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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“Roomba?” A puzzled frown crosses his face. It rings a bell, unexpectedly, but all he can think of is of some silly cordless vacuum humming its way across a stretch of carpet. This must be something else because he can’t imagine that putting a scare into Clementine. “…The hell’s that?”

He drops the thought though, nodding his relief to know she’s doing fine and carefully letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding in. It seems like nothing short of a miracle that she has come away unscathed thus far – and with a low, sick throb in his gut he understands that it might take just as much to keep it that way.

“I heard somethin’ too. Sounded like… squealin’. I don’ know.” His brows settle low over his eyes. “Whatever's bangin' around in them vents ain’t human, that’s for sure.” A muscle flexes tensely in his jaw and he looks to the shard of metal in his hands, his only weapon. “You’re gonna need somethin’. We can double back quick the way I came an’ get you armed. Figure there’s plenty a' scrap metal left lyin' around an' up for grabs.”

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?"

"These little robots, they had them in the last arena, they... they attacked people." she swallows and doesn't want to say much more about that. They're exactly what Luke is thinking of but a whole lot more aggressive and scary in groups, especially when chasing a group of girls to wards escalators that have a whole lot of heavy grinding gears to fall into. She never wants to see one of those things again.

Clementine starts to nod, "A weapon would be--"

Then she stops, tensing when she thinks she hears footsteps and is about to curse herself for talking too loudly to Luke when out from around a corner comes Nick. The relief she feels is about as strong as that she felt on seeing Luke. "Nick! You're alive!"

Alive but no uninjured if that pipe and his arm is anything to go by. The purple fabric doesn't hide the blood well enough. She starts to take steps to meet Nick as he comes forwards.

When Clem breaks off Luke glances up sharply, tinglingly alert, taking a half-step forward with an instinctive readiness to shield her. But he soon realizes he doesn’t have to - not yet. His heart lurches all the same when his best friend rounds the corner poised for attack, wide-eyed and bloodied pipe raised. The steel in Luke’s jaw softens, eyebrows lifting high enough to wrinkle his brow.

“Nick--” He blinks, advancing. Relief comes and goes, quickly smothered by worry. That pipe is badly bent out of shape by means none too difficult to guess at and Nick doesn’t look much better. Bites mean different things here but he can't keep help the way his stomach pitches at the sight of them before his gaze snaps back to Nick’s face, his friend looking shaken.

Had he killed someone?

“You alright, man?” No one can be alright when they’re here, he knows, forced to constantly glance over their shoulders. But the physical side of things they can deal with. They can try to, at least.

Edited 2014-12-15 05:16 (UTC)

Nick lowers the pipe as he looks at them both with utter relief. "Yeah," he nods, slowly starting to believe that himself. "Yeah. I'm fine." Especially now that he knows that they're still here. "Been lookin' everywhere for you guys."

He was near about losing hope too, thank god. The patches of purple fabric around his arm and ankles have been torn up and he's sure that the suit's also hiding bruises all over from an earlier encounter.

"I wouldn't go back that way," he says, gesturing to the direction he came from. "These little green fuckers were comin' at me in swarms. It ain't just the other folks we gotta keep an eye out for." He looks at the pipe, dented in places where it has drawn blood before letting his gaze trail to the bloodied bite marks. He keeps in mind that not all bites mean the same thing and looks at Luke as if to tell him to not worry, though concern crosses his face too when he notices the blood on Luke.

"Jesus, what happened?"

It's only fair after hugging Luke that Clementine impulsively covers the distance remaining between them to briefly hug Nick as well. "I'm glad you're here."

She steps back and listens to the tale he has to tell, making a note of the description. "Muttations. The Capitol uses them to make arena's extra dangerous for us." To make sure people died, even when the Tribute's themselves didn't want to kill each other. The fact he said they were a swarm makes her think of the bugs in her first arena. "There'll probably be others around here too."

“I’m fine…” He heaves a sigh, considering the dozens of little tears in his suit and wanting to believe he was more startled than hurt by the explosion. But he’s sure he’d have a better sense of his situation after the adrenaline flooding his system ran its course. “Goddamn machine jus’ blew up from across the room. Think I’m a’right, though…" He shrugs tiredly. "Pretty sure I’d a’ known by now if I was paddlin' up shit creek.”

There’s more to say and to do – but Luke falls silent, on guard while allowing Clem and Nick to hug without hurrying them along. He looks between them, carefully considering the information she soon supplies and feeling a familiar stab of sympathy for the terrors she has endured and for all he hadn’t been there for.

“We can’t be standin’ around out in the open like this.” He wets his cracked lips, forming a plan of action. It's a welcome distraction from the all too human fear slowly and sneakily twisting his gut into knots. “Was jus’ tellin’ Clem we should head on back the way I came. Figure she can find herself a good-sized piece of shrapnel lyin' around.”

Because it's not a matter of if she'd find herself in a pinch, but being prepared for when she did.

The hug from Clementine is unexpected. For a second he even thought she only approached his direction because she had spot something behind him. They may have bonded more since they got here but the things that have gone unsaid still makes Nick feel like he doesn't deserve it. Still, the gesture certainly isn't unwanted and it shows when he wraps his free hand around her shoulders to hug back, unable to resist the small smile crossing his face as he does. He listens to her explain the creatures as his smile falls to a grim look. She had faced these things and other sorts before but like hell he'd let any of them get at her or Luke.

"They still die if you bash 'em in the head enough," he says to Clem while giving the pipe another glance. "But you're right; we're fucked if they end up surroundin' us."

He thought he had heard an explosion earlier and if Luke had end up being caught in that, Nick would've heard everything but a scream. No more screams. Fake or not. The news of the close call makes Nick want to hug Luke right there, just to make extra sure that he was real and not just some crude projection the Capitol decided to do to fuck with Nick's head some more. But the words coming out of his best friend's mouth are most definitely what he would say. Not that Nick disagrees. He'd hate to leave Clementine without a weapon too.

"Here," he says to Luke, holding the pipe out to him. "You take it and she can use the shrapnel. I'll find somethin' else."

Maybe.

Nick deserves it, he's her friend just the same as Luke and Clementine's just as glad to see he'd made it through the Cornucopia alive as she would any of her friends. She smiles briefly when he hugs her back before letting go.

"That's always good to know. There'll be somewhere we can find to rest in, there has to be, probably further inside." she nods, of course she's lacking any bashing implements at the moment but there has to be some junk around here that she can use, there always has been in arena's so far.

Then Nick goes ahead and offers them both his weapons and the surprise sits on Clementine's face openly. "No, you need that Nick. I'll find something soon."

He can probably make better use of it than she can.

Luke purses his lips, the furrow between his brow deepening as he weighs their options. The selfless thing to do would be to refuse the pipe and to hand his rudimentary knife to Clementine – and for a time the white, sharp-edged fear of losing someone else he deeply cared for cuts deep enough that he does consider giving up his weapon. But he knows effective decision-making means untangling himself from emotions and trying to regard the situation as objectively as possible. The key word being trying.

“You hold onto it,” He decides after a beat, his voice sure and steady. They have an edge over Clem as far as range and upper body strength are concerned, and with Nick surely as willing to shield her as much as he is he feels comfortable enough to proceed with the plan. “Clem, you keep between us. Shouldn’t take more than a minute to get where we need to be, but let’s be fast an’ let’s be careful."

Pausing, he makes eye contact with each of them in turn. Seeking their agreement.

"We got this." He adds reassuringly. "Once we got you set up, we'll scout for a place to meet an' rest up if things get hairy.”

Nick opens his mouth to protest when Clementine declines, but stops when he hears Luke give his answer backed up by some form of logic that Nick wish hadn't existed. If it weren't for the fact that the pipe's rather heavy, he'd have given it to Clementine already. There are many things he wants to say and he gives Luke a challenging glare (what makes him think it'll take only a minute? Anything can happen in a minute!). Despite the lack of time, he inclines forward to assert that he'll be fine without a weapon, but stops when he hears thumping noises...from the vents?

"...you guys hear that?" His eyes trail to the open vent from earlier.

He'd think it'd be another tribute but those noises definitely are not human.

"We need to get the fuck out of here!"

Clementine's glad that Luke backs up her refusal. Better yet, that has the same line of reasoning that she was thinking for why Nick should keep hold of his weapons. As much as she wants to help she's the weakest out of the three of them and she's not going to be stupid enough to pretend otherwise when they're lives are on the line.

"Right, so let's--" she freezes up at the sounds, jaw clenched and her eyes flickering at every corner of the corridor they're in. She can't tell exactly how close it is. "Crap!"

Her voice is very low as she turns to run, "This way!"

That protesting look Nick shoots him doesn't go unnoticed -- and, of course, after twenty years of knowing one another it's nothing new. But it’s forgotten when that clanging and screeching of something thrashing its way through the network of ventilation shafts has him stopping to listen helplessly for a second. Breath bitten back and wide, searching eyes turned ceilingward. It’s the closest the sounds have ever been and he feels an icy trickle of dread through his gut, adrenaline surging, crackling, through his sinews to his tingling fingertips.

There’s no debating Nick’s logic this time. It's fucking flawless.

“A’right, c’mon!” He whispers as he takes off, voice sharp with urgency. But there is no speeding ahead on his part, not when his top priority is ensuring that everyone keeps up and keeps close. No one would be left behind.

The sound of metals clanging and thrashing about is different from the slow and sluggish pace of lurkers knocking over boxes as they roam. The groaning is now replaced by a screech that will surely reach Nick's nightmares. Either way both things gets his heart beating fast and his legs going faster. He keeps himself behind Clementine, looking back every now and then to see a set of teeth (always fucking teeth...) snapping at him every time he does.

They could probably lose it if they enter one of the labs and barricade the doors. He opens his mouth to offer the suggestion, but nothing comes.

Nothing for Luke and Clementine to hear except for the sound of Nick's guttered scream through his teeth. The pipe burns his hands but he can't drop it - he can't even fucking move as the electric currents surge throughout his body. He finally falls over with the pipe dropping onto the floor with a clang, his body showing no signs of moving as the alien salivates from the side of the wall.

"Oh--!" Clementine hears that screech and see's those teeth and damn it, why did they have to be fast mutts this time around? She's pushing herself as fast as she can with her shorter stride to keep up with the two men, all of them hampered by having no idea where it was they were going within the base.

There has to be somewhere safe up ahead, somewhere they can hide from these things, they just have to get there first. What are the chances the mutts can actually open doors? She opens her mouth to say so when Nick screams.

Clementine puts the brakes on immediately, skidding to a halt and almost falling as she calls out, "NICK!" No need to be quiet, not when the mutts are already on their tails. "Oh God!"

She doesn't think, just grabs what looks like a broken panel off the floor and throws it at the alien that's about to kill her friend.

Luke isn’t sure what to expect when something bursts out of a ventilation shaft with a force that busts the grate wide open and sends it flying, clattering to the floor. ‘Not human’ had been the vaguest and safest of guesses -- and as he makes the mistake of looking back, eyes going wide, he realizes it’s certainly one way of putting it.

“Oh shit!”

There’s a law for this, he knows there is, for the times when everything that can go wrong at the worst possible moment does. But his mind goes blank at the gurgling, lock-jawed scream, terror gripping him by the heart as he twists around in time to see Nick crumple to the floor and lie unnervingly still. And that thing -- half-insectoid, half-reptilian, and all predatory grace -- is all too eager to investigate.

A slab of metal flies past Luke from the edge of his vision. He sees it connect with the alien’s face and by some miracle it’s enough to have it rearing back some. His eyes dart around and he finds a brick-like hunk of metal and severed wires – some sort of button panel ripped from a wall, maybe -- hurling it with everything he has. It bounces off its shiny, oil-slick-black helmet of a skull and it snarls, tossing its head. He'd like to think it's more hurt than pissed off but the two seem to go hand in hand.

All he knows is there's no time to waste.

“Keep throwin' anythin' you can find! Jus' buy me a little time!” Heart thudding hard and fast in his throat, Luke goes for Nick, dropping to hitch his arms under his. He jerks him up onto his feet faster than he thought possible with the help of a huge surge of adrenaline, grunting as he manages to maneuver Nick up across his shoulders.

The alien’s hissing, shaking off its dizziness –- and Luke sees a pair of tributes slip out of a set of sliding doors up ahead and rush right past them, to his surprise. Only to stop cold at the sight of the alien's bared, spit-slick teeth.

Luke moves as fast as Nick’s weight allows - a speed-walk at best -, hearing a scream from too close behind him. The jagged, high-pitched scream of someone being tortured in the worst way imaginable. His lips pinch tightly. He doesn’t look back.

“To your left!” He calls out to Clem after a moment, hands full. "Maybe we can lose it in there!"

Edited 2014-12-31 18:10 (UTC)

"I -- got it!"

Clementine bends down and scrabbles for every broken piece of metal she can find, filling her hands and standing back up to throw them at the creature again. She misses as much as she hits and tries not to shake as the mutt's attention turns to the little human that's trying to hurt it. The creatures makes some kind of hissing sound that chills Clem down to the bone.

It's going to come for her, it's going to. "Luke! Hurry!"

He has Nick and that's all it takes for Clementine to start backing up in a hurry, throwing the last couple pieces she has in her hands until Luke's level with her and then, then they're not alone. "Don't!" she tries to call out to the other Tributes, too late and there's nothing she can do but try and make an escape with her friends.

Clementine runs, keeping pack with Luke as he carries Nick on his shoulders. She see's the door as he points it out, "On it!"

Quickly she works to get it open and waves him inside the moment it is. Once Luke's in Clementine will follow.

The air crackles with static, nerves tingling. His gaze makes a quick sweep across the room he’s no more than a few paces in, soaking in information. No vents (good); a set of doors opposite them, which meant they weren’t trapped; a cluster of crates, metal barrels, some blinking machinery. He half-turns back, sweat crawling ticklishly down his sides.

“Clem!!”

For the breathless split second he’s left waiting for her – a time that seems to stretch an eternity – his brain is suddenly overrun by a noisy, vivid images of the creature catching up, the creature slamming her to the floor and tearing screaming, bleeding, too-red chunks out of her. A cold sickness roils in his gut, lingering even as she hurries in and the doors are jammed shut behind her.

Luke crouches by a corner, easing Nick off his shoulders and onto the floor before hurrying to help block off the way they came. The crates feel like they’re loaded with cinderblocks - too heavy to lift and stack without straining something or other in the process, he figures - so they make do with shoving several flush against the door as fast as adrenaline-fueled bursts of strength allow. The effort leaves him panting softly, fresh beads of sweat gathering at his temples.

“Okay-- okay, I think that’ll hold,” ‘But we probably shouldn’t stick around too long to find out’ is what’s implied and left unsaid as Luke looks away and turns his attention back to Nick, moving to his side. Kneeling, he takes him gently by the shoulder and gives him a shake.

“Nick—“ He tries while briefly looking him over, his voice low, urging. “Nick, c’mon. We--”

The rest dies in his throat as his thoughts come to a sudden, screeching halt, crashing together. Nick’s body is all too still – a realization that doesn’t quite click until he thinks to bring the back of his hand to Nick’s lips and waits to feel the heat of his breath lap his knuckles. He feels like his own breath is being crushed out of him when nothing comes.

"Oh Christ...” He gasps out. Icy tendrils of fear snake, plunging into the hollow of his chest. Stunned, he presses fingers into Nick’s throat under the hinge of his jaw, only mildly reassured by the presence of a pulse. Thready, but there. He doesn’t waste another second trying to guess at how many minutes have passed since Nick had collapsed.

It comes back to him - first aid training for his stint as a summer camp volunteer and, more recently, the brief refresher Carlos had provided - and muscle memory kicks in. He watches himself pinch Nick’s nose shut, tilting his head back and chin up with an unexpected, confident steadiness and to his hands. Pulling in a breath, he then ducks to press his mouth to Nick’s and forces air into his lungs.

Once.

Twice.

He glances tensely to Nick’s chest after the second, watching it deflate. It doesn't rise.

Fuck.

He shares another breath - and then another and another and another, fighting to tamp down the panic trying to rise into his throat and pretend this was just another training dummy. Not his best friend lying motionless and edging ever closer to that place of irreversible brain damage.

C'mon, don' do this to me, man--

Edited 2015-01-03 16:30 (UTC)

"Is he alive?!" she doesn't mean to demand but her heart is in her throat and she needs to know as soon as they're done blockading the door. "I didn't hear the cannon!"

Yes. She didn't hear the cannon yet. Or maybe she missed it in her panic at the creature and the screams from the Tributes who go in its way instead of them. Clem wants to believe its the first option, no cannon fire and Nick was still alive but... but she watches Luke's face, then looks down to Nick, her dark skin going paler as she see's the same thing Luke does.

"No... no!" Clementine's on her knees beside Nick's body in a second, her small hands grabbing onto and shoving his shoulder, then pushing at his chest but she's took weak to apply the force needed for what she's trying to do. "C'mon Nick! Breathe!"

She looks back up at Luke, "You have to help him! Do CPR!"

“Yeah, I’m workin’ on it!” He huffs after the third set of rescue breaths, unease balling up tight in his chest. But it isn’t until Clem’s hands thrust into his field of vision and he sees them push frantically against Nick that he snaps out of the bubble of his thoughts, losing focus.

He suspects she hasn’t the muscle to exert the pressure needed to start a grown man’s heart – or stop it – but the smallest possibility is enough to put him on edge. Carlos had suggested that compressions on a beating heart could do damage, but whether it did or it didn’t they just couldn’t take that risk.

“Don’t!" Luke’s voice is tinged with desperation, fingers pressing lightly against her hand. “We don’ need to push -- his heart’s beatin’, it's fine, he jus’—“

‘Just.’ There’s no such thing as ‘just’ when a man lay dying and he recognizes the poor choice of word the moment it slips from his mouth. “--he ain’t breathin’.”

He regrets not having said so from the start what with the poor girl so ready to help. God, does he ever know what it’s like to be fiercely anxious, buzzing with pent-up energy, and yet so powerless to do anything with it. “I need you to keep a close eye on him for me,” He dips, pinching Nick’s nostrils and readying him for another breath. “Tell me if you see him movin’ or breathin’ on his own.”

Wouldn’t hurt to have a pair of extra eyes on this.

At once Clementine pulls her hands back as if burnt from underneath Luke's, looking exceptionally young in that moment as she realises she could have been making things worse, not better. She's trying hard not to panic, she is but if Nick dies so quick...

The fact that he won't really be dead isn't a comfort, especially with the looming possibility that he could come back as a Walker in the arena, a Walker that Clem and Luke would have to deal with. No, she can't think about that, she has to listen to Luke. Luke knows what he's doing, she believes that.

"O-okay, yeah, I can do that."

Swallowing thickly she looks down at Nick, willing him to go ahead and breath. "Please, Nick..."

Voices, he hears voices. Before everything went blank, all he heard was the sound of their footsteps and his heart beating like mad. He remembers feeling heat and burning as if his insides were on fire. The sounds of something not human fast approaching them comes back to him. Clementine was shouting his name.

Oh shit.

Eyelids twitch for a few seconds before they finally shoot open with Nick rising up, he'd say their names but is quickly interrupted by a coughing fit. He coughs into his hand without thinking and pulls it away when he feels the blistering sting. It had been burnt by the pipe earlier. Is this the Gamemakers' way of telling him that he should be more convincing? Would've been god damn easier if an alien wasn't sprung onto them.

He looks at them both, grateful that they're both in one piece but too dazed to formulate proper words. With the look on his face though, it's easy to tell that he's saying "sorry", like he let them down.

Edited 2015-01-05 01:58 (UTC)

He can feel his throat ache dully as he catches the look in Clem’s eyes – startled and sorry and too young for any of this – and he wishes more than anything that he could tell her that it’ll be okay, that Nick’ll gasp for air and they’ll be safe forever, and have it be true. But she deserves better than sweet and gentle promises that are destined to be broken. And as much as he wishes he didn’t, he knows it in his bones that she has seen enough of the world in all its lawlessness and ugliness to know a lie when she hears it. So he says nothing at all.

Nearly all his energy is sucked into the desperate struggle to shove aside the growing hopelessness threatening to crush him under its weight -- and he’s so absorbed in the cycle of filling and refilling Nick’s lungs and pausing briefly between sets to eye his chest that he almost misses the flicker of Nick’s eyelids.

His heart jumps with a shiver of fearful hope.

“Nick…?” Luke draws back, staring – and just in time, it seems, because Nick’s sitting up faster than he expects, coughing and coughing. Definitely not walker behaviour. He presses a hand against Nick’s back for support, ducking his head a little to look into his face.

It's impossible to gauge the level of pain he might be in. But Luke is convinced that he'd at least have a pretty a good idea if Nick were dipping into shock.

His voice drops low, careful, gentle. "Nick, jus'... lie down a second. Or lean up against this wall. Catch your breath." He rubs at his back unthinkingly, glancing to Clem. They could spare a few minutes. Hopefully.

Edited 2015-01-05 06:39 (UTC)

"Nick!" her relief and happiness flows out in a single syllable and Clementine sits back, dazed with it.

He's not dead, he's alive, for now he's alive. Thank God. She bites back the urge to cry and takes deep calming breath. They're not out of the woods yet, they won't be for weeks, not until the arena's over and they've come out of it one way or another. It's a dark thought but true, Clem's gone through this enough times now to know it.

At least this moment is a victory. Nick isn't dead despite the Gamemaker's best attempts to kill him so early on, Luke saved him and that's something. "You're okay, Nick, we got away." she tries to reassure him, "We're safe for now."

The door is sturdy and there's no sound of anything else coming at them.

Feeling Luke's hand on his back has him realize just how sore his entire body is from the spasms. Still, he wordlessly obeys, instinctively backing up (almost forgetting not to do so with his burnt hand) to lean against the wall behind him. He takes the moment to breathe as if to make up for the times he had forgotten to do so.

His heart's beating faster than it ever had, maybe even more so than it did when they all walked through that walker horde. He blinks away those thoughts - he's supposed to calm down after all. Clementine's reaction is unexpected but not unwelcome, though mostly out of his own sense of self-loathing than it is her. The girl is tough, but also good. She and Luke both went back for him when it was smarter to just leave him behind. That's what he thinks anyway, but he's grateful still. Hopeful, even.

"Thanks guys," he says with a look that is also apologetic. What happened may have been out of his control but he doesn't intend to let them down or put them in danger because of his shitty luck. He looks at his hand again making a face at the blisters already forming and the skin wanting to peel off.

"Well, I'm off to a fuckin' good start."

Arena 12 - The Spaceport

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