Mini Arena 3

[etcircenses]

The kids are picked up from the daycare bright and early, but by the Capitol instead of their parents. It's just like old times in the arenas, with only children to contend.

25 - 24 - 23

Stylists are starting to get used to the mini-arenas, though it doesn't mean they've been allowed to dress tributes in whatever they want. All the tributes will be dressed as proxy copy of a respective video game character. All tributes are reminded about the ticket rules for this round.

20 - 19 - 18 - 17 - 16

The platforms lift them up, and there is no cornucopia to be seen. The only way tributes will be able to help and protect themselves is if they go out of their way to harm another tribute and get the tickets, which will be tallied by their watches. The lights of the games flicker and glow within the dark. Classic video game fight tunes play overhead. Before them lay a great and stretching obstacle course, filled with animatronic enemies and various other hazards.

11- 10 - 9 - 8

They've all been warned, don't step off your pedestal early. They have also been warned to put on a good show. That's all this is about, a good show. None of them have been told that there can be multiple winners this time around.

5 - 4

3

2

The sound of the gong plays crystal clear across the opening. The games have begun.

[OOC: Remember, this is forwardated by a week.]

Comments

[shenunigans]

That's a heavy word to go with a heavy request. Any protests rising to his lips die in Dave's throat when it weighs on him. He knows he probably isn't a terribly heavy burden, but he's a burden nonetheless. He's overwhelmingly unimpressed with himself, fighting bitter comments from festering in his mind as he resigns himself to being dead weight.

He chooses instead to think about how this alters the visage he has of Punchy so far. Not that he ever thought he was anything less than stellar, of course, but this is a different side to him. He's more like one of those hero types than he ever had the chance to realise. He has all the earnest bravery in the face of grand bullshit that makes one, anyway. Dave was never so good at that. Or at least, never so good at admitting that he was good at that. What's the point in being brave if you can't be honest about it, anyway?

"Sounds peachy." He forces himself to agree, though it's harder to make his body believe a couple of bandages are going to get him to the end here. "You got many tickets?" He asks as conversationally as possible, as if he isn't trying to figure out the other boy's shot at winning here. He can feel a cold creeping up his toes, tapping him on the shoulder and tightening his chest. He wants to gasp and whine, but he hides it under a ragged breath instead.

[culturalappropriation]

"No tickets yet. Trying to keep it that way." He doesn't want paper proof of sins committed.

There's a cove, a tunnel in the rope course that's well large enough for most of the kids and downright cramped for Punchy (god only knows how the Initiate is faring with some of these tight spaces). It's sheltered and out of view and only has one entrance, so Punchy can guard the front without having to worry about a mutt or another kid getting Dave from behind.

He settles Dave down with the tenderness of a mother resting her baby in a crib and hunches over him. When Punchy leans forward blood trickles out his nose in little drips, and he sniffs noisily. He pets Dave's hair, not out of habit but because he honestly doesn't know what to do. Dave's always seemed the more melancholy of the two of them, carrying some kind of insecurity Punchy doesn't know how to speak to, but this is something else. Dave's skin feels cold, his face pale, his breath haggard and inconstant.

"A'ight, let me see where you's banged." He can rip of some of his Toad pants to make bandages. It's such a feeble idea, but Punchy's able to inflate even the slightest hope into a goal.

[shenunigans]

"You think they're gonna.." He starts, but he starts too quickly, wasting his breath on a few words rather than portioning it better. He pauses until Punchy sets him down, noting how remarkably uncomfortable it probably is in here for him.

"--Think they're gonna just let you ollie past without them?" His voice is a measured kind of quiet now, like he's being discreet and not legitimately struggling through words. "One does not simply walk out of an Arena and all." He adds, unable to be completely serious without adding at least a little sarcasm to it all.

He doesn't know what to do either, because he knows how he feels right now. He's died enough to know when an injury is going to fuck him up long term, and just the mere thought of that and walking out of the Arena has him wondering whether he'll be reset or not. The hand on his hair comes at the right time, a soothing action that contrasts the sinking feeling he's getting. He's too tired to find it weird and too sympathetic to Punchy's worry to haze him for it. He just quirks a brow at him, dull eyes peering up curiously.

"Everywhere." He says vaguely, trying to wave Punchy off without lifting his arm too much. It's fiddly to really expose where the wounds are when he's wearing overalls, so he gestures vaguely at his chest and stomach before flourishing his hand downward as if to really drive home the fact that everything is a problem.

"Look." He brings himself to say, finally, the word escaping before he's thought about the follow through. "I'm a stone cold traitor, that's gotta be worth. What. A few tickets?" His voice is careful, he's forcing himself to get it all out before Punchy can object. "Just take it. Even if I make it over- it's not gonna be pretty. I'll bleed all over everything, nobody likes that." Words are escaping faster now, trailing off into quiet mumbling as he loses conviction. "I don't want to harsh your buzz, believe me. It just is what it is." There's a quiver in his voice now, it's harder to put on a face for the pain when it's almost all he can focus on. He doesn't want to cry, but his eyes are fogging anyway and the fact that he feels like a sucker for doing it isn't making them any drier.

[culturalappropriation]

"I'm banking on them trying to put the stops on me, yeah." Punchy doesn't play the Arenas to win. He never has. He sees winning as some sort of disease he hopes everyone else gets so he can play their doctor later. And then Dave explains, and for once in Punchy's life, he's completely quiet as he listens. Dave's voice is quiet but the tunnel echoes, amplifies not only the words but the hesitations and wheezes.

He shakes his head, rolling his eyes as if this isn't serious, as if Dave's just joking with him. "No."

Dave might just have to spell it out, paint the sky, engrave the words into Punchy's very brain to get him to accept it. Punchy's had too many friends die in his arms. Too many people, period, even the ones he didn't like. He doesn't want to speed up adding one more to that too-long list. He takes off the stupid Toad hat. He takes out the puppet, his token, dressed like a nun still, and places it in Dave's hand.

"Hold tight to this. I ain't the best at first aid but I've taken some classes. You can bleed on me, it'll make me look like some hardcore baller."

He lifts Dave's shirt and there, there he sees it, there's an injury that his limited medical knowledge doesn't know how to assess, much less fix. And that's when the delusional optimism, the certainty that he can still make things okay even when logic and experience say that he's helpless, that's when it starts to creak and shudder under the weight of Dave's wounds.

[shenunigans]

He had suspicions from the moment he started talking that Punchy was going to brush him off for even suggesting it, but there's a weight off his chest for having done it. He feels more settled, somehow, he's just too tired to panic about not making it any further. He'll bullshit his way out of it when it comes to it, but he's gathered that no amount of gentle suggesting is going to get Punchy to drop this like it's hot.

"There's a first time for everything." He jibes at Punchy, trying to force himself to stop succumbing to the pain with tears. He might be relaxed, but it's frustratingly hard not to feel the strain and ache from his wounds. When he dies, he usually dies fast, so lingering through this part is new.

The puppet, however, is more distracting than Punchy probably realizes. He looks as if he's affronted by the mere sight of it for a moment before he obliges and very weakly holds it up with no commitment to holding it tightly. "My Bro would go apeshit over this." And thinking of the fact that Bro is watching is enough to cut those budding tears off cold. "It was just me, him and an apartment with more puppets than a goddamn muppet convention." He's just babbling aimlessly now, distracting himself from the pain. "Obsessive." He snorts, his eyes elsewhere as Punchy begins to make his assessments. The last thing he needs to see is that kicked puppy look.

[culturalappropriation]

He wants Dave to keep talking, wants them to have a conversation because that's doing something besides dying and killing. Something besides trying to hold Dave's guts in with strips of this stupid Toad costume. Punchy slides the hat behind Dave's head like a pillow.

When he tries to wrap Dave's stomach, his hands come away so slick with blood that he can barely wrap the makeshift bandages. He can't find his own fingernails under all the slick red.

This won't be the first time Punchy's killed in an Arena, but he can't tell Dave that. He can barely even tell himself that.

He doesn't give Bro a kicked puppy look. Instead he just gets quiet, letting the only sound in the tunnel be their breathing and the wiping of his hands on his pants. He brushes Dave's hair again. "How much does it hurt?"

[shenunigans]

If Dave weren't already aware of the state his middles are in, he's definitely aware once Punchy begins to do damage control as best as he can. He wants to crane his neck and look, but if he doesn't see it then he can pretend it isn't happening. Yes. Legitimately. He's just in a mind blowing amount of pain for no discernible reason.

At this point, he's still not sure whether Punchy intends to continue on as if everything is alright or if the reality is hitting him. He's quiet, it's worrying, Dave can feel anxiety pooling even though his heart rate is slowing rapidly.

"Much. Lots much." His voice is so quiet that it's probably hard to hear, but it sounds loud enough to him. "Worse than the time I thought I could grind my skateboard down the stair railings." It's almost impossible to get fainter at this rate. Drawing attention back to the pain is making his eyes fog again, but primarily it's because he can hardly focus them on anything at this point. Despite himself, his hand is squeezing onto that puppet tighter and tighter as his breathing gets more and more haggard. He decides to let his eyes fall shut, squeezing them tightly as if willing himself to get over a gaping stomach wound.

[culturalappropriation]

There's no gospel that ever deigned to guide Punchy here. The Pope never said anything about what to do with your friend when they're bleeding next to you and any attempt to stem it only makes it worse. God's been silent on the subject, so far as Punchy knows, and Punchy's started to doubt that God has much of an opinion on it all anyway.

Heavenly Father, why you so far away?

"Okay, don't think about it, dawg. I won't touch it. Just keep squeezing Lucy here." He squares his shoulders, hoping Dave won't notice, won't have a chance to brace or wince or even see it coming. No chance for the fear that always comes with impending death no matter how many times you get dragged back out of the grave.

They never taught him how to kill in superhero school. It was strictly verboten. They taught him how to stun, how to incapacitate someone or bring them to the floor or even break their ankles and wrists, but killing was the realm of villains.

But Punchy's been in the Hunger Games for a long time now. And he's got a stellar right hook.

There are two cracking noises, and in the confined space they sound like gunshots. One is Punchy's fist against Dave's face, and the second is Dave's head against the wall through the cushion of the hat. It feels barbaric, literally punching your friend to death, but it's effective. The cartilage in Dave's nose goes right up into his brain, and he never feels a thing.

Punchy does. He doesn't really notice the way his knuckles are split, or the wounds from before carrying Dave here. He feels the death that Dave can't laying heavy in his stomach like tar. The body in his arms is still warm, though limp, and clearly missing the soul that was recently right there.

Ignoring the timer, Punchy holds the corpse close and says a prayer for Dave, then holds him for a long time before moving on.

[shenunigans]

Their difference in faith is another one of the many things that sets them apart. Two teenage boys, both embarrassingly obsessed with hiphop with a handful of similarities and a world of differences between them. Dave never had room for religion in his life, he was never raised by Bro to believe in anything but the inevitable fight that he'd been partaking in since he was thirteen. Now that he's older, it's less because of a lack of faith and more a struggle to apply it to his life in any meaningful way. How are you meant to believe in God when you are a God? How are you meant to believe in Gods at all when you're as close as you get to being one back home?

He doesn't think much of the fact that the puppet, now known as Lucy, could be a nun for a particular reason other than it being gimmicky. Thus far she's proving to be a hell of a lot more comforting than any of the puppets Dave ever met, so maybe he misjudged puppets on the whole due to some bad experiences. Maybe he could say that about a lot of things. His mind is going around in circles as it spirals toward the train, everything is getting colder and he shudders as it nips at his fingers and toes. It's something like those moments between falling asleep and rousing yourself over and over, but the periods of what feels like sleep are getting longer. He squeezes his eyes shut entirely when a new wave of pain washes over him, not watching Punchy when he braces.

He doesn't see the fist coming at him, but he could swear there was a moment of relief before there was nothing. The skinny fingers wound around the puppet eventually release and go limp with the rest of him, he's now just an empty corpse devoid of any sarcasm or irony. Maybe next time he won't fuck it up.