thearena | Team...whatsit.

Entry tags:

Team...whatsit.

WHO Ariadne, Amy Reese, Kaidan, Garrus, Sheppard? I think that's everyone.
WHAT Mingle post for the awesome team of soon-to-fail.
WHERE Up near the showline. Let's say... 3-I? Maybe they found a good campsite there, by the stream? I'm thinking Amy and Ariadne found the camp while Kaidan was off doing his open-log things. If there are objections to this, let me know! Happy to edit.
WHEN Wednesday - Friday
NOTES Tag around, form threads, mingle and do stuff. Time is flexible, and mods might toss in an attack or two, so be wary.

The campsite is a secluded clearing, close to the snow, colder than the low altitudes but perhaps safer. Rocky ledges provide some shelter from the elements, and a cold snow-fed stream flows by.

Wednesday night, after the camp is first established, a silver parachute drops in with a blanket and a box of matches.

After Garrus joins, more gifts come, in the form of food for him and a couple more blankets.

All in all, it's starting to feel more like a camping trip than a fight to the death.

Of course, this is soon to change.

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The cliffs around here are tall, and the ground unstable, so it would be easy to assume a rock slide is natural, and not cause by the flick of a wrist in the control room.

In correct, but plausible. Which is the best way for it to be.

Either way, the ground groans before the whole cliff face starts to sag down. It moves strangely slow at first, but even if Kaidan had time to move a few feet, the whole edge he's standing on is going down.

Amy has just emerged from under the ledges, yawning. She hadn't managed much sleep; it'd been fitful, little short naps, paranoia awakening her every time someone made a move. She trusts Kaidan the most.

But then she feels a rumble, a groan in the ground.

"Kaidan!" she shrieks, in warning.

Kaidan feels the rocks crack before he hears it. The low groan of something going terribly wrong. He looks at his feet, then at Amy who's approaching, still far off. The shift happens suddenly and Kaidan is sprinting out of his cover, trying to find a safe place-- but there's nothing. He shouts a warning; but he's going down, and there's no stopping it. He doesn't know if there's anyone else but knowing Amy isn't... that's good enough for now. He sure sucked at the whole protector role, didn't he?

Edited 2012-04-08 07:12 (UTC)

Shepard hears the shriek first. It's shrill and distant, but loud enough for her initial reaction to be anger. Way to alert half the goddamn Arena to our location, girl. She can't be sure which one it is, but it sounds a bit more like Amy than the other one. Though maybe that's just because she expects Amy to be the one making noise, what, with that camera of her's and all.

But her frustration is quickly replaced with a gut-wrenching, twisting ache of worry. The word she had shrieked was Kaidan. And then the rumbling crashing chaos of earth being moved takes over everything, and suddenly her feet can't move fast enough.

There are really only two kinds of people in the world. Those who hear danger and flee, and those who hear danger and charge straight for it. Shepard has always been the later, to almost a reckless fault. She isn't even sure what she's hoping to do or find once she gets there, but she runs, full sprint until she finds the cloud of dust thick in the air no Kaidan anywhere in sight.

Amy had tripped and fallen backwards, ran to escape the land's collapse. She'd made it onto solid ground by the skin of her teeth, and, somehow, had managed to hold onto the camera in the process.

She holds her breath, waiting for a tell-tale canon shot, to tell of a Tribute's death.

The dust is starting to settle, and it might sting her eyes if she could be bothered to notice. All Shepard finds is broken earth and the steep mountainside that drops to an area so far below their current position it would take a full day's hike to reach it. She wants to be settled by the lack of blood she finds, or rather, doesn't find, but knows that might only mean someone is burred beneath the rubble somewhere.

She finds Amy first, looking shaken but no worse for wear. "Are you ok?" there is concern in her voice, even if it is a bit frantic. Aside from their earlier and fairly recent introduction, these are perhaps her first actual words spoken directly to the girl, but she is glad to see that at least she appears to be unhurt.

She smacks at Shepard. "Shut up!" she cries, shrilly. The cannon. She hasn't heard a cannon. It might mean that no one's died. "Did you hear a cannon shot? I didn't. Kaidan's still alive."

She struggles to her feet.

She grabs for both Amy's arms to both still and stabilize her her; holds her there and gets right in her face as she speaks. A little piece of her wants to shake her around a little. Maybe rattle her just enough to calm her down, but she doesn't, because she doubts Amy's had much experience with situations like these. Not everyone is equipped to handle them. Especially 16 year old girls, so she can't really be too angry with her. But she has no intentions of babying the girl, either.

"No. No cannon," she says in a voice as calm and even as she can manage while still being firm. "He's still alive. If you want to help me look for him, you need to answer me. Are. You. Alright? Are you hurt? Have you seen the others?"

Edited (total spelling fail) 2012-04-11 21:27 (UTC)

The cannon goes off then, but it isn't for Kaidan. It's Garrus.

Garrus, who'd been near the rocks just as Kaidan had started falling, does the stupid thing-- and runs after him. Ever the hero, eh, Vakarian? He has no biotics to save him, no armor to break his fall--

Turians are made light. Sturdy, but agile. Their bird-like forms need armor for this kind of thing. Garrus has the muscle, but none of the form. Even if he manages to cushion the fall from this height, even if he slows down Kaidan just a bit, his body won't take it.

Rocks, debris, the cold floor beneath him. They're the last things he sees before the world goes dark.

Edited 2012-04-12 03:14 (UTC)

She hears the cannon.

She didn't see Garrus go down. She only saw Kaidan. So she leaps to the only possible conclusion, and she shrieks, in shock -- that he could be taken away so quickly -- in despair -- that she hasn't any chance at winning now -- and just in pain. Because she likes him. Liked. She'd decided to trust him. And now he's gone.

She struggles against Shepard's hold, perfunctorily, and then she collapses, crying, choppy sobs into her hands, breaking her breath into awkward, hiccup-y pieces.

Shepard doesn't know what to do with the hysteric girl past letting her slip away and sob. It's easy to do, since a nauseating pang of guilt and devastation and regret and loss slams into her so hard and so fast, its like she'd just been punched. Kaidan. She holds onto his name like a silent prayer. She staggers back, away from Amy a few steps; green eyes unfocused for only a moment as she tries to keep herself in control. Amy can break down like that. Shepard... can't. Not here.

Peripherally, she knew it had to come to this sometime. The hows and they whys were never certain, of course, but she'd been listening when the rules were explained. 24 went in. Only one of them was coming out. When Garrus and Kaidan came along, and then the girls... well, thinking about statistics like that had been sidelined. Priorities had shifted from being 'the one left standing,' to simply keeping everyone alive as long as possible. They had been better prepared for other tributes. They hadn't been prepared for the arena itself to turn on them, and quite frankly Shepard would rather take on the other tributes.

"Fine," she says almost dismissively. Amy's shaken and distraught and loud enough to be calling who knows what, straight for them, but she's not hurt. And Ariadne and Garrus are still nowhere in sight. Amy can have her grief, but Shepard would rather not hear a second cannon fire, if she can help it. That rock slide could have done a lot more damage than just Kaidan. "Just... Stay here. Don't move. I'm going to find the others and make sure no one else was in it's path." She turns to walk away, and then turns back around to reiterate. Because she doubts Amy's paying her all that much attention. "Stay. Here. I'll be right back."

Ariadne, in fact, is nearby, having all but frozen in place when she heard not only the rock slide, but the resulting cannon fire. She went in the opposite direction that day, staying near their shelter but intent on finding perhaps a small animal for them to eat. She has no luck, but she is out of range for the rock slide, at the very least. She doesn't know what happened, or who died, and she tentatively makes her way back towards their camp. It's not a far walk, an even shorter run, but she isn't sure of what happened and doesn't want to run headlong into a fight she isn't prepared for.

The first good thing in this whole mess that Shepard sees is the small dark-haired girl, Ariadne, looking unharmed. She's only a handful of yard away when she sees her, but Shepard takes those yards at a near-on sprint.

One down. One to go.

She can't let herself worry about Kaidan. If he's gone, there isn't anything she can do. And she wants to hate it. But she doesn't have time. Since joining Kaidan and Garrus and the girls, her mission has been to help keep everyone safe. The dead can be mourned after the dust settles, so to speak. She needs to focus on those still alive.

"Are you alright?" she asks once she gets within a distance that won't leave her shouting. The girl looks...maybe rattled and concerned, but she's not bleeding or broken anywhere, as far as Shepard can tell. "Have you seen Garrus?"

She's vaguely surprised to see Shepard racing at her, but she knows that the woman will probably know what's going on; her grip tightens slightly on her bag out of nerves. She heard the cannon.

"I'm all right," Ariadne replies, her voice staying relatively steady despite her shaken outward appearance. "I haven't seen anyone since this morning. What happened?"

She appreciates Ariadne's levelheadedness, or the appearance of it, more than she can say. "There was a landslide," she explains. The next words are hard though, and she "Kaidan. Amy saw him go. She's fine. But I didn't see what happened. I don't know --" there is a sickening feeling in her gut she still can't shake. She hasn't seen Garrus in a while. If he was nearby, why hadn't he come running just like she had? Why wasn't he here? "-- if anyone else has been hurt. There was only one cannon fire. But there's a lot of mountainside missing..."

She wouldn't have gotten far with her last job if she hadn't been levelheaded. She prides herself upon it, when she takes the time to think about it.

Ariadne listens to Shepard's debrief silently, managing to quell the tremble in her fingers. "We need to get somewhere safe. Away from the mountainside. Recollect ourselves and figure out what we're going to do. Where's Amy now?"

"I agree," Shepard tells her with a nod. "Amy's near the ledges; I told her to stay put. The rock slide took away half the damn mountain though, so be careful."

She pauses, deciding what she wants to do from here, and then, half a moment later, she shrugs off her own pack and holds it out for Ariadne. "If I asked you to go back to camp and gather what you can of the supplies?" It's not really a question. It's an order. But Ariadne could refuse her if she wanted, and Shepard wouldn't hold it against her. "I want to look around. Find Garrus. I'll meet you back at the campsite. Try and calm Amy down, if you can."

Ariadne nods simply, glancing to the pack briefly before taking it. It's no problem for her to take it, nor to get their supplies back together. "We should move the campsite somewhere else," she states. She thinks it might be a good idea, particularly since the rock slide would have alerted everyone around to their location. She's surprised they haven't been attacked yet.

"Yes. And soon. Too much noise and movement around here, we aren't safe. Half the arena has to know where we are now, and I'd rather not stick around to learn which of those would use that to their advantage."

She takes one deep breath and looks hard at Ariadne. The girl is little more than a stranger to her, but she has no desire for any harm to come to her. But Shepard thinks she's stronger than she looks, now that she's taking the time to actually see. "Get everything together. I'll find Garrus. I'll meet you back at the campsite in... 10 minutes?"

Not that they have any possible way to tell time out here, but it's will give them both a general sense of a time frame to work in.

"10 minutes," Ariadne agrees, hefting Shepard's pack onto her free shoulder, knowing full well that any longer might mean all of their deaths. Her heart is in her throat at the idea, but that doesn't get them anywhere; if she freaks out, she'll only slow everyone else down. At this point, it's best to just listen to orders and get out of there as soon as they can.

She swallows thickly and nods again, exhaling to calm herself before starting back towards the campsite to gather their things up. She has everything of hers already on her.

Ten minutes crawl by like hours, but still she finds she doesn't have enough time. Garrus. Garrus. Where are you, Garrus? She can't bring herself to shout his name too loudly, not with her heart in her throat. But she calls to him, still. Searches every nook and cranny she can think of that Garrus might have wandered off too. But time after time, she finds herself back at the path of the rock slide. Dust-heavy air and damaged earth make it almost unrecognizable. Its the scarred path of the mountain face and then the drop...

Without Amy or Ariadne right in front of her, its easier to allow her eyes to blur. She swallows back all the tears and fears threatening to crawl up her throat and escape in a scream. She has to find Garrus. Because she can't lose them both. Not when she just got them back.

Only one cannon fire, she has to remind herself. Only one. But neither Kaidan nor Garrus are anywhere to be seen. And ten minutes have come and gone and the longer she stands there looking out over the edge, helpless to do anything for whomever may have fallen from where she stands, the more vulnerable she leaves herself and the girls.

It isn't much. But she arranges a handful of broken sticks and small rocks into a message that reads simply "N7→", leaving the arrow pointing in the direction she plans to head. If by some chance whichever of the two remained alive -- she still thinks it's Garrus, but she is starting to wonder -- they'll know it's her and where to find her. And hopefully it will be vague enough for anyone else to just see as sticks.

She returns to the campsite in search of Amy and Ariadne, but the look on her face is easy to read. She didn't find what she was looking for, and the clock is ticking. Daylight is quick to fade around here, and this area is far from safe.

"We should go."

True to her word, Ariadne had quickly gathered all of their things, keeping everyone's stuff as separate as possible while still easy to carry. Her own bag is still holding up well; she's impressed with herself.

She doesn't say anything when Shepard returns; she doesn't need to. Now isn't the time to start asking questions and demanding answers, though. That can wait till they get somewhere safe, somewhere that isn't prone to rock slides. She nods instead, glancing in the direction she figures is safest, "That way?"

Shepard nods, briefly. Her breath short and her body aching, though she doesn't think it's solely from her day's earlier exertions. It's a bone deep pain that makes her feel hollow and like she's about to be sick. But she swallows it down, because she refuses to let a little thing like grief to slow her.

She shoulders the bag she'd given to Ariadne to pack with their supplies. It's heavier now, and the weight and movement of it is painful against her back, blooming black and blue bruises from Kaidan's little mishap with her only that morning. The scrapes and bruises are only painful, physical reminders of his absence, now. And the bittersweet hope that things had finally started to look better between them only for him to be snatched away.

She begins to move, allowing Ariadne to fall in step with her. She'll push them if she must, but for now, she'll let them keep their own pace. They seem like smart enough girls, and they certainly should know the danger they are in. It feels like running. No. It is running, and part of her hates it. But she can't take on an enemy she isn't prepared to fight, and so she moves, allowing herself one long last look behind her, hoping against all odds to see Garrus saunter over to them, grin and make one of his terrible jokes. But he isn't there and they have to go.

Ariadne watches Shepard closely, unsure of what to say or do beyond just keep moving. Unsure of whether or not the other woman is hurt too badly to keep moving at any kind of decent clip, unsure if she'll be able to keep them both safe if the need arises. She hopes it won't.

Her eyes dart around as they move through the Arena, her heart in her throat. Finally, she broaches the topic that's been on the tip of her tongue for a while: "Are you all right?"

Shepard makes a sound that is supposed to sound like a puff of a laugh, but there aren't many who could possibly miss the absence of humour there. "I'll be fine," she insists. And that is true enough. She will be. She's just going to be sore as all hell for a few days. But a little thing like pain isn't going to slow her down. "Just a few bumps and bruises," she insists.

They keep mostly under the cover of foliage; trees and brushes. Anything to keep them out of the sight of others. As they move, she watches and listens for the sign of others. Unfamiliar tributes or... a fallen ally. She finds nothing.

It takes a while for her to speak again. She doesn't want to make much noise. They've made more than enough all day, so the quieter they remain, the better she will feel. But maybe a little assurance will go a long way, and the last thing she needs is either of the girls to be worrying about her. "We should keep moving until nightfall," she insists, hoping Ariadne will take that as an assurance that she can.

And they do. Quiet, rushed, tired and hungry, Shepard carries on through the Arena until the shadows start to blur together and the night noises of the forest come alive. They only come to pause when the evening's 'ceremony' begins. An anthem none of them had ever heard before their coming here courses through the air, blaring like an unwelcome symphony.

Her heart is in her stomach and her eyes burn as the flickering image of not Kaidan, but Garrus is displayed in the night sky and she wants to scream. Wants to cry. Wants to collapse to her knees and punch holes in the hard ground, but she does none of those things. Only stands there and looks at the sky with an expression unreadable to most. Maybe its a selfish thing, but she doesn't want anyone... not Ariadne, not Amy, and certainly not the rest of this world to know just what Garrus had meant to her.

She doesn't want them to know anything.

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oh dear this is super delayed D: i should be better now though!