thearena | He'd Rather Be Eating Mayo

Entry tags:

He'd Rather Be Eating Mayo

Who | Kousuke Nitou and you.
What | Catch-all for Nitou's Arena run.
Where | All over, see prompts.
When | All over, see prompts.
Warnings | Death, motorcycle violence, mask-related madness.

[Week 1, City]
If there's one thing Nitou has never cared much about, it's making noise. He's got himself a noisy motorcycle from the city, and he's riding it everywhere he can. It's partially because he actually knows how to fight quite well on a bike, and partially because the motorcycle in question looks eerily like Haruto's. And with one of those superpower masks handy, he thinks he's got little to fear in this environment.

Even getting attacked by some Ghouls isn't enough to worry him. "You're lucky I'm not hungry for you guys right now!" he crows as he slams a motorcycle into one of the shambling gray monsters that seems to be populating this place. He's so engrossed in ramming the monster that he's failed to notice that there may be anyone else in the area...and because he hasn't noticed anyone else in the area, he's not being all that careful what happens to the monster after he rams it.

So if there's suddenly a Ghoul being thrown into the air and at you, it's nothing personal. Just evidence of Nitou's failing to take his surroundings into account.

[Late Week 3/Early Week 4, City]
Everything is exploding, everything is exploding, why is everything exploding?! Nitou's bike-riding skills are really put to the test today as he tries to get out of town before it goes up in a fireball. It's not the first time he's had to deal with explosions, at least. Nor will it be his last.

"Yo! You need a lift?" Let's face it--he's not good at playing the Games like the murder spree they are. A straight, fair fight with someone else is one thing. Getting the hell out of an exploding cityscape before it finishes blowing up is another.

[Week 5]
This entire time, Nitou has been making use of the masks in order to give himself that extra edge he needs to stay alive in this. It's worked out well for him so far. Today...that's going to change.

He doesn't even remember why he put on the mask. He just knows that this time, it hurts. It's not right, nothing's right, nothing in this entire place is right, and he wants to get the mask off--

--only he's still on the motorcycle. There's only so much clawing at his face he can do before he gives up on it--and rational thought.

The problem with losing his mind while riding a motorcycle is that on some level, he actually still knows what he's doing with the motorcycle. He knows how to ride it, even if some dim part of his brain is thinking that if he goes faster and faster and faster with it, he'll be able to get this thing off of his face. And that if he defeats any enemies he sees while on the bike, maybe that will help, too.

Problem is, at the moment, everything looks like an enemy.

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Sandy is not exactly enjoying her tour of the city right now.

Limping through the streets, keeping away from sharp corners and alleys, she's burnt half to death and every step is agony.

But there's hope, there's a chance she can barricade herself in one of these buildings, this may not be New York City like she knows it but it's close enough.

The only problem is the whispers and the screaming that only she can hear. She's come to terms with it being some kind of Arena trick, because the alternative is that she's going insane and she can't have that. Winning the arena would be pointless if she lost her mind in the process.

It's because of this very loud and distracting internal torment that Sandy doesn't hear the motorcycle coming till it's almost too late. Another scream in her ear makes her stumble, that one sounded like Bayard and it set her heart racing, flooding her exhausted body with a fresh wave of adrenaline.

Stumbling to a wall so she can lean on it she finally hears the growl of Nitou's mechanical steed and she looks around frantically for a weapon. Anything will do, a shard of glass a chunk of cement...her eyes fall upon a bone that may have once belonged to a monster or a fellow tribute. It would have to do.

Inching along the brick her eyes spy another beast coming out from across the street to investigate the noise. Spying her the four legged monstrosity lunges into the middle of the road just in time to get side swiped by Nitou's bike. It lets out an unholy screech and is sent spinning through the air landing feet away from the girl with burns running head to toe on her left side.

Letting out a scream of her own she jerks away and stumbles backward almost landing on the bone she had been sizing up. The monsters back legs are crippled but that doesn't stop it from clawing it's way up the pavement towards her. Beady eyes glittering with hunger, thick gangs dripping drool.

The scream catches Nitou's attention, forces him to pay more attention to his surroundings. He'd only seen the monster, not the girl. Someone's in trouble now! A kid's in trouble! He revs the engine of the motorcycle again and gives a whoop as he sends it into a jump the monster's way. "Run!" he yells at Sandy, trying to get the creature to focus more on him.

It's funny how the body works. Even though Sandy knew how badly it would hurt, adrenaline pushed her to scramble to her feet and dash over to the chunk bone snatching it up. She grabbed a stone for good measure and hurled it at the monster catch it in the side of the head. Now it was confused and angry. But with it's crippled legs it couldn't continue after her so it turned to face down Nitou and his bike instead, whipping out it's tongue towards the attacking tribute.

"Woah, woah, woah!" There's really only one thing Nitou can do now. Pop a wheelie and try to smack this thing in the head with the front tire of the bike. He's better than he should be at this--he's had practice.

There is a purely unique sound that can not be entirely well described. It is the sound of a tongue being wrapped around a spinning front tire of a motorcycle. Followed closely by the monster attached to it being drawn in and hitting the tire face first having it's skin ground down by rubber till the bloody muscles are on display. If the beast had eyes to begin with they are lost to the mess of raw hamburger meat that it's face now resembles. With one last pathetic screech that drowns out all these other noises the beast falls with the bike tire crushing it's skull.

Presuming that Nitou can keep his bike upright with chunks of meat wrapped around the tire, Sandy will be very relieved and very impressed. So much so that she's gaping at him like he's a superhero she's never heard of before. She barely even notices that she's re-opened one of the wounds on her arm and it's bleeding gently.

"Hah!" Okay, so that was disgusting--really disgusting--but the important thing is that the monster is now no longer a threat, even if Nitou's got to clean that bike off sometime soon. He gingerly touches the bike down, careful to keep it balanced. What kind of Kamen Rider would he be if he couldn't do that much, after all?

Even if he didn't actually have a motorcycle of his own back home. This isn't much different than a bicycle.

"You alright there?" he calls out to Sandy. He's grinning from the adrenaline rush of all of that, and he's kind of not really thinking too hard on what he should be doing in the event of a deathmatch.

"Huh?" Oh right he's talking to her. She nods.

"That....that was really cool!" She doesn't normally approve of excessively violent slaughter, but when it came to monsters it was a different story. She was even willing to forgive him for almost getting her killed in the first place.

"Yeah, it was, wasn't it?" Nitou's giving a proud, sloppy grin. "So, you need a lift anywhere before more of those things come back?"

She considered her options and nodded, limping over to Nitou, her burnt leg still giving her a hard time. She was getting faster with it but each step was still painful and sometimes the pain would catch her off guard and knock her to her knees. In this case she managed to make it to his bike.

"Can you take me back to the big tower with the A on it? I have a building near there that I've been hiding out." She explained. "I tried to stay in the tower but there's robots in there. Big robots." Big enough even her powers weren't able to keep her safe.

"Tower with the A? You got it!" Nitou revs the engine. "Just hang on--and watch out for any monsters, alright?"

It's a thankfully short trip, though some of the roads take some clever navigating to get around the broken down vehicles and rubble. Sandy clings tight with her good arm and lightly with the bad one as she watches for anything that might want to eat them. Thankfully in the blur of their trip the monsters seem to be elsewhere.

Avengers Tower as Sandy knows it to be, is looking as though it's barely survived some kind of attack. The glass is cracked in some places, a smoldering hole on the upper levels is streaming smoke into the air. Sandy points with her burnt hand towards a smaller building at the end of the block. Three stories, old looking brick. The main entrance door has been ripped clean off and the windows are broken but she already feels a little safer seeing it.

"How'd you get so good with a bike?" She asked once the engine had been turned off. She thought she was handy with a hover cycle but this guy clearly was beyond her level by far.

"I've spent a lot of time riding them!" Nitou's grinning now. "Mostly just bicycles, but I learn fast. The motorcycle's just heavier."

He gives a low whistle at the sight of the building. "Man, it's a little roughed up, isn't it? And you're not staying in there?"

She nodded looking back to the tower.

"I wanted to. Where I come from that place used to be home to the greatest heroes in the world. By the time I was old enough to understand it had already been bought out by some big corporation and the heroes were all gone."

"I figured it might be a good place to stay but there are lots of big robots in there with lasers and stuff so...it's safer in one of these smaller buildings with the rats."

"Oh, man, that sucks." Nitou looks up at the tower. "So where'd the heroes all go? Out on some adventure?"

He makes a face at the thought of robots. "So, are the rats at least good eating?" Look, he's got no shame in a survival situation. None whatsoever.

"Erm...not exactly." Boy that was a bit of a story. Still it's not like they had anything better to do now. The monsters weren't following them, and she wasn't looking forward to climbing back up the fire escape to her nest.

"There were some problems with heroes...people with a lot of power scare people who don't have it. And so the people who don't have it get mad and lash out. By the time I was five New York City left the United States and put out a law making it illegal to be a metahuman or practice magic. Along with a bunch of other laws about wearing masks or staying out late."

At five years old she was already breaking the law just by existing. Quite the record.

"Oh, man...glad I've never been to America, then." Nitou grimaces. "I'd have gotten arrested in a heartbeat." Yeah, he's nothing but sympathetic. "So they just decided to stop everything instead of fixing the problems? Lame."

"It's not usually like that... I mean not from what the other Americans tell me." She explains not wanting to make the entire country sound bad. "Just...for whatever reason my version of New York City did all that. It's the worst. And now the gamemakers have brought some of it here I guess."

Namely some unspeakable monsters that Sandy had been trying to avoid since her first run in with them.

"Well, yeah, makes sense that they'd only want to bring the worst stuff here to throw at us," Nitou mutters. But then he remembers that they are still on camera, so he hastily adds, "only to make the Games more, uh, competitive and...difficult! And stuff."

"Yeah, that's one way to put it." She gives him a sour look to indicate that she knows why he said that, but she doesn't have to like it. While Sandy's no stranger to playing things up for the camera, her willingness to do so ran out around the same time she was burnt half to death on the first day of this round. One can only tolerate so much.

"They like to do that a lot actually. stealing ideas from other worlds. I mean this one time they had these animatronic animal monster robot things right? And wouldn't you know it? A few months later we get a guy who had those same things in his world. Or like how they can make traps that sound like people we love from back home."

The amount the Capitol knew about them from home was profoundly unsettling to Sandy.

"Yeah, kind of makes you wonder how much research they did beforehand." Because when they planned parties, then stuff was just close but not quite close enough... "And how they did it, I mean, it's not like I saw any cameras or anything." He shrugs. "Not like we see any now, though."

Really, all of this is kind of uncomfortable, wondering how long they'd been watched before they'd been taken. How they'd been watched and researched...

"Right? I think the other tributes don't talk about this stuff because it's so creepy...but I mean like...even in here they have people who are like...paid to watch us go to the bathroom and edit it out you know? It's so gross! And we have no idea who's doing all this either. They're just guys in suits who probably never even show up to the parties we go to."

Because if she found out who had made those books in the mall arena she'd punch them in the nose..

"I know, right?" Nitou shakes his head. "Sometimes I'll make things grosser than they need to be, just for them." He figures that at this point, there's no way this footage is getting aired. "The noisier you are in the bathroom, the worse it's gotta be for them when they watch that stuff."

That little comment was just gross enough to make her snort and laugh.

"Sick!" she declared with a half smile of approval. In that moment he had done the impossible and made her laugh despite everything. it felt good. Very good.

"Guess you're in it for the little victories." She added after the giggles subsided.

Nitou's gotta laugh, too. It feels good, laughing at a minor way of making the Capitol uncomfortable. Small victories, indeed. "Hey, I'll take what victories I can get!" Because it's not like he'd won an Arena yet.

"You've got the right attitude to keep going here." She agreed turning to move towards the fire escape she would use to scale the building. It was painful work in her state but she had to do it. She didn't want to be outside after it got dark.

"Try not to lose that sense of humor OK? We really need it around here."

"Don't worry about me!" He gives her a grin. "I've kept it this long, nothing's going to stop me now? You just watch out for yourself, alright?"

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He'd Rather Be Eating Mayo

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