thearena | My, that's a nice shiny you have there...

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My, that's a nice shiny you have there...

WHO| Garrett and anyone unlucky enough to wander by
WHAT| Thefts and attempted thefts
WHERE| The birch forest
WHEN| Wednesday night of week 3
Notes/Warnings| tbd

It's late, it's dark, and it's cold. While Garrett prefers the first two to daylight, the cold is proving to be a bit of a problem. The meat he'd managed to scavenge so far has frozen solid, for one, and his attempts at starting a fire without a match have been fruitless. He'd survived a major plague, a fire, monsters, and countless armed guards, but this environment was going to be the end of him if he didn't get some better supplies. With no sign of any more boxes, and no bodies to steal from, there's only one way to get them.

And so, Garrett finds himself out in the forest, surpressing shivers even with his winter camoufage blanket-turned-cloak, watching and listening for unfortunate passerby. He is all too aware that at least some of the other "contestants" here have better weaponry and combat skill than him, so every skill he'd ever learned from his life in the shadows of the City is being employed now as he skulks in the woods. When he does spot a target, he begins to slowly, cautiously close the gap, his every movement as silent as the snowfall itself...

[OOC note: just type SUCCESSFUL or UNSUCCESSFUL in your title to say whether or not he's, well, successful in robbing your character.]

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[...A dragon. Okay, that was new. Everything else the arena had thrown at him had been realistic, if much, much larger than he was used to, but a dragon? They couldn't just settle for really big burricks?

Then he sees that it's carrying tools. That's...odd. Was someone trying to use it as a pack animal? He follows it cautiously from up in the trees, moving as cautiously and silently as he can manage, watching its behavior. Nothing about it inherently says it's aggressive, but he'd rather not take a chance without knowing for sure. The thief gathers up a clump of snow from one of the branches, and throws it, hard, at a tree off to the dragon's left.]

Not as a pack animal, no. Or at least, if they are they're somewhere else entirely. Not to mention that Iskierka herself would have had more than a few words for anyone even trying to use in such a manner.

On the other hand she doesn't look immediately aggressive. Instead, her body language - or what of it can be read - looks entirely self-assured. As if she has every reason to believe that know is going to simply attack her out of the blue and never mind that some people have before. It's not until the snowball hits the tree that anything changes; her wings momentarily half-spreading in surprise.

A moment later her head whips around, not to the tree the snowball had hit, but in the direction it must have been thrown from; she hasn't quite spotted Garrett yet, but she's very clearly looking all the same.

[He ducks behind the tree's trunk, concealing himself as much as possible while still being able to keep an eye on the dragon. He's been in this situation before: a target, likely much stronger than him, trying to figure out exactly where he is. He waits until she isn't looking straight in his direction, then slips across to another tree like a shadow in a room lit by a single candle.

He's closer now, just that little bit closer to his target and her supplies. The problem lies in getting those supplies off of her. With the abilities granted by the shard of magic stone in his eye out of commission, he was going to have to try doing this the old fashioned way. He puts a hand on the hilt of his knife, ready to cut her belongings free of their restraints. The thief takes a small breath, and sneaks closer.

He pauses just above her, hesitant. No risk, no reward. Before he can second-guess himself, Garrett drops down on her back and immediately tries to cut the ropes.]

Iskierka's used to the weight of people on her back. She is not, however, used to the feeling of people dropping onto her back; without even a second thought she rears up onto her hindlegs, wings spreading wide to help her keep her balance as she tries to throw Garett off.

From this angle, it's easier to tell that it's not ropes that are holding the netting in place, but leather straps. Something very deliberately made for this purpose, and something that might be a little more difficult to cut through, in the long run. And if that wasn't problematic enough, there's the fact that she's not exactly a comfortable seat, between the fact that the assortment of spines running down her back and over her sides are a little too warm for comfort and the fact that her hide seems to be slightly damp besides.

To say nothing of the fact that she's still bucking like a wild horse.]

[For someone who avoids horses, Garrett manages to stay on surprisingly long: about 4 seconds. Then he finds himself flying straight into a tree, and hits it upside-down and shoulders first with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

Gasping desperately for breath, he looks desperately up at the dragon.]

Nice...dragon?

[...He was going to die, wasn't he?]

She's not pleased, that much can be told by her expression. But she's not attacking yet either, for all that she isn't making even the slightest attempt to pick him up out of the snow either.

"I am hardly nice," she answers.

Or rather, she's nice only when she feels like it, and just at the moment, she doesn't. Garrett might not have actually succeeded in his attempt to steal her hard won odds and ends, but the attempt itself was still made.

"And certainly not to people who think it is better to ambush someone, rather than announce they are present."

[He blinks, surprised.]

You can talk?

[Then, he coughs.]

Of course you can talk. Look, that? That was nothing personal. You could say it's a bit of a habit.

[A habit developed to get him as much as he could take with as little effort as possible, but a habit nonetheless.]

"I have always been able to talk."

Even when she'd only just hatched she'd been able to speak, and even after so long in the Arenas there's still a moment of surprise in finding that there are people who aren't used to either the idea of dragons, the fact that she can speak, or both. Needless to say, she's not entirely certain she approves of the worlds that haven't got dragons.

Not that this is a point that she's inclined to bring up now, of course. Right now she's more concerned with the attempted theft.

"Habit or not, it is terribly rude to simply jump on someone's back."

"I thought you were an animal. I don't know what people are like where you're from, but we don't generally ask animals for permission before we jump on them."

He hopes like hell that she accepts his explanation. Because if she doesn't, he suspects that she can easily run him down and fry him to a crisp. If he'd have known she could think and talk, he probably would have passed on trying to rob her.

Accepts is perhaps not the right word. She can almost understand that she might have looked like something that she isn't, but the fact that she'd been taken for a mere animal doesn't sit well. It never has, really, even despite the fact that it's come up time and again during her stay in Panem.

(On the other hand, it's never come up quite like this before.)

"I am not certain that is a good excuse. But I suppose as long as you do not try to do so again it will be alright."

He throws up his hands to try and show her that he's being honest and understands he's outmatched.

"I'm a thief, not a gloomer. You breathe fire, right? I'm not stupid enough to become charcoal from trying that again."

Fortune might favor the bold, but untimely death always caught up with the stupid.

"Why'd they drag in a dragon, anyway?"

"They have hardly said why they have dragged any of us here."

She thinks. She's not in the habit of asking people and she's not really interested in poking her nose into the sorts of places that she'd need to poke her nose into in order to learn. So she contents herself with staying as she is, and if that should happen to mean staying mostly-blind to the goings on behind the scenes, so be it.

On the other hand, Garrett holding up his hands is good enough proof for Iskierka on the not-about-to-attack front. If he changes his mind, it might not end well, but for the time being she's glad enough to continue on as they are.

"And of course I do! I should hardly be a Kazilik, otherwise."

"Seems like they just grabbed all of us and threw us in here. And they expect all of us to just become mass murderers."

He wondered where the logic was in that. Surely trained killers and murderers would be more entertaining to watch than a bunch of people hiding from everyone else and trying to survive?

"Ah. Well, fire's better than what we've got back home."

That's the question of the day, really. Iskierka generally supposes that there must be a reason they've been chosen and not someone who might be better suited to such things, but that's about where her train of thought usually stops. What-ifs and could-bes are really not her thing by any stretch of the imagination.

"Oh? What is it that you have at home?"

Regardless of just about anything else, she's always interested in hearing about other kinds of dragons.

"Burricks. They've got all the majesty of hagfish. Dragons breathe fire; burricks...belch explosive gas."

As useful as they could be as guard animals, there was just no denying that they were an embarassing enimal. At least they really were as dumb as they looked; sneaking past them was easy enough once you knew a few tricks.

The name means nothing to Iskierka. Which isn't anything of a surprise. Other worlds aren't something she cares much about - and as far as she's been able to tell whatever burricks aren't dragons, at which point she's stopped being quite so interested in them. Or rather, in what they might loo like. The idea of something that belches some kind of gas, on the other hand, is interesting.

"Oh," she comments. "I do not think we have anything quite like that."

Fire breathers, yes, and more than a few other things besides, but nothing that's explosive in quite the same way.

"You don't want anything like burricks. Trust me."

He raises a brow now, genuinely curious about this creature.

"So, can you fly, too, or are those wings just for show?"

"I should be a very poor dragon if I could hardly fly."

The answer comes almost immediately, and with no small amount of pride besides. True, she doesn't immediately jump to an an actual demonstration, but that may be more due to the fact that there's not exactly a lot of space in between the trees as opposed to a general lack of interest in proving that she can.

"Sorry, I've just never seen anything bigger than a bird fly."

His eyes metaphorically light up as he leans forward a bit in genuine excitement.

"Can you show me?"

Whatever scraps of his inner child survived his childhood bubble up to the surface now.

"It would be more impressive were there more space," Iskierka comments and it's at least partially a complaint. For all that she's fond of showing off she likes it a lot better when she do it properly. Make it the show it deserves to be, as opposed to something that's only bits and pieces.

That said, she's already half-spreading her wings. She might prefer the more impressive sort of showing off, but if Garrett would prefer something more immediate she's at least not unwilling to make her best attempt.

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My, that's a nice shiny you have there...

Pardon me while I laugh at Garrett thinking about doing really stupid things

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