thearena | WEAPONS ROLL RUN

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WEAPONS ROLL RUN

"The museum will be closing in half an hour. At that time, something very special will be distributed to the Tributes brave enough to risk their peers at the first floor elevators."

The storm is still raging outside, casting everything on the first floor in a dim light occasionally shattered by flashes of lightning. The thunder rolling in the background seems to set the tone, although some may find it a welcome distraction from silence.

Half an hour passes. Five minutes before it's done, the elevators cease functioning, leaving Tributes to use the stairwells.

Each elevator door opens to reveal a handful of weapons: firecrackers, revolvers, grenades. There are no threats to the Tributes who try to retrieve them - none but their fellow competitors.

[OOC note: party-style post. Everyone tag away.]

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Everyone is dying. It's the point of the arenas. To find out who has the best capability to survive, and who can deal with not only their fellow Tributes, but also the trials and tribulations that are inherent to the Arena. This is just another of those, and while Albert isn't paying a lot of attention to who else is there, Nepeta is.

It comes of having grown up on a planet where avoiding murder is a necessary life skill.

Still, while she is watching what he's making a beeline for, she's heading for something else. On the other hand, there's absolutely nothing saying she can't thin the competition out a little, and it takes no time at all to change her course to intercept his path to the elevators and if he's not ready to deal with an alien who's more than ready to kill him if she must, that's certainly not her problem.

He notices her a split second before she strikes and is barely able to juke out of the way, rolling on his shoulder and coming up with his right hand aimed as if it's a weapon. His eyes are hard and cold until they get a better look at who'd engaged him.

Her skin may be gray and she may have technicolor horns, but that's not what shakes Albert and makes him pull back defensively. It's that she appears to be a teenaged girl.

"Wait, I don't want to hurt you," with his perfectly human hand. Damnit, he really needs to get it together. A moment ago he'd been ready to take out anyone he could but how many others are children like this girl? Like Chaud?

Given that Nepeta knows people who'd been able to use their sheer physical strength as a weapon, that someone she's never so much as seen before would hold one of their hands like it was a weapon doesn't bother her at all. In fact, she treats much like she would any other weapon - with caution, even after he seems to decide that he doesn't want to attack her.

Still, that decision makes it a little easier, and she lowers her hands enough to make it obvious that she isn't pointing the claw parts of the clawgloves at him. This is perhaps not the best place for conversation, but as long as no one interrupts they should be able to manage about as well as anyone can expect, in the throng of people all trying to get to the same place.

"You don't?"

Claws. Could she have been the one...? For a moment his gaze goes as cold as it was when he'd appeared to go for the elevator but it passes. He doesn't know for certain, but the cuts hadn't looked clean enough to have been made by actual blades. It was something thicker, more blunt, and this girl is too small to have physical power enough to gut a full grown adult.

At least, if she were human. He's not so sure on that last score.

"I don't." Albert shakes his head and glances around the corner of the wall where he'd taken refuge, watching the bloodbath unfold with a vague sadness more than any sort of surprise or fear. "This place is sick, but I don't mind dying if it means taking out whoever killed my friends. In fact, I intend to."

He looks back at the girl, wondering if what he's doing is right, if it wouldn't be kinder to take anyone else he meets - even her - out so they don't have to suffer at the hands of those who enjoy the killing, who would make it last. But he doesn't have it in him to kill a child, not after all the violence he's endured in his long life. "I just need a weapon."

She's not human. Not by a long shot, but she also hasn't killed anyone this Arena either. She may yet do so, but she hasn't yet. In fact, she mostly hasn't over all. Not because she's incapable of it, but because she's been more willing to team up with people than to simply slaughter them outright.

Besides, she's pretty sure some of the other trolls in the arena have that part of things well in hand, and no one here is going to cull her for not taking out as many people as she can.

"There aren't going to be enough weapons for efurrybody," she comments, with a shrug that seems to say that she probably won't stop him if he's really dead set on managing to find a weapon.

"Probably not. We have a better chance if we're willing to work together." It's ludicrous for him to trust someone off the bat in this situation; he doesn't, in point of fact, but desperate times as the saying goes.

"You're smaller and faster than I am. If I can act as cover, would you be willing to grab what you can for the both of us?"

Desperate times indeed, and what he says is true. With things as terribly messy as they already are, working together probably is the best answer. She can't really guarantee that she'll manage anything particularly useful, but she's at least willing to make an effort.

"I can try, I suppawse. Are you looking for something in purrticular?"

"Anything. A gun would be best, or something explosive, but anything would suffice." He meets her yellowed eyes with his plain silver, a small up of the corner of his mouth turning his lips to a smirk, though there's no mirth in it. "Beggers can't be choosers."

He moves from his crouch to a more mobile hunch, ready to spring after her the moment they decide to move. He's surprisingly agile for how broad he is. Turning a bit, he peers around the corner of the wall, trying to gauge an opening in the fighting that they can use to their advantage.

Anything is a simple enough request to fulfill. Actually getting to the elevators is somewhat less so and she watches the flow of the crowd for a careful moment before she springs, and the motion is remarkably fluid, for someone who doesn't look much like they belong in a fight to the death like this. But she does a surprisingly good job of making her way through the crowds, and if some of that is helped a little by injuring people a little, she seems to have no real problem with it.

But then again, she's had a few arenas to practice getting through tight crowds.

He's quick on his feet, but not that quick. While Nepeta moves with a feline grace, Albert is more like a machine, less organic and more methodical. He notes which people the girl clips on her way and keeps an eye out for retaliation, shutting that down before it can land with precise kicks, elbows in specific areas of anatomy, and in one instance a throw that sends a man skidding back towards another group of combatants. Even so, all of his movements are meant to hinder and not harm. Well, at least not harm much.

As long as they're making some sort of progress, Nepeta doesn't much care about how they're making or what is (or isn't) happening to the people they're moving past. Not when it's fairly clear that they won't be getting any kindness in return. No, instead Nepeta focuses on getting to the elevators and bit by bit they do in fact make it there.

What, if anything, they actually manage to get out of them is still anyone's guess but progress is progress. Perhaps not enough so, but she's doing what she can.

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WEAPONS ROLL RUN

I don't mind at all!

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