thearena | live fast die young bad fugitivi do it well

Entry tags:

live fast die young bad fugitivi do it well

Who: Nasir & Gannicus & open to all!
What: See the prompts below. Basically, a couple of ex-slaves have fun in the fog, hunt like a pack of thugs and enjoy themselves. If you fancy a scuffle then you've come to the right party.
When: Throughout week 2 (and beyond?)
Where: All over the place! They aren't staying still, that's for sure.
Notes: Warnings for violence (!) and awful language. Will update if need be.

A. closed to Nasir & Gannicus only ( in which heat vision is a thing and nobody cares much for acid spray )

The Cornucopia had been... disappointing. The lead pipe that he had hefted for the first few days was far from satisfactory; the swing of it was wrong and he missed the impaling point of his swords. A blunt object was all well and good but Gannicus had a fondness for the familiar weight of a gladii in each hand.

And then the knife had arrived.

"The city of bread and they feed us fucking crumbs!" He laughed as he swung the short knife with an experimental air, slicing and cutting down imaginary Tributes as he paced the flat roof of a garage. This was their home for the night: exposed, but elevated and distant. A lead pipe in his lead hand and a knife in his off hand - it was unbalanced and crude (much like many men Gannicus had known over the years) and it would have to do.

Unsatisfied but resigned, he shot a curious look at Nasir over his shoulder.

"Tell me the gods have blessed you with better offering?"

B. Nasir & OPEN ( in which Nasir's hair remains immaculate no matter how many rude bitches get up in his business )

Nasir knew it was wiser to stay with Gannicus, but at the same time they could cover more ground and find more resources if they were apart for the time. But that wasn't the true reason he was walking through the fog on his own, trusting on his heat vision goggles to show him any nearby tributes. He was searching for someone from home.

If Gannicus was here, then why not Agron? Maybe even his brother. The Capitol had taken them after all. Why waste a former gladiator?

Nasir kept his turning his gaze around him, raising the goggles every now and then so he didn't become disoriented in a world of red, orange, and blue. He listened too. If he didn't find Agron, then he would find another Tribute to take their life and what supplies they had.

He was going to survive this arena.

C. Gannicus & OPEN ( in which Gannicus misses his audience, damn it. )

Gannicus was unhappy. This arena business was entirely wrong.

Where were the crowds? Where was that familiar, comforting roar - where was the pulsing, beastly universal scream for blood? He missed the way it filled his head, rising to match his pulse, blocking out all other worries and fears and replacing them with a primal urge to kill. It was simpler that way. Easier.

He could imagine it if he really tried - but if he really tried, then he wasn't paying attention to his surroundings. And that, Gannicus knew, would be a fatal error.

The heat vision goggles were going to take some getting used to - they were heavy and weighed his head down more than he liked, but the chance to see the world in a vivid new way was far too useful to pass up. Now, he hunted the bright red shapes in the mist - distant, fleeting flashes of heat and life that darted in and out of houses and between trees as Gannicus silently skirted his way about the town. The other Tributes were out here, somewhere. The red spectres that moved through the black mist of his heat vision goggles would show him the way.

Gannicus was still unhappy, but at least he had a plan: keep moving, keep hunting - light and quick, fast and small. Remember the noise of the crowd. Give everyone a glorious death.

D. Nasir & Gannicus & OPEN ( in which god knows what happens )

Tag us with your own scenario! Nasir and Gannicus will be out roaming the arena together during the day and by night they are camping out in various different roof tops and hidey holes. Feel free to run in to them!

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Nasir smiled and clasped Gannicus's arm. "Gratitude."

At Gannicus's next words, he let go of him and turned to inspect the bag he had found. "Let us unravel mystery of its contents."

He knelt next to it, set aside his crowbar and opened it. One by one, he pulled out the items-- wire, which he recognized, a tent, which he did not at first glance, a can with writing on it he did not understand, and...

Nasir held up the goggles, which stood out more than anything else. "Eyes have never laid on such." He spread it apart.

What was he supposed to do with this?

Gannicus's interest fell immediately on the wire. Hunkering down on his heels next to Nasir he picked the spool up and unravelled a section of wire between his fingers thoughtfully.

"I have never seen the like," He murmured, glancing briefly at the strange device in Nasir's hands, before pulling the wire taught between two balled fists. "But in this there is much potential..."

Nasir looked up as Gannicus unwound the wire. He reached out and touched it, finding it harder than he expected. He saw the potential as well.

"Well suited to strangle a man, among other uses." If they wanted to stay in one place for a time, they could set a trap.

"We are absent spear and gladius but not unarmed." Nasir glanced at the rest of the items. He started to pull apart the tent and, as it expanded, he soon realized his purpose. "Nor are we without shelter."

Discarding the spool of wire, Gannicus pulled his own pack towards them and emptied the contents haphazardly at their feet. The items clattered noisily but the results were much the same: tent, wire, the strange device, some kind of metal cylinder... and a stretch of heavy chain. With a huff of amusement Gannicus swung one short end in a lazy arc.

"Vinculum," He muttered with a frown as he inspected the weighted links and the way the chain as he twirled it. Gannicus shook his head. "I possess little skill in this. I have known it to be favoured in the Pit, but rarely was it used in the Arena..."

"Can you make use of it?" Nasir turned his eyes on Gannicus's supplies before frowning and looking back to the goggles. He held them up to his eyes for closer inspection.

It was supposed to go around something. It was almost big enough to go over his head but it was no necklace.

There were too many things here that puzzled him. It didn't settle well in his mind.

"If I must."

Gannicus wound the chain up over his hand once, twice, three times - it sat around his fist heavily and the impact of the chain on his own fingers would be just as painful as it would be on an enemy's face, but it was a tactic worth remembering. It was certainly more favourable to trying to use it as a whip.

Turning his attention back to the curious device Nasir held, Gannicus discarded the chain in favour of picking up his own matching goggles and weighing them up curiously. He pulled at a strap, testing the fabric.

"These are bindings, do you not think?"

Nasir looked at the same straps on his own goggles. "I believe it so."

It was not of the size for arm or leg and there would be no use for it there. But it could barely fit over his head.

Nasir did something that would seem very stupid if it did not work. He raised the goggles over his head and pulled it down. It was loose on him, of course, but the lenses fell into place over his eyes briefly. At some point during his inspection, he'd activated them, and so he caught a flash of an array of warm and cool colors before the lenses fell past his nose.

"What--"

He held them back up to his eyes.

"Fuck the gods." Not a phrase often uttered by him but this was bizarre enough that it warranted it.

"Gannicus, wear these as I am."

There's no denying it: with the bulky glasses strapped haphazardly to his forehead Nasir looked like a fool. Gannicus was just about to say as much, before he was taken by surprise by Nasir's exclamation.

Slowly, squinting, he attempted to fit the glasses on to his head.

"No easy task," He muttered in exasperation as he fought with the straps, getting them muddled up in a multitude of different ways before turning to Nasir with a silent plea for help.

Nasir took off his goggles and moved to help Gannicus.

Nasir had the advantage of spending more time in Panem than Gannicus. He thought he could figure out how this worked. Of course, it was harder than that once he got his hands on the straps and it took more a fair amount of experimenting before he managed to get it to fit on Gannicus's head. He let Gannicus take it from there, pushing himself away so he could grab his own goggles and watch the gladiator's reaction.

"Fuck me," Gannicus breathed as he admired how changed the world was around them when (finally) viewed from behind the strange contraption. He laughed brightly, grinning beneath the heavy curve of the goggles on his face, and turned his head this way and that as he looked at everything around them - the distant figures of Tributes amongst the fog in the distance, the scuttle of dogs on the ground, Nasir beside him and finally his own hands, splayed and examined in the form of bright red and yellow ghosts through the viewfinder.

"They have given us sight of the gods themselves!"

Once Gannicus had his goggles on, Nasir went to put his own on as well. He struggled with the straps but now that he had figured them out they were easier to adjust. He turned his head and saw the same things that Gannicus had. He wondered if one of the figures in the distance, distinctly human, could be Agron.

"If not all the gods, then the eyes of Diana so that we may hunt our prey."

How quickly the world had changed in his mind. He did not think of these people, who he had seen, some of whom he had spoken to, as animals. But he was a predator. He was out to kill him. The problem was, he was prey as well.

After staring at Gannicus to accustom himself to seeing him in an array of colors, Nasir lifted the goggles away from his eyes. His hands went back to canister he had taken out before.

"I wonder if there are other secrets to unlock with these." Though he did not see how.

Still entranced by the way in which the world was transformed by the goggles, Gannicus turned his attention properly to the world beyond the edge of the roof. Buildings were solid blues and purples; Tributes, beasts and light sources were picked out in bright red and yellow. It was an entirely novel way of looking at the world - everything that moved was a threat, and now every threat could be easily seen with the help of this strange mask.

Gannicus grinned broadly as he stared out at the arena below them, only listening with half a mind to what Nasir was saying.

"Oh, this strange new world," He laughed to himself, amused as he turned the heat goggles upwards to the sky above them. "What I would not give to see what schemes Spartacus would bring to life, were this mask in his hands instead of ours!"

Nasir would save the wonders of the heat vision goggles for later. Now he was determined to learn what else could help him.

His fingers found an indent in the canister. He'd seen something like this before in the Capitol. He was supposed to press down on it.

"We will see if this will be of any use." That was the only warning Nasir gave before he pressed down.

In hindsight, he should have been holding it far away from Gannicus. It spewed acid directly at his body. Nasir jumped and immediately released the pressure on the canister but the damage was done.

There was no reaction at first. Gannicus continued to stare out beyond the rooftop at the arena beyond, marvelling at the red ghosts he could spot through the mask with his broad grin still in place. But a net of holes were beginning to eat their way through his clothing in a spotted spray that covered one arm and half of his back. The only warning was a faint smell of melting plastic, acrid and thick, before the acid finally bit through the last layer of fabric and began to seep in to his skin.

With a snarl of pain Gannicus tore the goggles from his face and ran a hand along the arm where pain suddenly began to blossom in sharp patches - a stupid move, as it only served in getting acid on his palm, which similarly began to burn.

"Gannicus!" Nasir watched in horror as the acid ate away at Gannicus's clothes and then his skin. He cast about frantically. He had no idea if water would help to wash away whatever that was, but it was all he could think of.

"Apologies! I didn't know--" He really should have thought twice about it. Of course they would include something deadly in his bag.

"This was your fucking hand?" Gannicus exclaimed in disbelief as he clawed at the back of his arm, where the worst of the acid was eating red blisters in to his exposed flesh. Yet more stupid moves, as the acid was only smeared further around. The pain reminded him of dull memories of the brand being pressed in to his flesh, searing and sharp.

Nasir watched as the acid ate into yet more flesh.

"Jupiter's cock, Gannicus. Stop touching it!"

Nasir did the only thing he could think of. He reached for one of their bottles of water and opened it. "Stay still." He poured a little of the water on Gannicus's arm. It wasn't much. He didn't want to waste it in case this didn't work.

The water was a relief - he hissed as it washed through the angry red sores left by the acid but the pain was significantly less than the acid itself. It subsided after a few sharp seconds, leaving a dull pulsing pain in its wake - an improvement that Gannicus was intensely thankful for.

"And here," He muttered, holding out his raw palms for more water.

Nasir poured the water over Gannicus's hands, then set the bottle aside.

"Apologies," he said again not because angering Gannicus was the last thing Nasir wanted to do but because he had injured him. "I will use more caution. I did not mean to cause harm."

He inspected Gannicus's wounds now that they had been cleaned. He could not think of anything more that he could do, especially since he didn't know what had come from that strange object.

The wounds still burned like fire but the water seemed to have washed the worst of the offending spray away. Gannicus bit back the pain, suppressing the discomfort. He'd had worse, he tell himself, and still lived to fight.

But the pattern of burns across his palms worried him more than his hands; with the skin on his hands eaten raw in long streaks where he had tried to wipe the acid from his arm, he knew that he would have difficulty holding his weapons.

"Binding," He said between gritted teeth. "Bind my palms and I may yet still fight."

Binding his palms was obvious but with what? Nasir could strip, he wouldn't mind horribly, but it would make for a poor binding. Then he realized there was one item he hadn't examined. Fortunately for them both, it was the first aid kit. Much of it was unrecognizable to him but the cloths were clear enough. He quickly set to work on Gannicus's hands. His own moved expertly. He'd had plenty of experience with this, first with his own bindings after nearly dying, and then after Agron had returned to him.

After he was done with Gannicus's hands he tied the cloth around his arm.

"Tell me if wounds worsen." It was Nasir's responsibility to keep Gannicus alive and well, especially given the fact that this was his fault.

"And what further aid would you seek to lend me?" Gannicus bit out in reply, sounding just as darkly amused as he was annoyed at the whole thing. "Perhaps you will drop knife by mistake and hack other arm from fucking body?"

He flexed his hands, testing their stretch with a wince. The pain was less now, thank the gods, but what had felt like a bright burning flame was now a constant throbbing ache. His words were coloured with both exasperation and pain but there was still that familiar humour behind them - it was an accident, he'd believe that, but it didn't stop it from being a potentially fatal one if Gannicus couldn't handle a weapon.

"Apologies. If I had known I would not have touched it while you were near." Nasir truly did feel terrible about it but at least Gannicus could joke about it now. Maybe he wouldn't hold it against him for the whole arena, though he was sure he would hear about it for as long as they remained in Panem.

"It will not happen again." He promised.

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live fast die young bad fugitivi do it well

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COMEDY can't resist sorry

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