Arena 06 - Happy

[gamemakers]

The last few hours before the Arena have a strangely stifled quality, as if half the people they interact with are trying very hard not to laugh. Maybe it's the costumes, the fancy gowns and velvet tunics, the short capes. Or maybe it's their destination.

The round courtyard to which the tubes bring them could not be more different from the last arena. Though outside the circle of pedestals, disrepair and neglect has taken over the roads and buildings, the garden inside the circle could not be more perfectly sculpted. Every hedge is a smooth, rounded shape. Flowers bloom brightly in concentric circles of insane color. The Cornucopia sits gleaming and golden, and just in front of its mouth, a bronze statue of a man and a mouse stands amid the heap of supplies.

20, shouts the voice from the sky.

Aside from it, there is a hush. No flies in the flowers, no wind in the trees. It is a cool day, with the comfortable chill of early spring and noon's short shadows.

19 - 18 - 17

Outside the circle, behind the tributes on the northern side, a castle looms. Through its wide gate, devastation everywhere, but it, itself, is shining clean, glowing pink and blue. Opaque windows look down from the heights of it, as uncaring as every hidden camera the veterans know is there.

12 - 11

Music starts as the countdown nears the bottom, a whimsical, dramatic tune.

3

2

1

And with the final note, the gong rang out, and a firework shot into the sky from the castle's peak, bright enough to burst redly across the sky above them all. Let the Games begin.



((OOC NOTES: IF YOUR CHARACTER HAS POWERS THE CAPITOL HAS NERFED, make sure you are on this list.

And everyone really should review the arena post. Because there's a little more to play with than you might think.

And please remember to add your character's tag to each post they're in.))

Comments

[vibracion]

Who doesn't know who Walt Disney is? By her accent and the monsieur's, Rictor would guess she's French, but even French people have to know about Disneyland, right? Screw it, no time to worry about that.

"What? No. Definitely not a prince. No." In what world does Rictor look like a prince? Except he remembers the absurd aqua-blue getup he's wearing, which probably looks just great next to her poofy orange dress. Like two candy-coloured targets in a wide-open field. Rictor shoots a look around, making sure no one else is nearby, before returning his attention to the girl.

Blood reddens her bottom lip, and he catches a flash of those unladylike fangs. If he were what he was wearing, he'd probably have a pristine silk handkerchief and would've offered to her by now. But he isn't. Instead Rictor just smiles back, brief and only slightly distracted.

"No big deal. Listen, I don't know what's happening here, but I'm pretty sure there's no lovely princess up in that castle. It's— I mean, this is a theme park. It isn't real."

[makeflowersgrow]

Eponine doesn't exactly look brilliant in her dress; orange is NOT her colour. But she likes the style, the poofiness - the fact that, for a change lately, her breasts are completely covered.

Her attention, anyway, has drifted back to the castle. "I never thought I'd really see one, Monsieur. It is beautiful..."

But his words draw her back, and immediately her attention snaps back to him, troubled now.

"Not real? But... but it's there. It must be real... what is a theme park?"

[vibracion]

"A theme park?" Rictor echoes incredulously, like he wasn't the one to bring it up in the first place. Okay, no way this is a mere case of cultural differences. If he didn't have so much experience with literal aliens who knew jack shit about Earth things, he might find this weirder.

One hand scratches the back of his head as he tries to figure out the best (and quickest) way to explain the concept. "Like... yeah, the castle is real-real, but whoever built it built it for tourists. For normal people to visit and pretend like they're really in a land of magic and princesses in cupcake dresses. But this—" And he gestures beyond the castle now, where the buildings are clearly in disrepair and the grounds look like a tractor tore them up. "This is all screwed up. It's like no one's been here in centuries. This can't be—"

And he's getting way too agitated now, but he's been trying to ignore that feeling for the entire time he's been out here, standing in a Disneyland which doesn't look like Disneyland, his new boots digging into dirt which does and doesn't feel like the dirt he knows.

"This isn't Earth," Rictor finishes in a hollow voice.

[makeflowersgrow]

"What's a tourist?" Eponine starts to question, completely confused now, and not liking it a bit. Why was this man using such strange words? She hates feeling uneducated, so she adds in a defiant voice,

"I can read, you know? I am not stupid."

But she stares out, past the castle that had held her attention, to the wreck behind it.And she begins to realise and remember where she is and what she's supposed to be doing, and her face falls. Her shoulders hunch forward and she slumps visibly. How cruel. HOW cruel, Capitol. To show her what she wants - longs for - in the middle of a fight to her death.

"I hate the Capitol." It's a whisper, of sheer disappointment, but then her voice gets stronger. "I hate the Capitol, Monsieur. It is a cruel place, full of cruel people."

She shakes her head. "I thought it was real." Her lip quirks up as she sneers at herself. "Sometimes I am stupid. For a minute, I forgot where I was."

She looks over at Rictor. "Are you going to kill me?"

[vibracion]

She reminds him of Rahne again — why, he's not exactly sure this time. Her pride and anger, the unspoken depth of the thoughts behind her face, the unexpectedly sharp self-recrimination. It takes Rictor away from the growing, swirling hopelessness for a second, and that's enough.

"I don't want to kill anyone." There's no hesitation in Rictor's answer, but he still feels like it's lacking, somehow, so he adds, more emphatically, "I'm not killing anyone, and they're sure as hell not gonna make me."

They. The Capitol, as she called them. He focuses the word in his mind, nails it down and draws a target over it for his anger. They're the ones who took his powers away.

Well, the Capitol picked the wrong mutant to screw with. He looks back at the girl, holds his hands open at his sides to show they're empty, that he's not planning on making any sudden moves. "My name's Rictor," he offers, because being called Monsieur is weird and makes him feel old. "You should probably get outta here before someone sees you and decides you're an easy target."

[makeflowersgrow]

"I have been killed twice now, Monsieur. Twice in these arenas... but I have not killed anybody yet - and I will NOT kill. I have told myself that." She looks at him - and there's a mixture of determination and pity in her expression now.

"If you do not kill, Monsieur, you will be killed. Or you'll starve. The sponsors like people who will kill. They never send me anything..."

Eponine bobs a slight curtsey as Rictor offers his mane. "'Ponine, Monsieur Rictor."

She shakes her head ruefully, though. "I'm not scared of the others. It doesn't hurt too much to die... it does away after a few minutes if you are unlucky - or it is instant, if you are lucky. Death is better, though. It sends you back to the food in the Capitol."

[vibracion]

Rictor stares as the girl starts speaking, searching for... what, sarcasm or a thread of dark humour or anything except the deadly earnestness in her wolf-like gaze. It's not that miraculous resurrection is some foreign concept to him — he grew up around the X-Men, stood in the same room as Layla "God Touch" Miller, seen Madrox walking and talking after days frozen in an ice box. People die and sometimes they come back. But most of the time, most of the time, it's not that easy. Most of the time, it's Terry's dad, or all the poor saps in Mutant Town after Arcade and Taylor had their way with it.

Arcade. The flames rising from the apartments, the smell of the bodies. Chingao. This has gotta be Arcade pulling the strings, watching them run like rats through a maze all for their entertainment. And Arcade sure as hell never bat an eyelash over killing people, the permanent way. There's an intensity to Eponine's speech which borders on crazy.

"It takes a long time to starve to death," he answers flatly. "And I don't need help from zánganos whose idea of fun is this." He only has the vaguest idea of what she means by "sponsors" — he knows they're here because of the Capitol, and that a good performance gets rewards. The whole idea of it makes him sick, that they'd put kids through this, that they put Star through this...

Never mind. No one's here except him and Eponine, and the longer they just stand around, the likelier it gets that someone will try gunning for them. Whether she's delusional or just suicidal, Rictor has no desire to see the girl die. "I'm not staying here waiting for death. And you shouldn't either."

[makeflowersgrow]

She barks a laugh as he tells her about starving to death. As if she had not realised by now how long it took. Had she not been starving now for nearly a decade, slowly wasting away, clinging by her nails to life? She had given herself a sentence of six months more, before she had come here.She had been dying and she knew it. But here, fattened up a little, it'd take weeks of no food at all.

Laughing in the face of death. Yes, Eponine - another person now who thinks you're mad. She shuts up quickly, focusing on his word. A foreign word. Not French. Not Argot. Not even this English she somehow spoke fluently.

"You call me a 'zanganos'? What is that?"

But she sighs. She had stood and waited for death last time. But it had not come.She had been carried off, 'saved'.

"I promised Valeria I would try this time." She looked around and then sighed. "I suppose I will go to the castle, still. Even if it is not real. And you, Monsieur? Where will you go? I wish you luck, anyway."

Even if hope is pointless.