen her subtle reach for the knife, but doesn’t mention it. He does, however, keep a close eye out. Killers, unless significantly unhinged, are really naked in their intentions. But the fact that she is Kankri’s assumed ally is a point in her favor. Unless she’s playing a long con on him, which is entirely possible. It might be too elaborate for their current circumstances, however.

He lifts his chin and a smile ghosts over his face. “Venus. Like the goddess. The stories tend to downplay her capacity for war.”

He doesn’t step towards her in turn, but he does lift his hands to gesture as he speaks. “My name is Sherlock Holmes. I’d offer you a business card or perhaps a more spirited greeting, but that would be out of place, at the moment.”

"Didn't she set off the Trojan War? I'm pretty sure that was the World War Two of the Grecian times." A few months back, Venus would insist that no, she was named after the statue, totally different, but she's done some 'book learning' since then. She's expanded her horizons a little.

She pulls her hands from her pocket (her gift-shop jacket, fittingly enough, says TEAM WATSONS on the front) and holds them out. Her nail polish is perfect, having been redone time and again each day with various colors. It's a way to pass the time while Kankri sleeps.

Plus, it somewhat hides the blood under her nails from having killed Sam Winchester only a few days ago.

"Sherlock must be an awful common name. I'm pretty sure we have another one of those somewhere." Alternate universes? Venus comes from a world where that's plenty common. She tilts her head and pouts at Sherlock as she examines him more closely, then extends a hand to shake.

"Consider this a gesture of good faith too."

“Indirectly, but yes. And her son was one of the only prominent survivors. Beauty is a deadly weapon, in her hands.” He’s had a revisionist attitude on most symbols of love since he learned the truth about Moriarty. He’s more wary than ever of beauty, now, and not just typical aesthetics. Keats couldn’t have been more wrong, he’s decided—beauty is the opposite of truth. It is deception.

If he thinks anything of that jacket, he doesn’t show it. But hands are a deductionist’s dream, so he shakes hers readily. Then he cants his head to one side and arches a brow.

“I’ll admit to never encountering another.”

"No argument there. People like to think people who care about beauty are just vain and shallow, but some of us just like to feel armed."

Even as beat up as she is, she's bothered to cover some of her injury in makeup, blurred out the dark circles under her eyes and kept her eyebrows plucked. And it's paid off - she hasn't felt short of Sponsor gifts yet.

Her shake is equally ready, committed but not fierce. There's a tremble in her fingers but not her wrist, and her palm is hot with fever. "You arrived, what, a few hours ago, I'd guess?"

Edited (added detail) 2014-02-18 18:02 (UTC)

Beauty as a weapon-- now there's a fascinating concept. A popular motif of the past making a celebrated resurgence in the present. Sherlock manages to appreciate weaponized femininity even if he's fallen prey to it himself.

He bobs, a slight movement of the balls of his feet. He takes in her condition with a distanced gaze, trying to note the cause of the fever.

"Three and a quarter," he says with a shrug. "An abrupt shift from what I'd planned to do with my day, but I'll admit that I've been able to observe some fascinating phenomena."

Being cavalier about the entire thing is the best defense he's found, so far. Casually, he continues, "You should look into bringing down your fever. If you expect to stay lucid enough to defend yourself and your ally."

"You're taking it pretty well. You must not have had much planned." She's teasing, but it is curious. He doesn't seem to have a military build, although he certainly looks in-shape. The other Sherlock's a consulting detective, she believes, and though her only interaction with him was to break his ribs, she figures it makes sense to be focused on observation.

His comment solidifies that impression. Her lips part slightly in an "oh" of confusion, then concern that he was able to feel it in her hand so easily. "I have antibiotics I'm on. I'm quite popular with the Sponsors."

“It would have been a day on the opposite end of murder,” he says with a shrug. “If I was lucky.” He’s much more interested in the aftermath than the action in and of itself, all told. And maybe, if he’s being particularly honest, he’s most interested in preventing repeat performances.

“How fortunate,” he continues, though there’s an undercurrent to his tone. He’s figured out this place well-enough, and may have enough information to start judging it—the environment more so than the subjects. “My initial thought is that they wouldn’t want to be too generous—that would drag the game on artificially.”

"Investigator?" She pushes a lock of hair behind her ears. "Can we walk? I'd like to finish my patrol but I'm not ready to have you at my back."

She folds her arms as she moves, closed off, defensive. "They like to pick favorites. More accurately, they like feeling like they have some control over what's going on, like they have a stake in it. So they feed me."

"Consulting detective. Investigators are rather more base than I prefer to be." They take photographs of cheating spouses; he solves murders. There is a hierarchy and he is at the top of it.

He takes a step forward, gestures her forward with one hand to show his agreement. Once they set off, he nods. "So you play the system for its greatest rewards. I imagine you give them more of a show than a story."

"Whatever you say. I don't know the intricacies of police position. I'm, uh, how would you say it, extra-procedural law enforcement." Which usually involves breaking plenty of laws in her own right.

She rolls her eyes. "Don't insult me. I can give plenty of story. Just because I care about the packaging doesn't mean I don't put thought into what goes in the box, you know?"

"A vigilante," he prompts. It's not the most solid deduction, but she's young enough that he can't imagine another kind of extra-procedural role for someone who moves, speaks, and acts as she does. If aliens exist, here, then why not someone like that?

"Conjecture isn't insult, unless it's taken that way." Which it often is, and he knows this. He can almost feel Watson behind him, glaring holes into his back. But he shakes off the feeling, nodding in agreement with her last statement. "I imagine that if you give them the genuine article immediately, they'd soon tire of you. Which hasn't happened yet, if you're receiving antibiotics." He pronounces each syllable of that last word individually: an-ti-bi-o-tics.

"Professional superhero. There's a difference." The difference being that she doesn't have to worry about secret identities or taking a second job as a newspaper photographer.

"Maybe I give them the genuine article and they want more of it. I played these Games a while, boy. I know what they're looking for." The antibiotics make her nauseated, so for a moment her lashes lower and she looks inside herself for balance. She's sure he notices it, and she hates herself for that. "Anyway, they like my love story and they think me and Kankri are a good team."

"Undoubtedly." One that he's already thinking about, and all the various implications of. New universes might be the best mental exercise he's had in some time.

He glances at her, notices her condition but doesn't comment on it just yet. Instead, he says, "There are very few contexts in which I prefer to be addressed that way-- this is not one of them. I have no doubt that you're capable-- you're still alive, after all-- but giving up the genuine has a price. Fame is a pack of jackals, waiting to devour you. In this circumstance, quite literally."

"Oh, don't get stuffy and British at me. I call everyone 'boy'. You're probably twice my age anyway." The way she rolls her eyes isn't meant to be hidden, and it's as much for the cameras as it is for him. "And I don't need you to lecture me on fame."

How did Kankri stand this man? Aside from the fact that Kankri seems more forgiving than she would be. She walks beneath a skeleton of a giant whale and raises her eyes to make sure there isn't anyone hiding on top of it. She stops when she notices that there's something - a plastic baggy? - barely visible atop the highest vertebra.

"Someone's been up there. But I'm sure you already knew that."

He shrugs, visibly, but how much of that is affected is open to interpretation. "If your verbal displays of dominance give you comfort, then by all means."

Sherlock moves to the center of the skeleton, tilting his head up to get a better look. He takes in every angle-- the way the skeleton is hanging, the slight motion, the shadow of the plastic bag. It seems balanced enough, and it's immediately obvious that whoever was there is gone, now.

"I did. And they seem a rather resourceful opponent, to get up there."

"It's the way I talk. It's a Southern thing." She doesn't even bother to hide how ruffled her feathers are.

"They got up there recently, too, or I would have noticed them on my patrol earlier." She points to a pipe heading up the wall. "They must have got up that way. So someone in here can seriously climb."

Were she uninjured, she may try it.

"I'm aware. It is a part of your nature, as much as being 'stuffy and British' is part of mine." He can adopt different accents, and does on many occasions. But this isn't one of them. And he can appreciate the comfort of being oneself.

Sherlock turns in a circle, frowning. He hops, a bit, trying to gain some leverage, checking the angles and height. He reaches as far as he can, but he knows he couldn't make it to that height unassisted.

"I'm nothing of an acrobat, but this place takes all sorts, I assume."

"It really does. Aliens, dragons, angels. The place that used to be America is still a big melting pot."

If she sounds patriotic at that moment, it's a misassignment of where her feelings really lie - it's not America (or the land that once was America) that she really cares about, it's the idea of people being both exceptional and commonplace.

"I'm not climbing up there." She shakes her head. "But I don't like someone parking on my turf. Suggestions on how to take that whole skeleton down?"

"Target the wiring," he says immediately. "It's suspended by something, at multiple points to keep it balanced. Cut just one wire, and the entire thing will overbalances and topple. You could even--"

He cuts himself off, looks like a lightbulb has just gone off over his head.

"You should leave it. It's a defense. If you had someone to watch this point, they could topple the skeleton if anyone approached. They'd be trapped, and the way would be blocked off. You and your allies would be safer as a result."

"If I had someone to watch it." She raises an eyebrow (it makes the cut across her face dance slightly). "Which I don't. I could station Kankri here, and do you think he'd have it in him to drop something dangerous like this on someone?"

If he's a detective worth his salt - as he seems, so far, to be - then he should be able to gauge Kankri's personality well enough to see the obvious answer to that.

"If I topple it now, it'll still block off the way. The question's just how."

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