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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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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