thearena | Arena 05

Arena 05 - Chill

Usually, the tribute's outfits for the arena aren't accessorized. But today, the last thing their stylists hand them before the countdown begins is a pair of heavy black glasses, polarized and thick-lensed. They look at odds with the thick, winter gear they've been outfitted in.

It's a long rise to the surface today, inside their individual little tubes, much longer than usual. They start to feel the cold only about halfway up, and to hear the wind. It howls across the surface as they reach it, pressing all of their clothes flat against their bodies. And the reason for the glasses is immediately apparent.

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The sky is white. The ground is white (and gray and black and blue but mostly white), the far-off sea is blinding silver. Everything in sight flings light around, fractures it into scintilating rainbows and sheer white beams of reflection. It is strong, cruel light, and it bears no heat at all. The surface is so cold that the little metal trackers ache in everyone's arm, and the countdown has to continue at a deafening volume to be heard.

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The circle of silver pedestals is the only regular shape to be seen. All else is fractured and split, the most uneven footing imaginable. And at the center of the circle, the Cornucopia sports icycles hanging from its lip, almost to the pile of supplies tucked all neatly inside its mouth.

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There's a lull in the wind just as the gong sounds, letting it peal out across the frozen glacier, and echo off the high rock cliffs in the distance. And the ice answers, with a loud crack that seems to come from miles down.

Let the Games begin.

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"Got a couple," Alpha confirms, taking in the scene for a long moment before shrugging the quiver over his shoulder and starting down, nimble as though he'd been ice climbing his whole life.

Or mountain climbing rather, clients who wanted an Active who knew their way around mother nature in no short supply, and it was close enough that Alpha reached the bottom with little trouble.

He looks the kid up and down, tempted to label him dead weight, snap his neck and loot the body, but he decides against, carefully keeping any such thoughts from showing on his face. Resources are scarce in an environment like this, no reason to pass on a warm body, or extra pair of hands.

He indicates the kid's ankle. "Mind if I take a look?"

Howard makes a note of how smooth Alpha's movements are on the ice. Howard, who's never had to deal with anything slicker than that sole time he went rollerskating as a child, is completely without skill in this terrain.

He keeps the knife tucked close to his body. It's the only thing he has so far, and he's well aware of what a useful tool it is.

"As long as it won't give me frostbite." He honestly doesn't know if it will, in this weather, but he tries to pass it off as a joke so as not to look so clueless (and thus, vulnerable). "I stashed some of the other stuff I got before I fell down here."

This is a lie, but Howard's a convincing liar. Alpha looks genuine, but Howard knows he's helpless here, and he needs some way to convince anyone here he deserves to live a little longer. He tugs his snow pants out of the boots, then painstakingly pulls the boots off. His ankle's red and swollen, but he's relieved there's no blood or obvious break. "I can still walk on it."

"I'll make it quick," Alpha promises, keeping his head down so that his quick overview of Howard and whatever supplies he may be hiding -- damn these coats, he could have a harpoon nestled in there alongside that knife -- isn't noticeable. If he's telling the truth about other supplies, that's another unknown variable, and another reason to keep him alive for now, though how Howard expects to find anything again up there is beyond Alpha.

"It's not bad," he agrees, touching it gently for as long as Howard will allow, with the steady hands of a man who can set someone up to bleed out with only eight seconds and a two inch blade. "It'll need wrapping -- the boots will help with that. And we've got plenty of ice."

He straightens, allowing Howard to put himself back together, since he doesn't think the kid will appreciate that sort of help. "You can walk, sure, but I don't think you're up to climbing just yet."

He holds very still as Alpha examines the injury, then breathes a little sigh of relief when Alpha says it isn't bad. He has no reason to believe Alpha knows a broken ankle from a twisted or a sprained one, but he wouldn't know either, and even a potentially false assessment is better than none. When Alpha's done Howard pulls his boot back up and, with a little grunt of pain, pulls the laces as tight as he can allow himself.

"The alternative is hanging out down here until my leg heals up." He sniffs and brushes away more of the blood on his face. "We - I need to head for the cliffs, I bet. Or the sea. Even cold water's got fish, I think, and I can get those. I think I saw birds, too."

He glances up at the lid of the crack, thinking about the sandstone cliffs he grew up near. His lower lip crumples a little as he thinks. "It's going to get dark and cold in here way before sundown, with that angle. Look, I just need a hand getting out of here, and you can get out here on your own. I just need a..."

He pauses and looks a bit sheepish. "...a boost."

Alpha looks at him for a long moment, before he smiles. "A boost," he says, easy, almost teasing. "I think, somehow, I can spare a boost." He leans down and clasps his hands together as a stepping stool. "We all need a hand now and then," he adds, making the meaning as clear as possible.

Earning the kid's trust is all well and good, but if Alpha's too generous it'll come across as even more suspicious than if he'd snapped Howard's neck then and there. It's better to frame this as a give and take relationship, with just a hint of personal interest on Alpha's part.

Howard nods, adding almost too quickly, "I can hunt and fish. I'm useful." Clearly, he doubts that his worth is at all written on him, and while reliance may be a situation he's forced into, trust depends on his position not being do tenuous.

He gets up in Alpha's hands and struggles up over the lip. It's difficult in the puffy clothing, but he's got better upper body strength than it may appear - or possibly it's that he's only about ninety pounds, facilitating pull-ups. He waits for Alpha at the top, rather than running.

"That's good," he says. "Hunting, fishing, basic survival is going to be more important this time around than usual, I'm betting."

Alpha is careful not to smirk, as he watched Howard pull himself up (he notes the kids physical abilities automatically, though there's little to no chance Alpha can consider him a threat). Only big bad Ballard had been a more fun mark, which is pretty good considering the kid's not a highly-trained FBI agent.

Alpha flinches suddenly.

"Aw, we did have fun, didn't we. I especially enjoyed the part where you tortured me to death, remember that?" says Alpha but not.

"Shut up," says Alpha, in a mutter, clamping down hard in his head on the now smug part of his brain that was all that was left of Paul Ballard. Shaken--he hasn't had a problem since the radiation sickness--he makes sure it doesn't show and clambers up, flashing a grin at Howard when he sees the kid waiting for him and hoping he wasn't overheard.

"You say something?" Howard glances down from the edge at Alpha. The exact words were lost in the wind, but he does see Alpha clutch his head and then grin up at him. "Someone hit you in the head back at the Cornucopia or something?"

He worries his lower lip under his teeth a bit - something he regrets, because his mouth is chapped and tender in the cold, and when Donatello hit him in the face he split his lip a little bit too. He doesn't want to think he walked into an allegiance with a wacko.

"Hey, you get anything at the bloodbath?"

"Or something" Alpha agrees, and knocks his knuckles against his skull. "Luckily it's a pretty hard head. Just a little...pain, sometimes."

Pain in the ass more like it, he thinks darkly, before shrugging the quiver off his shoulder. "Just these," he says. He had briefly considered lying, but there's no point and he thinks it's a good idea to make Howard feel useful, if he managed to get better supplies. Alpha's over a foot taller than the kid and twice his weight if not more, so he feels pretty secure in his own obvious useful appearance.

"Just don't keel over on me or anything. I'm not dragging you to the water." Now for the part Howard didn't think far enough ahead about - the supplies he lied about.

"No bow, right?" Howard glances at the arrows. Rather than focusing on their uselessness as weaponry, he's already thinking of ways to use them. The quiver, obviously, can be used to obscure or hide anything useful they get. The arrows themselves can be used to help cook anything they catch, or possibly to help climb if there are cliffs near the sea like there are in the distance. And there may be more, if he gets a look at it. "Anyway, my stuff's in one of these crevices around here..."

Maybe if he buys enough time he can think of something. Or find a dead body to steal things from.

Edited (found a typo, had to fix it) 2013-01-21 06:53 (UTC)

"I'll try my best," he says, in a tone dry as bone. "No, no bow, but I got the part with the sharp ends so I'm taking it as a win." He shrugs carelessly, though the failure of the Cornucopia grates on him. So far his time here has been humiliation after humiliation.

Alpha squints at Howard curiously, casting a wide glance over the snowy terrain around them. "It's...somewhere around here," he repeats, raising his eyebrows.

"Yeah. I stowed it so I could get a look around, and that's when I fell. And now it's all..." He waves his arms around. "Snowy."

He should have run, he thinks. Back when Alpha lifted him to the edge of the crevice.

"Look, you look over there and I'll look over this way, and we'll holler if we find anything, right?" And if Howard can't think of anything, he'll try to use it as a head start to bolt.

[OOC: Planning on him getting a sponsor gift and trying to pass it off as from the Cornucopia. Alpha's free to see right through it.]

"It is snowy," agrees Alpha, tamping down on his irritation. Normally his patience is, not to brag, rather legendary but he's becoming concerned that this kid isn't worth the effort he's putting into him.

On the other hand, it's not like he has anything better to do. "It's as good a plan as any, I suppose," he says finally, deciding it's worth it to humor Howard just in case. If nothing else it'll be entertaining later on, probably. "I'll just...look over this way then."

"See you in twenty. Or whatever." And Howard slips off.

Of course there's nothing. He has only the knife. He said what he felt he had to to get out of the crack, but he knows he won't get far if he tries to run - his ankle's too injured. Maybe Alpha would let him go, but maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he'd be angry. Maybe he'd tell others later not to trust him. These aren't certain consequences, but they're possible ones, and he's admittedly terrified of anything that could go wrong in this situation. He has control freak tendencies, and unknown variables aren't fun for him.

The panic begins to rise in his throat, and he starts trying to put distance between him and Alpha. The shaking that was previously just shivering from cold has become trembling from fear as well. His breath puffs up in front of his face as he moves fast enough to pant, and then-

-a parachute from the sky. A Sponsor gift. He pauses, then ducks behind a lump of snow, certain it's for someone else. When no one claims it for several minutes, he looks around, then snatches it.

"Thank you thank you thank you thank you," he mutters into the package, then rips it open and stuffs the parachute and wrapping into the front of his parka. It's extra insulation that way. He rubs some of the falling snow on the ropes to make it look like he just picked it up from the ground.

There's a can of food and a small first-aid kit, too - a gift from Anna. He feels a pang of confusion as he looks at the note - that must mean she's dead - but tries to shove that aside. He can't afford to be sentimental here and now.

"Found it, Alpha!" he calls, retracing his footprints. Fifty feet of rope is looped around his shoulder - the kit is in his hands. He stashes the food in his parka.

Edited 2013-01-23 01:49 (UTC)

Alpha had felt secure enough in turning his back to Howard. The kid was pretty hardy but the ankle was a weakness. Not only would Alpha have most likely heard if he tried to come at Alpha from behind, but if Howard tried to run, it would be a simple matter to catch up to him again and...appropriate the knife and whatever else he may have stashed on his person. Alpha was beginning to have suspicions concerning the so-called supplies tossed in a hole, for example.

These morbid musings going through Alpha's mind (well. minds.) as he made the barest effort to scan the scenery were cut short when Howard called his name, coming towards him. He turns, mildly surprised at this turn of events.

"So you did," he calls back, sharp eyes taking in the kit and the rope with interest. Certainly not something he was likely to have hiddenin his clothing (although does it look slightly...puffier?) but there was still that edge of suspicious cynicism in Alpha's head that wondered.

"I don't remember seeing those at the Cornucopia," he says conversationally, keeping his hands at his side and trying to look nonthreatening. "You got a bag, then?"

"Slashed one open while fighting the turtle," Howard says, then gestures to his bloody face and busted nose. "He gave me this."

It's partially true - that's what makes the best lies. He did try to slash the bag open when it became clear Don was overpowering him, and Don did reward him with a karate chop to the face.

And Howard does have that earnest 'eager to impress' look to him.

"Anyway. Rope's heavy, but it'll be useful if there's cliffs near the water like there are in the distance." Howard figures heading for water is better. He's seen a few birds, and birds generally go towards the ocean, or so he figures. "If we get there before dark I'll get us dinner."

"Huh," he says, then shrugs. The supplies are real enough at least, and Howard seems to be planning to share--of his own free will even--so really, it doesn't much matter where they came from. "Got some battle scars early this time around," he adds, sounding genuinely complimentary.

He moves so that they can walk side-by-side and nods. "You'll do dinner, I'll do breakfast." At least five different voices start making the requisite dirty jokes or just sniggering in his, but Alpha ignores them. A night or so should give him to time to judge if Howard's likely to try and kill him in sleep, not to mention time for Alpha to decide if he wants to kill Howard in his sleep and take his supplies then and there.

No reason not to get a free meal out of it first.

Howard knows better than to believe he'll win on his own merit. Having an ally at least provides him with a chance. Besides, it means someone to talk to, and that's more interesting to sponsors than a silent tribute. It's this that drives him to share, because he's inherently a selfish person - this, and a deep fear that loneliness out here will drive him crazy.

It takes longer than Howard likes to get to the bird colony near the glacier, but that's his fault. Even though he never calls for a rest on his injured ankle, it does slow them down, and he's in agony by the time they finally reach the cliffs. He's grateful that it gives them an excuse to hide behind some rocks so Howard can work on figuring out how to get a bird. While he figures that, he binds up his ankle with a broken arrow to keep it straight, and uses some of the medicine from the kit on the cut on his side.

He watches where the birds are going and, after a break, starts to scale up on the wall of the cliff there to where he's about seventy percent certain a bird's nest is. Despite his lack of reach and injury, he's an adept climber, and it doesn't take long before he's found a nest.

Rather than returning down immediately, he stays in wait, barely moving, until a bird comes back. A nest of eggs is a decent meal, but a whole bird must be a feast.

With the trained reflexes of someone who's spent a while hunting small animals for food - although he's always been better at catching rats and lizards - he lunges out and grabs a bird's wing as it comes in. The bird wrests out of his grip, but its wing is broken, and it flops from the edge of the cliff to about forty yards from Alpha. Howard begins the ascent down, eggs and nest tucked into his pocket, and is clearly in need of some rest when he reaches the ground.

The bird's still barely alive, fluttering in the snow. He breaks its neck.

"Here. We'll share. I got eggs too." He holds it out like a child presenting a particularly grotesque art project.

Alpha's not too concerned with keeping the Sponsors involved, not yet anyway. Of course, he must be doing something entertaining At this point he considers Howard as more a sort of walking, talking inventory than an ally.

Of course, someone out there must like what they're seeing, because not long after Howard wanders off to scavenge some food Alpha spots a parachute floating down, which he snags in midair, not so much caring if it's for someone else. Say, Howard. And if it was, he's going to be feeling the benefits anyway, since Alpha opens it to find a firestarting kit.

There may be some other perks to having the kid around, Alpha thinks once he's got a decent fire started (in a shallow hole, so they don't have a completely obvious beacon). He watches him clamber up the cliff with admirable skill considering his age and injury. He's perhaps not entirely useless, and there's a glint of ambition that Alpha can use, he judges, from Howard's patient wait for a bird rather than being content with stealing the eggs.

"You'd almost think you were right at home here," says Alpha, grinning. He's always cheerful when he's got other people doing his work for him. "Not exactly a feast fit for a king, but perfect for our purposes, I think."

Howard's thrilled to see a fire-starting kit, because while he does have reservations about anything that could give away their location, it means they can eat the bird now instead of having to freeze it and worry about bacteria. After dying of horrible sickness in the last arena, he doesn't want to risk it a second time.

He pulls feathers off the bird and sets them aside. They might be useful later, even if only to add extra padding into their boots or something. Waste not, and all that.

"It's better'n the FAYZ." He shrugs but grins back, relishing in the feeling of being useful and wanted. "My hometown. That's how I know everything I do, honestly, about stealing and dumpster-diving and hunting. What about you? You never did tell me what you did back home. Just that you were sort of a jack of all trades scientist."

"Must have been some hometown, when frozen wasteland is preferable," he says with a raised eyebrow, only marginally interested but careful not to show it. He does take note that his street kid theory appears to be correct. "Pretty experienced with looking after yourself then?" He frowns thoughtfully. "FAYZ is a strange name for a town."

He takes a moment to think over the question of his own past before he answers. It's disconcerting, having to form a false persona around his actual name rather than just picking the most suitable person to step forward. "Well, that's something of a complicated question. If you were being generous you might say I was self-employed. If you were being less generous and more, well, precise, you might say I was unemployed." He shrugs. "Economy, you know how it is."

"I'll take the cold over death plagues and killer worms." He nods slightly. "It's a weird name because it's an acronym I made up. Fallout Alley Youth Zone, because everyone's under the age of sixteen. All the adults disappeared when I was thirteen."

Including his parents. It's left him in a stunted state, able to look after himself but convinced that he was abandoned and as such, grasping to human contact with a child-like sense of clinginess. Not that he recognizes the latter factor in himself at all.

He spreads a bit of Alpha's parachute to catch the bird blood as he starts to butcher it. "That still doesn't tell me what you did, though. That makes me think you're hedging, like you don't like me asking specifics."

He's only brave enough to say that because he has the knife in his hands. His expression says that while he's very skeptical, he's really not trying to make waves.

"Huh," says Alpha, turning Howard's story over in his head. It sounds like a ridiculous sci-fi novel, but then, there's Alpha's own life to consider. Regardless, pointing this out is as likely to put Howard on the defensive as anything so Alpha refrains. It's a handy insight into the kid's mental state, anyway. Abandonment issues are always handy.

"FAYZ. Descriptive, certainly. Did they ever come back?" he asks, curious.

"You, young man," Alpha says, gathering up the arrows to make a rough spit. "Are the nosy type. Some people are entitled to their secrets, you know." He glances at the knife, casually, as though he's only curious about Howard's butchering technique, and he smiles to show that he's not truly offended.

"But nah, truth is, I did pretty much everything, and anything." He doesn't know how much the Capitol knows of the truth and, by extension, how much they would be willing to reveal. Best not lie too much and need to explain himself at some inopportune time later.

"A little massage therapy there, a little personal security there. I'm...indecisive, you might say." He shrugs. "I wanted to do everything, so I gave it my best shot. Just before I came here, though, I was doing photography."

"No. We never found out why they left us all to kill each other over the remaining food." He hands Alpha a bloodied half of the bird - the larger half, a gesture of good intent and submission. "So I mean...this is all kind of business as usual over here."

He waves a hand at the landscape. "Except it's way colder. And that sucks."

He figures Alpha talked about intending to win before. He won't be all hugs and cuddles, and honestly, the idea of him being a photographer makes Howard snort a little. He bets 'personal security' means something out of Bad Boys II where people get shot in the basement or something.

"Bet that's useful here. Knowing how to pick things out at a distance."

"Well, that's certainly a crap hand to be dealt, but at least you're turning it to good use here." He uses the bloody carcass half to gesture at their surroundings before he sticks it on the spit. He was gratified, if unsurprised, that he seemed to be defaulting to the leader of their little duo. He didn't have partners so much as minions, preferably.

He used to have a lair, after all. He misses having a lair.

"It's handier when you've got a telescopic lens," Alpha says casually. Photography is not an inaccurate description, though perhaps a more accurate description would be 'spent three months spying on his true love(s) and her boytoy with aforesaid telescopic lens'. He very carefully clamps down mentally on any interjections by said boytoy now occupying a section of his brain. He's already had one slip-up in front of the kid.

"But I am pretty observant. That's useful no matter where you are, especially a lovely place like this."

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Arena 05 - Chill

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timeskip!

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