thearena | Arena 12 - The Spaceport

Arena 12 - The Spaceport

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.

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Scavenging for supplies was a little easier back at home. At least being in an empty house or an abandoned convenience store gives you an idea where the things you're looking for could be. Either the station has been picked clean by others here before him or Nick is just shitty at finding the right places to look. Probably both, he thinks.

The pipe he's carrying has since been bloodied and broken from his encounter with those green alien things that took him by surprise. He narrowly escaped with a few bite marks on along his arm from the ones that managed to get at him. He wished he had his helmet on the moment he retaliated by bashing their skulls in because it still feels like he's got blood on his face.

He looks up when he thought he heard squealing of some sort, but it's the voices that makes his stomach drop. The last time he heard a voice he thought was familiar, it nearly damn got him killed. Anxiety trickles down his spine as he tries to decide whether to go to it or not. He doesn't know if the bites mean anything like they do with lurkers, but he still takes it as a sign that time's a wasting. Burning daylight. Fuck, whatever. They're in space.

He quickly, though more importantly, quietly follows the voices that he now recognizes to belong to Clementine and Luke. He would allow himself to be happy and relieved if hadn't been for that encounter he had with the C-BOT12. He can't take chances; he's rounding the corner - opposite from where Luke came from with his pipe ready first.

He freezes when he sees them though, pipe still held high while his eyes are wide and dumbfounded.

"...Luke? Clem?"

"There you are." His eyes lock on hers and yes, yes, he's conscious. Good. "It's okay, you're safe. Take a deep breath. Take twenty."

She sits back on her heels and feels her pulse in her throat. She's teleported too much in the last hour. It feels as if she's holding back a sneeze, except that it's every cell of her body. She closes her eyes and tries to tamp down the energy running through her veins, threatening to rip her a thousand ways.

After a few seconds her powers calm down. She opens her eyes and looks back at Luke as he recovers.

"Let's just go with superpowers." She reaches over and brushes some hair off his forehead, getting into his eyes. "You okay?"

Honestly, all Kaito wanted to do right now was panic. He hadn't asked to be here, okay? He had no idea about aliens and space and right now all he really wanted was to be home eating a double chocolate ice cream cone. But since he had no choice about it, it was apparently time to buckle down and p-p-p-pokerface

"Argh, okay. It was blue, green, blue...!" His fingers practically flew over the control panel. By some small miracle, as the cheetah mole rat alien came bounding toward them, the bridge fizzled out.

Which didn't actually mean that it fell; actually, the alien was still scrabbling at the very edge of their platform with its rather impressive-looking claws.

The mad dash to the Cornucopia just makes Dave all the more reluctant to approach it. It's a stark contrast from the last Arena where everyone was hugging and holding hands- people are dropping off like flies at this rate. Dave is preparing to launch down into the station and find his friends when he comes across a figure just drifting idly into space like sad, wounded trash. There's no way of telling whether he knows them or not, but he can't bring himself to float by on his merry way when it could be someone he knows.

So he grabs at them clumsily, only able to grab at the figure's leg and deciding he'll just have to deal with it. He drags them through the air as best he can until he can slip into the station, fumbling a bit as the suits suddenly become heavy again. It was a pretty inelegant landing to say the least, but he's taking the moment to squirm his way out of his suit so he can painstakingly drag whoever the fuck this is up against a wall.

"Hey, anyone in there?" He will helpfully rap his knuckles on the helmet before he helpfully starts to unscrew it.

Nick lets out a long breath, as if he had been holding it in this whole time - which is true to some extent. Sometimes he forgets to breathe in the midst of dealing with the situation at hand. If he had met this guy before, like he has met others on the training center rooftop or the bar or something, this would've been different. Now, it's no different from him encountering a survivor in the woods. Or a bridge. Dammit.

He shakes his head and comes to from his thoughts and notices the guy stepping closer. He stands his ground though, keeping his legs as still as he can. He's got a couple of inches on this guy but that's all he's got going for him. He considers the guy's question. He's not just asking what district he's from is he? Not that districts ever mattered to him.

"Where dead things eat you," he answers impatiently, hoping for it to just get brushed off as sarcasm because what does it even matter now? He thinks about what's left of home for a moment and what's left of his idea of a family as his eyes soften with honesty. "Fuck. Look, I don't got time for this. I need to find my friends make sure they're okay."

They are okay. They gotta be.

He keeps his gaze on Daryl for a while, as if pleading to let him go as he finally takes a step back to go back down the hallway.

It's difficult to convey you've been here a lot longer than I have, you tell me what to do with a look, so he settles on motioning for her to stay precisely where she is. Be still, be silent. That cumbersome outer space suit she's still wearing will afford some protection against the bites and scratches of an animal, he thinks, but won't be much use against a gun, a knife, and it hinders her movement besides. Ditching it might be the best course of action, and he plans to suggest it. But what if he's wrong?

The uncertainty is kept from his expression as he waits. Within moments the creature arrives at the corridor they'd just vacated, its snuffling and the clatter of its claws loud enough to echo in the silence of the spaceport. There's a low growl, a series of thumps he can't make sense of. It knows they're there, though. Soon it's throwing itself against the door trying to get in, and Daryl moves without even thinking to bodily block the door, bracing his back against it.

"It's just the one," he says, looking to Beth. There's clearly no longer a need for stealth. "Maybe we should let it in an' kill it, before it brings some friends."

He has no way of knowing whether the creature possesses a pack mindset, but it seems safest to assume that the noise it's making alone could be drawing more things... or people... to them.

She braces herself against the door too, for what her meagre weight will be worth in keeping that thing outside. Though letting it in and killing it before it makes a fuss isn't a bad idea, either. It's one she considers carefully, looking around at everything in the room and back to the helmet in her hands which is the only thing she owns in this whole arena other than what's on her back right now.

"Okay. What are we gonna kill it with, though? I don't got anythin', do you?" though she figures if he actually had a weapon he would have it out by now.

Not that Beth isn't aware that he could probably kill a lot of things with his bare hands, but they don't even know what that thing is yet. "Maybe there's something here. You hold the door, I'm gonna take another look around."

"He's being fatalist." If Albert is surprised at all by Venus' sudden appearance, he's either not showing it or has other things to worry about. Really it's that teleportation is so low on the list of things he finds beyond commonplace, but with Jet laying there acting like he's about to clock out, Venus showing up warrants a glance and that's about it by way of hello.

"Someone's knife snapped off in his wound. Our original cybernetics are active so it's not nearly as bad as it could be," he gives Jet a warning look in case he tries to argue. "But I think it may still be in what little organic flesh is still present. I don't know if it's better to leave it in or pull it out for risk of him bleeding..."

He starts out strong, giving a rundown of what's happened, of the situation as it is, but by the end he can't keep just a little of his anxiety from creeping into those words, a shadow of worry crossing his expression. Space is never good for them, especially not Jet, and while he'll be damned if he doesn't try his best to make this time the exception, he's frightened there's nothing he can do.

"I have first aid training but this is the point where we'd wait for a medic."

Jet offered Venus a lopsided smile in greeting, but Albert's claim that Jet was being fatalistic earns him a dirty look. "I'm not being a fatalist, asshole, there's a freaking knife sticking out of my gut and it hurts like a bitch and you won't take it out." His voice was strained with pain, but it didn't stop him from letting his irritation shine.

His read-outs said he was already bleeding internally, even if they pulled the thing out it wasn't going to change anything. He wasn't about to die, but he was dying. Just...slowly. What did Albert expect him to do in the meantime? Wander around with something stuck in him?

"Forget it." Was his muttered 'warning' before he grabbed the blade himself and yanked it out, wincing as it cut through something it probably shouldn't have -apart from his hand which now sported a nice slice of it's own- and let the blade clatter to the ground. The too thin red and the thick white liquids already coming out of him oozed up a bit more, but didn't gush as feared. At least the pain was less.

Oh, God. They are totally married. Venus would laugh but the truth is it's a little touching to see a different facet of the relationship she's come to see as bedrock. She's always gotten the impression that she's seeing the catgut stitching them together, and not the meat of the bond itself.

"Good thing I am a medic. Kind of." Venus' powers are on the fritz right now, strained beyond their comfortable capacity, and healing Jet's going to tax them all the more, but that is barely a concern on her mind right now. Like Hell is she going to stand aside while one of the guys who took care of her when she was being a sad, sloppy drunk bleeds out his gut. She sets the helmet aside and moves next to Jet, right before he decides to yank out the blade.

Awesome. Also gross. "Hold still." Her voice is the sort of authoritative command of someone who's all business on the battlefield. There's none of Jet's irritation, none of Albert's anxiety. She's fully Venus, the persona, rather than Delilah tucked safely inside.

She doesn't bother to ask permission. She reaches over and splays her hand over Jet's wound. First is diagnostic, a kind of scienceless, intuitive process where she extends her complete awareness of her cells to his. She feels everything as if she's inside the cell walls themselves, every pathway ruptured, every bridge displaced. Dark spots, like holes in vision or myriad blind spots, form around her hand.

"Lay back and think of Albert." She starts to knit him back together, molecule by molecule. Her lashes flutter with exhaustion. For Jet, it'll feel like a massage and an endorphin rush and a hot shower and the release of a sneeze all at once.

The German in question moves a bit out of the way so Venus can get in to help even as he glowers at his husband for pulling the damn thing out without any preamble. He paces once, twice back and forth behind Venus as she works her magic - and it does look like magic to Albert but at this point he doesn't care what it is so long as it works.

"Idiot. You've cut some sort of nutrient line doing that." He recognizes the white fluid as a byproduct of Jet's cybernetic system to process food into literal fuel, mostly just because he's seen Jet injured more times than he cares to remember. "I don't know how we're going to fix that."

Nor just how detrimental it'll be. It could be nothing, it could mean he won't be able to process eating anything for all Albert knows, he doesn't have the system himself. It's just easier to worry about that than if he'll even survive long enough to need to worry about it.

Venus, though, when he can finally tear some part of his attention away from his husband, looks as if she's about to drop. Still grumbling - words like 'reckless' and 'idiot' peppering the low toned speech - Albert posts himself behind her to catch her if she swoons. He knows how much teleporting took out of Ivan, he can't imagine the toll that and healing someone (whatever that entails) is taking on his adopted sister.

Brock's reaction to the perfectly innocuous event of someone opening a door is maybe very telling about what kind of person he is -- he quickly rips the drawer completely out of the desk he's rifling through and holds it up over his head like he's about to just hurl it at the intruder. Who winds up... being a teenager. Apparently. So... Brock just then casually sets the drawer down on top of the desk like he didn't just do the thing.

"There's nothing in here, so," he says, gesturing vaguely out from his sides, indicating the whole of the lab, and then he jerks his thumb over his shoulder. "I was gonna check the other door, though."

Cool Brock, thank you, that didn't fill Kaito with mortal terror at all. He didn't scream, but his mouth definitely dropped open as he put up his arms to ward off the drawer, jesus fucking christ.

When Brock didn't hurl it at him, he lowered his arms slowly, like he wasn't entirely sure this wasn't some kind of fake out. This was awkward. "Do you, um. I can help."

What could he possibly help Brock with WHO KNEW, but he was going to edge carefully into the room anyway, in case there were more terrifying things inside than men tearing drawers out of things and possibly throwing them.

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.

In a world with trolls, a world that has now thrust him into outer space or some highly accurate simulation of space with the intention of watching him fight tooth and nail for survival, ‘superpowers’ is just about as good an explanation as any. Day by day, fewer and fewer things seem within the realm of impossibility -- and in the end, maybe it’s not the ‘how’ that matters so much as the rescue in itself.

He had seen her turn away, felt his stomach drop a little more with every step placed between them. But here he is out in the hall he remembers passing through - a pervasive, eerie silence in the air like the stillness of a frozen lake before that bone-snap of cracking ice - only because she had committed herself to doing something of no benefit to her. He’s under no illusion that everyone would do the same if they could.

When her question comes he wills himself to nod before he finds the breath to answer, faintly and then more reassuringly. The brush of her fingers is unexpectedly tender and out of place and he lifts his head, considering her with worn, confused eyes. Vividly remembering mom's kindnesses the days he had missed school laid up in bed with a fever. Reminded of Nick dropping off homework and chewing absently at his thumbnail while pacing a hole through his bedroom rug and wondering when he’d be able to come out and play again.

“Yeah…" He shakes his head clear, tries to, his chest hurting in a different way. “Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks -- thank you.” There is no waiting for his dizzy spell to pass or wasting this second chance at life she has given him. He braces a hand against the nearest wall and carefully pushes onto his feet.

A hand reaches out to grab at the back of Bucky's suit. It certainly isn't to try and stop him--Gary's too delirious to really figure out what he wants from this action, except maybe to not get left behind and alone. Seeking assistance from the man that just smashed in his chest is probably not the way to go here. Gary doesn't really think about that, either.

"I've got more than one line, you jerk. I'll reach in and tie it myself if I have to." Jet's glared at Albert even as his husband but when he started up his anxious pacing, Jet turned his attention to Venus instead. He did as he was told but he made another face when she told him to think of Albert.

"Yeah, like what, how stupid his face is or how annoying his pacing can get or how much of a bastard he is?" He muttered it, letting his ire speak for him instead of what he was actually setting his mind to. Think of Albert, of those eyes Jet never got tired of looking at, of how he never felt safer or more loved than when Albert held him to his chest. How Albert was the first person to make him feel anything even close to that since he'd been eight.

The skin on Jet's hand sealed itself up as whatever Venus did ran through him and the squishy stuff on the inside knit together the way it was supposed to. His eyes fell shut and his head rolled back a bit as the sensation swept through him, causing a small groan that was definitely not caused by pain.

His face flushed in response, but he tried to ignore it and opened his eyes to look at her instead. She definitely looked about as good as he'd felt a few seconds ago. He sat up and reached to collect her hands in his, half to get her to stop and half to help her stay upright.

"Hey. You look like you're about to hit the floor."

"Oh my God!" Marco does the only reasonable thing someone with slightly more dignity than to wet their pants would do - he goes over to the edge and starts stamping on the alien's...hands? Paws? Whatever, the ugly appendages at the end of its arms.

The alien lets go of one hand and uses it to swipe up, very nearly turning Marco's face into the basis for a Lifetime movie.

"I could use some help over here, technerd!"

So he does. He wraps an arm under hers and over her back and lifts so she can get to her feet.

"That's certainly the plan. Although superpowers being in the fray is a spanner in the works."

Look, he killed Thor last time. He's pretty sure having an angry god with a grudge against you is all the worse when that god has powers.

"I'm okay, I just need a minute." When she opens her eyes she has an unfocused middle-distance sort of stare; all her attention right now is focused inwards, keeping herself from ripping apart atom by atom. She wonders if she should get up and run away from them, demand space so if she goes supernova they're not in the blast zone (like her brothers, like her parents, like her grandmother), but no, she has this.

She has this. The thrum of energy scrabbling to get out, from under and within over her skin, dulls down as she sorts her immense power back into order. Were she with the X-Statix, they'd haul her off to "dialysis" right now, but that's not an option here. She has force of will and that's it. She takes a deep breath and lets it out and sits back, not falling into their arms but still going slack and relaxed.

"I can't fix the cybernetics." She doesn't know what that means for Jet - maybe she would if she were a doctor, but she only knows how to repair, not how to treat. It's like a construction worker trying to patch up a sinking ship. She grins, lopsided. "The way you two are fighting, I'd think Albert was the one that stabbed you."

"Don't call me technerd, short stuff! I just saved your bacon!" Well, okay, maybe that was a little premature, but in any case, Kaito did a quick check of the area, and...

The lasers, yes! One of them was just close enough and mounted on an adjustable stand so that if he reached, he could swing it around. The beam burned through part of the metal paneling in the wall as he swiveled it around and aimed it at the cheetah alien.

With a zappy laser noise and the smell of burnt fur, the beam took off one of the alien's ears and severed its paw.

She makes a soft pained noise as he lifts her, and leans heavily on him, very clearly miserable.

"Well, we can let most of them sort each other out?" she suggests, half-heartedly, more focussed on how terrible she currently feels. "If they use their powers to maul each other, we can just lay low. We might need to, until I can move better."

"Don't mention it." He may be thanking her for saving him, but the part that stands out to her is the few seconds when she walked away. She wonders if a real person, a really good human being, would have even questioned coming back for him. He's done nothing to her but be vulnerable and run up her credit card a little, and yet she was convinced she was leaving him there for a solid few moments.

She knows there are people that would have left him there, of course - but she also knows that trying to separate herself from them has been a trial she's been fighting for the last year or so. She's got as much blood on her hands as any of them, but she's not the scum of humanity, not a sociopath with a crown of bone and flesh, right?

Right?

And as if embracing that mercenary role, she puts on an act like this was all part of a plan. She glances out of habit over each shoulder, and above them, making sure there's no immediate threat before she asks: "before you got locked in there, did you see a little troll kid run past? I'm looking- I'm looking for someone."

[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.]

The more he feels that faint shifting of unease off her, at his own memories, the more his eyes keep from meeting hers. The more it goes the clearer those memories try to be, doing that feed through loop he's starting to really hate.

But she doesn't pry and that's a relief.

(It's a hundred layers of heavy guilt. Guilt he's being all too motherfucking tired for up already.)

She says she'll do her best, but truth is, he's not sure he believes her. She reminds him of Terezi in that sense, but unlike her, he's got no business making deals of exchange. He'd changed for Terezi, she stayed for him. Nill was all of her own self and her own choices what he couldn't be making no part of. It scares him just as it ever does with them what he feels he could lose.

His eyes are wide as he listens on what she tells of Linden, and moreover, her own power. Reaching beyond the arena? Truth told, he hadn't tried. The arenas were always being so far from the capitol. He wasn't sure he could push that far.

Aight, He thinks. He catches the very, feeling on his pan, in his fingers, in his maw.

a mentor be he. such ninjas is enduring.

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Page 7 of 28

Arena 12 - The Spaceport

MEANWHILE...NICK

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do we want to start separating them this early or a bit later on?

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Spaceport

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this thread is punching me in the heart

bilbo baggins | open

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