thearena | 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.

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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.

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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,.

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The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces "the Arena is now open". The Games have begun.

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Ruffnut was as usual, eternally puzzled. That was not the sort of name dragons had where she came from, but this dragon could talk so who was she to argue?

"Well it doesn't really matter if you approve or not, that's just how things are where I come from." She shrugged her boney shoulders. "It's not like we told them they can't talk. We only barely stopped fighting them a year ago...or maybe it was two years..." Time was weird.

Who were either of them to argue, when you got right down to it? True enough, Iskierka might have been inclined to argue simply on general principle, but that's simply part of life with her.

"I suppose you should know," she allows after a moment of consideration. "Although I cannot imagine it would have been at all easy to be fighting even whatever dragons you might have had. Most people at home would think twice about a fight with even a small dragon."

That was enough to make her smile with a bit of pride.

"Yeah, fighting dragons is serious business. But we didn't know any better. The Vikings of Berk have been fighting dragons for as long as we know. They try to steal our food, we fight. They burn our village down, we fight. Then one of us got the bright idea to try and ride one. Now we're all friends." She explained giving the shortest and possibly least satisfying version of her tribes history.

Given that Iskierka is only sort of tangentially interested in this set of other dragons, she doesn't mind that it's a short explanation. Beside, from what she can see it covers everything that really needs to covered.

"Of course it is serious business to fight a dragon," she offers instead. "Even back where I am from it is."

"Do your dragons fight much?" Ruffnut had apparently forgotten what it was she was supposed to be doing because...well talking dragon seemed more interesting. And she spoke so fancy! It would be more off putting to the down to earth and rough around the edges viking girl if not for the fact that Iskierka still looked perfectly capable of ripping a human apart.

"Of course we do," Isierka answers. "We would not have anything like the Aerial Corps otherwise and however is one supposed to defend against French dragons if one doesn't have dragons of one's own?"

Admittedly, she doesn't have any dragons to call her own, but she figures she can speak for the Aerial Corps in general. She is the only one of the Corps present, after all.

Ruffnut's glazed over expression declared she didn't understand.

"OK...what's an Aerial, whats a Corps and what's a French?" She listed in order starting to wonder if asking questions was going to be her main form of communication.

It seemed like there was just so much she didn't understand about this world.

It's not a bad method of communication, really. Iskierka had certainly done her fair share after she'd arrived, and she doesn't really mind answering them either. Not in this case.

"The Aerial Corps is what I am a part of," she answers. "It is like a military, a little, but we are our own group. And the French are who we are fighting, of course, along with their allies."

"Ah...right OK. I follow." Only a little. Ruffnut had a tendency to let her mind wander and even though she knew this was important she was having a hard time breaking the habit.

"But we're not fighting the french right now...like here. And we're not all part of the Aerial whatevers?" Because she needed to be sure she was doing what she thought she was doing or this was going to change alot.

"We are not," Iskierka answers. "It is only back home that I and my captain are fighting them. Here we are fighting everyone else who has been put into these Arenas. And no one else here is from the Aerial Corps, besides."

Just her, until and unless someone else shows up, and she's not certain she wants to see her Granby in the arena anyway, even as much as she misses having him around.

"Oh...sooooo I should be fighting you then."

Ruffnut shifted into a defensive sort of stance...at least that might have been what she was doing. It was sloppy and looked more like she was about to drop to the ground at a moments notice.

She hadn't fought a dragon without a dragon of her own in a long time. And she'd never actually beaten a dragon without help. Plus a talking dragon? Valhalla was sure challenging her on her first day. Then again she should have expected that.

"Oh, we do not have to. Not so early on in the Arena. They have not yet told us that we cannot make alliances, after all."

Besides, as much as she would certainly have been willing to fight with Ruffnut, the Arena only had started. And that alone would have been more than enough to get Iskierka to give people a little bit of a headstart before fighting. To say nothing of the fact that it would rather have ruined the conversation they'd been having besides.

"Alliances...yeah that's good. Let's be friends." Ruffnut had to change the big word into a smaller one she was more comfortable with. She understood what an alliance meant, but it was easier to think about it like this.

"I look out for you, you look out for me. All of Asgard knows our names before this is over." She declared pumping her fists into the air.

As long as Ruffnut has got the general idea, Iskierka isn't going to complain too much. Especially since it's better than she had barely more than a moment ago. How long it'll last ... well, no one can say that for certain. But this is a start, and that's enough for her.

"Of course they will. It is only fitting that they do so."

ARENA 10-Placid Hollow

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Annnd, since I don't know what else for them to do shall we fade to black?

Works for me o7