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

[lessthanelementary]

"Shelter's not so scarce here," Neffa says. "But food - that's harder to come by." What little of this place he's seen thus far has been stone walks with weeds coming up between bricks, the skitterings of maybe-living things in the shadows, endless structures designed to look real but hollow on the inside - not a gatherer's dream.

He gives the bag in his hand a single brief shake - the cans clink together softly inside, clearly not a terribly hefty weight. "There are five. I've yet to open one. Help me find what'll feed me when they're empty, and two of them are yours." (This was a bargaining position he'd never been in before - start low was the general rule, but this opening offer was based more on start high enough that killing you for them doesn't become the better option.)

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard nods, squinting at the bag, deciding that yes, that looks like five. "Deal." This is an acceptable deal to him, and he doesn't want to try ratcheting it up. Maybe if he had his own materials, but as it stands he's going to have to work with what he can find, which means he's putting a lot of faith in luck.

"Well, I seen rats and cats around here. Both's edible. I can teach you to make a trap." He pulls his cape up and starts to rip away the hem. "Rope or twine is better, but we got to work with what we got. I'll show you how to make a snare."

He jerks his head, gesturing that they should find shelter before they do this.

[lessthanelementary]

Neffa takes the moment Howard's occupied with the cape to wipe an involuntary look of distaste off his face. Rats? He hopes whatever's in these cans will last him long enough that he won't have to resort to that for a while. (If you die, you won't have to resort to it at all, his mind reminds him helpfully, and he decides that following Howard is a better idea than chasing that train of thought any further.)

He moves warily closer to Howard, throwing a glance over his shoulder and then around at the surrounding trees. "That'll do," he says. "Payment will be dispensed upon satisfactory completion of the agreed-upon terms." His grip on the bag is decisive.

"There wasn't much cover the direction I came from," he adds, once that's clear-- "I was rather expecting just to... sleep under a bush."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Bad idea. People sneak up on each other out here. It gets ugly." He knows from experience, given that he stabbed someone to death in their sleeping bag last time he was here.

Howard waves a hand towards Fantasyland. "There are buildings that way. Bet everyone's heading for the castle, so don't go there. More people means more danger."

Neffa probably already knows that. Howard starts walking towards Fantasyland - he doesn't plan on staying there - and starts to tie a knot in the string of his cape. "You see this knot I'm tying here?"

[lessthanelementary]

Going back to the castle is firmly on Neffa's list of Things To Avoid - he's had one near-death experience there already today. Avoiding people, though, that'll be difficult advice to follow - he has no illusions about his ability to stay alive long on his own.

He increases his pace to catch up to Howard, close enough to see what he's doing, even in the fading light. The knot, he's relieved to see, isn't too complicated at a first glance, but he hopes he won't be asked to replicate it without a second demonstration. "I see it," he says, and pauses to cast a glance around. "I hope you've enough cape left to let me try it once."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"You have a cape too," Howard says, raising an eyebrow at the makeshift bludgeon in Neffa's hand. "But yeah, I'll untie it and show you again. Basically, you look for places that rats or cats are going to be passing over - between crannies, anywhere that looks like there might be a hole. Think of where you'd go if you were a rat."

It comes kind of naturally to Howard, weirdly.

"You set up one of these and it tightens when pressure's applied, like when someone tries to pull out. Make the loop bigger and you could catch a person, too."

[lessthanelementary]

Neffa's never wasted any time wondering where rats go. He has a vague sort of idea (the docks by the river in the Stonecutters' Street, probably, or... stables, anywhere), but his only encounters with them have been at a distance - eyes glowing in narrow streets after sunset, distant skitterings in allies piled with refuse.

Fifty people waiting in the shadows to kill you, and it's the rats that offend you? He shakes the thought off and directs his attention back to the knot.

"Let's keep it to rats for now," he says, before that can go any further. "Unless you've got a knot for holding them once they're caught?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"That's more complicated, and it's not a knot you use for that. It's a counterweight. People don't do good when they're upside-down. You could stick 'em with your classic X-knot then." He shakes his head. "But I wouldn't recommend it. You don't look like you have the guts to kill, you know?"

And Howard hopes to God he's right about that assessment.

[lessthanelementary]

It's wounding, that it's so easy to tell. He knows his facade was good in the Capitol - but cold-blooded murderer is a harder face to wear when actual murder is required, as it turns out.

Still, he doesn't appreciate the reminder. "I'll kill before I die," he says, and at least for the moment he says it, he truly believes it. "But in my experience, the living are more useful." He casts another glance around them - he dislikes the nearness of the shadows even more than he disliked the exposure of the sunlit hours. "Besides, you can't eat people, and it's food I'm paying you for."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Big deal. So will most people." Howard included. He seems more born for the shadows than Neffa, and infinitely more comfortable in them. The sun may give vision, but it also exposes you, and Howard knows he's one of those people who does much better when hiding. "I don't use it to kill people. I use it to get away from them, rig up a place where I can sleep, you know?"

[lessthanelementary]

They're ill-matched in that sense. The games Neffa plays don't take place in the shadows; magicians come by their deception honestly, wear it in their smiles and speak it like a native tongue. Neffa's not well-suited to this-- looking over his shoulder, crouching to stay hidden, avoiding the light. It shows.

He needs to start thinking differently, clearly. It seems obvious once it's pointed out, but it certainly hadn't crossed his mind. "...That's practical." The outlines of the buildings are coming into focus, a skyline that even from here looks like you could push it over like a wood fence and see it fall flat to the ground. "Here's a question-- What happens if, in a place with a finite number of safe places to sleep, you come across one already occupied?"

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

The castle stands against the sky, looking like the intro to the classic movies Howard grew up watching. It makes him want to laugh and cry at the same time. There isn't a Disney song out there that quite captures what the Arena feels like.

But he hums a section of 'Poor Unfortunate Souls' anyway.

"Then you find somewhere else. Or..." Howard raises an eyebrow. "You hope they're sleeping while you go through their things and take what you need. I don't feel too bad about it, since other people are playing a lot more cold-heartedly than that."

[lessthanelementary]

The castle reminds Neffa of the palace in Ristopa, a little - the shape is wrong, but the way it always hangs on the horizon is... if not comforting, at least something resembling familiar. It doesn't put him much in the mood to sing, though.

"You hope they're sleeping? Do you really think it's the morality of that you should be questioning?" Not that he'd ever been in a position of fighting for his life against fifty desperate people for strangers' entertainment before, but hope didn't seem the most intelligent way to approach confrontation here.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard makes a sudden break in his singing, hitting an intentionally flat note.

"We're in an eighty-person murder game and you're getting on my case about stealing?" Howard raises an eyebrow. "Boy, you're wet behind the ears."

[lessthanelementary]

Neffa's almost affronted. He's as painfully aware as anyone that his survival skills are... lacking, but wet behind the ears genuinely stings. It's telling that that's what the boy's thoughts jump to at the first misunderstanding, as well; if he's seen it, the cameras certainly have.

"Let me put it another way," he says, and he puts on the voice he likes best for the slower customers - the ones who don't understand the terms the first time. "In a place where almost anyone can be assumed to be the kind of person who prefers to steal off of corpses, hoping to catch them asleep doesn't seem to me the cleverest way to stay alive."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Well, if they're awake, I tend to run real fast in the other direction." Or stab them, but he's not going to tell Neffa that. Howard narrows his eyes at Neffa; he doesn't appreciate being talked down to, and since he does a lot of it himself, he recognizes it immediately.

"Look, I finish showing you this and I get the cans. Then we're done here. You can keep your thoughts on my methods to yourself."

[lessthanelementary]

"I reserve the right to speak my thoughts, as you're the one leading," Neffa says, and tightens his grip on the neck of his makeshift sack. "Your part of the bargain being to help me stay alive, I must consider any potential for personal endangerment so long as we're together a breach of terms." Suddenly he doesn't much trust Howard to find them a place to hole up - he doesn't think he'll be repeating his mad sprint of the afternoon anytime soon.

That said, moving this slowly is making him more nervous. "As you said. Show me the snare once more, and we're through."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I'm not going to kill you over three more cans of food. It's not worth the chance you'll kick my ass." Howard's small, weak, bones showing under his skin. "You might be one of those crazies who thinks it'll be fitting to use my own snares on me."

He holds the cloth out again and repeats the snare. "There. Now show me you can do it."

[lessthanelementary]

He doesn't dignify the first statement with a response. Arguing business ethics isn't going to avail him anything now. He turns his attention to the snare, determined not to botch it - he'll show him wet behind the ears.

He takes the strip of cloth from Howard and shakes out the knot (he'll leave him with it when he goes, of course, but there's little point destroying his own cape now), and goes for it before his hands forget what his eyes just saw. His execution is less than confident, but he makes it through the first few turns of the knot successfully - but then something gets upended, some bit gets reversed, damned if he knows, and it falls apart in his hands.

A deep breath. "Once more," he says shortly, and he does not lose his temper-- he will not lose his temper-- with his nerves frayed to pieces his temper is all he has left to keep-- "Only once."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Actually watch what I'm doing this time, okay?" Howard seems unable to refrain from putting a little jab in. He repeats the process, this time a bit slower, then hands the knot back to Neffa. "It's easier to figure out how to tie it if you untie it first."

He folds his arms and watched Neffa work.

[lessthanelementary]

"Are you this friendly with everyone who risks their life to help you?" He unties it carefully this time, though, looks at what pulls through where and what connects to what else, and isn't sure if it's gratifying or embarrassing to find that it isn't that complicated - tricky, sure, but when he starts smaller, the loop doesn't pull through like it did before, and when he pulls the snare over his wrist and tugs, it tightens neatly.

"Ha!" He can't resist holding up the snared wrist to show off the knot, which is far less lopsided than he'd expected. It's not much of a victory, but it's his first real victory of the day, and that means something. Check starvation off the list; that's one less way to die.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"I thought we had a deal. Don't pretend it's altarism," Howard says, fully botching the term 'altruism'. "You can keep the knot."

He can't help but give Neffa a slow clap.

"Now. Food. There should be a train that way, you can sleep in the cars and it's elevated. You'll probably be safe, I'm betting."

[lessthanelementary]

"Don't worry. I have very little use for altruism." He only puts a little emphasis on the word. Only a little. Because the slow clap only stung a little. Because lording your education over someone in a death match, that's a victory.

He cranes his neck in the direction Howard indicates, but he can't tell if there's a train there or not in the gathering darkness. Well, he's got the concrete results he was looking for - he can take one thing on faith. Leaving the snare looped over his wrist (he'll want to practice that knot before it leaves his head), he opens the neck of his makeshift sack, businesslike, and proffers the contents to Howard.

"Two. As promised. I'll give you your choice." They're all more or less the same size, but their weights are different; he's not sure what that could indicate, but maybe it means something to Howard.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

Howard takes two cans that slosh slightly when shaken - hopefully soup of some sort. "Thanks, man. Always a pleasure doing business."

And he runs off.