On My Knees, Saying Prayers in the Streetlight [Open]

[nunpunching]

WHO| Punchy and open.
WHAT| Punchy wanders around and finds a pharmacy, dissects a walker.
WHEN| Before Hellrena, week one.
WHERE| Near the town green.
WARNINGS| None.

Punchy hasn't eaten in nearly a week. His body, though used to somehow pulling nutrition out of a diet of nothing but gummi worms and sports drinks, is running on fumes. He feels his skin starting to get tight over his cheekbones and his lips starting to chap, and what's worse, he's feeling unfocused. It's a strange and unpleasant feeling for someone who can sit down and hammer out a computer program overnight; it's the way he felt back in class, as if nothing is interesting and nothing matters.

Of course, given that he's in a death Arena, feeling detached and listless isn't exactly a proper response to the circumstances.

He's set up his hideout inside an old pharmacy, one that would no longer be deemed fit to sell drugs due to the sheer amount of mildew sprawling out over every surface. He'd hoped to find candy, but the mints and lollipops he found practically crumbled to pastel-covered dust in his hands. He really only comes here to sleep during the day, catching quick catnaps and escaping from the more suffocating part of the heat.

At night, he goes out and kills these weird machinations the Capitol has put here, these walkers and insects. He has burns all over his hands from one of the giant spiders, but he's dragged a walker back to the pharmacy and is trying to take it apart, to see if there's a machine inside. How does it hunt with no eyes, no nose? If it has a sensor beacon, it could be used to find his allies.

He's hunched over this stinking, hideous corpse and so enraptured with his study that he wouldn't even notice someone coming in.

Comments

[nunpunching]

"I'm stayin' breezy, Joanie." Aside from looking piqued from not eating and barely sleeping, he looks alright. No evident injuries besides some typical scrapes on his knees from bumbling around in the fog. The blood on him is from the walker, not his own.

"Been going out of my head a little with no one else around, though. Shit's isolating out here. Lonely."

He isn't a person who likes to be kept to himself. His fantasies of grandeur can only sustain him so long.

[formersurgeon]

Joanie. She smiles faintly at the nickname.

"I know what you mean. Being alone isn't a great thing in general. Not in the arena, at least. But this..."

She turns her head to look at the door at the swirling fog.

"At worst, it's basically sensory deprivation. Not having someone to anchor you, things can go bad a lot faster."

[nunpunching]

"Not having jack to eat ain't helping. I've done it before, but it ain't fun." Punchy frowns; even if Joan offers him something, he won't take it from her. He's pretty sure he's got more for his body to cannibalize than her skinny frame does.

"You seen any of our peeps out there?" Or anybody, really. It's hard to find anyone.

[formersurgeon]

"I've found some food in the houses. It's not enough, but it's keeping me from starving."

It's also making her sluggish and tired, but there are so many other reasons for that that she hasn't drawn the connection yet.

"I met a few new people at the beginning. And I ran across Gabriel. I don't know if you know him."

[nunpunching]

"Good. You's a bit of a bluebone girl, you need extras to pack on that bod. No offense." He really doesn't mean it in a skeevy way, just as an observation.

"The angel?" Punchy doesn't quite believe he's a real angel. "I know of him but he ain't one of mine."

[formersurgeon]

She doesn't take it as skeevy. By now she speaks Punchy.

"So he says," she answers. She doesn't quite believe he's an angel either. "He's definitely different, but he's a good guy." Strangely enough. "He's a friend."

[nunpunching]

"Didn't he blow the shit out of one of the floors in the last shindig?" Punchy raises his eyebrows (he's never managed to raise either independently). "That was janked up."

But he'll take Joan at her word. Gabriel's in the circle.

He nods over at the dead walker. "You know if it's worth chomping up in the tums?"

[formersurgeon]

"He did. And it was. He's far from perfect."

But a friend nonetheless.

She looks at the corpse of the monster, then frowns at Punchy. Apparently her knowledge of Punchy-speak still has holes.

"I'm sorry, what?"

[nunpunching]

"Look, my peeps on the outside be leaving me to dry in here. I ain't gotten shit to eat or drink. I'm just tossing the idea out that maybe this bad boy be full of protein."

And he nudges the thing on the floor just in case that wasn't clear.

[formersurgeon]

Peeps on the outside. There's a look of grief on Joanna face as she thinks about the silence from Sherlock, but the expression is gone almost soon as it appears.

She considers the dead creature with a grimace.

"It would probably taste terrible. And it might be poisonous." She sighs. "But if we're likely to starve to death anyway..."

[nunpunching]

Punchy's oblivious to most things, but not to that. Not to Joan and not to grief; he knows both much too well. He reaches over and gives her shoulder a squeeze, then wraps his arm around her.

"Poison ain't how I wanna bite it." He shrugs. "But it's better than starving."

*sigh* Sorry, damn autocorrect

[formersurgeon]

She doesn't like showing her sadness, doesn't like being caught out in it. But she trusts Punchy. Knows that she's safe, which as least dulls the discomfort of discovery. She slides her arm around his waist.

"So...cut it up for kebabs and build a fire?"

[nunpunching]

"Sounds legit. Sounds pretty gangsta, actually." He pats her hard on the back and then holds his arm out.

"You know, Holmesboy and I tried to hack out the chips last Arena, and the Gamemakers went fuckin' ape about it."

[formersurgeon]

The pat surprises her, rocking her forward a little, so she pauses a little to parse his next statement.

"I bet they did," she says, her voice softening with a tinge of sadness, although it wasn't entirely genuine. She's supposed to be sad about Sherlock, the one who supposedly threw himself off the Tribute Tower, so she makes sure she sounds that way, but it comes from a place of ache, for both the Sherlocks.

"What did they do?"

[nunpunching]

Punchy looks sad too. And a bit angry. He understands what might drive someone to suicide - understands it too well - but it's a sin in his religion. And he's seen what grief does to those left behind. He has a hard time forgiving it.

He's seeing it now.

"Set off all the alarms with the nitrous ox, blowing it up the rilla soon as I said I was gonna do it." He looks at Joan with raises eyebrows, expecting her to understand that as soon as the Capitol says 'no', his impulse is to do exactly that.

[formersurgeon]

She gives him a look, her eyes slightly narrowed, but more out of amusement than disapproval.

"...you're thinking of doing it again, aren't you."

[nunpunching]

"Duh."

He holds his arm out and points to where the chip is implanted under the pale skin. "But not in the Arena."

[formersurgeon]

"Because they can't instantly punish you outside the arena, right."

She takes his arm and looks at it more closely.

"I'll help you. I can do it cleanly, make it hurt less and be less likely to get infected."