Along came a spider; OPEN

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

Who| Disciple, Vriska, OPEN
What| Disciple meets the Spider troll and later gets attacked by a spider. Coincidence? Yes.
Where| Fountain in Park; Main Street
When| Backdated Pre-Hellrena
Warnings/Notes| Possible violence? Arena warning.

A. For Vriska

It's quiet here, in the park. Quiet and mostly deserted. The buzz of insects is somewhere nearby but she thinks she can rest. The fountain is crumbling, like everything, but enough remains to sit on for a moment. She can even close her eyes, think about something beyond the next step for a moment. She's tired and a little hungry, so when her bag slips off her shoulder onto the crumbling cement beside her, she lets it lay.

Time seems to slip past her as she starts to half doze. She was never much good at noon, especially not after days of wandering aimlessly.


B. OPEN

The buildings appear suddenly through the fog as she steps carefully over a crack. Some time, maybe a few days ago or maybe several, a crack has split open wide under her feet and it was only her quick reflexes that kept her from dropping to her death. She knew it was before she had found Signless and Karkat, but not exactly when. Time isn't exactly easy to keep track of in this place, with fog so dense it seems to make the world perptually grey. It didn't really matter. Lesson learned.

Before her, shapes move in the twilight and she watches one of those strange bugs drift near the front of a house, buzz up--then quickly away. She frowned, watching it disappear into the fog. Not going to catch that one, she thought, and walked on. She'd have to catch one at some point. She didn't have the time or safety to put up a trap for some beast.

With her mind was so preoccupied with the hunger swirling in her stomach, she didn't hear the shift and scatter of rooftiles until a pale leg was already in front of her face and a sharp claw hooked in her shirt.

"Shit."

A quick kick only brought those claws closer, grabbing at the clothing and digging into skin. No, breath, think. The next kick is at the horrible mouth, worse than any horror she had seen--and briefly she wonders if this what the Empresses's lusus looks like, terrible and frightening--but she has no time to think about stupid things. The spider, if you can call it that, had dropped her and every second counted.

"Shit shit shit, never going to prioritize food over people again." Stupid quadrants and descendants sending her back out into this madness. Find them and keep them close next time.

A sound behind her might be a person or it might be another creature come to share the feast and honestly at this point, she's sure things can't get worse.

"If you're coming to kill me, can you wait just a minute? I'm--" And she has to duck another claw, all the while trying to find that wrench she stupidly left in the bag, "I'm busy!"

Comments

[splendid_roman]

"You look it," Ian said. He'd heard something and come looking for an opportunity to kill or someone who needed help. He'd discovered the latter and he quickly had the lead pipe in his head, which he used to hit one of the spider's legs.

It screeched and retracted the leg, but otherwise didn't seem keen on letting go of its prey.

And Sat Down Beside Her

[this8itch]

The past few days have been complete and utter hoofbeast manure. All of her grand plans have turned sour. Her 'Steal all the Loot' plan gave her a missing left eye, which she artfully covered with a sweet ass eye patch, and that 'easy meal' from Spineless and Karkat left her belly empty. She still could have taken a meal to go but dammit, she was making a point. Her and her stupid ass pride.

The pit in her stomach growled as if to remind her of her current situation. Her brow furrowed as she rubbed a hand over her gut to silence it. Food. She needed food. Before she would allow herself to rest, Vriska needed to eat.

Forcing herself to press on she happened by luck to stumble upon a quiet park. It looked like this place didn't much much to offer, much like the rest of this shitty stupid arena, but her one good eye caught sight of a pair of familiar shaped horns peeking out around some crumbling cement rubble. Nepeta? Oh thank motherfucking god! Maybe she had food.

Vriska's pace quickened, trotting up to the broken down fountain, "Hey! Nepet-"

Her voice cuts short as she rounded the corner seeing the other troll more clearly. That was defiantly not Nep. Another fucking mystery troll? Fuuuuuuuuck.