thearena | [ota]

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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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It's later that week when the Disciple finally ends up in the same house as them--well. She ends up wandering up the same path, only to stop dead when she sees the light in the window. At some point she lost a shoe, left somewhere in the foggy spaces of the amusement park as she had outrun one of those strange faceless creatures. To be honest, she's exhausted, constantly on the run or catching brief moments of sleep beneath bushes and the bug she managed to take down and eat is a distant memory.

So when she sees the light through the windows, she crawls backwards, reaching for the heavy wrench in her bag and watching the windows. Shapes in the windows are hard to make out and when she crawls onto the porch to peek through the windows, a board breaks beneath her foot.

Skittering off the porch, she barely has time to duck around the edge before she hears voices inside.

Familiar voices, she thinks, but she can't place the familiarity through the muffling of the walls.

One of Signless's ears flicks. He isn't quite sure, but that didn't sound like normal night noises, or just the creaking of an infirm hive. He looks at Karkat and jerks his head in that direction, as though to ask 'did you hear that?' as he stands, very quietly, very carefully.

He's going to go investigate and he'll want someone with him who'll actually use their knife if it comes down to that.

Karkat gets to his feet just as quietly, his two mismatched carving knives out. He'll just creep along after Signless, ready to attack anyone who tries to fuck them up.

She watches the shadows shift across the porch, slowly sliding down into a pounce. Two--she can take two, she thinks. A few quick strikes to the gut and they'll be down long enough for her to scavenge their camp. She thinks she smells food. She lifts her head to sniff before ducking down again, hoping this thin piece of board hides her horns. There's food and something familiar. Maybe one of those bugs she ate earlier.

The wrench is still cold and heavy in her hand as she positions herself to pounce. She has to take them out on the first try or she'll end up wasting energy on a stupid fight. Must be ready when they come out. If they come out at all, she thinks, but they aren't dumb enough to ignore that noise.

Thank goodness that the board doesn't hide her horns entirely, or this could go very badly very fast. He sees the very tips, and some of her wild hair, and stands up a little from his crouch so his face is actually visible in one of the cracked windows.

"Meulin?" he whispers cautiously, hoping he's right.

Karkat lowers his knives for now, although he's ready to start stabbing if whoever-it-is does prove to be an enemy.

She's still cautious, not lifting from her position even when his face appears in the window. She's been fooled once and as unlikely it is that they'd use the same trick twice, she doesn't believe in taking chances with these things. So it's slowly--with her wrench held back behind her for ease of movement--that she finally raises her head enough for her eyes to meet his.

She pauses, not long enough for him to say more perhaps but long enough for a memory to surface. He'd remember it, he's from that time. It'd be like yesterday. Not like her who had almost forgot.

She whistles, a lilting tune Signless used before she had even met him. If it's him, he'll reply.

Oh, thank goodness, it is her. He whistles back the response, a continuation of the melody, and tilts his head toward the door as though to say 'come in, before someone else hears and comes to investigate'.

"Oh my fuck," Karkat says under his breath, "what kind of stupid code even is that?" But he stands aside so the Disciple can come into their hive of the night.

She's still cautious, if only because this isn't a well guarded campsite in the middle of nowhere, it's two Vantases in a crumbling hive centered in a death arena. The last thing they need is someone to hear that and realize there are no birds in this particular arena.

Once she's inside, she drops the bag at her feet and stretches, tall on her toes.

"Sorry, once you get tricked into following some fake into a raptor hive, you start trying to make sure people are real. Though now they know that whistle."

Which means she probably will need to work out another code next arena. Or hope they don't pull that trick again. Still, her face softens as she takes them both in. Not particularly scrawny, even for this far in the arena.

"I'm glad you're both doing okay."

"We'll come up with a new signal before the next one," he assures her as he settles himself back in by the fire.

"We've been having very good luck so far with keeping out of trouble, and I've been hunting so we haven't gone hungry." It's clear from his tone that's very pleased about this. "I think this is the most okay I've ever been in an arena."

"He's really good at hunting bugs," Karkat informs her. "He's all BAM and then he stabs them right between the eyes. Do you want some?"

She nods, settling on the floor by the fire once the others do so. For once at least, she feels comfortable relaxing for more than a few minutes. She lazily takes in their words, smiling when Karkat seems so proud.

"Of course he is. I mean, he had to have some way to eat before I started hanging around. And yes, I would love some. I caught a bug a few nights ago and I had to break into some food I got at the...well it wasn't really a Cornucopia but whatever you called that. Harder to catch them when they run in packs."

Signless leans his shoulder comfortably against hers -- he feels she might need some comforting gestures, after being (he assumes) all alone since the beginning.

"The Cornucopia was terrible, between the fog and it being so scattered," he agrees. "I couldn't find anything at all. And we've found some food in the hives on occasion, but they're already starting to get picked over, so thank goodness there's reliable food to hunt."

He pushes the plate of bug toward her. It's cooked fairly on the well-done side, but he understandably doesn't quite trust it to be clean otherwise.

"Here. It's not half bad."

"It's not exactly gourmet either," Karkat points out. "But these are the biggest land bugs I've ever seen on Panem, so I suppose there's that. Turns out there's some water bugs in the Capitol nutrition commerce hives, though. Expensive as fuck, though, which I suppose is natural, since they're seadweller fare. It sort of makes sense, though? That they have water bugs and not anything else. Land bugs are probably not fancy enough for Capitol tastes and where the fuck would they get nonviables?"

"I do miss the easier pickings on Alternia. At least I didn't have to worry about that being poisoned--Ah I think we are all past the point of caring how 'gourmet' or well-prepared our food is."

She takes up a piece, eating it in quick bites that betray her hunger "Water bugs? Huh. I didn't think humans cared about that sort of thing really. Fancy sure, but I don't notice more waterbeasts than landbeasts. Maybe they're just the ones they like best?"

"I've eaten them a few times, when I was still learning all the human food." He'd abused the ability to order food right to his room a bit when he'd first arrived, but in his defense being able to eat whatever he wanted whenever he wanted had been an extremely exciting luxury.

"They're not bad, though I don't think they're much better than land bugs personally. It may very well just be a matter of them being seen as more high-caste, given the focus on what's often arbitrary levels of worth here."

He watches her eat, a little concerned with how clearly hungry she is. It's a strange reversal of their usual roles: him fussing over her to make sure she's eating enough, giving her part of something he hunted.

"Yeah, I've had the smaller, cheaper waterbugs," Karkat says. "I think the humans call them 'prawns' or whatever. They do this thing where they saute them in, like, butter and serve them over noodles. I think they use the butter on the big, really expensive ones too. Me and Terezi tried using them for grubloaf and it wasn't bad but it wasn't exactly right either. But it was better than some of the other stuff we tried."

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