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thearena2014-05-17 03:17 pm
etcircenses) wrote in thearena2014-05-17 03:17 pm
Entry tags:
- ! arena 10,
- cassandra marko,
- clara murphy,
- commander shepard,
- roland deschain,
- the grand highblood,
- the signless,
- ✘ alex murphy,
- ✘ brainiac 5,
- ✘ bucky barnes (616),
- ✘ carlos the scientist,
- ✘ clementine,
- ✘ co,
- ✘ courfeyrac,
- ✘ cuthbert allgood,
- ✘ deanna winchester,
- ✘ diana ladris,
- ✘ donatello,
- ✘ enjolras,
- ✘ fili,
- ✘ gannicus,
- ✘ hanji zoe,
- ✘ hawkeye pierce,
- ✘ ian chesterton,
- ✘ jack frost,
- ✘ jaime reyes,
- ✘ joel,
- ✘ kevin,
- ✘ marius pontmercy,
- ✘ max guevara,
- ✘ nasir,
- ✘ natasha romanoff,
- ✘ orc,
- ✘ r,
- ✘ red sonja,
- ✘ riley abel,
- ✘ rock lee,
- ✘ rokk krinn,
- ✘ ruffnut thorston,
- ✘ some ovmennet,
- ✘ starkiller,
- ✘ steve rogers,
- ✘ susannah dean,
- ✘ topher brink,
- ✘ venus dee milo,
- ✘ vriska serket
ARENA 10-Placid Hollow
The Tributes are taken early in the morning, most of their support teams seeming in good cheer as they dress them in warm clothes, getting them to their tubes. There is obvious comfort in the familiar for the prep teams, and they chatter with, or in some cases, over the heads of their Tributes as they get them ready and load them up.
20
19
18…
If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.
Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.
8
7
6…
But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.
3
2
1
The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.
19
18…
If the Tributes could see the area they are passed up into, they would see a deeply overgrown, dilapidated town green, with a large bandstand rotting away in the middle. The spoils of the cornucopia are not gathered in one spot, instead scattered throughout the thigh high grass and weeds around the town green.
Around the edge of the green, the old business stand a silent sentry, looming out of the fog as it thins and winds into them, providing much desired cover.
7
6…
But the Tributes cannot see the ground around them. The fog, thicker even than it will be in the rest of the arena, makes the world small around them. The sound of the count down echoes strangely, the tributes seeming too close as the fog brings sounds of their breath, their coughing, the snap of twigs under their feet right to ears of the other Tributes. But with the fog bringing visibility down to only a few feet, it's hard to tell what is a true danger, and what is only the fog playing tricks on them,.
2
1
The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.
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"Yeah, that's...that's what I'm saying." The only good thing about right now is that, at least, she doesn't feel like she's going to be fighting back sobs anymore for...a little while, at least.
Clara almost reaches out to grab a hold of Alex's flesh and blood hand, as if she believes that holding onto him can make her believe that any part of this is okay, or at the very least let him know that she's here for him, no matter what. She only stops is when she hears him turn away, which pulls her gaze back up to his face.
"Do you have something specific in mind?"
timeskip to night?
Alex makes a weird gesture with his shoulders like he's trying to shrug and finds the joints don't quite work the same way he's used to: it's this strange little jiggle of his shoulder plates and he has to wonder if he even has shoulder to begin with. Alex glances at the windows. No one's tried rattling the doors yet. Alex points at the windows. The neighborhood Clara's used to, having big open windows was a selling point. Now he wishes these had bars.
"We need to get these boarded up. We do that, I think we can sleep a little easier." What he really means to say is Clara can sleep easier. Him, he's planning to stay up all night if he has to. Although looking at his wife, the way her eyes are wide and still glistening with tears, and he thinks she might not be doing much sleeping either.
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-----
With how thick the fog is, Clara expects it to be hard to tell whether it's day or night outside. She's wrong. While the daytime in this place is dull and gray, nighttime is pitch black, at least from what she can see out the window of the small upstairs bedroom that looked like it could belong to a boy around David's age (though, thankfully, without all of the trappings that would make her think of David, save a hockey stick that had been shoved in a corner with a baseball bat, both of which were now downstairs along with a mostly dead book of matches, the can of soup she had been given by the stranger she stumbled into before Alex found her, and a number of other things they'd found upstairs that could be of use). Fumbling in the dark to grab the pillows and blankets off the small bed, she manages to do so before making the now-familiar trek downstairs.
She'd done this enough over the course of the afternoon and evening that doing it in the dark with her arms full was only slightly unnerving. Clara knew enough by now to know that one of stairs near the middle had a dip to the left and that the third step from the bottom squeaked.
"Nice job on the windows." Not that she can tell with how dark it is, but she can assume so as she adds to the little nest of blankets and pillows that she's built on the floor since their first trip upstairs. It briefly crosses her mind that David would probably complain that they're wasting the pillows and blankets by doing that instead of building a pillow fort.
"I wonder how David's doing." The thought's come to mind a lot over the past week, but it's the first time she's actually said it aloud.
Gonna lead into the attack by the faceless walker
He refuses to call it his new body. He does wonder if it's at least got a mute button: he can't be the only one fed up with all the damn sound it makes.
"Thanks," Alex says. He falls quiet at the mention of David. It's something he's alternated between stewing on and wishing he didn't have to worry about. It's not exactly his shining moment as a dad. "Hope they've realized we're gone. Bet you Jack's already checking up on him."
He even had the keys. They'd talked about this in the car, during those long days where they sat on their butts waiting for a contact, and naturally stuff like What if I die came up. Tying up loose ends. Watching out for loved ones. All that. If there was anyone in the world he trusted to look after his family, it was Jack. It's just...in all the scenarios Alex ran in his head, this wasn't it. He'd expected to get shot on the job, leaving Clara and David. Both of David's parents going MIA, though. Didn't see that one coming.
Alex turns back to the window, aware of Clara trying to get comfortable in her blanket nest. It'd be that kind of spontaneous level of sexy if they were in their house's living room. This one smells like mold and rot.
"I think someone's coming our way," Alex hisses with that quiet tone of voice that says he's hoping she won't panic. He watches as a shape comes out from the darkness, the fog lifting just enough to see a vaguely man-shaped shadow walking. There's something off about it, something about the arms and legs being...wrong. No sign of a weapon yet.
The shape stops by the window, where there's only a few half-rotted boards between them and it.
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The mention of someone being outside made her stomach twist. Would someone really do that? Try to break into a house and pick off the competition at night while they slept? She wants to believe that no one would do that, but this is a massive fight to the death and the idea doesn't surprise her as much as she wishes it would. Hell, the only reason she's even willing to consider snuggling up in a nest of blankets and trying to get a decent night's sleep is because Alex is here (and somewhere in there is a knight in shining armor joke that she just isn't quite ready to think about). Instead of staying where she is, she untangles herself from the blankets she had already nestled up in and reaches out for the hockey stick she had brought down earlier.
From the knocking on the window that's followed by the sound of the window shattering, Clara almost wishes that she'd listened to Alex and slept upstairs. Not that she'd tell him that, of course.
It's the sound of the first hit of flesh against wood that drew Clara up to her feet. The second hit, along with the distinct crack of the wood starting to give way, makes her back away slightly and hold the stick in front of her in a way that she's almost certain isn't the standard way to handle a hockey stick. Through the next few cracks, she just focuses on Alex in the desperate hope that maybe he has some sort of plan. She's about to ask in a hushed tone what they should do when the wood finally gives way and...it, because this thing definitely isn't a person, considering its complete lack of a face, is starting to come through the window.
"Alex!" Her next move isn't the smartest course of action, especially considering Alex is well over six feet tall and covered in graphene armor in comparison to Clara who is by no means small, but is much smaller than him and her best protection is lots of layers of fabric. Swinging the hockey stick almost blindly in front of her, she runs towards the thing with the hope that maybe, just maybe, she'll get a decent hit in and be of some help.
Punchy?
It gets through fast.
Next thing he knows, the thing busts its way in and it lurches forward in a rippling motion, something that should've been the head/neck area splitting open to reveal a gaping row of teeth. Fangs. The word he wants is "fangs" and he has a split second to gasp "holy christ!" before that damn mouth lunges at his arm. Alex instinctively braces for impact, for teeth to tear into his flesh and rip his arm off. It doesn't happen.
What does happen is the thing is now latched onto the armor, teeth squealing against the plating and leaving deepening gouges as it worries at him like a dog. It doesn't hurt. It should. He should be screaming bloody murder. Trying to jerk his arm free, Alex catches sight of Clara running at the thing with her hockey stick...and she, on the other hand, is a lot more squishy than he is.
"Clara, stop!" Alex gasps. The hockey stick bounces off the monster's head a few times before it lets go and decides to snap at Clara with a click of its fangs.
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It doesn't stop him from leaping to the aid of anyone he hears, though. Repeated failure - no, the repeated kack of success - never did. If there's one thing Punchy has spades of, it's resilience.
The dark of night doesn't do much to make visibility any worse - the fog's deep enough that he can barely see his own feet anyway. It's a miracle that Punchy's able to navigate with his ears, given the untold damage he's done to them through the last five years of too-loud gangsta rap amplified through a variety of high-end speakers with very little reprieve. It's even more surprising given that the fog obscures sound only slightly less than sight; even the sharpest noises seem dampened, as if coming from inside an metal drum a hundred yards away. Punchy walks over dead grass that should crackle under his feet and only hears dull rustling.
That dull rustling turns into the thumps of footfall as he runs towards the sound of breaking glass. He's not even that far away, and the house seems to just pop up right in front of him so fast he almost runs into it, but thankfully he's close enough to the broken window that he can just vault on into it and land in the same room as the woman and the metal man getting attacked by...something.
He throws himself headlong into it, ducking under the hockey stick whipping about and grabbing the walker around the waist. He yanks back, and both monster and unlikely would-be hero of a redheaded teenager with freckles on only one side of his face topple backwards. It's not exactly the smoothest of introductions, especially when the monster is writhing about like a fish and clawing at Punchy's bare forearms. Spittle flies from its hellish maw.
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After what feels like an eternity, but is probably closer to a few seconds, she finally springs to action. Which, alright, might not be the biggest help, but Clara doesn't know what to do in these types of situations. The only things she has any real experience trying to kill for getting into the house are bugs, and sure, she doesn't like most bugs, but most of them also don't have mouths that look like they should be on a shark instead of a vaguely humanoid creature that looked like it clawed its way out of a nightmare. She moves to stand above the heads of both the boy and the monster, and puts the blade of the hockey stick into the thing's mouth. With all the strength she can muster, she slams the stick (and, along with it, the creature's head) to the side and into the ground, hoping to avoid the kid's head.
Which, okay, doesn't seem to really daze the creature as much as she hoped it would, but its jaws aren't snapping as much as they were before since there's wood in the way (though she's well aware that it probably won't last for very long). In a last ditch effort to get its head to hold still, she puts her booted foot over where its eyes should be before shooting Alex a panicked look that screamed I don't know what else to do.
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He moves forward with an urgent purring of stabilizers. He doesn't have a weapon, the hockey stick won't hold forever and the monster (he could say "animal", but c'mon, look at this thing) is downright pissed. If this was Detroit, he'd have a gun or he could call backup or use something better than his bare hands. It takes Alex another second to realize he's not exactly unarmed: he might not be able to get out of this suit but he knows it's heavy. It's armored. The plating looks like you could find it on a tank. Besides, he's not sure if he's even got a foot inside it for the thing to chew on.
Alex lifts his leg, the HUD he can't get rid of targeting the thrashing head with this little red reticule that jerks around. It says something about _CALCULATING ANGLES and _RECOMMENDED FORCE and he assume the suit knows what it's doing because he's just running with it. He prays he doesn't nail the kid instead. His foot comes down. No trembling, no wobbling from balance.
It hits perfectly the first time...and it lands a lot harder than he thought it would.
Something crunching underneath his foot with a wet thud. It collapses like it's just a cardboard box with a freaky, nauseating give. Something spurts out with a squelch. The monster twitches a few times in the kid's arms before finally going slack. Alex pulls back, skin drawn tight over a face that's gone a few shades paler, and he has to resist the urge to check if he has some of the thing's brains and teeth stuck to his foot.
"You guys okay?" His voice comes out in what Alex recognizes as another sign of Cop Mode: controlled, a careful flatline. He reaches over to touch Clara's hand lightly, putting himself between her and the kid, just in case. "Thanks."
Alex holds out his hand toward Punchy, offering to help him up.
no subject
Thankfully, Punchy has a strong stomach. He needs it when pieces of the creature's brain (or whatever it is) splatters across his bare throat. It is, to put it as simply as possible, gross, and the sudden slackness to the beast isn't nearly as comforting as it really should be. It feels too much like a corpse. Punchy's felt too many corpses in his arms for a kid his age for that be any comfort at all.
Mulishly, he shoves it off him and refuses Alex's help getting up, although he's hardly in a pose that telegraphs "danger" to anyone looking. He looks as if he's getting up from tripping on the football field when he actually looks at the two people he rescued (as he considers it) in the full. It's as if he doesn't even remember that there's a dead monster slumped right next to him on the floor.
For a moment, he ignores his raging hormones and instead casts his attention to the overgrown tin man before him.
"Shit, man. Are you a robot?" Because if he is, Punchy wants to pop a panel or something and starts fiddling around. Does he have USB drives? Punchy looks Alex up and down, the light of curiosity brightening up a face made flush by exertion.
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"I'm fine," Clara murmurs in that tone that says I'm not really fine. Nothing about this is fine as she clings to the hand Alex has placed on her's as she clutches to the hockey stick with her other hand. It isn't a total lie, at least, considering that she's completely fine physically. But being physically fine doesn't change the fact that her mind is racing and her heart's pounding and she's completely terrified of what might come through the window next. Enough to the point that she almost forgets about their teenaged intruder/rescuer.
That is, until the kid speaks. It takes a moment for his question to pierce through the fog in her head that's been brought on by seeing Alex crush a probably-living nightmare creature's skull with his foot like it was nothing more than a bug in their kitchen. But once it does, something lights up in her eyes that's a mix of anger, disappointment, and a pinch of sadness that might be a little bit closer to grief.
"He's a person," Clara says in a way that's almost weary, like she's had this conversation a million times and will probably have to keep having it with people who are close to total strangers. She isn't exactly denying it, considering she's well aware of the fact that the proper thing to say is that he's technically a cyborg. It's one of those words that she still struggles to mentally link to Alex. "More importantly, he's my husband," she points out, as if that might make him stop thinking about doing whatever has come to mind that brought that curious look onto his face.
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"I'm Alex Murphy, this's Clara," Alex keeps himself between them and he doesn't care how obvious it is. He doesn't like that feeling he gets from the kid, like he's dismantling his motherboard with his eyes. He reaches back to hold Clara's free hand, still on edge. "Thanks for the rescue."
He emphasizes "rescue" in case the Tribute changes his mind because of the husband/wife angle. There's still two of them versus one of him, Clara has a hockey stick that might not be the best weapon out there (still good enough), and Alex hopes that curbstomping the creatures head will leave a lasting impression. The that could be you if you look at my wife wrong one. Sure, he's shot people, he's done a lot of stuff he wasn't proud of undercover, but it's never been like this.
Alex flicks a deliberate glance up and down the kid, let him know that he's being cased out too. "You got something with robots?" Alex's voice goes lower, takes on a challenging tone. It's even a little defensive.
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Some of the most popular heroes in his day are robots. One of his professors was a robot! Aside from the jokes about sticking magnets instead of pins on his chair, the kids treated him like any other stodgy-ass tool.
"I'll take care of this for you." He takes his jacket and uses it as a sort of towel to wipe the monster's grime from his face, then covers the dead beast's 'face' with the garment and starts to drag it out towards the doorway by its hands.
Finally, he looks at the fine lady in front of him, the one who just said 'husband' as if that would actually mean anything to a hormone-addled teenager in a death Arena (spoilers: it doesn't). He straightens up from dragging teh walker. "Nah way, shawty, you's like a ten and he's a six. He best be packing some mad shit in the toolbox to be hitting up on such a fine honey, you catch my drift?"
He tilts his pelvis forward a bit in case she didn't. He also tries to give her a smoldering grin but instead he just looks like he's waiting for an optometrist to put eyedrops in.
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And then it does. For a moment she wonders how she failed to get such an obvious attempt at innuendo. Clara turns bright red, which could be from embarrassment or how pissed she is that this kid doesn't seem to know when to stop. Which ever one it is, it makes her stammer as she tries to find the words. "Yeah, I catch your drift. And none of that's your business." Which, alright, may not be the best comeback, but it gets the point across at least.
Months ago, after Clara had first signed the papers to give OmniCorp the okay to save Alex, it had struck her that their marriage was about to get incredibly complicated. Sure, there were the obvious things involving their personal lives (and at some point, hopefully in the Capitol instead of here, they were going to have to talk about it), but there was the fact that people were bound to call their relationship into question eventually.
Clara just thought it was going to be from the nosy old woman a few doors down, her mother, or from some newsblogger instead of a horny teenager.
Pulling herself together so that she isn't stammering or as bright red, she fixes him with a mom-look in the hopes that it might put him off of trying to get in her pants. "Listen, kid, you need to get a few things straight. One, like I said, I'm married. Happily married. Two, we're in totally different leagues. C, you're really selling my husband short by saying he's a six. He's an eight, at the very least. Personally, I think he's a ten. And four, since it wouldn't hurt saying it again, I. Am. Married."
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He gets snatches of the slang: a lot of it's stuff he's heard before on the job but because it's never been directed at his wife, it's like hearing it for the first time again. Did he seriously call Clara a "shawty" and - wait...wait, yeah, he did make a dig about his plumbing (plumbing that honestly, Alex has no idea if he still has at this point, but anyway). Beside the point. His face starts to cloud all over again once they get into fire honey territory, up until the point where the kid tilts his hips in what might be the lamest hip thrust he's ever seen.
That puts Alex squarely between being pissed off and biting off a laugh welling up. Between finding Clara, the attack, and now this? It's funny - like hysterical funny, not funny-funny - and he finds his mouth twitching as he struggles not to grin.
Good thing he's letting Clara handle this one. From the way she lets it rip, he figures she's got this way better than he does.
"Done hitting on my wife?" Alex says once he's sure he won't smile. He keeps his arm looped around Clara. "You got a name?" It was that or Alex was forever calling him Punkass Kid in his head.
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His face turns red, and the freckles that dot his right cheek vanish into the blush. He hunches up his shoulders and bends over, muttering something about getting "bossed up" and "honkies". He manages to drag the walker corpse to the window he bust through and then lift it up and dump it outside in the most sulky, comically teenage way possible.
Yes, Clara. He did actually think he had a shot there. He also thinks you're a cracker.
"Name's Punchy." Which is totally a cooler name than Alex or Clara - I mean, really, dude's a robot and he's going by Alex? Not Killtron 3000 or Superbot? Missed opportunity there.
There's still a giant smear of walker brain on the floor, but Punchy doesn't seem to think that'll be an issue.
Punchy holds his hands out. "Y'all peeps chill? Because rescue by Punchy comes with a price, and that top dollah is that you don't be icing no other motherfuckers on my watch."
no subject
Also, what kind of name is Punchy? It makes him sound like he's the long lost, bar brawling cousin of the Seven Dwarves. Not that she's going to say that out loud, because that's rude.
"I think we're pretty...er...chill." Clara doesn't speak teenage boy. Hell, she isn't even sure if this is how teenage boys talk or if this is just Punchy's own personal, highly confusing way of speaking. "And I don't think we'll be...um...icing?...any motherfuckers, period. So, I don't think you have anything to worry about."
Clara leans into Alex a little bit, as she looks up at him, barely able to hold back the grin that's threatening to come out at how utterly ridiculous all of this is. "You weren't planning on icing motherfuckers, right baby?"
Yeah, she knows just how ridiculous it sounds coming out of her. Which is probably part of the reason why she's giggling just the slightest bit.