thearena | open

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Who| Brock Rumlow, and Open
What| Xenos and airlocks and murder, oh my?
Where| Upper levels of the station
When| Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Aiming for fights, rescues, and Brock using other people as meat shields. Unless you were one of the few to get into his good graces at the start. Any questions or potential ideas, pm me.

There had been a grand rush for the Cornucopia, as he'd imagined, and the temptation to try and edge someone out in the effort to grab something useful had been there. He wouldn't lie about that. But priority had to be given to finding a secure location to defend, to last as long as possible. That meant figuring out the station, what was on it, and finding food before anyone else got the bright idea. Then he could worry about getting the drop on someone and stealing their weapons or tools, or whatever else he needed. Couldn't be any harder than the struggle of the initial rush, or so he supposed.

He had to remember that there were in fact other people when the station around him was so resoundingly quiet. Lights flickered and cast sharp shadows against the wall, abrupt enough to set anyone on edge as they moved between puddles of light and dark. Moving to the end of a section and tapping at the airlock, Rumlow found this way cut off. No amount of button pushing seemed to be gain him access. Oh well. The station seemed circular, so maybe he ought to double back the way he'd come.

And that might have been the plan, had he not heard something drop to the floor behind him in the darkness. Instantly he shrank back against a nearby wall, dropping to a crouch as his breath fogged the inside of his helmet, waiting.

A tribute? Or something else. This damn suit was clunky as Hell, going to slow him down if it came to a fight. Was he really going to bite it because he refused to be seen wandering around in a pink spacesuit?

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Sigma, too, has decided to keep his suit on - the visor impeding his vision, his cybernetic eye picks up too late that the airlock he has entered is not unoccupied. He curses his fate, and should have known that, sooner or later, he would run into someone whose identity was also obscured. The spacesuits were useful tools: it kept one anonymous from enemies as well as needy friends. His old legs and cybernetic weight, compounded with the hard metallic floor and narrow echoing walls, made running rather futile. He was grateful, at least, to have the assistance of the morphogenetic field - a warning that someone was dangerous was better than any hiding place his legs could carry him to. Without assurance that he was walking into certain death, Sigma decides to take his chances and approach the other Tribute.

He removes his helmet, the wrinkles of age plain on his face, as he observes the anonymous figure on the floor.

"You're fortunate those helmets are one way. I do not know who you are, but rest assured I am not looking for a fight. Reveal your identity and I shall consider an alliance. Should you spring at me, I will not hesitate to kill you." They were big words coming from an elderly man.

Edited 2014-12-18 19:31 (UTC)

Big words, sure. But the old man's got guts. Rumlow's got to respect that, and he pulls himself to his feet when Sigma steps forward.

Of course, he's not whipping off his helmet easy as all that. They've both got a disadvantage in bulkiness, but Rumlow still figures he can probably move faster than the old geezer if he has to. Doesn't look like he has anything worth taking, and taking him along for the ride's only going to slow him down. "Alliance?" he replies, through the distortion of his helmet. "Yeah. I just bet."

His gaze lingers on that eye. Interesting feature. Better than an eyepatch, at any rate.

Sigma does not recognize the voice that comes from behind the helmet, but he is not daunted. The old man casually sets his helmet under the crook of his arm and puts his hands on his hips.

"You're new, aren't you? Surviving the Arena is no easy task for one person on their own. After all, there are Xenomorphs around here," he pronounces the name carefully, making it perfectly clear he knows what he is talking about. Sigma had seen the eggs and knew it was only a matter of time before the Capitol got their bloodbath. There was, of course, a chance that this man came from a world where such creatures were the works of fiction (rendering his information useless), but Sigma could not be certain. "Do you truly believe you would last long, one on one?"

He will know the other's decision soon enough. Sigma stands his ground and waits for a vision that might tell him one of the possible outcomes of his gamble.

"Only gotta last longer than everyone else," he pointed out, fingers flexing at his side. There's a number of options available here. He can turn his back on the old guy, stake him out for bait for these things -- Xenomorphs, really? Where's Arnold when you need him? -- or accept his help. So far, he doesn't seem that useful.

Option two seems pretty good. He's not armed but if he gets the drop on the guy, he's pretty certain he can snap his neck before he has a chance to retaliate. Better to feign an alliance up until that point, however, and he straightens his back.

"So what's the plan, exactly?"

Sigma opens his mouth to tell his new partner to keep moving - that standing stationary was a surefire way to attract unwanted company - when pain explodes behind his eyes and he doubles over. Another world unfolds around him, still very similar to their own, where he and this yet unnamed man are travelling through the corridors of the Arena. Something moves in the darkness ahead, drawing long shadows in the barely-flickering light.

Sigma stops and raises his hand, signalling the other to stay still. Were those the telltale sounds of a Xenomorph's nails clacking against metal? They sounded a bit different from the archetypal monster - as if it were down on all fours...

He lowers his voice to a whisper. "...Wait. I don't think we're-"

Apparently this man didn't get the memo.

Falling victim to his own mistake, Sigma realizes an instant too late that removing his helmet had been the wrong thing to do. The other man's hands tighten around the sides of his head and with one, powerful twist, the vertebrae beneath Sigma's brainstem snaps. The elderly man lives long enough to die in a blind panic, twitching on the floor, unable to breathe or speak a word of his agony.

The vision takes moments to wear off and leaves Sigma blinking back white. Straightening up, he sighs angrily, running his hand down his face before gripping the bridge of his nose to stave off a headache. He really did not have the time for this betrayal nonsense, and even if he were to bail now, there was a good chance that one or both of them was already damned. He may as well speak straight.

"First, I am going to ask you if I need to put my helmet on, or if you're still going to snap my neck after I tell you there's an incoming enemy?"

He glares at the other with all the intimidation he can muster, thoroughly unimpressed.

That brings Rumlow to a dead halt. At first he figures the guy's having a heart attack, or something close to it. What he says next clears his head of that notion, and his lips curl into a faint sneer. "What, you some kind of mind reader?" he countered, though casually enough to dismiss if the man was just speaking his hunches out loud.

And if he wasn't? If he did know what he was planning? Didn't much care for the idea of someone rifling through his thoughts. Being untrustworthy as a rule tended to make you not trust other people, too certain that they'd be every bit as likely to turn on you as you might be to turn on them.

Licking dry lips, he takes a step closer, fingers curling tight at his sides.

Rumlow is, apparently, a man who will not be moved by reason or by bartering - exactly the sort of person Sigma has a hard time dealing with. He watches the other man advance and must stare at him in confusion before he realizes he is being threatened. He would kill him for reading his mind? That was usually not the reaction his powers begot.

Sigma has no choice but to retreat somewhat, to take a step back before Rumlow comes within arm's reach. "I..." He is still blinking spots back from his eyes, where his sight is returning from the doomed world to the present one. "I can predict death," he blurts out, which is not quite the truth, but the brevity might save his life. Now Sigma steels himself, plants his feet at shoulder's width apart, and holds out his hands. "Stop. We do not have the time for this. You are going to die if you don't listen to me!" It was another quick half-truth, but Sigma feared what might come down those halls more than a broken neck.

Self-preservation is the top priority here. That, and making a good showing for the folks back home.

So when Sigma signals for him to halt he does, albeit with a look that says he better keep talking. He wouldn't kill him for his gift, no, he's not prone to wasting something useful like that. Of course, this could all be some distraction tactic so the old man could shiv him in the back at the first given opportunity. Who's to say?

Rumlow's jaw works tight in frustration, but he's obviously willing to listen. For now.

The next moments tick by like a trainwreck in slow-motion as Sigma waits for the betrayal. It does not come. He releases a muffled sigh, dropping his voice low. He cannot know when the creature will come.

So Sigma straightens, grateful for this man's eagerness if not to work with him, then to preserve their lives long enough to part on a neutral ground. "Alright. I do not know how much time we have. It seems to have given us enough time to begin backtracking together, so I presume less than ten minutes. It will come towards us from that direction..." He points down the hallway they both came.

He stops his rushed explanation to think. "Perhaps if we hurry, we can head it off. Or, we can take our chances with a barricade and hope someone else attracts it interest. Any ideas...?"

The thing about the Arenas is that Nill really isn't suited to them in any capacity. While she's plenty experienced with trying to keep herself alive, she's also spent most of her time since her arrival trying to do things for people. And now, because it makes such a good show, they expect her to kill them.

Instead she's been trying to find her friends in the hopes that one of them might actually win this game. All she needed to do was make sure they outlived her. It was all she really could do, and it wasn't exactly complicated. Unfortunately, it does leave her on her own for decent chunks of time while she tries to find people. Fortunately, she made it out of the Cornucopia unscathed.

Having a knife in hand only makes her feel slightly on edge however, and Nill freezes, ducking into an offshoot hallway when she manages to fumble and drop the length of rope that had still been attached to her spacesuit. It was such a stupid accident. If she did it again she might get herself killed. It doesn't take long that there only seems to be one other person in the general area though, and Nill can't tell who it is - she hadn't seen them, and she doesn't know the minds of that many people here.

After a moment of weighing her options, Nill projects the little 'voice' that her telepathy allows her to communicate with. While it doesn't have any real sound to it in Rumlow's head, it does give a general impression of wariness. Likewise, it gives no indicators of gender.

"Name?"

Well that's unsettling.

He's not a fan of anything or anyone being in his head but him, but the helmet blocks any view she might have of the narrowed eyes, the thinning of his lips as he pulls to his feet. The figure in front of him is slight, but armed. Good. He's been needing a weapon for some time now.

"Rumlow," he thinks back at her, cocking his head slightly. Maybe he can lure whoever it is in closer, make them think that they've found a potential ally.

"Rumlow," The voice echoes back at him, as if considering the information. Though it still doesn't exactly have any sound, there's something like recognition in it this time, more feeling than anything direct. "The man from the bar."

The figure doesn't make a single movement to get anywhere near closer to him, though it also doesn't try to get further away. The weapon isn't lowered either.

"This is Nill."

A breath drains out of him at that. Nill? The mute girl with the wings? It's more a surface thought than pointed attempt at communication, but she can likely read it well enough.

With a quick glance around he gestures her closer, before displaying open hands. She's not in any danger from him, at least not for the moment. It'd be far better if the audience at home could see him protecting her than the trouble it'd be worth to attack her, after all. Got to play the game, the way it's been told.

"It's alright. I'm not gonna hurt you. Said I'd look out for you, didn't I?" With a crooked grin he reaches for the visor of his helmet, drawing it back so she might see his face. As if that made him any more trustworthy.

"You did," she concedes, but it only seems to do so much for her faith in the words. Even so, she steps out into the open, knife still held carefully in her hands, more in a position for defending a sudden attack than instituting one. For now.

She still has her helmet with her, but it's held in the other hand, with rope in it and what looks like a box from the cornucopia, if he got a good enough look to recognize it. She steps closer, but stays outside of the reach of his arms. Nill has confidence in her speed, and with that suit on there was no way he could actually get his hands on her so long as she wasn't dumb about it.

"If you keep your suit on someone will catch you. It's too heavy."

Not that keeping it couldn't have merits, but it wasn't worth it in the short-term. And while suspicious of Rumlow, she doesn't know enough about him or Steve to care about what he did or know what it entailed. She liked him.

It's too early in the Arena for her to have figured out that none of the tributes are receiving any help from their mentors and sponsors. She hopes Linden is paying attention if he's sober. (If he's alive.)

If she's waiting for him to make a move against her, she'll be waiting some time now. His posture's dropped into something a little more comfortable, though obviously still keeping an eye on their surroundings. No reason to let them both get dropped on by one of the creepy-crawlies making its way around the ship.

"Yeah, and if I take it off, I'm wearing a tight pink spacesuit," he points out, this time out loud, and it's clear enough from his expression what he thinks of that option. "I'm less worried about them catching up to me than I am getting through the areas that like to lock down and pull the oxygen out. I'm used to wearing heavy gear, don't worry."

There's another look at her, as though he might be injured that she's not just trusting he won't turn on her immediately. Well, can't blame her. Pretty smart of her, actually. But that's not the point.

"Anything that way?" he adds, nodding in the direction she'd come.

They stuck six in pink? Really? She actually looks a little surprised. Clementine could definitely pull off pink, and Karkat... might be able to. Linden was a victor and if he ever ended up in an Arena Nill would be furious, but he wouldn't be able to manage pink at all.

A small flicker of a smile quirks her lips upward.

"I don't think pink is your color."

She'd found it was better to just be careful, but his reasoning for keeping it otherwise was sound enough, even if it was part motivated by the desire to avoid pink. She doesn't pay his apparent hurt much mind.

"You should wait if you're going that way. There were other tributes heading in that direction."

They'd mostly just been passing through as far as she could tell, but it seemed like an unnecessary risk to try and deal with them or hide in the area. Over this way there had just been the one tribute, and not dealing with him would have been easy enough if she hadn't given herself away.

"Yeah, well. There's worse than them hanging around, and staying in one spot's not going to stay an option." Rumlow casts his gaze above them as the lights give a sputtering flicker. Faulty equipment might be a nuisance on Earth. In space, it could be life-threatening all on its own.

"Is there any way to seal that door, keep them from coming through after us?"

The other thought he has is rigging a portion of the area to look safe, just long enough to hit the airlock. But getting more than one person at a time with that trick's the optimal way to do it, and it really depends on who's out there, and how wary they're going to be of any traps set.

...he shouldn't be enjoying this as much as he really, really is.

"I don't think so."

She spares the door a glance, the buttons around it, but she doesn't let her gaze linger there for more than a second or two. If she had never spoken to him before then looking away would practically be an invitation to get attacked. Even considering they've spoken before and seemed to get along well enough she's not sure that would stop him if he felt like it was necessary at the time.

"Most things in this area are falling apart. I think they did that on purpose."

She wouldn't put it past the gamemakers to rig sections of the Arena. It might be that if anyone stayed in one spot for too long, or if they set it off, the section they were in could start coming apart. A race to get back to safety. It would certainly be dramatic, and the Capitolites seemed extremely fond of their drama.

"For now it's safer to keep moving."

"Right, the whole 'suspenseful battle against the environment' aspect. They never let you forget this is all a reality-tv show in the end, do they?"

Nill's caution and mistrust is well-placed, but he's also reasonable certain she won't try anything on him. And if they're playing up to the cameras...well, he could do worse than appearing to protect a tiny, defenseless little girl with angel wings. He'd just have to keep an eye out for anyone else they happened to cross along the way. Mouth thinning grimly, he motioned for her to follow before turning, pressing back in the direction he'd come.

He'd go first, knowing she wasn't going to leave her back open to him. Let her keep an eye on what lay in the other direction. Carefully stepping around a patch of exposed wiring sticking up through the floors, Rumlow starts for the door.

And then pauses when he hears skittering, too faint to tell which direction it had come from.

"...well that's not a good sign."

"Coast's clear."

Marco and Kaito have an uneasy sort of truce established, one where they're both aware that two brains are better than one when it comes to surviving the insane death traps of this Arena. When they travel, they're careful with corners. They've even got a little series of hand gestures figured out.

Marco's kind of coming to like this guy, even though that's compartmentalized away in Marco's brain under a tarp of "might have to kill him later". Kaito seems to know what he's doing and have a level enough head not to completely flip out.

Marco doesn't even know if he's capable of flipping out anymore. Feeling impending death, sure, but he's been hardened by way too much alien combat and near-death to really freak. In a way, it seems almost innocent, the ability to actually surrender to the pants-wetting, shrieking terror, and Marco doesn't miss it so much as resent that he's no longer able to do it.

The room they wind up in is a science lab, but rather than a pickable lock, there's an airlock with buttons and some glass cabinets full of metal instruments and 'samples'.

"This one's a cul-de-sac. Great. Might as well five-finger discount everything in these cabinets."

"Is that an expression? Shouldn't it be ten fingers?" It just made sense to Kaito that if you were stealing, you should obviously use both hands; he was absolutely overthinking this. But sure, yes, metal instruments. He opened one of the glass cabinets and started cheerfully ransacking the contents for anything useful.

"This reminds me of the science room at school. Except, you know. Creepier."

Well well. It looked as though neither of the two tributes had realized they had company nearby, watching them with interest. Neither one looked like they'd put up much of a fight, either, but getting the drop on one meant alerting the other, and he was going in empty-handed for the moment.

Couple of kids. They'd die soon in here, anyway.

Quiet as he could in that heavy suit, Rumlow slid towards the airlock door. Easiest, cleanest way to prune away some of the competition.

"Totally an expression. Maybe you're using your other hand to do something else. Like distract the clerk with fingerpuppets or whatever."

Thankfully - maybe - for Marco and Kaito, the suits only allow for so much stealth. Marco's got his ears pricked to even the slightest twitch or scuffle, and he whirls around and sees Rumlow behind them. It comes to a split second decision - to try and communicate or to assume that the guy going towards the airlock is attacking them and go for his throat. Marco makes the wrong choice.

"Dude, you don't want to open that." He edges away.

Oh, yeah, a guy going for the airlock controls, yes that seemed fine, perfectly fine

Kaito probably would have taken a more measured response here, except that he'd almost gotten his face eaten by a cheetah alien earlier and so he was just a little

jumpier

than usual.

Which manifested as him smashing his elbow into the face of the glass cabinet and hurling the biggest, sharpest, throwing-friendliest shard at Rumlow.

Well, not at Rumlow; he wasn't homicidal or anything. More like at the space between him and the controls, which he would be occupying pretty soon if he didn't make a detour.

There's no way he's on the up-and-up about this, and there's no mistaking what he plans on doing. Which is why he can't hold it personally when one of the kids hurls that chunk of glass at him, nearly nailing him in the suit. That would have been problematic, and his head jerks back to stare in Kaito's direction.

"Bad call, kid." The helmet distorts his voice as he reaches for the panel. Of course, whatever was in those cabinets was likely going to go flying right along with them out into the cold of space. Could be some stuff of use in there somewhere, though if they hadn't found anything yet it was entirely possible the place had already been picked through.

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[Marco and Kaito for Airlocking]

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