I'm Just Trying to Take This New Skin for a Spin [Open]

[celebrityskinned]

WHO| Venus Dee Milo and open!
WHAT| Various Arena encounters.
WHEN| First week of the Arena.
WHERE| Anywhere you want!
WARNINGS| None yet.

She has a map now.

Over the last few days, making about one 'jump' an hour or so, Venus has cased out the ground floor of the space port and gathered supplies for herself, Jet and Albert. Some of it's food, some of it's water, some are just sharp pieces of metal or strange vials that she's certain could make for a decent weapon. A strip of spacesuit cloth, tied over the edges of the upturned helmet, has transformed it into a handy messenger bag, and she's sure that the design will be all the rage in the Capitol soon. She's filled it each time with whatever scraps might help them last the weeks and track down the people who most definitely won't be winning.

She can tell by the way her skin seems to hum when she's done teleporting that she's been pushing it lately, and because she's with people willing to call her out on it, she rests. She sleeps while Albert keeps watch, keeping the injured Jet company while he takes his turns. She eats from the little dehydrated packets and she doesn't do more than two 'jumps' in an hour if she can help it. She makes sure to clean the makeshift bandage on the stab wound in the side of her chest on the regular. After they figure out the pattern to the gravity failures, she makes sure that they're all strapped in to the ground for the twice-hourly jolt.

When she teleports, it's nearly painful to see, a trick of the eye as reality arranges itself in perverse ways to squeeze her out of the dimension and back into it. She seems shrouded in the afterglow of lights that clutter up an eye after a flash, and then disappears into a blind spot that vision should not have allowed. She emerges in the same way, silently but preceded with the colorful blots of the optic nerve going haywire. And when she's crawled out of the pocket dimension she travels through, she only sometimes remembers to apologize for startling anyone she comes upon.

She may just teleport right next to you.

Comments

[silberfuchs]

Venus returns from a supply run just as Albert's turning to rummage for a packet of dehydrated... he's not sure what. Beets or something. It doesn't matter, he's hungry. Or was. Venus' sudden appearance makes his lose his appetite as he's looking directly at where she winks back into existence and the effect makes him a bit queasy, something he knows is psychosomatic - or at least purely neurological considering his stomach, like the rest of him, is artificial - but he can't help it. Looking right at her when she jumps is like a migraine on fast-forward.

Gingerly, he sets the food packet back in his own upturned helmet-turned-food-bowl and tries to blink the uncomfortable sensation from his eyes. "Welcome back."

[celebrityskinned]

"Thanks." She sits down next to him, folding one leg over the other and upturning the helmet. Another flashlight, some scrap metal, and probably best of all - duct tape. "Sorry about the visual."

There's something comforting about coming back to a 'crew', to her family - and she has started to consider them such. It's a heavy sort of sweetness, one which makes her simultaneously grateful they're here and guilty for such selfishness. She knows her comfort comes at the cost of their freedom, her solidarity at their safety.

As all things.

She picks up the duct tape and hands it over to Albert. "I found a bunch of...eggs or something on the lower floor. I'm thinking they're probably not gift baskets. How's it been here?"

[silberfuchs]

Another way to look at it is their comfort comes with an added side of safety. Numbers do wonders in the early days of an Arena. As a group, single Tributes are less likely to approach for fear of being overwhelmed, and their sharing resources means they stay alive just that much longer. If Delilah said anything to the effect of her thoughts, Albert would shoot her down immediately. This was his plan in the first place, to find their allies and stick together as long as possible.

"I take it you don't mean the kind for omelettes." He takes the duct tape with a raise of his eyebrows, clearly approving at the haul. "We'll avoid them, though I suspect the Gamemakers can likely hatch whatever's in there at will. Maybe we should try and seal the area off."

Not that there would be much of a point, but he's gone too long doing operations for rescue, for protecting others, that it's hard not to view the Gamemakers as the main enemy and try to thwart their plans, even if it would extend their time here. "The tape is a good find. It works as a bandage and stitches in a pinch and we can make weapons with it and the metal and pipes." They'd ripped a couple of those from an adjacent corridor, thinking to rig up some makeshift weapons. A jagged, duct taped spear is better than nothing.

"It's been fine here, if boring." If boring means stressful. He's supposed to be resting while the more restless go hunt for supplies and allies but he can't manage to sit still with his adopted sister and his husband off potentially getting into trouble. "Did you run into anyone?"

[celebrityskinned]

"And risk sealing someone inside there? It's too big, and I can only make so many jumps before I'm toast." She shakes her head. The Gamemaker surprise won't be thwarted, she knows that. If they have to pick their battles she's going to just up and abandon this one.

"I'm fine just using a cudgel. Honestly, a weapon's going to slow me down more than anything." She prefers her fists. She prefers the pain of split knuckles and broken fingers. It makes her feel like she's fighting even matches. "It's been pretty quiet. This Arena is huge."

She takes a seat and stretches her legs, twisting her ankles against the floor and listening to the satisfying pop. Her neck and knuckles follow in short succession, then her shoulders.

"Is Jet doing okay? I haven't- I'm not a mechanic. I'm not even a real medic. I just put things together that seem ripped apart on like, some gut level."

[silberfuchs]

"The quiet won't last long." He shrugs, but it does give him an idea. All the killing is well and good for the Capitol, but it's juicy gossip that holds the audience's attention just as well.

"Jet's doing alright. You did a good job on his organics, it's just the cybernetics that have been a problem, but he sent me a message that he found Bruce and Sam and is getting patched up as we speak." Albert taps the side of his head to indicate the brainwave transmitter, then pauses theatrically and leans in a bit, one eyebrow raised. "Speaking of Sam..."

He trails of conspiratorially, as if he's trying to make her blush. Maybe he is. He doubts it'll work but it's amusing just the same.

[wizardplease]

The arena had been full of far too many unpleasant and strange surprises, and when reality began to get all strange and faulty up ahead of him, Haruto recoiled and painfully brought his injured right hand up to rest over his belt buckle. If danger was incoming, he'd need to be ready to fight it. Or, possibly, haul out Hurricane form and run for it as fast as he can.

His face falls when he sees who it is. Then it scrunches into a look of disbelief. "What was that?" Hey! He recognized her! And in what limited experience that he had, she wasn't any sort of hazard.

[celebrityskinned]

"Sorry!" As soon as Venus turns her head, she realizes that it's Haruto Soma, that guy who was somewhat untarnished yet that she met while hungover in the elevator. The memory is enough to make her queasy, that morning mostly spent draped over a toilet seat, but he stands out in her mind's eye almost as some sort of beacon. Right. The guy with hope. "Teleportation, your eyes'll adjust in a second."

She waves a hand, eyes immediately going to his own reaching his belt. A weapon, maybe? She's been a combatant far too long to miss the gesture.

"Haruto Soma, right?"

[wizardplease]

Haruto continues to back away, and passes his good hand over his eyes with a grimace. That was hard on the eyes. Thank goodness the feeling was fading away quickly. "It's fine! It's fine." And he nods in quick confirmation that she remembered him just fine. "Yeah. And you're Venus. Right?"

He grins, and lets his bandaged hand with the gaudy silver and black ring crammed on one of the fingers drop away. "How're you holding out so far?" He has no intention of fighting anyone that he doesn't have to, and definitely no intention of fighting anyone that he recognizes and presumes to be friendly.

[celebrityskinned]

"Yeah, Venus." She's fully absorbed into her persona for the cameras, now. Her name, given to her by an agent, fits her better now than the one she was born with.

"Oh, you know. The same as I always do in these places. I'm built for this place like a car's built for the road." Not space, necessarily, but the Arena. Even restricted from her medicine, she's settled. She sets her hands at a loose angle so it's clear she isn't an aggressor here. "You?"

[wizardplease]

"Oh?" The moment he tosses out that casual little question, he's wishing he could take it back. Saying a thing like that's a good way to pick a fight in here, isn't it? So he coughs and he's quick to continue. "Better. Haven't had much trouble since this happened." And he holds up his bandaged right hand for a moment to indicate the 'this' that he meant. He's got it together. He's got his magic. Things are going to be fine.

[reassures]

Venus does in fact teleport right next to Nill, and if having strange powers has taught her anything, it's that startling a telepath is not a good idea. They're on the more difficult side to actually startle, so when Venus appears out of nowhere right beside her Nill nearly jumps out of her skin.

Thankfully she isn't running on enough instinct that she tries to actually hurt Venus. Nill jumps back, the knife in her hand raised, defensive but ready to actually be used if she needs to. It isn't until she actually realizes who it is that some of the tension leaks out of her shoulders, though not entirely.

If they both wake up alive in the Capitol after this they're gonna need to have a talk about your teleporting, Venus.

[celebrityskinned]

"Whoa!" Venus puts a hand up, ready to try and disarm Nill and extremely glad it doesn't come to that. She quickest way she knows how to get a knife out of someone's hand will leave them with a dislocated shoulder. "Sorry, I never know if I'm about to sneak up on someone when I do that."

Nill. She's glad to see Nill, glad that the brave girl who wanted to do for others what she felt no compulsion to do for herself has made it this far. They have a kindred spirit, even if it's of a tragic nature.

"I'm only scouting. You got nothing to fear from me." She doesn't feel as if that needs to be reiterated, but it can't hurt.

[reassures]

It's almost impossible to feel relief in a place like this, but it's about as close as Nill manages to get when she nods her head and lowers her knife. She doesn't stow it elsewhere, because that would hardly be the best course of action, but it's obvious enough that she doesn't find Venus to be a threat.

"Venus. I won't hurt you," Nill says to her through the telepathic link, but she makes sure to stay back, unmoving, knife lowered, not a threat. It's rare that people react well to a sudden... something talking in their head. She'd be more confused if they didn't.

[celebrityskinned]

Venus' eyes flick up for a moment, as if she's searching inside her own head for the voice, but she doesn't panic. She's lived too long around telepaths to find it anything other than vaguely surprising. She meets Nill's eyes.

Do you know if your telepathy is being recorded? She tries to repeat that sentence over and over again in her head, hoping Nill will pick up on it.

[reassures]

"It's not. If it was I think I would be able to tell. They don't seem to have nulls either."

She tilts her head a little, as if making sure that Venus is okay with her presence, and then peers down the hall they're in. She's spoken with enough people that the Capitol must know she's a telepath, but Nill didn't really think they would be unaware of that to begin with. They had to have some idea of what it was to make sure she couldn't use it. It doesn't mean she wants them knowing about anything important she talks about with Venus however, since they already find her suspicious. She'd been branded after all. She didn't want Venus getting into more trouble.

"The last time Lonestar posted someone told me there could be chips in our heads. That seems the most likely right now."

[metalicarus]

Jet was doing better at least, to the point he could pretend nothing was wrong and keep going with what needed to be done, like supply runs. Although supply runs sometimes turned into rescue missions with how dangerous this place was. This time it was a supply run, one where Albert stayed to hold down the fort and he and Venus did the leg-work. The older cyborg was probably a little chaffed the two injured people on their little team were sticking their necks out -something about pride and being the caretaker and all that crap- but he'd been trying to take care of them both and needed some rest. Even if that rest included keeping one eye open while they were gone, it was better than nothing.

Jet had just been sorting through some things, trying to figure out which scraps were useful and which were truly junk when the distortion caught his attention. It was strange to watch Venus teleport, his eyes were more mechanic than Albert's and a lot of it was artificial with minimal organics left except a few nerve strands here and there. Consequently, watching her appear was jarring when his organics strained to send the right messages while the mechanics just merrily went along there way as though someone randomly coming into existence wasn't even a big deal. Basically, it made his head throb (likely because he didn't have a stomach to get sick to) and when she showed up, he clenched his eyes shut a moment and pressed his palm to his temple.

"Yo. Find anything?" It would pass, he just needed to not keep his eyes closed a second.

[celebrityskinned]

"Sorry. I know that's a pain to look at. It looks great on camera, for whatever reason."

She reaches over and digs through her helmet pack, giving Jet a quick visual once-over - she's got nowhere near the mother bird impulse that Albert has for them right now, but ever since Kankri died in her arms she's been terrified of losing her people to infections and illness. She looks at Jet's pallor as much as eyes flitting down to the place he was wounded, though it's been healed.

How could she explain how important Jet is to her now, how he's a gateway through which she can see something better than the ills of humanity?

"Found some dehydrated ice cream. Not sure what it's got going for it nutrition-wise, but it'll be a step up from the powdered brussel sprouts we had last night."

[metalicarus]

"It's fine." He waved her apology off and rubbed at his eyes a second before reopening them. Jet was naturally pale, but he didn't look sickly. In fact, he felt pretty good, considering. He gave her his own once-over, not bothering to hide the fact he was looking for if anything was wrong. He'd lived among enough stubborn people to not trust someone if they told him they were fine, it was better if he looked himself.

The mention of ice cream, however, makes him perk up a little. "Anything's better than brussel sprouts I dunno who voluntarily eats those things, powdered or otherwise; ice cream'll definitely be an improvement."

He turned back to the scrap piles he'd made and nudged one of them. "This is the junk I've found, some of it might be usable as weapons, other stuff...well, I'm sure we can come up with something for this junk."

[celebrityskinned]

"Better brussel sprouts than beets, I guess. I'm convinced that those were created by Satan. I got my tastebuds back and tried them and thought it was some sort of sick practical joke."

She picks through the scrap metal, a knit working into the corner of her mouth as she pulls sharper edges against her fingernails to check their deadliness. The white lines against her nails stand out even in the dim light, it seems. She sets the pieces that pass muster aside. "Yeah, these are useful. In case you want to bleed someone."

Going out and killing has been the elephant in the room. She knows both Jet and Albert know about Venus' reputation, her body count. She hasn't asked if she's allowed to roam free and try to hunt Molotov and Black Tom down, but at some point she will.

[metalicarus]

"Beets are pretty bad, you're right." He smiled at her but then returned his attention to the scraps. He picks one up that she'd set aside in the 'worthy' pile and tested it for a good place to hold.

"Bleeding someone's kinda the point, right?" Killing was the elephant in the room, but Jet knew it was something that needed to be approached and, really, right now when it was just them was the best time.

He could remember a time when Ivan had told Joe that the cyborgs didn't kill needlessly, they spared lives whenever possible and almost always tried to find the peaceful resolution before taking on the violent one. Those were the ideals Albert still held, maybe not as tightly as Joe might, but tighter than Jet held them. Albert wouldn't condone blood spilled outside of self defense (or occasional retribution) unless it were to Black Tom or someone else on his husband's shit list. Jet was less idealistic about it. He wouldn't hunt anyone down in cold blood (unless they'd earned it) but if someone he didn't know or didn't care about got in his way...well, it was a death arena.

He's quiet a moment and when he speaks, it's low and careful as though he's considering his words for once. "Al'l tell you we shouldn't play their game -and I agree, to a point- but being passive forever's just gonna get either yourself or people you want to see win hurt. And then, I figure, that's still playing their game, just in a different way...so what's the point in running in circles till you're shot down?"

[a_minute_younger]

Gary catches the distortion out of the corner of his eye--something he almost misses, as Venus appears in the spot he passed a moment before, but it's just strange enough that it gets him to look over his shoulder. There is, quite suddenly, a person there. A familiar person, yes, but that familiar face is hidden behind some kind of mind-numbing spacial bullshit and really all Gary can think of is how everyone who isn't familiar is probably trying to kill him. Instinct takes hold.

Thankfully for the both of them, Gary's first instinct is to run. He hisses a sharp curse and dives for the opposite side of the room to gain some distance. And while the does ultimately achieve what he intended, the landing leaves something to be desired, as Gary is in fact injured enough that tumbling around like normal isn't going to work out too well. He collapses and skids the last several feet on his face, then spends a few precious seconds flopping around on the floor while he tries to regain his footing. He does not regain his footing. This could have gone better.

[celebrityskinned]

"Whoa, whoa!" Venus doesn't pursue Gary, because she knows better than to go running towards a scared person flailing around when they think you're going to rip their head off (literally). "Chill out, kid! I've got a hit list this time and you're not on it!"

And after watching that abysmal display of prowess, she'd feel kind of bad killing him anyway. It'd be kind of like kicking a puppy. With combat boots.

She doesn't approach. Instead she just keeps her hands up in a 'calm down' pose and relaxes her shoulders.

[a_minute_younger]

Venus's voice pulls him back--enough that he stops struggling, at least. He does not get up, though. Gary might not be in pain, but the feeling has drained from his limbs and he's pretty sure that his legs can't hold him up right now. He's just going to lie on his side for a little bit until that fixes itself.

"Oh! Venus!" Gary manages a weak wave with the arm that he isn't lying on top of. The other one is bent in an awkward direction and probably wouldn't work well for waving, anyways. "What are you sneaking up on people for if they're not on your list? Just eager to see me?"

[celebrityskinned]

"You wish. Just your good luck and my charming teleportation abilities." She puts a hand on her hip and doesn't go to help him so much as watch. "You okay there? Or did I actually scare the dickens out of you?"

It's easy for her to forget she's hardly older than him. The last few years have pulled her from seeing herself as a 'kid', made her feel just shy of, if not a matriarch, an older sister to most of her peers here.

[a_minute_younger]

"Nah, I'm fine!" Gary takes a moment to stiffly roll onto his back, propping himself up on his good elbow. His expression is cheerful and stays that way. "Some asshole caught me at the Cornucopia, but that was days ago. I'm okay now!"

Anyway, that's a boring thing to talk about. Gary changes the subject. "Teleportation, huh? That's how you did it?"