thearena | [benny hill theme intensifies]

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[benny hill theme intensifies]

Who| Carlos + anyone in the Arena!
What| Catch-all post for Carlos in weeks 1 + 2! The Gamemakers are trying to kill him, so he's encountering all kinds of nasty beasts and horrible monsters that always seem to find him. If you want to run into him during the superspecial hell arena, there's a prompt for that! Watch this space for week 3 edits.
Where| All over the arena. Seriously, he's on the run from horrible monsters and will be roaming around everywhere. Specific locations are in the comments, but if none of the prompts strike your fancy or you want Carlos to stumble on you, just specify where you are in your reply.
When| Weeks 1 + 2 for now
Warnings/Notes| Horror? Monsters? Gore? Dark humor? Welcome to Night Vale.
Also! All prompts but the first one involve him in a situation where Carlos could use a rescue. However, if your character would try to kill him, feel free to tag into this as well, since the Gamemakers might very well try to steer more murderous characters towards Carlos. I do want him to survive/escape since his death is planned already, but you are 100% free to injure him!

Carlos didn't know what was going on. His first few days in the Arena had been, well, almost normal. They had gone as well as could be expected: he had gotten his hands on a lab coat, gotten some chemicals from old houses, stripped some cars, and had fashioned some makeshift weapons. Carlos knew better than to hole up in a house permanently; last Arena, he and the others had been punished for not being exciting enough, and Carlos's life was riding on putting on a good show. Therefore, Carlos had fashioned traps that he could carry with him during the day and set around his camp at night. It had been a lovely system, painful but nonlethal, and Carlos had had an exciting encounter or two that would probably up the drama.

So what if the monsters seemed to have an uncanny sense of where he was? It wasn't so bad. Carlos could outrun them. He had a lot of experience in doing that. He had also received his share of sponsor gifts, all of which had made the week infinitely easier, and the note from Cecil was folded up and securely tucked into the pocket of his D10 jacket where it wouldn't come loose and fly away as he was fleeing spiders or dogs or shambling monsters.

And so what if cracks had begun to appear uncannily close to him? Cracks appeared in the ground all the time -- it was one of this Arena's hazards. They always made a sound, and he rapidly learned to jump to steadier ground -- not to mention stick to landmarks and important features of the Arena that the Gamemakers wouldn't want to destroy.

It wasn't until the third building in a row nearly collapsed on him that Carlos began to suspect. None of the other houses were collapsing, and the one he had been in had shown no signs of structural weakness. He'd checked.

The cloud of poison-gas confirmed it, Carlos thought as he ran through the town, lab coat held up over his mouth to shield his lungs from the toxic green vapor: the Gamemakers were definitely trying to kill him. This confirmed Carlos's fear -- that his act of dissent in Ian's rescue meant that the Capitol was through with him and intended to kill him as quickly and quietly as possible, with no chance of resurrection. It only filled him with more determination to stay alive.

By the time the air raid sirens went off, Carlos had given up going in houses at all, since if they didn't collapse right away, they were invariably full of spiders waiting to drop on him from the ceiling. He had given up leaving town, since cracks would open up under his feet. And he had given up on getting more than a few hours' sleep at a time.

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"Hmm" is Terezi's only initial response. She doesn't seem at all bothered by the description, at least not in the same way that Carlos is. It's rather horrifying, yes, but she's probably more than a little desensitized to horrible things at this point.

"I am still judging you for making a fire," she informs him, not without a little bit of dry humor. "But significantly less than I would have otherwise been judging you! So. How about this stand-off we're having? Are we going to keep chatting about abominations to nature with our hands on our weapons, or can I come over there and get the other end of my rope?"

"That depends," says Carlos. "I have a very good reason to stay alive as long as possible in this Arena, and if I die, it absolutely cannot be boring." He draws a breath and fights back the urge to take a step back, to look at the situation and realize how strange what he's saying is. "I need to be sure you won't kill me -- or if you do, it has to be as exciting and...well, theatrical as possible."

"If I intend to kill you, I promise to make it so spectacular, your human Broadway will call me up and beg to have the rights. Or whatever dumb equivalent you have."

Odd as the request is, Terezi doesn't feel that she needs to ask why he's making it. That's the name of the game here: Entertainment. If he's looking for a thrilling and captivating exit, then there's only one reason she can think of that he would need that sort of assurance. He must be worried about not coming back. Whether it's a valid concern or not isn't really any of her business.

"In the meantime, you're sitting in a food storage unit, and I still need my rope. Do you even know how silly you smell? It shouldn't take a genius to realize that Humans in Refrigerators is not going to be an award-winning production."

Carlos regarded her a moment longer, then put away his spray gun and reached over to untie the rope from the refrigerator door.

"...I know I've been in the Arena for a few days," he said, sounding a little miffed, "but I didn't think I smelled silly." There, the rope was free: Terezi could pull it back and coil it up at her leisure.

The rope is quickly pulled back to safety, wound between Terezi's hand and elbow, and tossed back into her bag. The spray canister still sits against her hip, but her hand no longer rests on it. If he's not going to hold a weapon, she won't need to either.

"Well, what else would you smell like, Mr. Caramel Fudge?" she asks, lifting a brow quizzically at him. "You're sitting in a refrigerator. Is that normal behavior for your kind? Do you have some other word that you'd like me to use, other than silly? I am willing to compromise here!"

This confuses Carlos for a moment -- she can smell the fact that he's standing in a refrigerator? It's almost like she's --

-- oh. She's that troll.

"Oh," he says out loud. "You're that troll. The one with the synesthesia. You see with your sense of smell." Then, Carlos realizes how fascinating that is. "Can you only smell colors, or can you detect normal odors too?"

Terezi's a little surprised that she's identifiable by that particular trait. Usually she gets "the blind troll" or some other variation of that. Remarking on her scent vision is certainly a new one. But the question he starts asking makes her grin.

"I can smell both! Why wouldn't I? Do you stop seeing the stuff outside just because you're looking through a window? Or do you not know the glass is there, just because you can look through it?"

Well, it was the most interesting thing about her. And besides, her blindness didn't matter. Why bring it up?

"That's fascinating," he says completely seriously, getting out of the refrigerator and closing it. "You must have smelled the tripwires when you came in. That's a really impressive skill."

"It has it's uses." Terezi responds coyly and carefully steps over the tripwares in order to move closer to the human--or maybe just to show off the fact that she can smell them without needing to see them.

"It's certainly more versatile than your sight. Imagine if you could see someone lying to you. That would be a pretty neat trick."

"You can do that?" Carlos stares at her, surprised and definitely impressed.

"...can -- can I test it?"

Terezi does her best to look affronted by the mere notion that she wouldn't be telling him the one hundred perfect factual truth. "I am insulted that you would be skeptical of my veracity!"

A pause, then: "But sure, whatever! Throw a test at me." She's not exactly sure if she can pass it, but there's a 50-50 chance of being right by pure guessing anyway.

It isn't skepticism. It's just that Carlos can't resist the urge to test something like that.

"Okay. One of these is a lie, and I want you to tell me which one. I found this lab coat in an old pharmacy; at age fifteen I invented a specterometer; or I can't stand the Beatles." The last one is the lie. Carlos is quite amenable towards the Beatles, though he wouldn't call himself an ardent fan.

Terezi steps closer as he starts, taking a few cursory sniffs. Two truths and a lie, huh? What Terezi doesn't like to point out is that she can't actually smell direct lies. What she smells is something closer to a culmination of a bunch of tinier things. The shiftiness of their eyes, the tightening of their jaw, nervous twitches or ticks that might give them away. Her nose picks up the scents of deception, and her gut sorts out what it means.

This sort of thing is based more on cleverness alone. Normally, the ridiculousness of statement two would warrant skepticism. But given that he's trying to test her, and therefore most likely trying to trick her, statement two is the only one that she's absolutely sure is true. So it comes down to statements one or three.

She ponders for a moment. Two truths and a lie. Two truths... and a lie. He might have placed the lie first to use the second statement as a means of diminishing it. Or he might have stuck to the proper order of the thing: Two truths, and then a lie. Statement One is dangerously specific. He could have found a different lab coat in an old pharmacy, or found that labcoat in a new pharmacy, or found that labcoat in and old build that wasn't a pharmacy. There are several things that could be untrue.

But Three is also suspiciously vague. A simple statement of dislike instead of calling out whatever it is that he dislikes about them. If he really couldn't stand the Beatles, Terezi gets the impression that this human would have picked them apart much cleaner than that. He was certainly specific enough with his other statements. A clear case of one-of-these-things-is-not-like-the-others.

"The third one is the lie," she guesses with an air of confidence, even if she knows that her odds are 50-50 at best.

"Very good!" he exclaims, truly delighted. "All right, let's try again. When I was ten, at space camp--" Here, though, Carlos pauses: he thinks he's heard something.

"Did you hear that?" he whispers, worried. He's not sure if it's real or his imagination, but paranoia is a survival skill in Night Vale and the Arena alike.

Terezi was putting a lot of concentration on Carlos, so when he suddenly stops and whispers, she stops too. Her ears perk, the pointed tips peeking out from beneath her hair. If there was something before, she doesn't hear anything now. Still, she's not about to drop her guard so easily.

"Maybe we can continue the twenty questions later," she suggests quietly, her hand going for her acid spray canister again. This time she doesn't have any intent of pointing it at the human. "Do you have an alternative route out of this building? Or were you just hoping that someone wouldn't find you?"

"There's a front door, a back door, and several windows big enough to climb through," Carlos informed her, quick and businesslike. "I'd rather not lose the building, since fortifying places to sleep is a lot of work, but we're definitely not trapped."

"Good. Just checking." She's content with staying here to wait for whatever might be stalking them through the house. Just so long as there's another way out. Being backed into a corner isn't the best strategical position... Not unless you're planning on taking down the back wall in your attempt to escape.

"Do you have a name?" she asks suddenly--if only to kill some time in lieu of waiting anxiously to see if a creature materializes. "Or do I get to start making up nicknames? I'm kind of partial to Caramel Fudge already. You're going to have to have a really good name to beat that."

"It's Carlos." But when she repeats the nickname, he can't help asking: "Is -- is that really what I smell like?" His tone is curious and a little tickled; the question is said the same way as is that really how my voice sounds or is that what I look like from the back?

"Yep! Caramel Fudge--like the ice cream. Decadent and smooth, but with the chocolate sprinkles on top." This is a perfect depiction of the human in front of her. She almost wants to give him a little lick, just to make sure that her assessment is spot on.

And also kind of because he smells delicious.

"What kind of name is Carlos supposed to be?"

Edited 2014-08-03 21:30 (UTC)

Her description of him reminds Carlos uncomfortably of Cecil. Therefore, Carlos reacts exactly the way he usually does when Cecil says something like that: he ignores it completely.

"A human name," he replies simply: Carlos isn't sure how to give a better answer than that. "It's pretty common, actually. There are a lot of people where I come from who are named Carlos."

Terezi's usual response to people ignoring her weirdness is to up the ante. Actually, her general response to any reaction is to up the ante because she's very bad at knowing when to stop.

Fortunately the surrounding arena is just unsanitary enough for her to keep her tongue in her mouth where it belongs.

"Weird. Do you ever get confused by other Carloses? How do you deal with people having the same name as you? Do you fight them to the death?"

Edited 2014-08-03 21:55 (UTC)

"No, we don't." Carlos can't tell if she's serious or making fun of him, so he turns once more to his experiences in Night Vale, where you always treat everything like it's serious. "Usually, a combination of physical appearance, family names, and various identification numbers are enough to differentiate individuals."

"Lame. You humans have such strange customs."

Because you know... murdering your name twin is totally an acceptable means of dealing with strict naming conventions. There can be only one.

"I guess that's what you get when a species evolves on the idea that all life is precious instead of the more reasonable survival of the fittest. Your human Darwin knew what was up."

"I like to think we've evolved past the need for that," Carlos says with a bit of a sniff. "The way I see it, the entire human race has become so well-suited to its environment that we can afford to support the people who might not survive on their own," he argues. "That way, we don't lose their contributions to society."

It isn't that Carlos has forgotten about the noise he might or might not have heard. It's just that, well, it hasn't attacked yet, and this is an interesting debate.

Terezi laughs at that. If there's something out there, it's most certainly heard them. They're not dead yet, so she's not going to worry about it too much.

"You never evolve past the need for that. Not when it comes down to it. My species has thousands--maybe millions--of years on you, and we never evolved out of that. Sure, you might have the stray impulse to help someone out of the kindness of your heart! Or to satisfy some sentimental urge! But ultimately there is that notion that if you are good to your society, then they will repay you in kind when you need it. Most of the time? It's not altruism. It's just a safety net."

(no subject)

youbarium - 2014-08-10 16:31 (UTC) - Expand

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