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

[schnapp]

They were shitty things to say, but Beth doesn't hold it against him. They might have stung at the time ( "I sure as hell never cut my wrists lookin' for attention!" especially comes to mind ), but she's been here too long and experienced too much to keep being hurt over that. People do things they regret when they're scared. They say things they regret. She's strong enough to forgive that.

"It's an arena. I've been --" she cuts herself off at the noise, tensing up at the skittering. This is familiar, at least. Being constantly alert for any sound that might signal walkers in the area. Beth ducks into the room when he motions, her steps light and as quiet as possible.

She looks at him after she closes the door behind her, taking care not to make a single noise. It's a pointed look, one that clearly carries a question. They've gotten good at communicating without talking over the couple of weeks that they were together. He'd hold a finger up to his lips to tell her to be quiet, or point in a direction that she needed to go in while evading walkers.

The look she gives him asks: what now?

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

[weaintashes]

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.

[schnapp]

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."

[weaintashes]

Daryl looks down at his space suit and empty hands then back to Beth, eyebrows raised questioningly. There's not even a proper belt or any pockets to put things inside; he has nothing. It would be an opportune moment to crack a dirty joke if he was that kinda guy, but he's not, so he saves his breath.

Beth's added weight against the door was more help than she thought. When she moves away, the mass of the creature colliding with the door is enough to rock Daryl forward slightly with a grunt, giving a pretty good indication of its size and strength. Still, it would be two on one. He likes their current odds.

He gives the room another once over but still can't see anything remotely useful as a weapon. Then his eyes fall on the helmet Beth's still carrying around and inspiration hits.

"The visor," he says, raising a hand to gesture to his eyes, "on your helmet. Break it. Try an' get shards big enough we can use."

If they encounter anything later that makes having the full suit and helmet necessary, he figures he can just backtrack for his and let Beth use his helmet.

[schnapp]

It's not easy to get the visor off. The plastic, or whatever it's made of is sturdy. It's meant to block out all the horrors that space could inflict upon a person. And judging by the amount of trouble Daryl's having, they don't have a lot of time. She grits her teeth as she pulls and pulls and pulls until the thing snaps clean off. The hard edge of it scrapes against the skin of her hands, but that can't be helped.

She snaps the piece against her knee into two jagged pieces, ignoring the smaller bits that go splintering off. She hands him one and grips the other tight, taking a deep breath and forcing down the spike of nervousness that she refuses to show him.

They don't know what this thing is, or what it can do, or how to kill it. But they don't exactly have an abundance of choices here.

"Okay. Open it up, whenever you're ready."

Killing walkers has imparted a great lesson on them: when in doubt, always go for the head. It tends to work on most creatures.

[weaintashes]

Accepting the snapped off shard, he studies Beth as she gets her game face on. It bolsters his confidence, the fact he'll be fighting alongside someone he's been through hell with already — he can trust that she knows what he knows. This may not turn out to be anything like dealing with walkers, but at least they're as prepared as they can be.

He waits a few seconds after she gives him the go ahead, then nods and sidesteps away from the door. But the creature doesn't break through immediately. The door's able to withstand several more rumbling crashes against it before it finally flips open, and what looks like some kind of giant, inside-out mutant dog alien bursts through, landing on all fours.

Daryl has the advantage of being behind and to the side of it, and the hard kick he aims at its shoulder catches it off guard enough to send it skidding across the floor, spiked tail lashing every which way as it goes. It recovers from the sprawl and rolls into a crouch in one fluid motion, and a second later is lunging at the nearest of its prey — Beth. Its trajectory is disrupted by Daryl catching its tail in a one-handed grip and giving a solid jerk backwards, which leaves it wide open for Beth to attack from the front.

[schnapp]

That thing is terrifying, but she's learned not to flinch from that kind of terror. A second's hesitation could mean the difference between life and death where they live, and when Daryl grabs the creature by its tail, Beth moves forward quickly with her improvised knife in hand. She doesn't stab the skull, because it looks thick and she's not sure if it would work. Instead, she stabs the fleshy underside of its neck, bared as it hisses and writhes against Daryl's grip, attempting to wrench itself free.

She stabs twice until her hands are covered in viscous green fluid that she assumes it the thing's blood. Blood that starts to burn her skin.

The momentary flash of pain provides a two-second distraction.

[weaintashes]

While Beth aims for the vulnerable throat, Daryl simultaneously drops into a crouching position without letting go of the tail and rips the visor shard across what he can reach of its underside, opening it up. A torrent of the same sticky green fluid is released along with foul-smelling viscera. The creature's contortions quickly become so frantic and violent that he's forced to let go, leaving it to sputter acid across the floor, snarling out its dying rage, before eventually convulsing and collapsing.

Once he's certain the thing is dead, he slowly lets out a steadying breath and looks up at Beth, the corners of his mouth twitching upward in what might be a smile. "You did good."

The anesthetising effects of adrenaline are already wearing off, granting him awareness of his bare skin burning, too, and of the shallow cuts on his palm from his makeshift weapon. He tucks the shard underneath an arm as he regains his feet, wiping his hands on his suit. Then he's reaching to take Beth's hands in his, turns them palm up, and uses his sleeve to thoroughly scrub them off as much as possible.

"Stuff's like acid," he mutters, wishing for something more effective to neutralise it. "Might blister. Keep an eye out for a sink or somethin'." Would a spaceport even have sinks?

[schnapp]

Her hands still continue to smart a little bit even after Daryl scrubs all the blood off, but it's fine. Beth continues to scrunch her fingers up just to make sure that it doesn't get stiff or anything. She needs to be able to hold her makeshift knife, even if it happened to leave cuts in the creases of her fingers where she'd gripped it. But it's fine. Both of them have endured worse before.

She's tough. She can keep going. They both can.

"You oughta smile more often. And not just when we're killin' things," Beth remarks, with a smile of her own. A distraction from the pain now that the adrenalin has pushed the fear away a little bit. "I guess we should...go and find supplies. If there are any around here."

[weaintashes]

The comment predictably wipes away all traces of his smile because he hadn't really been aware of it until Beth pointed it out, and now he's embarrassed. He lets go of her hands and stands there awkwardly for a few seconds, wanting to ask what there is that's worth smiling about.

Except the answer comes to him before he can even open his mouth. She's there staring him in the face.

Well.

He knocks aside the door and steps back out into the corridor, waiting for Beth to join him before he moves on. There's only one direction they can head in that's not backtracking, so that simplifies the choice of where to go.

"There was this place, Terminus," he says quietly while they're walking. "Signs for it everywhere. Said it was a sanctuary, a community. An' I guess maybe it could'a been, once. Rick wanted to check it out — I was with him, Michonne, Carl. We thought maybe everyone else would'a headed that way too." He's unconsciously chewing on his thumbnail by this point, heedless of the alien blood crusted under it, inadvertently revealing his anxiety. He falls silent as they reach intersecting hallways and looks to Beth. They should probably start moving inward, he figures, and nods in that direction.

[schnapp]

The smile was very short lived, but it is definitely being filed away into a small database of Beth's memories. Times when Daryl Dixon was Nice to Me, or something similarly titled. The list had actually been growing at a really surprising rate up until the point where she had felt rough hands shoving her into a car.

She sticks close to his side as they move, alert to every noise in their vicinity. Perhaps too much so, because every tiny sound in the distance makes her shoulders visibly tense. They've killed one of those things, but there's no telling how many of them are out there.

"...what happened?" Beth whispers, with trepidation, like she almost doesn't want to know. But then again, He had told her that everyone was alright. That just means they're alive and breathing. It doesn't say anything about the trauma they might have experienced.

She wishes, more than anything, that she were strong enough to shield them from all of it. But she isn't. Nobody is. So they just have to make do.

tw: gore related to cannibalism i guess?

[weaintashes]

The silence stretches on for longer than it should and he's reluctant to end it. Beth really doesn't want to know. Except she needs to, because who the hell knows what may happen when and if these Capitol, Gamemaker, whatever-assholes return them to their own world. She might stumble across the Terminus signs, too. She needs to know to stay the hell away from the place, or whatever's left of it.

"Was a literal slaughterhouse," he answers in a voice barely above a whisper. "For people. They kept the live ones locked in train cars, and were gonna butcher and eat us. Nearly did." If they didn't come from the world they did, there might be some humour to be found in his explanation. But the horror of the place — the swaying human torsos on meat hooks, the people left to bleed out, the goddamn grill out front with meat on it — is still too vivid in his mind to crack any jokes. It makes him vaguely queasy just remembering.

"We found the others there. Most everyone except Carol, Tyreese, Judith — they were safe outside. If not for Carol..." He shakes his head. "She got us out. About blew the whole damn place up rescuin' us." And there's an undeniable swell of pride colouring his tone as he says that last part. "Later, after all that, me an' her went lookin' for you. We'd seen a car like the one that took you."

That also feels important for Beth to know, that he'd never given up on her. She isn't just another dead girl to him. She's his family.

[schnapp]

The thing about Beth is that she really wants to believe the best in people. It's a little naive, but that belief doesn't exclude the fact that she's seen a lot of horrible things in her lifetime. The Governor beheading her father. The mutilated girl on the mannequin in the country club. Hearing about what happened between Shane and Rick. She knows that there are people out there that will hurt her with very little provocation. She knows about human cruelty.

But this? This is enough to nearly feel sick to her stomach. To the point where she's reaching out to grab his hand and give it a quick squeeze - I'm glad you're okay.

"That's terrible," she whispers it, dizzied with the mental image and the realization that she came so close to losing them all. People do crazy things when they're desperate enough, but eating other people? That's messed up.

"You looked for me?" Beth doesn't know why she's surprised. She's just...touched, that's all.