thearena | [ota]

Entry tags:

[ota]

WHO| Karkat, the Signless and YOU!
WHAT| Mutant camping, and food sharing if anyone's hungry
WHEN| All through week one
WHERE| Various less-shitty houses around the residential area
WARNINGS| Nothing as of yet; will be updated or marked in-thread

For the first week, Karkat and the Signless wander the rows of houses. Many of them are empty of anything useful, but occasionally they find a can or two to add to their small stock of rations. In a few of them they find bugs hiding somewhere dark like they found in the first one, and on those nights they have to worry at least a little less about running out of food. Once they even manage to trap and take down one of the dogs -- it isn't exactly appetizing, but cooking it as thoroughly as Signless insists on to make sure it's safe to eat masks at least some of the taste.

Mostly, they use the (less dilapidated) houses with fireplaces as overnight camps. The faint glow of their fire can be seen through the grimy windows, especially when it gets dark.

[As a note, the mods have said humans probably shouldn't eat bugs as they'll suffer pretty bad side-effects. If your non-troll character shows up and wants some of their food, it's probably best to have it happen on dog night.]

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The only thing keeping the dog where it is is a snare around one of its hind paws. It's a lot bigger and toothier than the Signless pictured when Karkat told him there were roaming dogs that might be edible, so under the circumstances any help is welcome.

"If you wouldn't mind. I don't know how much longer that snare's going to hold it."

Hey, Karkat knows that voice. "Roland! Yeah, that would be really fucking good right now. Get your leathery butt over here." He adds for Signless' benefit, "This is that Roland guy I told you about. Remember? He and Cuthbert were friends when they were wigglers, but he's super fucking old now."

If Roland needed a reminder as to why Karkat and Cuthbert are friends, here's another one. That tact. But it's only the truth and so Roland doesn't bother to respond, just circles around behind them and walks closer. As he goes he removes the rubber band holding a long orange extension cord to one of the beltloops in his pants. "Why did you trap it if you don't have any way to kill it?"

"We have knives, but the issue is getting close enough to use them. I was lead to believe we were dealing with something about half this size." He holds up the steak knife he's been using as a weapon: perfectly good against bugs, probably good against a normal-sized dog, but a little dodgy against something this big with this many teeth that still has mostly unrestricted movement.

"What we need is a way to down it and keep it still, at least for a few minutes."

"Look, I never said they were small barkbeasts," Karkat protests. "You just assumed they would be." He holds up his own knife, which is a carving knife at least. "We weren't able to get any supplies at the start, so we've just been raiding the abandoned hives."

"Neither did I." Roland hooks the cord over an arm, loosing a few lengths of it and starting to tie it into a loop. "Surprisingly useful stuff in some of these houses. That is what you mean isn't it? Houses?"

He moves aside a little more, trying to find a clear space but not block the dog in completely in case it does escape. "I may need one of you to bait it," he says, dropping the small talk. "That could keep it in place long enough for me to hook it."

At least with it kept more or less restrained by the snare he won't have to worry about it bolting unless something Really Very Bad happens, so that's something.

"Karkat, you do that, you're the more nimble of the two of us."

"Well yeah, one of us isn't going to see the dim side of ten anymore and it sure as fuck isn't me." Karkat moves to bait the dog, distracting him by darting back and forth to poke him with his carving knife.

Roland ties the loop carefully, then raises it around his head and swings, and swings, and swings...

There. It doesn't go all the way around that massive head, but it does seem stuck behind the ears and jaw. The dog immediately starts tossing its head and Roland leans back, putting all his weight against it. "Be quick about this," he manages. "Can't hold it more than a minute. Maybe two." Maybe.

It's definitely harder than it is with a stunned, stationary bug, but Signless still manages to dart forward (avoiding those huge jaws) and drive his knife into one of the dog's eyes. The noise it makes is deeply disturbing, and also very loud, and he winces.

Karkat manages to dart in right after and slice the throat just above the improvised lasso. With any luck, that might make it bleed out.

It does. It also gets blood everywhere. Only once it falls over and its moans start to fade out does Roland stop pulling at it, walking cautiously over to it and looping the cord back onto his pants. "Help me carry this - got to move before all that noise attracts someone."

That's exactly what has Signless on edge right now. Stupid, stupid, he should have known it wouldn't go down quietly, and now everyone on this side of the town probably knows where they are.

"Any house will do, so long as it's not too badly rotted out," he says, and hoists the back end of the dog over his shoulder. He may be small, but he's solid and spent most of his life carrying heavy things long distances. Roland won't find himself doing the lion's share of the work.

"A fireplace for cooking is preferable but not required."

Karkat gets himself to the middle of the dog, figuring that Roland will take the front. "We've been moving around a lot," he informs the human. "And raiding the nutrition blocks. Kitchen," he qualifies. "Sometimes they have food in cylinders."

Roland takes the biggest, heaviest part of the thing without argument. As the biggest, heaviest one of the three of them, Roland's probably the best suited to carry that end anyway. "Cans," he says. He's got a few still in the windbreaker that's tied over his shoulder - not many, but some. "Not sure what's in 'em, but since coming here I'm getting used to that. Least none of them have killed me yet."

"Let's find a house, if we can. Would you stay in one place long enough to dry some of this? Depending on how much your kind needs to eat, there may be a bit left over."

"I don't like staying still for too long, but it may be worth it to have the extra food. What do you think, Karkat?"

It certainly couldn't hurt, but drying things takes a while (or at least it did on Alternia) and staying grounded for that long will make them more and more vulnerable the longer they do it, in his opinion.

"Yeah, cans, that's what humans and highbloods call them," Karkat says. "And if Roland's willing to stay with us while we dry the meat, that could work. There's, like, more safety in groups and all that shit. Signless sucks at fighting people and I'm just average without my sickles," much as he hates to admit it, "but Roland's like Bert, only grown up and probably better at that shit, so if he sticks around we'll probably be okay."

"Are you, truly?" Roland looks from Karkat to the other, surprised. Between the claws, horns, and teeth, he'd expected skills much more deadly than what Karkat makes them seem. "When we've time after all this I'll practice with you a little, if you like." He's looking at both of them, but the older specifically. At least Karkat knows how to do something. "Signless, is it? Aye, I'll stay, and we can take the night in watches. I can show you one or two tricks in the meantime that might be of some little help."

Signless smiles a little ruefully.

"You won't have much luck, I'm afraid, unless what you can teach me is defensive only. I'll hunt animals but I won't harm people."

"He's weird like that," Karkat adds. "But he's really good with hunting smaller animals, like the bugs here. The first night of the arena we were going through the hive we were in to find supplies and there was this bug that came out of nowhere and, BAM, a second after he'd already pinned it though the eye with his knife. But, uh, you wouldn't want to eat the bugs here. Trust us."

They'd already found that out the hard way with that Jolly guy from Planet France.

"I'm really good with sickles, though," he adds, recognizing that this is probably a really good time to change the subject. "I've been training with them practically my whole life. I've only gotten a chance to use them in one arena, though, and by then one of my arms was fucked because I'd gotten stabbed at the cornucopia. And, like, average for a troll is still better than average for a human. Humans are kind of squishy and defenseless."

Roland's look toward Signless - much the look you'd give someone who's just announced their intention to stop using speech altogether and from now on communicate only by interpretive dance - is interrupted by Karkat. Probably for the best. He's met pacifists, but certainly didn't expect to find one here.

Cort speaks up in Roland's mind once Karkat's done. Roland's been remembering the voice of his old teacher even more often lately, and this time Cort has Things To Say about the concept of spending a lifetime focusing on just one weapon, and a weapon that can't even be easily recreated. A part of Roland agrees, but he'd guess it might be a normal thing in their world. And does it matter? Sensible or not, things are what they are, and Roland's new allies apparently need more help than he thought.

"You'll have to describe to me what sickles are like. Maybe we can find a way to make something similar. Think that house might be a good one?" He nods toward it. "Once we settle somewhere I'll try to remember some purely defensive moves. You might at least learn to keep yourself safe until someone else can come to help you."

"It should work fine," he says. It's just as worn down as the rest of the houses, but the roof and walls are all intact and the door is still on its hinges, which are all good signs. The inside is probably still structurally sound.

"I do know a little," he adds after a few moments. He's been here a full human year, after all, and while for most of that he stuck to the purely survival stations, lately he's been proactively trying to learn to defend himself. He's not that helpless.

"Karkat taught me some sickle form, and I've been working on my own lately as well. Mostly with staffs." They had been really the only weapon in the tribute training center that were immediately useful for defense, rather than only really good for it as a last resort.

"I'll draw you what sickles look like when we're inside the hive," Karkat says. "With, like, a stick with the end burned to charcoal. It's a curved blade on a handle. I dual-wield them, one in each hand. I'm actually pretty decent using knives the same way, but bigger stuff like swords and basically any two-handed weapon are harder, my body's used to moving differently than you do with those. I mean, if I'd known when I was three that I'd be stuck here and only get to use sickles in the training center, maybe I'd have picked a different strife specibus but I was three and I wanted to be just like the Thresh Prince when I moulted."

Roland nods, because of course he knows exactly what that means. "If there's another knife in here you could take it," he says, managing to open the house's door without dropping the gigantic doghead. "It'd be good in guarding Signless' back if the two of you wanted to go among the trees and make a staff for him. If that's what you know it's what you should have," he adds, leaning around the dog to address Signless himself.

There is a fireplace in this one, it turns out, but it's not nearly large enough to hold all of this thing at once. Roland walks to a spot nearby, slowly starting to set the body down onto the old carpet.

Signless is pretty impressed with Roland's ability to just roll with Karkat's troll-centric babbling. So many of the other humans here would have made a stink about it; it's nice to see one that doesn't throw a fit even if they may not understand.

"We should clean the dog first, but I wouldn't be opposed to going out after."

Though looking at how large the carcass is, it might take some time to turn it into something a little more manageable, even with help.

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>karkat: call everyone old

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