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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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.

Yeah, Roland's pretty cool for a human. He's not quite up to Katniss and Peeta or even Maximus in Karkat's mental ranking of Humans Who Are Actually Pretty Good, but he's getting up there.

"Yeah, that would be cool," Karkat says, as he does his part to lower the central part of the dog. "I'll go check the nutrition block now for spares--and cylinders too."

Roland hunkers and looks the thing over once they've set it down. "Might not have much luck with meat. I'd suggest drying all that we find, and eating the organs tonight instead. Your kind - trolls, wasn't it? - how do you feel about brains? Can you digest them?" He looks pointedly at that huge head. "If we can get through that skull, those might be our best bet. These'll help with that." He waves a hand at his hammer and screwdriver. The later'll work as a kind of chisel, he's pretty sure.

Practicalities out of the way, he looks back up at Signless curiously. "When we first met, I think Karkat mentioned you. You're his ancestor? Some thousand years before he was, ah, 'born'? Unless I'm misremembering." Roland frowns. He can't count on his memory these days, not the way he used to, and it doesn't sit well. Regardless, he'll just have to work harder to learn these things.

The Signless nods.

"A thousand sweeps, which I believe are longer than human years, but it's the same either way."

He looked thoughtfully at the dog. Roland was right, there wasn't going to be much meat. "As for brains, considering the trouble it was to take it down, I don't see any reason to waste any of that dog. Any food is good food."

Karkat's on his way to the nutrition block to search, but he calls over his shoulder, "Yeah, we're not highbloods or anything, we'll totally eat offal. Even if we don't have any unfertilized shelled ovums to scramble the thinksponge with." Which is how he'd always eaten the brains when his crabdad had brought dead mammals home.

Edited (singular thinksponge not plural) 2014-05-27 04:02 (UTC)

For a moment, Roland just stares in the direction of Karkat's voice.

Well.

"I'll take that as a yes," he mutters, and bends over the dog again to continue inspecting it. "If we want to stay here long enough for the meat to dry, I'd try to drain the blood into the fireplace. We just need some way to hang it up." Roland straightens and looks around the room. "Maybe some of this furniture would do, but I'm not sure... Have you seen anything here that might work?"

While he tries to think through their options, another part of Roland's wondering about something else. "Does Cuthbert ever have trouble communicating with him?" Roland asks, quietly. While Roland may be long used to understanding only a quarter of the details in any given conversation, that's not something he can really see his old friend putting up with.

Ah. That's right, Roland is a friend of Cuthbert's. Signless sighs and runs a hand through his hair, his expression becoming a lot more drawn-in.

"I think they have trouble communicating with each other, much more than either of them wants to admit. Cuthbert makes little effort to understand many troll concepts, and mocks Karkat when he doesn't understand human ones rather than actually attempting to educate him. It leads to frustration and frustration leads to further misunderstanding, as you'd imagine."

And, alright, he may be a little biased, but he is deeply unhappy with Cuthbert over pushing Karkat to pail him, over treating him like not putting out meant he was worth less, over not giving Karkat what a troll actually needs out of a blackrom but staying in one with him anyway because he's a dumb horny teenager. Cuthbert is not in his good graces right now.

Roland sighs. "That does sound like him." Much more like him than what Roland'd been trying to imagine. Signless' manner says he's speaking more in specific terms than general ones, and Roland wonders at whatever relationship he's got with Karkat, whether it's close enough that Signless has been told everything.

"Sadly, I think you've got the right of it," Roland says, trying to keep his voice low. He doesn't know how sharp troll ears might be, so speaking of this at all might be a risk, but he wants it said before Karkat comes back. "Signless, I cry your pardon on his behalf."

He's taken on Cuthbert's loyalties by helping these two, and that means taking on Cuthbert's mistakes as well. For all Roland's uncertainty about whether he and his friends make enough of a group to need a dinh, and for all Cuthbert's gone something like a year without a leader of any kind, he does seem very much to need one.

"He ever was the most..." How to say this? "...willfully immature of all of us. But I don't remember him being so young." Roland shakes his head, dismissing his own confusion on the matter, and studies Signless thoughtfully. "Perhaps between the two of us, we can find some way to manage them."

Maybe one day Signless will try to explain pale romance to Roland, because yes, the type of relationship he has with Karkat is pretty much explicitly about Karkat telling him everything.

"I've been trying, mostly on Karkat's end, but I'm sure you've seen how hard it is to keep things civil between them." After how messy that breakup had been, all help was good help. Especially since Roland knew Cuthbert better, could probably put things in ways he would better understand.

"And normally that would be a good thing, with black romance, but neither of them understands boundaries." At least he'd been able to talk to Karkat about that, after the disastrous night with Kankri earlier that week. At least he'd made some headway.

"I don't think either of them mean to be so difficult. They just come from very different cultures and have very different expectations for what a relationship should entail, and they're too young to know how to negotiate that respectfully yet."

Roland raises his eyebrows. Black romance. Doesn't sound like anything anyone would willingly take up, but... "I've probably got as much to learn as Cuthbert," he says, standing and walking toward one of the room's doorways. "But now's not the time. I may have to call on you at some point after all this, long as you don't mind a lot of explanation."

He leans past the doorway, squinting. "There may be some chairs in here that'll be of use if they're still sturdy," he says, and grabs two to set them face to face in front of the fireplace. "Help me pick this up again, I'll tie its legs to the back of one of these."

Most of the blood would have left when the beast's throat was cut, but not all of it, so Roland picks the thing's head up the same careful way he'd carried it, wound aimed up. "Depending on whichever when he was taken from, I don't think Cuthbert knows anything about human romance either." He shrugs. "I won't make excuses for him, but it may help to understand that much."

"I wouldn't mind explaining, though I've found some of it is very hard for humans to conceptualize. You'll need to go in with an open mind."

He helps Roland lift the dog, following any instructions he's given -- this isn't something he's used to doing, considering that with a family of four to feed back home and an abundant amount of wildlife they never really dried much of anything.

"Everyone was young and stupid once," he says with a one-shouldered shrug. "It's not an excuse, no, but it explains his actions. My issue is more that he continues to be young and stupid despite attempts to educate him."

Karkat comes back with some nutrition cylinders (creamed spinach, cling peaches, corn) and another carving knife, not quite the same size as his first, having only managed to hear the tail end of the conversation.

"I don't know about stupid," Karkat says, "but we're fucking stuck being this young as long as there's games. They keep bringing us back in bodies exactly like when they grabbed us from where we were, so Bert's still the same fucking age physically as he was when we got here."

"Do you really think that makes a difference?" He frowns at the dog's back legs as he ties them to the chair. That's not something that would ever have occurred to him. "That we keep our memories, but not the ways we've been changed by them?" It's not the worst case scenario, certainly, but something about the idea's a little disquieting anyway.

"Tilt its head back," he says, going back into that other room for another chair. "Once the rest of what's in there finishes draining, we can probably start to cut it open. Either of you have anything that'll strike a spark?"

"I would imagine your memories and the lessons they teach you are infinitely more important than the relative age of your body," Signless says. He has extensive experience with that, after all: two sets of memories, one body, and without them he never would have come as far as he has.

"Speaking as someone with experience in such things. As for a fire, we have matches." He looks to Karkat (he's the one who's been carrying them, since he found them originally), tilting the dog's head back as instructed.

"Yeah, but it's fucking awful to know that you'll never get any bigger or have an adult moult or have whatever happens to adult humans happen to you because you're stuck in an adolescent's body forever," Karkat says as he gets out the less-than-half-now filled match box out of his windbreaker pocket. "I mean dying all the time is shit anyway, but I know when I think too much about that shit it fucks me up a bit and I'm one of the ones that got to go back for a while before they grabbed me again." Or whatever had happened.

Edited 2014-05-31 07:26 (UTC)

As they talk Roland kicks at the extra chair, breaking it down into kindling that he sets in a simple pattern inside the fireplace. "Going back? Does that happen often?"

It's not that he doesn't care about the rest. It's only that - well, it happens. It's 'fucking awful' that it happens. In Roland's mind, that's all there is to say on the matter. As to Signless' experience with memory, Roland notes it, but... later. He'll ask later. His own memory problem isn't something he's going to think on too much in a setting where he needs to be as alert as possible. "After the last of this blood's finished draining, we can slit it open. See if whatever comes out looks edible."

Edited 2014-05-31 12:57 (UTC)

[ota]

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I swear Roland did pick up that hammer in another thread I'm not pulling this stuff out of my ass

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do you guys want to just thread together for however many comments while karkat's in the kitchen?

I'm okay with that if you think he'll be a while - just let us know when you want back in?

i'm okay with that, sure

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would it make sense for Karkat to come back soonish?

he'll be back after this tag

yo! i'm back!

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