thearena | Arena 15: In The Eye Of The Capitol

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Arena 15: In The Eye Of The Capitol

For the majority of you, this has become a familiar morning routine. Escorts come to pick up their Tributes and Stylists quickly see to setting them up with the bland and thin grey suits, much to most of their dismay. You'll not hear a word said in complaint though. The staff has gotten the threat to them loud and clear. Only the daring will be willing to offer even a mere "good luck". Peacekeepers quickly collect Tributes to send them off into the launch tubes. If you're from the Districts, it may be one of the last things you ever see.

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What everyone rises up to is not much better a sight. It's a war zone out here in every sense. Those native to Panem will recognize the sight before them, having seen it every year in a propaganda tape. The wreckage of District thirteen. The Cornucopia sits at the very center. Offworlders might recognize some of the weapons there, and if not, then they'll certainly be able to spot some familiar scenes far on the outer edges of the arena, perhaps even a beast or two they know well from their worlds.

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It's muddy and damp and there's plenty of wreckage to cut one's self upon no matter where it is Tributes run. The Cornucopia tempts the Tributes in for its bloodbath. Districter and Offworlder alike, there will only be one winner.

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The gong rings out and a voice announces; “The Arena is now open”. The Tributes are free to make their choice; to run or to fight. The Games have begun.

~~~

By the end of the night, one child from each District will have their face shone up into the sky, the first twelve killed at the Cornucopia. Only twelve to go...

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Sandy gave a nod, and then realizing it was weird to do that from behind spoke up "I think so."

Straining her neck to twist it one way and the other trying to rise up a little higher on Luna's back made her burns stretch and some of the sealing wounds split open again. But by this point Sandy's body was going into a sort of struggling shock. Each stab of pain felt duller but still kept her from going completely numb. In the back of Sandy's mind she realized this was a bad sign.

"There, I see something shimmery in that direction...it might be water." It was a vague hope but the closer they became the more clear this vast ocean would become.

"Good. Hang in there." But Luna knows words will only do so much, and right now she's set on getting Sandy to safety. She changes course towards the direction Sandy's indicated, and after a little while more of going forward step by labored step she sees the ocean shimmering in the distance. That's--that's good, and it's not good. There will be plenty of water, of course, and the saltwater might help with cleaning the wounds. But seawater isn't exactly guaranteed to be sterile, and it will be painful. Still, this is the best they've got right now.

She lowers herself when they reach the water's edge, so that Sandy can climb off her back. Luna's not used to such effort in this body so she's already feeling exhaustion from the trip here and from the pain in her shoulders from Sandy's grip...but there's still work to do and the area is exposed even if they seem to be alone at the moment, so she can't stop. "Sit down and make yourself comfortable, as much as you can. I'll try to clean your wounds, but it's going to hurt."

The relief at having reached the ocean is short lived. Sandy tries to focus on what lays across the water but it's difficult. Her skin feels hot and horrible. A selfish and childish part of her wishes that the girl had finished the job and she could be dead and done with this pain, but the even more selfish brat in her was too stubborn to give the Capitol such an easy victory. She wouldn't be the daughter of Flint Marko if she didn't kick and scream and drag her feet every step of the way. It seemed nothing would come easy for her just like her father.

"Thanks in advance...ya know...in case I'm in too much pain to do it afterwards." She managed a sardonic half smile before bracing herself for the pain. She was good with pain even if she wasn't always good at hiding it.

Luna smiles weakly in response, but gets to work instead of saying anything. Scooping water out of the ocean's edge with her bare hands is imprecise and inefficient work, much of it spilling out onto the sand before she can do anything with it, but she tries to trickle it onto Sandry's burns.

Handling the melted jumpsuit isn't going to be easy, so she wants to treat uncovered parts first. She makes sure to try and rinse the wounds on Sandy's face first, then what she can reach of her side and all other exposed areas of her injuries. It's going to be a long process, but she's prepared for that and hopefully Sandy will be too. "This is going to take some time, but we've made it this far. Keep holding on."

Each splash of cold salty water on her skin makes her tense up. Sandy hisses and groans and dig the fingers of her good hand into the mud but she manages to stay still and keep her voice down.

"Y-yeah, we've made it this far." She repeats reflecting on how many other messed up situations she's endured to get to this point. This...this was nothing...this was just a setback right? Commander Shepard wouldn't let this stop her right? Pruna wouldn't let this stop her.

Deep shuddering breaths keep her heartbeat steady. "T-thank you for this. Some tributes aren't as helpful." Maybe if she kept talking it would keep her from thinking about the sensation of red hot needles digging into her leg.

"It's the least I can do." Luna's concentrating on ferrying the water back and forth between the ocean's edge and Sandy's wounds, but it's a simple enough task (if a slightly frantic one) that she has space to answer. "I'm afraid I'll only be able to help a little bit right now. I'm not equipped to do more than clean your wounds and try to prevent the worst from happening. Even if I'm successful, these burns will take weeks or months to heal, especially in conditions like these."

Truthfully she still isn't sure how much of a difference she can make, limited as she is. But it's not as if she can go without doing what she can, and if she can do something for Sandy it'll be better than her actions in the Nonary Game.

"That's actually good to know." Sandy grunted between her teeth and managed a quivering half smile.

"If I last more then a week I bet someone will send me a first aid kit...or at least a knife." The ominous meaning behind that left vague.

"But I'm sure I can survive a couple weeks if I find a good hiding place. This isn't as bad as the time I broke my leg on the first day."

This was a lie. This hurt much much more then the leg being mangled by a bear trap, but she was hoping that if she said it with enough energy in her voice she might trick herself into not crying. It wasn't working. Tears were running down her face now.

"O-or having my fingernails ripped off or...or being eaten yeah...yeah not that bad." She continued to lie.

Luna is more or less able to maintain her composure, but she cringes a little inside with each incident Sandy lists. What a terrible place the Arena is...not that that's surprising. And today is only the first day. How much more of this is going to happen before this one game ends? How many more will follow?

She notices the tears on Sandy's face but opts not to say anything, continuing to rinse the burns. Luna wants to be supportive, but she's less experienced with bedside manner given that it never mattered with Kyle. "I'll hope that somebody sends a first aid kit soon. In the meantime, don't give up before help comes. You're going to get through this." She tries to be firm about that last part, as encouragement.

She nodded in her usual reaction to hearing that statement, it was really all they could do was be blindly optimistic about these things. Cynicism didn't help much.

"I've come too far to quit now." She confirmed gingerly running her good hand through the sweaty hair left on her head.

"Have you been doing this stuff a long time?" She asked trying to turn the conversation to more pleasant waters while every part of her wanted to scream and cry and curse and pout about how unfortunate she was.

"Sort of." Giving an exact answer would raise more questions, but it is true that this has been part of Luna's functionality since her creation. "I don't need it that often, but there are times where I need to be able to look after others. Although it's never been like this..." Luna tries to keep the doubt out of her voice, but a little bit remains. Up until now she's had the advantage of better resources and relatively minor issues compared to what Sandy's got now, so this is new territory for her. No orders and no Lagomorph overseeing her decisions, just her.

Luna's not going to let that stop her, though, and she stops to inspect the burn on Sandy's side. It's looking a little better, but there's a long way to recovery and Luna can only help her get partway there.

Sandy nodded in a distracted sort of way, scanning the horizon for threats. None were coming from the ocean at least though there were some shapes she could almost make out if she squinted. One looked to be a boat.

"I only just learned how to do this stuff from the training center. It's come in handy more times then I would have liked." She confessed "I wish I had something I could give you to thank you for the help."

Even if that help mostly just made her hurt more. She flinched as a twinge of pain shot up her back to remind her.

It would all be worth it though if she avoided infection and stayed alive.

"You can thank me by staying alive. That will be more than enough." Luna ignores the obvious - that given where they are both of them are likely to die sooner or later - and gets back to splashing water onto Sandy's wounds. A little more of this, and maybe she can move on to something else. "It's good that you've been learning skills like this. They're not always useful for helping yourself, but times like now..."

As much grief as Kyle gave her as a child (or as much care as he didn't) Luna is feeling glad she's actually had practice in caring for people if not burn treatment specifically. Knowledge alone is only so useful without ability. And that gives her another thought: "Actually, if you have a chance to help someone else with what you've learned, you can thank me that way. How about that?"

"I'd say I'm good at that but...well I don't exactly look like it."

This was not the worst first day in an arena she'd had, but it sure was high on the list.

"I'll definitely do that." Helping someone else was a promise she was much better at keeping then staying alive. A sudden pang of sadness swept over her though. This girl was clearly too nice for a place like this and the more time she spent with her the more it confirmed it.

"We needed someone like you." That much was true. The more healers there were in the arena the better it was for the tributes. The less interesting it was for the viewers though.

The comment makes Luna stop for a moment, before she realizes what she's doing and gets back to the water. Needed...for all that her life is part of someone else's plan, she's never really been told she's needed before. It's a strange thought, and it leaves her at a loss for a proper response for a while. What does anyone say to something like that?

She definitely doesn't know the answer to that question, but Luna tries anyway. "Well--thank you. I wish that weren't true, but there isn't much we can do about that. Maybe one day..." She has doubts, with the rhetoric she's heard about the Hunger Games, but Luna can wish anyway.

"There's always gotta be at least one winner." Sandy muses closing her eyes and trying to drown out the sudden whispering that's started in the back of her skull. That's...troublesome. But she can deal with it later.

"Sometimes it's people you'd never expect. Obviously I wanna win after all this time...but it would be nice to see someone who actually deserved to be safe from all this get out even if it wasn't me."

Too many arenas had been won by opportunists and monsters. People who embraced the dark sticky awful parts of humanity.

"I'm not going to win." That's never really been an option to Luna, and she doesn't seem all that broken up about it. If she's concerned about anything it's the fact that not winning means she's going to die again. That more than anything is the frightening part - that, and knowing it's all going to happen again to everyone who doesn't win. "To be honest I don't know how long I'm going to last. But I want to do something while I'm here, I suppose."

It sounds noble, but mostly she's just had enough of watching people die. The Nonary Game may be gone, but the Hunger Games aren't any better and Luna knows she'll break again if she doesn't do anything. She'll settle for doing what she can instead.

"I've heard that before too." A surprising amount. It was unfortunate how many people who said that were either dead or changed beyond recognition.

"At least you're honest with yourself...and helpful...and really kind." Sandy gives a shudder of pain and forces a smile.

"Thank you."

Luna sits back and smiles weakly, shaking her head as she checks Sandy's wounds again. Sandy's wrong, she thinks, but now isn't the time to start going into that. "You're not going to be thanking me in a few moments. I think your uncovered burns are all right for the moment, but your jumpsuit isn't going to be so easy to work with."

She's not sure she should try this, to be honest. With only her hands, separating melted fabric from skin should be a terrible idea. In fact, it is a terrible idea. When the alternative is to wait for days in hopes that sponsors might drop down the right tools to make it safer, though, the terrible idea might still be preferable.

Sandy feels her stomach do a flip and she turns her attention to the water, focusing on it instead of the horror show her skin had become.

"J-just...do whatever you think is best...I can handle it. I-I'll try not to scream so we don't attract attention."

Because clearly that was the most important thing right now.

Luna has to take a deep breath herself, and stands to submerge her arm in the water to wet her sleeve before returning to her former position. One she does, she gives Sandy's arm on her unburned side a quick squeeze for comfort. "Keep hanging in there, please. It's going to hurt, but I'll try to keep it to...as little as I can, I suppose. Ready? On three now. One, two--"

And she starts scrubbing at the melted areas with the fabric of her own jumpsuit, praying that whatever the fabric is made of it won't take more effort than they can afford to get off.

Her body tensed and there was a strangled sound of pain, but she kept her mouth closed tight. Tears began to leak down her cheeks and her breathing was slow and tense but she didn't cry out. She would have given her left arm to be able to turn to stone again right now and ignore all this pain. She'd have given both arms to be sent home once and for all.

Thankfully Luna is good at what she does, peeling away the melted suit as best she can, the fabric coming apart in some places and exposing the raw skin and nerves underneath. Like ripping off a scab if Sandy were to try and compare it to something.

Which she would if she wasn't putting all her effort into not screaming or looking at it.

Luna tries to be relatively quick about things and although it's only so easy with just her sleeve she does her best to be careful even more, trying to minimize the exposure of raw skin. All her work goes on without a word, Luna putting all her attention into her work, until eventually she comes to a point where she thinks (hopes) Sandy will be safe...if her wounds don't get infected, of course. It's far from a perfect job, really rather messy compared to the ideal, but under the circumstances it's the most she can do.

Finally she sits back and gives Sandy some room to breathe. There's one more thing they probably ought to do, but that's not going to be pleasant either and she doesn't want to overwhelm the girl any more than everything else already has. "I've managed to scrape off the melted parts of your clothing now." She tries to sound comforting and peaceful, although her nerves still show through. "Unfortunately some of your skin came off with it. It would be best to use more saltwater to rinse the exposed areas and hope that helps. But I think we're through for the worst part! That's good, isn't it?" She smiles, and it's weak and tired but it is meant genuinely.

With great effort and red tear stained eyes Sandy manages a smile back.

"Y-yeah, that wasn't so bad." She lies. She feels like she's on fire again. The exposed nerves where her skin was peeled away are red and raw and glistening with blood and who knows what else.

"B-bet you've never had t-to do that before." Her words catch in her throat as she's torn between sobbing and throwing up. She bites her lip to try and smother both down and turns her eye to the water again.

"Not my best first day...but not my worst."

Right now Luna wants nothing more than to get rid of those raw areas and make everything better, but she can't. It's still just the two of them here by this sea, and right now they've got nothing but the hope that the water is clean enough that it won't harm Sandy more than the burns were doing. All she can do is squeeze Sandy's arm again and hope that doesn't hurt, and try and make this as quick as possible. Once again she tries to keep encouraging Sandy. "If we're both lucky, this won't have to happen again. I'm, um, going to start now. If it gets too bad, let me know and I can stop for a while."

In lieu of any requests, though, she's going to start ferrying water between the shore and Sandy's new wounds again and try not to let on how helpless she really feels. That can wait until she's made an effort, at least.

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Arena 15: In The Eye Of The Capitol

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And we can fade to black here I think. This was fantastic! :D