thearena | ARENA 11-PaneMall

ARENA 11-PaneMall

It’s pre-dawn when the Tributes are roused from their beds and sent to their tubes. Those who’d been imprisoned for the past few weeks had their heads covered before transport to the staging area, and there’s an air of confusion surrounding just about everything that’s happening until the stylists and managers arrive on the scene and try to calm everyone down. The reunions may be happy, but they're sadly very temporary.

The first clue that something strange is happening comes from their clothing: figure skating costumes with bright colors and sequins and ice skates strapped to their feet. Some may even find it difficult to stand with the blades on their feet, but as they're placed into the arena, all becomes clear. The mall skating rink seems quiet and quaint, especially after weeks of uncertainty and stress. Too bad the peace and quiet can’t last.

20

19

18...

Above the ice rink (which houses all 100+ Tributes) there are floors with shops looking over them. Large, bright fluorescent lights dot the multi-storied ceiling and create a warm, nostalgic glow to the place. Benign music is piped in from various hidden speakers to compliment the intended mood of fun and commerce.

17

16

15…

The countdown continues and the Tributes, some of whom haven’t seen each other in weeks, stare at one another helplessly. That is, until one of them boldly decides to speak.

"We're expected to fight here today," Steve's voice suddenly cuts through the tension in the room. It commands attention without demanding it, a conviction of truth in his tone.

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13

12...

"To turn on each other through fear and self preservation. And we could give them what they want. A bloodbath," here he pauses longer, lets the reality of his statements sink in. Let people realize what he's saying, that this is a choice.

"Or we can choose not to fight. To instead work together," an option so many seem not to even realize they have. "No one here has to die by our hands today," he knows his speaking won't be without consequence, but he does want to believe he'll be the only one to pay for this.

"This is a risk. One many of you are hesitant to trust, let alone take. But everything we do here is a risk to ourselves and those around us," nothing in the arena comes without putting your life on the line.

"I, for one, am willing to take this risk, to choose not to fight," Steve looks around the room, making eye contact with a few people as he does. He's not telling anyone what to do, this is for them to decides for themselves; their freedom of choice.

But he's got faith in the his fellow tributes. "And I've got a feeling I'm not alone.”

… 3

2

1…

After the countdown ends, there’s a moment of utter still and silence. Then...

BOOOOOOOOOOOM

The room seems to erupt with noise and concussive force. The explosions are so violent that the muzak is paused in its tracks and shakes some of the Tributes off of their pedestals, and after the ice fog and smoke clears, it becomes apparent that fifteen of the Tribute pedestals and exploded there on the ice rink. Fifteen corpses lie mangled on the bloody ice: Deanna Winchester, Danny Fenton, Fili, Kili, Kain Highwind, Perry Kelvin, Julian Bashir, Clint Barton, Karkat Vantas, Sirius Black, Rahm Kota, Cinderella, Bunnymund, Robin, Rock Lee, and Rokk Krin.

The center of the ice rink remains completely intact and stocked with a few dozen keys of varying shapes and sizes. This is the Cornucopia and the Gamemakers are compelling the Tributes to skate for it.

The gong rings out, and the countdown's voice announces “The Arena is now open.” The Games have begun.

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"Kid, will you look around you? Does it look like a hug is the right thing to do in this fucking situation?"

She shook her head. He was new, had no context for any of this, she bet. Fucking christ, his reflexes. What the hell would happen if he came across someone like that Kevin fuck from the last arena?

"No, I'm not OK. I have a small window of time to get a fucking weapon so that I can go and take care of a kid I gotta find. It would help to not get exploded or mauled in the process. If you want to talk, keep up."

Because skating was happening right now.

"...If I say yes, are you going to hit me?"

Because she seemed very irritable. Which, to be fair, he couldn't blame her for.

He released her, easily keeping up with careless grace, even on the ice. He's a tiny, skinny boy. If one didn't know about his history, it'd be easy to assume he was going to snap in two the moment someone gave him a solid punch. "It doesn't look like there are a lot of weapons here. I just see some keys."

"If I hit you, you'd go flying, and believe me, I'm saving my hitting for another time. Food and a weapon I could use before anything else. Can you skate?"

Right about now the name of the game was grabbing your shit and setting up, and Mindy still had a few things she had to do before that happened. It didn't help this kid was her age and didn't get the danger.

"I'm betting the weapons are housed in things that need keys. Hence the rink, to watch people fall on their asses."

"I can skate. I used to visit the Water Tribes sometimes, and you have to know how to skate there." As an Air Nomad (and as the Avatar, though he hadn't been aware at the time), the monks had made sure he had had a wide variety of experience in all the different nations. He always took to travel much faster than the other kids, and that had been saying something, since nomadism was in their blood.

It didn't even occur to him that she might not know what the Water Tribes were. She looked strange to him--eyes too round, skin too pale, hair all... yellow--but surely, she was just from a place he hadn't seen before. That in and of itself was weird, since he'd been practically everywhere, but maybe she was part of a race like the Sun Warriors, hidden away for hundreds of years. "Are you planning on attacking people?"

He hoped she wasn't, but... well, he couldn't really blame her if she were. The people who had them here had just blown up a bunch of people, and they'd probably do it again if they didn't fight. Still, he hoped that more people were willing to lay down their weapons and protest.

"Ok, I got more than half of that, and the bottom line was 'yes bitch I can skate,' so good. Might want to go and get a key yourself then kid. Wouldn't want you to end up surprised."

Or caught up in a bear trap. Definitely not.

She needed more time to think, and while she could have brushed him off, she was in no mad hurry. Winning, after all, didn't matter now. NOW, she had the ability to help out some of her own.

"I'm planning on fucking people up if they go after me," she replied. "I got all my senseless killing out when I had MY Arena."

"Uh..." He glanced back where the keys were meant to be, looking at the mass of people trying to grab at them. "You know what? I think I'm okay. I don't like weapons, anyway."

That statement could be easily misinterpreted. It wasn't that he was morally against weapons--they served a purpose, and sometimes, fighting was completely necessary. No, it was just that he was more comfortable fighting with his hands or a simple staff. Weapons were more the forte of non-benders.

But wait.

"Your arena?" He did not like the sound of that. "I thought this was the first one. And that everyone except one person is supposed to die."

"Suit yourself," Mindy said, shrugging. Pacifists. If that was his angle, clearly the exploding tributes had done nothing for some people. The Capitol were certainly going to fix that eventually.

She stopped, looking annoyed. "Christ, you're new, of course. Listen, they do make us run this shit for their entertainment, but death isn't permanent unless they make it so. Trust me, first arena I was in, I died. You don;t forget something like that. See here? They bring you back and then you fight the next Arena. That's how they work. We fight so the other Districts don't have to."

"What?"

It felt like his brain shorted out. This rattled him more than the death he witnessed.

"What do you mean, death's not permanent?" He stopped in his tracks, ice showering from his skates. "Death has to be permanent. If I die, I have to stay dead. They're... it's... they're going to kill babies if they keep bringing me back!"

Yes, he said that like it made sense. The moment his heart stopped, his next life, a little Water Tribe baby, was going to take its first breath. Bringing this incarnation of him back... they would rip the soul from that infant. They would unnaturally stall the Avatar cycle. They would be using one of the most fundamental building blocks of the world like a yo-yo. THE AVATAR IS NOT A YO-YO.

"Yes, yes, everyone is fucked up when they hear that," Mindy said, rubbing her ears. Wait, what the hell was he talking about, with babies? What the hell?

"Um. Your...name isn't, uh, Jesus, is it?"

Oh fucking lord of all that's batshit, tell her they didn't bring fucking Jesus here. What the hell was Jesus supposed to look like again? Not like this kid, right, he looked like Buddha. Shit, now she wished she paid attention to those nutjob fanatics on the subway.

"No. My name is Aang. I'm the Avatar." Yes, he expected her to know what that was. The concept of a world that didn't have an Avatar was completely incomprehensible to him.

"Who's Gee Soos? Is he a friend of yours?" Aaaand... yes, yes, he actually fucked up Jesus's name. To be fair, his world did not have a lot of names like that.

"The...like that movie with the blue fuckers?" Mindy missed the cartoon, sorry Aang. All she knew was a stupid rehashed plot of a movie by the same name. "What is that?"

She laughed. "A friend to some, kind of a nobody to me. But whatever, you're not him, good to know. I think having one god here to begin with is a bit much."

"Wh... what?" She was using a lot of words that he didn't understand (movie? God?). There was clearly some kind of miscommunication going on. "No, no, the Avatar. You know, master of all four elements? Bridge between our world and the spirit world? The keeper and enforcer of balance throughout this world and the next? You... seriously don't know what I'm talking about?"

...Oh dear. She was not from home.

That meant that there were other people from other places that didn't know about (or maybe didn't have) the Avatar.

He was sorry, but he had no idea how to respond to that information. It was like she had just told him that where she come from, there was no sky or ground or bending. The Avatar was fundamental. How could a world maintain balance without one?

"Ok, so now I'm understanding less than ten percent of the shit you're saying, which brings me to my next FYI. You're not in your world. I'm not in mine. Nope, we're all HERE, in this place, and whatever powers you had were nerfed, well, taken away, at any rate. This place is, like, the purgatory of hell or something."

Man, this would be hard to explain.

"This world's balance? That's pretty much us, being in these games."

"There's no... we're all..."

He gave the rink one long, surveying look. Color drained from his face.

"THIS IS BALANCE?!"

No wonder! His world had been without an Avatar for one century and was already almost irreparably damaged! This was a world that didn't remember having one!

Oh. Oh, no. No, no, someone tell him he wasn't going to have to bring balance to this. No, he had enough to deal with in his world, which this world stole him away from during a very pivotal moment (thank you very much), and he did not have the time or resources to whip whatever this was supposed to be into shape.

Please tell him he wasn't going to have to anyway. Roku, please show up and tell him that this wasn't going to be a thing.

"Shitty balance," Mindy corrected him, "but this is what passes as normal. A long time ago, this world was at war, and the government won. Well, you know a central ruling government, they have to keep the people down. So they divide them up into districts, 1 to 12. Each district gives the Capitol some resource, and in exchange the Capitol lets them exist. But to make sure they're kept in line, the old plan was the games: take two of each kid from a district and have them face the other kids in combat and survival in the conditions. Back then, only one person lived."

There, crash course. "But things eventually changed."

Aang's jaw dropped. "They used kids for this?" (And by kids, of course, he meant people younger than he was. In his world, twelve is not at all too old to go on adventures and get into potentially deadly skirmishes.)

Welp. This was going to be a thing. He was going to have to try bringing some semblance of balance to this place. He couldn't let this stand.

This was such a mess.

Aang rubbed his temples, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before taking a deep breath and opening them up again. "This is terrible. All of it." He had yet to hear one good thing in this conversation.

"It's more adults now," Mindy said. "At least, mostly anyway. But there's still a few kids. You, me, Clementine, Ellie, Sandy, Riley. Right now I'm actually looking for a girl even younger than us though: she had power in her her world, and now that's gone. She's never even seen death, not like this."

She sighed, idly fingering her newly received branding. "And this will be your first time in an Arena. You're gonna have to play it careful."

"Most people haven't seen death like this." Although despite that, Aang didn't seem fazed by the death the way a little pacifist should be. He hoped that Mindy could look out for that little girl--she seemed ready to.

"Careful. What do you mean, careful?" Of course, he knew that chances were that it'd get violent. He was just hoping for some quick advice from someone who'd played in other arenas.

"Some of them have," Mindy pointed out. "You can tell who though, you look at them enough. I've been here a few times so I can tell obviously, who's new and who isn't. The explosion thing, that was pretty new."

Not shocking, but definitely new.

"I mean its not just people you have to worry about. The terrain is always going to have something going on in it that will try to kill you, and keep in mind that the longer you're here avoiding shit, the more it wears on your body. My first Arena, I was more than halfway starving to death."

"So... make sure I don't starve and try not to be killed. I can do that."

He'd been doing it for his whole life, so he could do that. Luckily, it wasn't uncommon for Air Nomads to fast for higher spiritual experiences, so he could handle hunger pretty well.

"Aaand... try not to be murdered."

He'd been doing that for the past year or so.

"Don't underestimate people. It's usually a little better the first two weeks, but when they start getting whittled down, things get dangerous. I've seen it, BEEN it, and that's when you really have to watch your back. The Capitol usually decides they're going to try to make things a little more interesting at the point."

Like explosions.

"Luckily for you, you're young. Most of the older people here aren't too keen on murdering children if they can help it."

"It's never stopped anyone before!" But, hey, apparently other worlds don't have fully grown adults regularly trying to imprison or kill a group of kids and teenagers, so. Maybe that would be an advantage.

Maybe he could use his age to get people to listen to him.

"I'll be careful. Don't you worry about me." Yep. The little pacifist thinks he'll last more than an hour.

"It stops people, believe me. There are good, decent people here who are trapped just like you and me. But eventually, food runs out, people get tense, and things will come to a head. Killing is going to happen eventually, somehow. You just gotta be ready for it."

There were less kids and more teenagers and adults anyway.

"Dude its your first run. You should be worried about yourself."

"I'll be okay." He seems pretty confident of that. "Thank you so much. Good luck with your keys. And with the little girl."

Then he turns and skates away.

He doesn't even remember to get her name.

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