thearena | [open] London Bridge is broken down

Entry tags:

[open] London Bridge is broken down

Who| Phillip Gray and Open
What| Week 5 & 6 Catchall with a closed prompt for Firo
Where| All over the Arena
When| Weeks 5 and 6
Warnings/Notes| FNAF details, Closed prompt contains death by rats,

I- Week 5
A. The Church

It didn't matter that the Capitol stripped the building of any religious connotations, for the ragged Phone Guy, it was still a place that held something special. There was signs of a struggle here but it didn't matter to the Tribute as he settled down on a pew and rested. Food was becoming scarce, and with each passing day, the rats were increasingly aggressive towards anyone who got too close to their scraps. The sudden illness knocked the wind right out of Phillip's lungs, he'd never experienced anything like it…was it just the tributes who were afflicted?

He was all too aware that the Arena was whittling down but as desperate as things turned, Phil had no intention of fighting or killing without provocation. For all intents and purposes, he knew he was on borrowed time, that should the Capitol be bored of him, they could send him back into his gaudy-colored, deranged death. Killing anyone for the sake of winning wouldn't serve any other purpose than to get extra sponsors and break him. Linden knew about his stance on that aspect of the Games, that he would never stoop so low as to be like the serial killer. I'd rather die…self-defense was a whole other story. Gray found himself debating these ideas in a place that, in any other world, would have ended with lightning striking him.

"I miss you Vee…"he whispered into the empty room, not knowing if that someone on the other side of the camera. Whatever idea the Capitol had of Phillip Gray ever letting go of the District Five tribute, it was wrong. He figured he could say something like that in a church, right? "A lot." He whispered three words and allowed himself to rest, one ear open for intruders.

B. The Forest

The Arena's forest bore no resemblance to the clearings Phillip played Pirate when he was a child: there wasn't a hint of the comfortable breeze, only the eerie crackle of branches in the wind. There were signs of blood, of bodies dragged around and away. This was plain survival and the Phone Guy kept it that way. He had to keep his mind busy as he laid down a simple trap for a rabbit to take. He couldn't deny the smile when he caught a frog the other day, and of coursed he named it Kermit before it ended its' life.

Anyone in his reach will get one look before he decides if friend or foe…and react accordingly.

II - Week 6
A. Village Outskirts
How long has it been since Phil saw another Tribute? The lack of activity should have been unnerving, and at times, it was, but this is when Phone Guy thrived the best. So many months have passed but old instincts died hard and it's in the silence of the Village that he becomes aware of the hazards, the environment, everything. Being stuck in that security room for five years, his hearing was fine-tuned to listen for any steps that were not his own, for someone else's breathing. This was the last raid he could make, he had to make it count as he broke pot after pot.

B. Closed to Firo - Castle
It was the howling of the wolves that prompted Phillip to abandon the forest for the time being, he'd made it this far and overgrown dogs weren't going to kill him now. The castle, even with the damage inflicted by that witch girl still seemed sturdy enough to hide from the ravenous beasts. Gray made it a point to avoid the castle as much as he could, the experience in the Catacombs, even if it was just the entrance, left one hell of an impression on him. Too much like the back rooms at Freddy's, dungeon cells replacing the steel drums that held the dismembered limbs that…But times were harsh, and there was only so many threats he could face before he called it in.

"Hello…hello?" he greeted into the walls, hoping an ally would answer.

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"You look all right yourself." His spirits were up and that's what mattered, right?

A camp, that's good; Firo didn't set one up himself, but he nodded with relief to know that Phil had one.

His expression darkened at the news of the forest. "Can't say I'm too surprised. Eowyn said there was some weird stuff goin' on there and the place looked creepy as hell anyway. Nothin' good can come outta all those weird lookin' trees."

Firo made no pretense at being anything but a city boy through and through.

"Are you just lookin' for shelter here, then? It's pretty good for that, at least--it's dry, almost clean, has all its walls and a roof."

He smiled, trying to keep upbeat. And he was truly grateful for all those things; he'd spent many years living in places that had none of that.

"I was until I, well, I keep spotting rats around these parts," Phil admitted sheepishly, "It's more from a restaurant employee's perspective but they're disgusting little vermin." Even killing one for substenance was a gamble, "Not to mention, they're getting more territorial." That was the creepy part: that the Capitol was somehow increasing the animals' aggression but for what? There were fewer tributes now than they had been in the past and the Arena's hazards took even more lives in gruesome ways.

"But hey! You've lasted this long, there's gotta be something right going on here!"

Firo nearly wanted to laugh at the character of Phil's concern--worrying about hygiene here, really?--but he growled just at the thought of rats. "Those things are gross. We had huge ones back home, especially if you were down at the harbor--one a' the first things you learned on the street was that there was a reason people don't sleep in those nice abandoned warehouses."

Even if it was shelter... Well, the rats had gotten there first and their numbers were greater. A shelter for the night wasn't worth getting chewed to bits.

He shook his head. "I could say the same for you." And, despite the plan they've agreed to, he couldn't help but smile a little as he reached out to punch Phil's shoulder. "Maybe this'll be the time you'll make it out."

Gray shot a look towards his fellow Tribute that read don't judge but he can see how people can be so adverse to the vermin. "I heard rats in New York get to be dog-sized but-"

The punch and what Firo said, Phil shook his head, "It's not in my hands if I make it out of here, Firo, it's the odds, just as they are yours. I'm just trying to survive as best as I can without backing out of my promises. My luck is that I'll end up beheaded or torn apart."

He knew his luck and deep down, some part of him wanted to die gruesomely, to make up for what happened with the kids. They were mangled beyond recognition, so much so that they were listed as Missing, there was no way to tell who was who. The killer did a terrifyingly good job at making sure their parents would never find peace.

Edited 2015-07-05 18:08 (UTC)

The odds. Managing a casino teaches you a little something about the odds and Firo barely kept back a sigh as he thought of them--theirs weren't all that good.

"'Least getting your head taken off is pretty quick, right? Even if it ain't as painless as they say."

There weren't many ways to make this a brighter conversation, Firo realized as he shoved his hands into his pockets. "If somebody does that shit to you, we'll just get 'em next time, okay?" He tried to smile, as if words of revenge would bring comfort.

Phillip chuckled at the somewhat comforting promise of revenge, "Hey now, I won't hold it against them if they're doing it for survival...death match and all." It would be a different thing all together if the killer actually enjoyed the murders in the first place. Dandy Mott may be gone, but his impression in the Phone Guy was as clear as it could ever be: some Tributes could become monsters.

"Likewise though, even if I'm not one to play the revenge game." That wasn't entirely true, "Okay, not play the revenge game in Panem." Better.

As he spied their surroundings, Gray noted the beacon over Firo's head and scraps of food. "How long have you been in here?"

"Hey, it's the whole... what do they say..? The principle of the thing. Need to make sure people know not to mess with you the next time."

At home, there often wasn't a next time. But Firo knew firsthand that dying repeatedly was never pleasant, so he wanted Phil to be spared that as much as possible.

"A while." His mouth quirked up in something like a smile. "This place is so huge you can still stay on the move even if you don't leave. There wasn't a tenement on the block that was even a quarter the size of this place."

Not that tenements were known as an impressive unit of measurement, but it was the only reference Firo had.

He thought back to what Phil had said a moment ago. "If you already have a camp and you don't want to hang out with the rats... Are you lookin' for something?"

"I may be from a small town but this place sounds scary big. I've been avoiding it, heard people went nuts in here. Guess I was wrong." No, but those hazards were nothing compared to the actual threats that inhabited the castle.

Firo caught Phil in his plans and he gave the mobster a sheepish smile, "I figured if there's a castle, and the Capitol wants to go full on fairytale, there should be suits of armor, right? Maybe it'll the others, they're way more experienced than I am. Uh, Daryl Dixon and Rick Grimes, you know them?"

They looked grizzly enough to be considered veterans.

"Nah, I don't." And he wanted to tell Phil to stop undervaluing himself, but held his tongue. Maybe there'd be time for that after the Arena.

"All right, then. Armor, got it. Where do you wanna start lookin'?"

Firo didn't seem to even consider the idea that he might not be invited along.

"I thought there'd be more random ones in the halls--that's how it is in movies and books, you know?--but I can tell you which places I've been that don't have them."

For Phillip, Firo was invited by default, there's no questions needed. "I was about to suggest the armory or the torture chambers because why not, but that would be too easy," he almost let slip out too kind of the Capitol t just have weapon blocking armor just lying about. He offered Firo half an apple for his trouble.

The castle walls were overpowering, and Gray wondered just how Firo managed to not lose his mind in these halls. The former guard was not thinking things through as he should have. "And ghosts? Have you found them?" That one? He's intimate with, unfortunately.

"Armory does make sense... So how about we check out those places first? Maybe it'll be there, just, like... with traps or something?" The Capitol wouldn't make it too easy, but sometimes they threw you a bone. Usually with a hefty price attached.

Firo thought of the flashes of a long dead--should be dead--man he encountered on a lone foray into the catacombs. It seemed he couldn't escape being haunted by Szilard even here. Realizing he had paused, he shook his head. "...No. No ghosts. I don't believe in crap like that, do you?"

Phillip nodded to both questions, but it's the former that gets a proper response, "We'll have to just hope for the best..." The latter gets a steely nod, "I do." Because when technical difficulties can't explain what happened to those bots, what else is there? What can anyone say by the malicious acts the animatronics made, the way they blindly pursued, their irrational acting around the adults? There was something sentient within them. And they would not stop until they had their revenge.

"Remember what you asked me a few weeks back?"

Hoping for the best was probably the best plan they could hope for, Firo realized as he started moving forward.

Firo raised an eyebrow, nodding slowly as he reached back into the memory blanks. "About all the shit that went down with you back home? Yeah, I remember."

How could he forget? Though the action of the Arena prevented him from thinking too much on the details, no one could forget hearing about how their mild-mannered friend dealt with corpses.

Phil felt like he was insane for admitting this out loud, "There were times when the animatronics were left alone in the daytime...they would stare at the adults, sometimes in threatening ways. At first, I thought it was all in the employees' imaginations, given the murders. And then one of them attack a young man named Jeremy Fitzgerald...they started oozing blood and and mucus soon after even though they were perfectly clean. Worse, their behavior was erratic, spiteful at times."

As he paced down the halls that were falling apart, Gray added, "The official explanation was they were malfunctioning. I supervised those repairs, they were fine. But there was something inherently wrong with them."

Minding any rats or insect, the Phone Guy sighed, "Beady little eyes looking for someone to stuff."

Firo listened quietly and closely. At first, he was almost impassive--still doubtful, as before--but as the story went on, he raised an eyebrow and his mouth nearly dropped open.

He kicked a piece of rubble down the hallway. "...And you're tellin' me that people didn't just decide to torch the things right away?"

Firo didn't put much stock in superstition, as Phil probably gathered from his skeptical response to ghosts. But when it did seem like something creepy was up? A decisive response was best, Firo thought.

"They couldn't, or at least...they wouldn't want to lose their investments. Apparently, no matter how many guards died, management would consider them chump change compared to the animatronics. I was one of those people who favored getting them fixed but that’s in the past," Phil didn’t want to seem like a callous asshole, as some of the people did.

“So yeah…I guess I’m a superstitious sorta guy.” And more when a quick footed mass of fur crossed their path, “We need a cat here. A big freaking cat, a huge one.” Something told the Phone Guy that if they found a feline here, the rats would not go down easily.

Firo's lip snarled in disgust. "Jesus. Those are some real bastards. My boss would never let somethin' like that go on if it was hurtin' his guys."

Then again, that was the same boss who was supposed to have guys dying for him without hesitation. Firo didn't always think his self-righteous remarks through.

"...I dunno about that. Maybe a few cats--I bet guys like these could easily take out a cat when they swarm." Despite trying not to let on at any unease, he found himself glancing at the walls around them. "There's always more of 'em around than you'd think, too..."

Phil raised his hand slightly at that before he quietly put the thought away out of respect for Firo and his family. "Money coming and going, and I'm still mad at myself for not stopping it when I had the chance."

The look on Phone Guy's face as Firo said that? Priceless. "If we survive this...you do not have a career in motivational speaking, Prochainezo," he sassed out, "You're making me think they're all over the place and I only have a knife!" He...left Jet's gifts behind the moment he decided to get the armor.

Firo looked away, not entirely sure what to say to that. On the one hand, it sounded pretty clear to him that Phil had only been doing his job--how do you disobey your boss's orders? But he didn't know how comforting that would be. "Can't go against the boss. And there's no use thinkin' about it now..."

Some of the gloom from his face lifted as he laughed at the next remark. "Guess it's lucky for me that I can only leave my current job in a box." No need to ever find another job, motivational speaker or not. Even in Panem, he still thought of the Camorra as his one and only career. A career that might come to a bloody end if his Family knew about the business in Alcatraz and Panem, but Firo had accepted that. "Anyway, a knife's all I got too, so at least you won't go down alone."

Despite his joking words, Firo found himself hoping they'd reach their destination soon--and maybe they would; a few of the heavy doors coming into view looked promising.

"Oh look someone with just as dark a humor and lethal a job as I do," Phil shot back with the grin to match. The big doors revealed an armory all right...ransacked and the once sturdy models torn apart at the hinges. Some of the pieces were already rusted away with something that neither Tribute would like to find out and more skittering could be heard. They were everywhere and not all of them took kindly to a visitor, let alone two...

"Remind me again why I dare hope for positive things to happen in an Arena."

Carefully, he edged along the wall as he spotted some usable equipment, even with the sounds some of the rodents made.

Firo laughed as they entered, even as his heart fell a little. "I couldn't tell you."

"Speakin' of dark humor... What do you call a dead guy in a hole?" Firo had snapped at people for sharing jokes at bad times before, but he found himself falling into humor when things were looking sour--usually as a form of defiance. But just then, he wondered if maybe he could cheer his friend up.

Firo, seeing that Phil had that area covered, wandered for a darker corner. It was difficult to see what was there in the gloom, but perhaps it hid something worth searching for...

"What do you call a dead man in a hole?" Phil asked as he did his damnedest not to step on one of the damned vermin and get a chest plate. Joking in the face of death had been present in the man's life ever since he took on the night shift, it was necessary. On Firo's side there was a cache of parts that were in usable states but on top of a nearby stool was a big, fat creature that stopped being a rat ten pounds ago. "Easy..."

Firo grimaced when he saw the rat, pausing a moment to debate if he should risk moving forward. On the one hand, that was a damned nasty rat. On the other, maybe its bulk would keep it from moving too quickly...

"Phil." Firo said the answer as if he were about to pause to let Phil soak in the brilliance that was that joke, but he couldn't stop himself from babbling on with barely a pause. "Get it? Because he fills the hole, but it's also a guy's name that sounds the same."

Firo reached for a crate a few feet from the rat, not seeing the big old rusty halberd that leaned on it. The weapon was happy to make its presence known, though, when Firo disturbed its resting place--it crashed down on him before he even knew what was happening.

Payback for an awful joke, perhaps?

Phillip almost laughed at the terrible joke at his own expense but he immediately jumped at the sudden crashing sounds and-oh God... "FIRO! ARE YOU OKAY?!" the inevitable rush of energy had the former guard rush over to his friend, edging around the instantly hissing mass of rats that were now very aware their spot was invaded. Tetanus shots were out of the questions and...

"Prochainezo, talk to me, do you need help?!" Phil didn't care, he was already clearing out.

Firo wasn't down for the count yet, but he nearly thought he would be when he heard their furry friends scuttling around. The noise he'd made couldn't have made them happy.

"I'm fine, I'm fine--" He shoved himself to his feet, grimacing as he noticed the deep cut on his arm from the falling weapon. Could have been worse, but it could have been better. He squeezed his arm to stop up the bleeding, realizing what he had to do.

"Just give me a minute, okay? I can fix this. ...But I think you'll wanna stand back. Last time I tried this in the Arena, everything freaked out at me and Jack." As in, they nearly got torn apart by fish and sirens. But they escaped just fine, so hopefully he and Phil would have the same luck...

He watched Phil's eyes for compliance. Hopes aside, the farther the man was from him, the better.

[open] London Bridge is broken down

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cw: slight mention of suicidal thoughts, dead children

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