Arena 12 - The Spaceport

[etcircenses]

As usual the Tributes are woken up early for the start of the arena, leaving the Tribute Centre before dawn. A few hours ride in a hovercraft delivers them to their destination where their excited prep teams will outfit them in skintight suits that are colour coordinated by District (D1 is White, D2 is Red, D3 is Orange, D4 is Aqua, D5 is Purple, D6 is Pink, D7 is Light Green, D8 is Blue, D9 is Yellow, D10 is Dark Green, D11 is Lavender, and D12 is Black) over which they will be put into what is instantly identifiable as a spacesuit, complete with oxygen tank and helmet before being loaded into the tubes.

They rise up into what appears to be outer space and immediately upon emerging from the tubes Tributes will find themselves floating upwards with a length of rope the only thing holding them to their podiums. The countdown crackles out from speakers built into each Tributes helmet.

20

19

18…

The Cornucopia sits in the middle of a dusty crater with buildings surrounding it, made up of a number of chained down cases and cubes in limited numbers. Cubes which sharp-eyed Tributes will note look like they fit into the slots beside the doors that lead into the spaceport.

8

7

6…

The mirrored visors of the uniformly white spacesuits make it impossible to tell friend from foe. Tributes fighting for goods will have to risk harming their friends but the alternative, floating off into space or suffocating when their oxygen runs out, leaves them little choice.

3

2

1…

The gong rings out and the countdown’s voice announces, “the Arena is now open” before the line goes dead. The Games have begun.

Comments

Cornucopia

[etcircenses]

Sandy Marko : DOA. Closed to Eponine

[justoutrunyou]

For a brief moment, Sandy is overwhelmed with childlike glee at the location chosen for this latest deathmatch.

Space! Really? Space?!

The stars spread out all around and for a moment she wonders if anyone has a chance against Shepard. This is her home field isn't it? Sandy has dreamed of space travel since hearing stories from Shepard and Garrus and Thane. How amazing would it be to travel to new worlds and-

-The gong sounds and Sandy reacts on instinct launching herself forward. The lack of gravity throws her off and her light body feels even more out of control as she careens for the boxes. She doesn't want to leave empty handed. Especially after all the trouble she went to in the last arena not to give the capitol the satisfaction of an easy death.

She's so focused on the items in front of her and keeping herself upright she doesn't notice the impending doom coming up behind her.

MCU!Bucky Barnes - OTA

[tookthewheel]

The airlock doors close behind him and Bucky drops the case he'd taken from the Cornucopia onto the floor, pulling off the weighted spacesuit immediately. The moment he moved through those doors he felt the strength flow back into his body, accompanied by the tell tale sounds of his metal arm recalibrating for full combat output. He knows what that means, this is an arena where everyone's full capability is in use.

It means he has to move even quicker than usual to familiarise himself with the area and find his allies. While Bucky relishes what it means for himself and how effective he can be in accomplishing the missions he has set for himself it also promises deadlier enemies, both from the other Tributes and the inevitable Gamemaker set traps they will encounter.

The Capitol would not allow them their full abilities back without measured justification for doing so.

With that thought running through his head Bucky lifts up the case easily under his right arm and takes off at a measured run, choosing to leave examining its contents until he's in a more secure location with less chance of interruption. As he does he takes more note of the white suit he has been dressed in, feeling distinct ire at how it will impede his preferred stealth tactics.

Any Tributes might run into him here or deeper inside the base when he stops to pull open the case and arm himself, they might want to think twice about approaching Bucky though if he doesn't know them already. This is the arena, they're here for one reason only.

[ooc: as a note Bucky will fight/kill if attacked or confronted with anyone unfamiliar (so long as they're not a kid), if you'd like this to happen with your character message me!)

[lasttosail]

Sam's got his boots in one hand and his makeshift bag in the other (the case in which his supplies came having been far too big for him to carry comfortably even in both arms), and except for his panicked breaths, his movement through the corridors is almost silent. He was given a black jumpsuit, and though he finds it a right queer garment, he's grateful to have it in a place with so very many shadows.

It's in one of these he ends up standing, in a corner where two metal walls come together-- just for a moment, just long enough to catch his breath, to get his bearings. He digs into his bag, stares in bewilderment at most of its contents, and then pulls out-- well. He wouldn't know it for a taser, but that's what it is. Guns he's seen here, in the hands of the Peacekeepers, and it puts him in mind of those - but he thinks there's something different about it, about the shape of the business end of it especially.

Warily, he picks it up the way he's seen the Peacekeepers do - it's a little big, but if he sets the bag down he can hold it with both hands, steady it with one and get the other properly on the trigger--

--and that's when he hears the footsteps. Heavy, booted footsteps, clearly belonging to a Big Person, and not moving like one afraid, either. They all mean to kill you, in here. Every one of them. Fear crawls up into Sam's throat, and he presses himself back into the shadow as well as he can, trying to make himself smaller, trying not to be seen.

If your luck holds, Sam, he'll just walk right by. Please-- please let him run right by without seeing me.

Clementine - OTA

[smarterthanthem]

Clementine takes a good few minutes to wriggle free of her spacesuit, fumbling at the catches on the helmet before finally being able to throw the stupid away. It was heavy, a fact that had become apparent the moment she hit gravity and realised there was no way she could keep it on and move with any kind of speed.

"Come on, come on!" she finally kicks free of the cumbersome suit and stands up, taking stock of her surroundings. The Cornucopia had been overwhelming with the stars wheeling overhead, leaving Clementine both shaken and awed at the fact that the Capitol might have somehow put them in outer space and struggling to get hold of the cube that had let her inside. This though, this quiet dark indoor space she can deal with for the moment.

Rubbing the arms of her pink suit she starts trotting cautiously forwards, looking for anyone familiar and hoping that there were more supplies hidden ahead.

If the Cornucopia turned out to be the only source this arena she could be in big trouble.

hope the timing is ok for this

[burningdaylight]

He has seen ravaged bodies and blood-streaked floors and death before. But not like this. Not while trapped in someone’s fucked up idea of a game. And after a few hours spent restlessly searching the spaceport for the others and for supplies and brushing shoulders with death more than once, the last thing he expects to find when rounding the corner with a jagged, still-warm piece of shrapnel firm in his grip is Clementine. His eyebrows go up, wrinkling his brow.

She’s alive.

“Clementine…!” He calls out, hoping not to startle her. His blood-speckled face is knotted with worry. “Oh, thank god.”

Initiate Open + Body horror warn?

[carnagecarnival]

They wake him up earlier than the others, almost at night still, and all too early to catch a broadcas. Ain't that a mercy? Because if he had, he'd have gone to panic a lot more than he was being to do then. Stepping out of his room, peacekeepers there, glancing around to find ain't nobody coming with him. That two seconds of horror that this might be what he thinks, that they've come for him, and they're going to make him a mute again because he just wasn't being good enough.

Then nothing. Whatever happened, he doesn't remember it, and right up until he rises up into the arena, that dark fog remains.

He sways upon the platform, like growth in the ocean. His helmet if perfectly round at the top, normal as all any human's. His head sings, with the countdown beating on him with each number and dancing 'round his thinkpan. He looks around through the Helmet, seeing a lot of motherfuckers what's around but not being able to tell who's who. He squints, like that might make it all the clearer by some miracle. He spots the square shaped holes around the distant walls. He sees the cubes upon the ground, all just laying there, waiting.

He sees so many motherfucking stars. It's so beautiful, even with his head aching. Are they going to kill him like they did the first arena? Make it so he dies here and winds up somewhere else? He guesses he'll find out.

The countdown ends and he lurches forward. It's like swimming, he should be able, but Mirth his head is spinning and all of want to come the fuck off. He reaches the cube closes to him but missing putting his hand on it at least three times. He has to be careful, he manages to think through the spin. If he loses this he's dead. This is the extent of what all he knows, as he tries not to lose the cube when shoving it in the slot, as he sees the faster of the other Tributes is doing. The doors open and he steps in, the door snapping the rope he didn't all quite realise was on him, but something much greater happens. The voodoo comes back.

Like breaking out from underwater, he can suddenly breathe again. He can feel and he can feel. Motherfucking. Everybody. Their horrors dance in his head, their paranoias and fears. He can feel the minds and souls of all, and his eyes flash against the visor, showing the pink to indigo back and forth as it dizzies his ownself. And more than that, he can feel sharp the ache of what's missing.

He's stripping out of that space suit and fast, claws near making to tear in his panic. He twists and pulls and yanks it inelgantly off of him. He reaches up for the Helmet and makes a pained gasp as it comes off. He sees the button, slams it to move on the next room, then collapses against the wall. His hands rise up, slow and shaking. He brings them up over his head, hovering, and feels nothing. Nothing. A noise slips from him, and he lowers his hands down on the place where all his horns should be, where his nerves burn. There's something there, like a soft plastic and cloth instead, stitches up to hold them on. A strangled cry comes.

His horns are gone. His horns are motherfucking gone.

He jerks his hands away with a final scream. He's a sitting duck right there, as all motherfuckers make to come up but he can't think, his head aches, his horns are gone, and the voodoo is all caught up in his thinkpan. He stays there, rocking, trying to steady himself in the sea of everyone's fears as his eyes flash that solid pink to indigo, fear seeping on out of him in waves for them unfortunates coming near.

if this is not okay let me know;;

[reassures]

It's luck that has Nill finding the Initiate more than anything else. She's been trying so hard to distinguish which thoughts are supposed to go to which person, but everyone is too frantic, there's too much pain outside the spaceport and inside it. She can only find so many people so soon after getting in the structure. But what she does hear is someone screaming, and though she doesn't know who it is or what might be happening to them her feet move before she has the time to think about it.

At first glance she doesn't recognize him without his horns, and when she does a second later the horror makes a good hole in her chest. His horns are gone. They took his fucking horns because he was too big as it was. It was pure luck that they didn't decide to do the same with her wings, that they were easy enough to fold and strap down.

But that's not the only thing that's horrifying about this. As soon as she saw him something went wrong, because all of her worries about this arena were suddenly a hundred times worse, the fear of it almost stifling, difficult to breath past. Fear that she'd watch people die, that she wouldn't save anyone, fear that she would die, fear that those fuckers would bring her back, or what part of herself she would lose to it this time. It's suffocating.

But the thing she's afraid of more in this moment is watching him die again. His thoughts are terrifying, and she doesn't understand just how it's doing what it is, but she's not going to watch him die. She refuses.

Quickly she stumbles over and drops down in front of him, dropping the helmet full of potential supplies at one side and the switchblade at the other. She doesn't try to touch him, but she lifts her hands, extended towards him. She's not sure if her voice can get through to him right now but she has to try.

"Kurloz, please, it's me, you need to get up, you can't stay here, you'll die, you need to get up, please, please Kurloz--"

The 'voice' doesn't particularly have a sound to it exactly, unless he's tried to imagine what she would sound like if she could speak. Then it might sound a little like that. But otherwise it's very worried, gentle but terrified, frantic and fast. Her eyes keep darting to the door, afraid someone else will come in any moment.

Sigma Klim - OTA

[futilecycle]

The protective spacesuit brings with it a familiar feeling of claustrophobia - Sigma had never gotten used to the suits Akane made him wear between Rhizomes, they were always too bulky and unwieldy for his liking. As his pedestal breaches the surface, Sigma is greeted with an all-too familiar sight: a wasteland of stars, dust and craters. He knows at once the projection above them is fake - not being shot into space aside, photographs in deep space were taken in black and white, with colour added in post production to make them pleasing to the eye. Real space was suffocatingly lifeless and reminded him of how humanity grew ever closer to joining that empty void of nothingness.

He turns his body towards the space station: his telescoping eye allows him to distinguish the mark on the spaceport door from afar (some truly bad design, he can't help but think; space dust was cancerous, and one was less likely to carry it with them in an entrance below ground). It was unlikely it would open without a trigger, and loathe as Sigma was of the cornucopia, he steels himself to find the object that would fill that gap. As he waits for the countdown to end, he searches but cannot find the constellation the Initiate called his own. His blood pressure rises and panic begins to surge: without his son's gift, he had always associated standing here with failure, proof that humanity had brushed against extinction and that all that remained of his sorry race were the sprinklings of space stations on a desolate, hostile moon.

Akane's voice echoes in his ear: This is your home, Sigma.

The gong sounds and Sigma sets off in pursuit of a cube. He realizes at once - and with some relief- that his pact with Ruffnut will be impossible to fulfill. There is simply no way to identify her, and it gives the Doctor the excuse he needs to ignore the other players. His weighted arms, made for space, work in his favor and though he was slow on earth, he covers great distances on the moon quickly. He is one of the first to seize a cube.

He will not allow the temptation of supplies deter him from escaping space. Deciding to pull out while he was ahead, Sigma turns around and sprints towards a spaceport door, passing Tributes going in the opposite direction.

Bucky Barnes (616) -- open to all

[soldieronwards]

His head has been a mess for months now, his thoughts and feelings whipping back and forth between clean, perfect allegiance to the Capitol and creeping guilt and suspicion that something is terribly wrong.

(It's a form of conditioning in and of itself--the way he feels when he gives up the fight against the programming is so preferable to the way he feels when he tries to fight it.)

But when Bucky finds himself sent back into the Arena, all that clears up. This is simple. It's a mission: survive for as long as possible while winning the trust of potential rebels and not giving away that anything is unusual about him now. He can't deal with himself and his own thoughts very well, but he can handle missions just fine.

So the first thing he does once he grabs himself a cube and a case at the Cornucopia and gets into the spaceport is punch the nearest non-functional control panel hard with his left fist, sending bits of electronics spraying into the air around him.

It's just an act, he tells himself--just a way of reminding the people around him that he's still volatile, angry Bucky Barnes. He's not really letting off any helpless frustration or anything.

[closed for Molotov]

[celebrityskinned]

Venus should be thinking about the space suit that's fitted over her, clumsy and protective as bubble wrap. She should be considering the suit's capabilities and trying to piece together a strategy as she goes up the tube. A smart, sensible person would be prepared when the zero-grav kicks in.

But Venus doesn't need to be prepared, because she feels awareness go like a wave through every molecule of her being, like the hair on the back of her neck rising but in every single cell of her body. She feels time and space fold in on itself and become small enough to fit into her palm or her mouth. She feels her mind drain along the blood running from her brain and into her fingertips.

She has her powers back. She barely even notices that she's floating and tethered. A single, simple plan writes itself in her mind: find her friends and teleport them to safety. It barely even occurs to her how difficult it'll be to recognize them all with their outfits.

She teleports to the first person to catch her eye, blinking out of existence in a flash of impossible light, as if the (lack of) oxygen is bending around her in the place she disappears. She appears in the new spot, next to

She holds her hand out to catch the person. "Who are you?" She doesn't even know if the other person has any way to hear her. If it's someone she's looking for, she can get them both to safety. If it's someone she doesn't care about, she'll teleport away and leave them in pursuit of a cube.

And if it's one of the people she has on a very small shitlist, well. All it'll take to kill someone is to make sure they don't get a cube.

[molotov]

All Molotov is trying to do is get to the cubes. She's never been in space before, and she's struggling with the lack of gravity, the loss of her usual grace and coordination and sheer power. Nothing has changed for her, nothing feels different or unusual, or anything except frustrating.

She startles at the sudden appearance of a person next to her; she's sure she was mostly alone a moment ago. But maybe she just didn't notice, maybe she was distracted by attempting to get to the Cornucopia.

The voice is muffled, unintelligible. Molotov squints through her helmet, trying to see who's inside that other spacesuit. "Tom?" she calls, then realizes that the other person won't be able to hear her either. She figures that, based on the size of that spacesuit, chances of it being someone she cares about are small.

Molotov kicks at the figure violently, more out of self-defense than anything else.

Psii || OPEN

[biiowiired]

The suit was a warning, but the endless black of stars arcing overhead still made his head swim. Deep space? But this was wrong. The primitive spacesuits and propulsion technology of this planet suggested they couldn't even make colonies outside their own solar system. And this was supposed to be an "arena." A simulation then? A damn good one.

He leaped towards the cornucopia, keeping close to anything he could grab to change his trajectory. He realized he'd be flying closer to danger if he chanced this, but he also knew many Tributes had no experience with unaided flying, and next to no working knowledge of space travel. He had an advantage. He also knew that without the usual planetside comforts, materials and food would be scarce. Those cases were valuable. His sharp eyes, honed from sniping with psionics, quickly saw that the cubes seemed to be for the slots next to doors. He also saw that the suits and helmets completely disguised who was in them. Great. He wasn't in a hurry to kill anyway, so he concentrated on snagging one case and a cubekey. He made it past the airlocks, and ripped off his helmet as soon as a hiss and an indicator light announced the arrival of oxygen. It impaired his peripheral vision.

A sudden headache bloomed, heralding the return of his powers. Someone screamed—ah, no, just the voices of the soon-to-be-dead back again. He grimaced, quickly recalibrating his mind for shouting his own thoughts just so he could hear himself think. But he supposed having his motley collection of powers back was a good thing. No need to run when he could fly.

Psionics thrummed, and a strobing red and blue glow spread around his body. He jetted quickly down the hallway and around the nearest corner, followed by his floating helmet, also wreathed in oscillating red and blue. Hidden sufficiently enough for his standards, he cut the glow and stripped down to his yellow (ehehehe) jumpsuit. He originally thought he'd ditch the heavy spacesuit in gravity zones, but if he had his powers, weight was no object. He shoved the cube in his case and floated that up for hands-free carrying. He reattached the helmet to his spacesuit, floated it, and experimented by making one of its arms wave.

Decoy in place, he sent it flying ahead of him as he skulked a short distance behind, glancing back over his shoulder more often than was necessary. He knew both he and his new puppet were glowing targets, but he was still in an area swarming with people anyway, apparently doing his best visual impression of a banana in space. Once he got away from people and stealth became more useful, he'd ditch his flashy powers except for fights, find a tarp or something to cover himself with, and check the contents of his case.

[[ ooc: plot with Psii here! ]]

[pythianjudgment]

Terezi has to admit that she's making out rather well. No gross injuries, and her list of supplies is growing, even without making a rush on the Cornucopia. Her thoughts are constantly several leaps forward in the future, trying to keep track of all the different ways that things could go down.

She smells the flashes of red and blue before anything else, bringing her to a halt in the middle of the corridor. It doesn't take her more than a few seconds to figure out who she would find if she went to investigate those lights. Even without her Sight, it would be pretty easy to tell by the color combination alone. No one else produces quite the same appleberry lightshow that the Captors do.

So, rather than hiding or making a more cautious approach, Terezi strolls her way up to what she already knows to be the floating spacesuit, clad in her bright orange jumper.

"Ambassador Appleberry!" she greets with vigor, taking the suit's hand and shaking it heartily in both of hers. "What a delightful surprise! I didn't know you were out for a stroll on a fine evening such as this! I must say, you feel even more grossly underweight than normal. And quieter, too! Such terrible manners, not even greeting me with a hello! Come, let us walk--"

And with that, she will loop her arm around behind the spacesuit and start steering away from the main hallway.

Aang | OPEN

[actually112]

The moment the airlock shuts, the moment he touches down on the ground, he knows. His chi snaps through their paths again, like they were never blocked, and he feels alive.

It hums in his blood. His hands shake as he pulls off the too-heavy spacesuit. Bending is back. "It's back."

He stomps the ground and stretches forward, letting out a whirlwind burst of wind from his hands, which swirls down the hall, and then lets out a bright, happy laugh.

"It's back!" Powers are back and he can feel the world around him again.

Megan Gwynn | OTA

[soultospare]

How had she escaped the Cornucopia unscathed? How had she made it out with a case of supplies and not so much as a scratch on her? It seemed next to impossible that she'd survive all the mayhem, yet there she was, safely through the sealed doors that led to the creepiest, most sci-fi looking space station imaginable. She was hesitant to remove her helmet, scared that there might be some sort of weird chemical mixture to the air that would make breathing it unsafe, but she finally did so after getting her bearings and finding a place where she could back into a corner for safety.

It was only once she removed her helmet that she noticed the familiar sparkly residue left inside of it. Her black eyes went wide in astonishment, wings fluttering excitedly. "Hello? What's this?" She had her dust back. And if she had her dust back...

Excited, fluttering wings meant she was airborne in an instant. She could fly! Her powers were back, baby! Maybe she actually stood a chance in the arena after all!

[infinitemayonnaise]

With the return of powers has come the return of the drawbacks to those powers. Like making sure the magical creature who lived inside of you had enough other magical things to eat before he ate you, too. And people came back from this Arena death thing, didn't they? Not that Nitou has to like any of these things.

But Chimera's been sniffing around and is nudging him in the direction of what he claims would be a source of something he could eat, and so Nitou's following those directions, and...crap, that's a teenage girl. He hesitates there for a moment and looks down at his stomach. "Really, dude? Really?" Attacking a teenager to drain her mana, that's what they're reduced to?

beth greene | open

[schnapp]

Sometimes, there isn't much choice except to run and hide. Back at home, when there were just too many walkers to face down, each one part of an unending herd. Fighting them would be a useless venture that would only drain them, they'd never make a dent. When the goal is simple survival, running and hiding is a carefully cultivated skill, and it's exactly what Beth does.

She doesn't go for the Cornucopia. She avoids that bloodbath, heading straight for the airlocks after she grabs one of the cases on her way. It's so incredibly difficult to move in zero gravity that getting herself through is a tough venture, but she doesn't take time to stop and breathe once she's through.

Beth sheds her spacesuit, slinging the fabric across her back like some kind of oversized sling, but keeping her helmet in her hands because it's just about the closest thing she has to a weapon right now. At best, it's the kind of momentary distraction that allows her to get away. When it comes down to hiding, she chooses the air vents hidden away in the darkness. It's not ideal - they're cramped, and she's going to have to find food eventually.

But for now, it gives her time to breathe, just for a second.

( ooc | feel free to also encounter her later when she leaves the vent to try scavenging for supplies and such. if you'd like to plot things out in advance, here's a link! )

[reassures]

It's a little while before Nill finally manages to find Beth. She's been without this particular skill for almost two months, and while it's a lot like stepping back into a pair of well-worn shoes, there's still a little stumbling involved where she needs to adjust to the rough edges of it again. (This is made especially difficult with all the pain and fear floating around the place.)

But she can hear Beth, even distantly, and after taking a moment to be more sure that she has the right person Beth will hear a very soft voice in her head, anxious and careful, gentle and worried.

"Beth? Are you alright?"

While it's easy to identify it as a voice, it doesn't exactly sound feminine or masculine, or like much of anything - unless Beth has ever imagined what Nill might sound like if she had a voice. If she has, then it would sound like that.

natasha romanoff | open

[atoner]

Natasha has to admit, this isn't the kind of gear she's used to. The bright orange space suit definitely is just about the least stealthy thing she can think of, and it's probably going to be downright fluorescent even in the dark. She sighs as she straps on the boots she got from the Cornucopia, the ones that supposedly reduce impact. She's not putting her trust in them just yet, but they're something. The two blades she got are carefully concealed, but placed within easy reach.

And the phaser? That gets hefted with one hand, testing the weight of it. It's lighter than the firearms she's used to, but it'll do.

She moves through the spaceport with care. Find resources, find her allies. It's not much, but it's a start.

( ooc | nat will absolutely kill if she's attacked. but she also has no powers. plot with me here, if you'd like! )

[permets_tu]

Grantaire's flight from the podium had been a tedious and complicated one, burdened by troubles wholly foreign to him. In choosing not to throw his life away in the gauntlet of the cornucopia he had done himself the favor of pursuing entry to the space port earlier than many, but ignorance of how it was unlocked caused some delay. Nonetheless, he had eventually triumphed, extracting himself from the cumbersome confines of the suit that had protected him beneath the star strewn sky with laborious effort.

He passed those frustrating moments with curses on his tongue, muttered lowly with increasing vulgarity, and he stood panting, attempting in some half-hearted fashion to gain his bearings. He walks with care through the spaceport, with no weapon to defend himself, and spies the woman dressed in the same garish colors as he in the same moment that he is wondering what sort of poor challenge he will make to some of the players of this terrible game. She is of a slender build but he is wary, notes the boots that do not match his own, the weapon in her hand, and he greets her with space yawning between them.

"Fared you well in that clumsy sprint?" he observed carefully, surmising she had run for the cornucopia and returned from it triumphant.

Shepard | Open | Choose-Your-Adventure

[earthborn]

She didn't know what to expect, even as they bolted the helmet in place and set the seals. It was an odd nostalgia-- even with the outdated tech, there was that moment when your air supply switched over from ambient to pressurized, a subtle hiss, a sweetness that signified the high oxygen content. It was like coming home.

Seeing the stars like that, the unwavering spacer's stars, was another homecoming, but that and the gravity cut-out focused her. They weren't real, they couldn't be, but the vacuum would kill just as easily as the real thing. She made a decision, as she carefully regained her feet, as the countdown rang out, and for the first time since her arrival, Shepard ignored the Cornucopia.

^[1] Far off, but not too far in the beautifuly desolate landscape, she could see the right angles that interrupted rock and dust that meant airlock. Not safety, there was no such fantasy in this place, nor in true space, but safer. She bounded towards it with speed and ease of training in the low gravity and gained the airlock well ahead of some others, scooping up one of the fist-sized cubes that littered the terrain as she did. She assumed they were grenades, but was glad to see that what they held instead were keycards.

The airlock itself was more than antique-- a model like this probably had never existed outside fiction. It was blocky and inefficient for any purpose aside for perhaps holding up the large, movie-audience friendly decals, which did an adequate job at their purpose of labeling the portal as an airlock. Shepard palmed it open with no delay. There would probably be more resources than at the cornucopia, and if there wasn't salvage, an ambush was the better strategy.

That, and the sudden, almost vicious way it closed behind her as the pressurization cycle began was pretty definitive-- she left a few lonely inches of the rope that had anchored her to the pedestal outside those clamping jaws. Jane wasted no time stepping through when the cycle was finished.

^[2] You could say one good thing about Cerberus, and it was that, unlike the Alliance and the Capitol both, they at least knew how to adequately light a goddamn interior. Kasumi had once praised Omega for just the opposite, and this place was a good example of that miserly approach to warmth and light. It was a ghost town. But as Jane carefully worked off her helmet and made it secure on her back, she noticed one particular lack-- it wasn't silent. You could hear them, far off and hissing, the air pumps, the small motors and machine noises that echoed up vents and along solid metal like a tuning fork, and all of it was the breath and heartbeat of a living space station. Life support, whatever it meant in this place, was working.

Shepard supposed it might have been meant to be creepy, all those little tell-tale sounds, like rats, or ghosts, or maybe spirits, but to a spacer it was beyond merely reassuring. Dead ships are silent, not the silence of the grave, but the silence of space, so quiet and dark that your ears invent sounds and your brain makes shadowplays on the velvet black of the void. Which was another revelation on it's own. She tensed, and the corona answered, a flare of blue-white in the darkness like a beaconfire. Biotics; they weren't playing nice, this time, and she might not be alone in here, but one thing Jane Shepard wasn't, was afraid.

Which meant only death to those who attacked her.

_{[Shepard will attack anyone who is either seemingly hostile or who seems like they might have goodies, and that--
or a less violent encounter may be written on the fly or plotted out here at your pleasure!]}

2!

[gunshiptotheface]

Getting in the airlock had been nothing short of a challenge. He was thanking everything that he hadn't gone for the cornucopia this time around. Inside, he needed to cover ground and find somewhere that was defensible, that was his main goal.

Turning the corner, a familiar glow of blue caught his eye and automatically he threw himself back against the bulkhead. Biotics were not something he wanted to screw around with, and when no attack came he took a chance to pop his head out and have a look at who it was.

"So you know, you look good in blue, Shepard."

Milla Vodello - OTA

[belongsontv]

This being her first arena does little to steady Milla's nerves. The countdown booming into her ears just makes her stomach twist as her gaze drifts across the circle of tributes.

When the countdown finishes, Milla pushes off and away, ignoring the Cornucopia entirely to head to an airlock. Even if the supplies laid out are tempting- she isn't going to throw herself that willingly into the bloodbath. The weightlessness just reminds her of levitation as she floats and jumps along. If not for the lessening of her oxygen- she would laugh at the strangeness of it all as she fumbles to find a way into the door. She grabs a key, managing to get the oddly blocky door open and force her way inside. The burst of oxygen when she takes off her helmet is more than a relief as she deeply inhales and slides out of the bulky suit.

Milla does laugh though when she feels the rush of her telepathy sliding back into place, stray snippets of thoughts and feelings radiating through the air before she closed off her mental channel. Even the silliness of her jumpsuit can't dampen the excitement she feels when she realizes her abilities have returned.

The mental minx gladly lifts herself off her feet with levitation, floating along quietly as she moves further into the space port. It's not unlikely she'll run into anyone else in her poking around.

[For any ooc plotting click on over here for Milla's plotting thread!]

[infinitemayonnaise]

Nitou isn't really happy right now, though he's done very well for himself in the Cornucopia. Supplies are great, but powers came back. His powers come with a little bit of a catch in the form of Chimera, an ancient magical monster who lives inside of him. Chimera lets Nitou use his power in order to fight, but there's a catch--he demands to be fed mana, magical energy, in exchange. No mana? Then there's a problem. Chimera needs that magic, or he's going to eat Nitou--and then who knows what will happen?

Still, there are some things that can snap Nitou out of whining at his stomach and trying to shut Chimera up. Like seeing a floating woman. Chimera's not started fussing about wanting to eat a magic-user, but how would you do that flying thing without magic? "Hey! You're flying?!" Stealth? Who was worried about stealth?

Davesprite - open

[anachronologistics]

The only thing that Davesprite can think about just before the airlock shuts is how cramped his wings are in this goddamn spacesuit, and that if he absolutely has to keep this motherfucker on he's just going to ask someone to kill him now. Or maybe stand in an airlock and let it slice him in half like chump cheese.

Okay, that's definitely an over-exaggeration. But the fact remains.

Except when the airlock shuts behind him, there isn't any time to think about it.

No, no, that's not right. There's plenty of Time. And he's instantly made aware of it, not unlike the way a person is instantly aware of someone saying their name in a crowded room, or instantly aware of someone speaking their native language in a foreign country. Time and Timelines, crissing and crossing and criss-crossing enough to make his head spin as he suddenly orients himself on an very sharp axis that he hadn't necessarily tapped into in three years, and hadn't had even remote access to for approximately two months and two days --

It makes him feel queasy, though it is less about what it is and more about what it means, and if it weren't for the fact that it's been hours since he last ate he would probably have blown chunks in his spacesuit. But, even then, there's still no time, because just as soon as he's hit with a temporal surge he's hit with something else.

To anyone else, it just looks like a tribute in a lavender suit swaying on their feet before their legs collapse (leaving them in an incredibly vulnerable position to the opportunist tribute) but to Davesprite it's far more than that. His vision is swimming with white-hot light, and his mind is flooded with a burst of knowledge and code that makes his mind feel a little like it's being filleted open and that would have definitely made him puke if his body wasn't suddenly glitching itself out the possibility. And glitching out is certainly what it's doing: his legs glitch and shimmer on the visible spectrum just before there's a sudden flash -- a nod to the neuralyzer in Men In Black, perhaps? -- and suddenly the lavender space suit is falling into a heap on the floor, and an orange-gold ghost-kid with orange wings goes surging into the air toward the ceiling.

"Jesus fuck," it comes out in a bit of a (restrained) panic as he hovers in the air and stares at the heap of space suit covered in orange ectoplasm below.

Hopefully no one trips over it.

[[Plotting here, but open for everyone!]]

Kousuke Nitou | OTA

[infinitemayonnaise]

Nitou has always been one to live by the idea that in danger, there was opportunity. The Cornucopia had been the biggest danger of the Arena, and therefore the biggest opportunity. His gamble has paid off. He made it into the Cornucopia and out again with a nice crate of supplies, and once he gets inside the space station, he wastes no time in shucking that bulky space suit, going through the crate, and making stuff as easy to carry as possible. Nitou wants to travel light; less weight means he'll be moving faster. He takes the time to don the fancy impact reduction boots that were inside the case, for everything else fit nicely in the plastic bag of...he wasn't sure what it was, but it was shaped like fish.

And with that, he's off. He's got a plan--find Haruto, then...okay, so his plan really begins and ends with finding Haruto. But it's still a plan. It's not until he hears a familiar voice that he stops dead in his tracks, for the familiar voice is coming from inside of him.

"KOUSUKE NITOU. I'M HUNGRY." Not that anyone else would be able to hear the voice of Chimera. The voice of the creature who lived inside of him and allowed him to use its power in exchange for being fed magical energy. If no magical energy was provided, then Chimera would eat him. And Chimera hasn't eaten in a long, long time. Nitou had thought he was gone here in Panem, but he's just realized that no, that wasn't the case. Chimera had only been sleeping. And now? Now, he needs to find the monster some kind of food.

"Chimera?!?" And Nitou takes that moment to stop and grab his stomach, looking down at himself in horror. "You're in there?!" So, yes, there's a man standing around in the halls of the space station wearing a purple jumpsuit and yelling at his stomach. It's all perfectly normal.

[silverskymagician]

"A chimera in your stomach? That's a new one on me." said Kaito, peering around a corner in his own light green jumpsuit. Maybe walking in on some dude talking to his stomach was more than he'd bargained for, okay?

"I thought they were generally, you know. Giant monsters." Kaito himself was about as actually magical as a potato, but he did know his mythology and so on.

Nill | OTA

[reassures]

Twenty seconds isn't nearly enough time for someone to get their bearings, but hell does Nill try. This Arena is so much louder than she remembers the others being on the screens, so much so that it makes her head ache, but it's an easy enough thing to ignore when in another few seconds people are going to be dead.

It helps that she's seen places like this before - the shimmer of the stars like this aren't nearly as much of a distraction when there are very few good associations with environments like this, and when the gong rings out Nill bolts, moving as quickly as she can, in and out of the cornucopia, not so much as brushing shoulders with anyone else. She can't. There's no way to tell who was there, and she wouldn't hurt anyone, but she also couldn't help them. The only way to do any good here was to get inside, and hope the people she wanted to keep safe were in there. So that's what Nill does. And if she's on the verge of tears the entire time, well, it's not like anyone can see her face.

It doesn't occur to her until she's inside, stripped out of her spacesuit and already searching the entrances, just why this Arena is so much noisier than it should have been. The reason comes in the form of a particularly unpleasant spark that rips through her head, splitting pain shooting down her arm, and it takes her a moment to realize that the pain isn't hers, isn't real. Someone outside just broke their arm.

Someone broke their arm, and she could hear the agony in their head, the pain. Their thoughts.

Just like that, things slot into place. She starts sifting through sounds, pushing back pain, disconnecting from emotions that aren't hers, and for the first time in months Nill almost feels confident. Maybe if she was careful enough, she could actually make sure someone made it out of this place alive. She could do this.

Leaving the suit behind is a mistake, but Nll relies on her speed more than almost anything else, and if for some reason her other defenses didn't save her then that would be responsible for doing her in. She leaves it behind, but grabs the helmet, stuffing the case with the supplies she snagged inside it as well as what's left of the rope before she takes off. Staying is a death sentence, and her suit isn't the only one on the ground in here.

((ooc; telepathy permissions and plotting comment.))

[a_minute_younger]

Perhaps Gary is the person Nill heard when she first entered the airlock, because when he nearly runs into her at the crossing of two dark hallways he is definitely not in good shape. Staggering, clutching an arm at his side that absolutely should not be bent that way, his expression is wide-eyed, worried and frightened for the brief second that he doesn't recognize who Nill is. That second is all Gary needs to act. He leaps backwards with a yelp, spins and throws himself around the corner to one of the adjoining rooms.

The move might have been impressive if Gary was in any physical state to pull it off. There's an ominous-sounding thunk and the clatter of assorted supplies as he runs into a set of cupboards. Then silence.

Then, once he actually thinks about who he just saw: "...Nill?"

Luke - locked to Venus (spoilers whited out)

[burningdaylight]

The brutal public execution broadcasted stays firmly lodged at the forefront his mind for the dream-like stretch of time he spends standing numb and heavy on the pedestal as the counter ticks away, feeling that icy trickle of dread through his gut as he looks round at others in anonymous white spacesuits. As he’s left to grasp at the cold, sharp-edged reality of his situation.

He hears his pulse thudding deafeningly against his eardrums. Hears his breath rasping in his throat and feels the weight of the sweat clinging to his chest and tries to will himself to be ready for something no human being should.

2
1

The arena wasn’t just something talked about, a distant threat. Not anymore. It was here and it was now. It was people clawing their suits and helmets off inside the space station. It was some already chasing one another, cartilage and bone crunching under frantic blows and blood dashed against the walls. Someone screams. He stares blankly a moment before scanning the area for Clem, for Nick. For familiar faces that he can’t find amid the struggling, scattering tributes. Adrenaline races through him, shaking him, and all his whirling thoughts finally click into place.

Go.

He takes off, tearing down the halls of the spaceport looking for cover. For a weapon. For anything to keep him alive long enough to find his people.

- - -

It happens so fast, one of the airlocks sealing off while he’s rushing the doors and leaving him pounding desperately against them. An alarm flashes and he twists around wide-eyed, blinking the message on a panel to a sharp focus:

Oxygen leak detected. O2 level present: 99%
95%
92%

Luke’s throat dries up, sweat prickling the nape of his neck.

No no no --

He searches every inch of the airlock over and over, sick with frustration and on almost on the edge of tears as he struggles to fight down the animal panic rising into his throat, his chest tight and hurting fiercely. He slams his hands sore against the doors, again and again, huffing, hissing curses, until despair finally overtakes the wild determination gripping him and he lets himself slump forward, metal cool against his sweating forehead. He closes his eyes, taking a moment just to suck in hungry lungfuls of air through his lips. There’s nothing he can use. Nothing he can do for Clem or Nick or Beth. No escape.

72%
67%

At least this time death is coming quietly, without a violent struggle. No scorchingly cold water filling his throat, tearing into his lungs. No one else in danger and drifting within sight but beyond his reach. Just him fading as time slips away from him and chaos rages uninterrupted on the other side.

[celebrityskinned]

If he still had his helmet on, Venus would have kept going as she slinks past, having extracted herself from the chaos for a moment. The battle, people chasing each other down and beating their brains out, strangling them, drags and dissipates down the hall. She stops because she can tell from the size that none of those forms destroying each other are the person she's looking for. She hears slamming against the airlock door and she runs up next to it, hoping it's Kankri so she can save him.

It's easier to leave someone to die when you can't see anything human bared, when the body language of desperation and defeat is blurred out by the puffiness of the spacesuits and when the visor keeps you from making eye contact.

When you don't have a name to assign to someone.

"Luke?" His name escapes her mouth before she realizes that it's a binding curse. She wonders if he can hear her on the other side - he must be able to, she thinks. She can see him sweating and knows almost by instinct that he's running out of air.

For Tom and Dave

[arrogantalloy]

Tony knew that this was going to be one hell of an interesting arena. After all, this was the first time he needed to be in a space suit.

Unsurprisingly once in the suit Tony was calm. It was almost like being in his own suit, which almost had him want to ask J.A.R.V.I.S what the situation was, but he kept quiet, because the reality of him being in a space suit and not his suits was very obvious with the lack of H.U.D and puffy feeling movements.

Of course the second he lost atmosphere and started to float, Tony wasn't all that sure if he was going to enjoy this arena, last time he was floating in space he was busy directing a nuclear weapon at a Chitauri Mother-ship to stop them from being able to send more their way. And it hadn't ended well.

[Tom]

When the countdown is complete Tony locks eyes on the Cornucopia, something he had long ignored in every other game but now knew the anything he could get from here could only help him get back to something resembling earth gravity. And even tools.

Grabbing his tether he pulls on it until he can get his feet back on the podium, then forcefully pushing off as he un-clips the tether to send him drifting fast enough towards the one place everyone is heading.

And the one direction where Tony can't tell friend from foe.

[Dave]

Tony feels like he's going to have quite a bit of time to contemplate his mistake of trying to get supplies as he slowly drifts off into space as he clutches his belly, not only is he holding it due to pain, but also as a futile attempt to keep his blood in him and his air in his suit.

He's also wondering which is better, bleeding out slowly from the stomach, or asphyxiation? Neither, neither is better and they're both shitty ways to die equally.

Re: For Tom and Dave

[pimpcanes]

Tom's given himself a carte blanche to attack anyone he crosses in the Arena. There's only one person he would feel even slightly remorseful to hurt, and she's more than capable of holding her own against him. Everyone else is, at best, an inconvenient obstacle on his way towards securing himself if not a victory, then the adoration of further Sponsors and goodwill of the Capitol.

Carlos has pushed him away. That sends him on an arbitrary trajectory, but Tom uses the tether, wrapping it around his wrist and his elbow to shorten it and bring it taut, to change his direction. It sends him towards Tony like some hellish pendulum, armed with a piece of metal from one of the podium.

Blood doesn't drip from the shiv; it hangs in zero-gravity like rubies. He collides into Tony and the blood orbs break apart into little beads, like oil on water. He brandishes the blade.

Garrus Vakarian | OTA

[gunshiptotheface]

The tech was outdated, even Garrus could see that. While the techs had a hard time even trying to figure out how his sloped helmet would sit over his fringe, he simply pulled it on with practiced ease before it was sealed in place. It wasn't armour, not exactly, but the pressurized suit felt more like home than Garrus had felt in a long time. It was going to be easy to tell who he was in his suit, the entire silhouette screamed that he he was certainly not human and almost instantly made him a nice large target.

Space, it was not something he thought the capitol would use. Catching the steady and unwavering light from the stars, which clearly meant vacuum. The instant zero-G had his inner ear complaining violently for a moment before he swung his head to actually see what they were aiming for. Focus, breathe. The cornucopia was there, but sitting in vacuum wasn't worth the risk of a suit tear, if they had a station he had resources.

It was only a split second decision as the buzzer went off, tearing away from the cornucopia, he went for one of the cubes. Zero-G was still difficult, Issac newton's third law was entirely in effect, and without magnetic boots, he needed somewhere with gravity. The safest chance of survival was inside, and from the looks of the somewhat ancient and entirely nonfunctional airlocks, that was where he needed to be. He was rewarded at the airlock door, the cube providing a key to get in, as he pulled himself inside, he stayed well clear of the doors, waiting for anything nasty to be on the other side of the airlock and let the atmospheric pressure adjust.

Stepping through, he pulled off his helmet and listened, the thrum of life support was steady and the filters seemed to be doing their jobs. After living on a space station for a decade he knew that there needed to be sound, if there wasn't, the only promise was death. Untying the rope from around him he picked a direction and headed into the station, he was not going to wait at the airlock for someone else to come through with a potential weapon.

Re: Garrus Vakarian | OTA

[silverskymagician]

Kaito moved as quietly as he could through the halls (which was pretty quietly, actually; that was one thing he was rather good at), peering around corners carefully because the station didn't seem like a particularly friendly place. You know, even taking into account the deathmatch. He didn't actually want to kill anyone (surprise, surprise), but he did want to not die, which he felt was a very noble goal and one that anyone could aspire to, even if --

Yikes, wow. That wasn't a costume, was it? Like who would show up to a battle royale dressed like... whatever Garrus was dressed as? Okay, if it turned out this stranger wanted him dead, he could just scuttle on back to one of the darker areas and try to lose them, right?

He just needed to play it cool. Just be casual and not let on that he had relatively little idea about what was even happening.

"...H-hi! Sir or ma'am. Nice weather we're having, isn't it?"

Nailed it.

Nick | OTA

[fuckitall]

It doesn't seem real to be up here - in a place he has only seen in movies and videogames. It's almost unbelievable but there's no time to contemplate it. The only things that keep Nick focused on reality is knowing that his breathing is rapid and his heart is still beating. The sight of the bloodbath deters him from approaching the cornucopia. He needs a weapon and he knows it, but the suits make it nearly impossible for him to tell where his friends are. He doesn't want to take that chance. He has more blood on his hands than his mind can handle already.

Once he becomes acquainted with gravity again, he takes the chance to remove the spacesuit and takes a second to breathe. He looks out at one of the windows as his eyes widen with dread at the thought of Clementine and Luke possibly still out there.

'They have to be here. Alive.' Nick tells himself as he takes quiet steps through the corridors. If he made it in, so have they. The alternative is too difficult to imagine let alone accept.

don't mind if i do

[weaintashes]

The windows that look out onto the sprawling emptiness of space are an unnecessary distraction as far as Daryl's concerned at the moment. It's disorienting, thinking too hard about the fact he may very well be trapped up in space in a death match arena, if this isn't all some kind of fever dream. Previously he'd never been out of Georgia. Hell, he's never even had a vacation before.

He doesn't allow himself to get distracted by these thoughts as he finishes shedding and stowing the bulky outer space suit, then methodically commits to memory the layout of this particular alcove and hall in case he has to return to it. With that taken care of, he resumes stalking through the corridors as silently as he can, in search of supplies. Weapons.

There's nonfunctional, closed doors at the end of one corridor he investigates, effectively making it a dead end. Perhaps literally, he thinks, upon hearing footsteps approaching, presumably someone taking the same path he did. There's nowhere to hide, and in his eye-searing yellow space suit, it's not as though he can hope to remain unnoticed.

Mentally preparing for the worst, he moves to meet the stranger head on and stops a short distance away. His hands are held at his sides, palms up, to show he's unarmed, and he's pleased to note his unwelcome visitor's likewise unarmed. He doesn't disguise the fact he's sizing the guy up, attempting to ascertain how much of a threat he might be.

"Dead end this way," he offers in a low voice.

Brock Samson | OTA

[samson]

Inside the airlock, Brock doesn't waste time. He's sure that a good chunk of people who survived that out there are now going to spend a minute catching their breath once they reached safety, but he's not stupid. His oxygen tank is depleted, useless, and most importantly it is heavy, so he shrugs it off and leaves it there. His helmet is trickier, quite frankly, not only because he doesn't really get the latch, but because he doesn't know if he'll need it later. But it impedes his peripheral vision, so he sheds it too, leaving it along the way as he starts jogging through the corridors, just to get away from the door and find a place to regroup.

GENERAL SPACEPORT SHENANIGANS.

Once he's far enough from the airlock, Brock takes care to move a bit more stealthily. He's looking for air vents, some place to crawl into so he isn't a huge fucking Smurfy target just strolling through the corridors, but it doesn't seem to particularly be in the cards.

Whenever he comes across a dimly-lit corridor, he ducks down it, hoping it will lead him to a more secluded room. He mostly just winds up in some stupidly florescent corridor again, though, and he is beginning to suspect that this is less a spaceport and more a Habitrail. It's ridiculous and insulting and he's getting angry.

SCIENCE LAB.

Eventually, the stars align or some such bullshit, and Brock actually finds a room. It's below the endless maze of corridors, and he has to wonder what kind of crazy Winchester widow designed the station.

But it's a room. Finally. He stands there for a second as the door whooshes shut behind him, and he realizes it's some kind of lab. Brock is not a super-scientist, but he has spent enough time in labs to know that this is maybe a place to scrounge for supplies. Acids or something. Test tubes he can shove into people's eyes. Things like that.

He's rummaging through the drawers as quietly as he can, and eventually he comes to the conclusion that there is fucking nothing in here. Which is, you know, fantastic.

But there is another door, which ostensibly leads to another part of the lab, and he moves toward it, his back to the first door.

science lab

[silverskymagician]

The door opened, and standing behind it was just this awkward-looking Japanese kid who had somehow managed to find a Personorb? It didn't actually seem all that useful, but maybe he could throw it at someone and run away if it turned out he was going to run into some Mad Max mutants or something.

Kaito did not. Really. Know what was going on or who this giant gaijin was, and actually it was probably a testament to how unprepared he was for this that he was really more weirded out by running into a giant American (?) than he was by someone who might actually try to kill him.

He'd stripped off his outer suit, revealing that he was wearing District 7 colors. "H... hello! Am I interrupting something? You know what, I can just leave."

Kuroba Kaito [OTA]

[silverskymagician]

Kaito should probably have made it more of a priority to find a good hiding place and stay there, but once he'd gotten to the science labs, all the gadgets and puzzles and so on were a little too hard to pass up, and anyway, he was going to be here a while, right? They were all trapped in this joint for now. Given that, it made sense to familiarize himself with his surroundings.

So instead of doing something actually useful, Kaito was just sort of dicking around with the jumping pads and light bridges and so on. Awesome, A+ survival skills.

[gobananas]

Marco, oh teenage lord of the awesome survival skills, is learning. He isn't lying in wait like some creeper, but he is staying in some handy shadows while he watches Kaito try out the dangerous-looking science machines. He ended up ditching the white spacesuit a ways back, aside from the helmet, which he carries around and pokes around tight corners before he dares venture out. It would be funny if it weren't so desperate and dangerous.

Actually, no. That makes it even funnier. Because he's about to get killed by like, comic book villains and superspies and his one defense is sticking something that looks like a fishbowl out in front of him and hope people fill it with warning shots.

Maybe the guy running around playing with science stuff has the right idea. They're all dead anyway, right? Why not enjoy it?

Marco would be happy staying there in the shadows, taking quiet mental notes on what all that capital-S Science does, except that one of those hunting aliens is sneaking up on them...

Clint Barton | OTA

[cognitived]

The world coalesces suddenly, galaxies trembling Clint's very eyes; all color and light and the quick socked-punch of shock in his belly. But even as the rope around his belly tightens and holds him close, Clint realizes there's something -- off about what he's seeing. A shimmer, a quiver; like the new prototype masks one or another SHIELD R&D kid had come up with before everything went to hell.

So, probably not real then. But the suit he's wearing is, and from what he's already learned in this game, if it seems like there's a threat, there probably is one. Clint breathes soft, breath misting the visor of his helmet, and scans the arena he can see. Ahead loom doors, and as soon as possible Clint's pushing forward, sluggishly making his way through the air. It takes far too long to struggle there and through the door, and Clint's well aware that there can't be all that much oxygen at his immediate disposal. But soon enough he's through, pressing his back to a wall as he scrambles to remove the helmet, taking in a deep gasping breath. It's --it's good, it's okay. He has nothing resembling a plan in as much as find shelter.

Right now though, the place looks and sounds deserted, the delicate humming of machinery the only thing left to him. He has nothing but the force behind his body, and yet -- Clint's dealt with worse. ( Or so he tells himself. ) He gives himself half a minute to regroup, and then he moves stealthily forward.

spaceport;

The world around him looks like some shitty vintage sci-fi movie. Half the place is glaringly bright, light bouncing up off tile and metal, boring into the dark of his eyes. The other half is so suddenly dark it's like being blinded, taking ages for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting. The paths seem to have some directional sense behind them, but for now Clint doesn't know exactly where they go. He peeks into a few rooms, light on his feet, ready to fight or run should something come at him.

But eventually, everything gives way to--

science labs;

--white labs, sterile and chilling. It reminds him sickly of medical bays, not the ones at SHIELD, no, but those in movies. And typically, that never ends well for anybody. Clint takes even more time here, walking so carefully it's as if he was on another mission and the target was just out of reach.

That makes it normal, almost. He might have even called it easy. ( But that would be a lie. ) Still, there are puzzles. Tests and trials and tribulations, all those fun T words. He makes it past a laser show, ears perked for any hint of enemy. There are no allies here, not as far as he can tell.

It's been a long time since he's worked completely on his own.

Spaceport

[tookthewheel]

It's hard to lurk in the shadows when you're wearing a bright white spacesuit but, with decades of experience behind him, Bucky manages to do an admirable job of it. The sound of footsteps approaching prompts him to press himself into the dark shape of a doorway and take out the switchblade he earned from the Cornucopia, in case the one approaching turns out not to be an ally.

The aim is not to hide himself entirely (impossible in this location and outfit), only to keep himself hidden long enough to be the one to get the drop on the other. This plan proceeds well enough until his sharp eyes make out the face of the man through the gloom.

He knows that face, doesn't he? From months back. A man he killed and was then informed was not someone to be killed. Too late, then the man, Clint Barton, was dead in the last arena's Cornucopia, blown up by the Capitol after Steve made his speech. Except not quite, Bucky didn't know the man at all really but he trusts his senses, which are telling him something is different here. That fact promotes caution as he steps out of the doorway.

bilbo baggins | open

[somethingprecious]

[After finally managing to get inside the safety of the spaceport, ripping off his helmet, and tucking himself away into an empty room to drop the pack he managed to grab from the cornucopia he realized he was shaking terribly. So terribly that when he tried to undo the spacesuit he was suited with his fingers shook hard enough to make such a simple task almost impossible. His heart felt like a stampede of raging horses in his chest and it took considerable effort to force himself to into something close to calm.

He lets out a breath of relief when he manages to undo the spacesuit and pull it off him. He wasn't sure what use it could be inside the station, but it hindered his movements more than the shoes did yet he wasn't ready to pull those off yet. He had noticed the sharp glass littering the floors when he made it inside and while shoes were highly uncomfortable for him he'd rather suffer that then glass in his feet.

With the suit off he picks up his bag again and moves to sneak out of the room once he was sure the coast was clear. Just before he escaped down the hallway he caught sight of himself in the window and moved over to peer outside. The window itself was almost too high for him to see the vast and dead landscape beyond the station, but he could see the stars and constellations of space far too well. A cold sickness spread through his blood as he stared up into the stars. Helplessness... Yes, that is what it was. How he expected to survive in a world so far beyond his own he couldn't even begin to imagine, but he had to try.]

[Science Labs]

[He was searching for Frodo and Sam now and the further he ventured into the station the more that cold helplessness seeped into his bones. He had yet to see their faces outside against the stars so that was a small ray of hope that they were still alive, but that hope was small and fragile.

Gradually he became used to wearing the boots - as used to them as he could possibly be. It was hard to be completely silent while wearing such clunky things, but what could he do?

He slips inside one of the science labs, not yet realizing what it is yet, his eyes scanning the room for any sign of wayward hobbits. In his hand he clutches a switchblade tightly, ready to lash out at anyone who dares to come too close to him.]

[Abandoned Zones]

[The sight before him makes his stomach turn and for a moment he fears to go any further. His hands have begun shaking again and he tightens his grip on the switchblade. Taking a step forward he pauses when his foot catches on a ripped piece of clothing. When he bends down to pick it up his fingers brush over what looks like dried blood and with a startled yelp he drops the cloth. His sound carries through the deep hallways, echoing his faint distress.

He really really hoped Frodo and Samwise weren't down here.]

[abandoned zones]

[69problems]

[As was customary for him, the Signless began this arena wandering. It would be far easier in the later weeks if he had at least a general idea of the layout of as much of the arena as he could get. That eventually led him to the lower levels, and thank goodness his troll eyes could see in the dark or they would be twice as creepy as they already were.

He heard the yelp from up the corridor and his ears flattened back. Someone clearly didn't know that drawing attention to themselves with loud noises was a good way to invite attack. He lifted his pocket knife and crept down the hallway, wincing every time his boots brushed some of the debris or made a particular loud noise against the floor.

The form ahead of him in the darkness solidified into a familiar hobbit and he lowered his knife.]

Bilbo?