thearena | (no subject)

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Who| Everyone in the arena
What| Even more reasons to hate the Capitol.
Where| Everywhere.
When| 4 am.
Warnings/Notes| Any group is being targeted to be separated. Everyone should be tagging someone they are not with, as well as those they are, as the Gamemakers are driving them apart. (You can feel free to search for, and possibly find your buddies later)

Once upon a time, when this place was a much happier place, fireworks would light up the sky, delighting children and leaving everyone with a magical feeling in their hearts.

This will not leave anyone with a magical feeling.

It was much later than a fireworks show would have ever gone. Closer to dawn then not, when anyone who could rest, even those far from it, would have finally managed to drift off.

It started with a strange, warbling music. For those familiar with this place it feels wrong, close to something they would connect with this show, but wrong. Distorted. Stumbling through a few bars, it starts to peter out just in time for a high pitches whistling.

And then the first firework explodes into the ground in a shower of bright colors, lighting up the castle. There is a moment of silence as the sparks fade.

And then all hell breaks loose.

Whoever is controlling the fireworks obviously have goals in mind. The strikes are tight, controlled. They are herding. Targeting the groups, the pairs, driving them apart.

The fireworks aren't made to kill (although a direct hit may), but they burn flesh, and leave anyone who looks at them too close momentarily blinded. Ever one is a shrieker, loud, louder then the shrillest fourth of July fireworks, screaming toward their targets. The arena is suddenly a shrill battleground, full of blindingly bright colors.

Th whole attack doesn't last longer than 20 minutes, petering off as the divisions have been deemed enough. A few squeal through the night here and there and then finally, blissfully silent.

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R looked over and whoa, suddenly she was closer than he thought she was.

It did drive home again how slow he was.

"Try...ing!" R grunted.

His limp sped up a fraction more, R getting an awkward loping look as if he was gonna get dumped off his stump if she so much as looked at him wrong. He teetered forward, and, impossibly, kept going. It wasn't a run, nowhere close but he was making progress and that was about all they could ask for at this point. By now they were close enough to feel the heat coming off Thunder Mountain. Another firework spun into the side of it, lighting one of the tracks on fire as it exploded into sparklers.

"You...see anyone?" R asked, turning to his new best friend.

She looked more alive than he did, so he assumed maybe she had better vision. Y'know, two eyes are better than one. She seemed like a sharp girl and even better, she hadn't changed her mind so far. R was all for shuffling into the blaze and seeing where that got him, but he remembered oh yeah, Living girl here. Different...limitations.

Suze scanned the ride for any signs of life. While two good eyes gave her an advantage over R, it wasn't very helpful when she didn't see anyone or anything of note. Though given the fireworks bombarding the false mountaintop, she considered that a good thing. She didn't see anyone moving along the ride, but she didn't see any burning bodies either.

The growing fire heated up the air around them. That, in combination with all of the running she had been doing was causing Suze to sweat wish for water. There might have been people hidden within the ride, but with the fire blazing, she didn't think she could risk a trip inside. If the fire didn't get her again, the ride just might collapse. She sincerely hoped that whomever might have been there before had booked out of there at the first sign of trouble.

"I don't see anyone. Are you sure this is where she was?"

"Yes," R said, sounding for once sure of himself. "Left...her here. Wanted to...surprise her."

R started to lurch toward the ride, only to stumble to a halt when a firework slammed into the path leading up to Thunder Mountain: it was the prettiest explosion he'd probably ever seen, but it also blew out a good chunk of the path and the zombie was left staring there helplessly at the crater.

He knew he couldn't navigate it.

R backed up to stand next to the girl, his shoulders slouched as if he wasn't sure what to do. Yell? Go around the back? Maybe he could try to pick his way through the crater and ask her to go around the back. Divide and conquer, he suddenly remembered the term. Yeah, maybe that was a plan. R sucked in a breath to start talking again.

"I don't...see her. She's...human, like...you. She'd leave...right?" R asked, searching the girl's face. He wanted the truth but he also wanted to be reassured at the same time.

Maybe she was being optimistic, but Suze really didn't think anyone would still be hanging around the ride. The fireworks had come down fast, but there had been enough noise to wake and warn people before the real damage came down. Despite the days, almost weeks she'd been in the arena now, Suze hadn't seen anyone die yet, and she was really hoping to keep it that way. Until she had solid proof otherwise, she was going to believe there wasn't someone burning away in the fake mountain.

"She probably did," she replied. She looked back at R again and gave him a small smile. It was strange, but even if he was a walking, talking corpse he almost had a kicked-puppy look. Whoever Julie was, she was probably important to him. It was an odd thought to wrap her head around, but she'd been adapting to odd for years now.

"I know I bolted as soon as the fireworks came down. I'm sure she did, too."

Edited 2013-04-20 05:35 (UTC)

"Maybe she's...nearby," R moaned, wanting more than anything to believe her now. The smile was what made him decide he did. "We'll...look, yeah?"

R assumed Julie had the same survival instincts as this girl. Hoped she did. The look he gave her was mostly still dead, but there was an undercurrent of gratefulness underneath it as he closed his blackened mouth and nodded. Okay then. Going with that half-glass full take on things Then R turned on his stump and began trying to pick a path around Thunder Mountain, probably too close for comfort with the heat beating at them and sparkles spiraling off from where the fireworks scored hits.

He tried to plod along and multi-task at the same time, thinking he was missing something here and it was hard to think when he kept worrying about Julie and the others. They neared the place where he thought he remembered a wagon being - there was nothing but splinters - when he turned to the girl with him.

"Name?" It was sudden but if she was cool enough to help him out, then maybe they better be on first name basis.

Suze followed R, but keeping a wider distance from the burning ride than he was. Given that he was a zombie, she wasn't particularly concerned about him getting too close to the fire. For a moment it was almost like watching a ghost go into danger. It wasn't really danger for them at all when everything just went through them. Then again, R would still show the damage from any danger. He'd just get up and keep walking. That was how it worked, right?

She was busy considering all of this while simultaneously keeping a eye out for any other life around the area. Thankfully, she didn't see anyone hurt or worse which left her assumption about this girl running away, validated. Suze looked back at R when he spoke up again.

"What-? Oh, my name? I'm Suze."

Suze was a pretty name - he liked the way it sounded aloud.

"Nice...to...meet you, Suze," R groaned. "Wish...better...cir - "

He wanted to go with "circumstances" but that wasn't happening, so R dipped his shoulder, grunted, and hoped he got his point across. He was grateful more than he even knew how to express that Suze was trying to help him out. Most people wouldn't, not with a zombie. They'd either run or try to kill him and she hadn't done either. R appreciated that.

The back of the mountain wasn't hit as hard, R limping to a stop.

He checked for bodies, lying there or stumbling around like him, so there was that. R felt his hopes starting to rise. He knew for a fact humans were a lot more prone to hightailing it out of danger zones before it was too late: for every Living he'd ever eaten, a lot more of them had gotten away. He hoped that was the case here. He stopped at what looked like a piece of BBQed fish.

"That's...theirs!" R pointed at the charred piranha. He remembered watching Wyatt gutting it, the zombie almost sounding excited instead of lost.

It was pretty easy for Suze to understand the gist of what R was getting at. She nodded her head in agreement. Pretty much any other setting would have been a better meeting for them. Of course...a setting change wouldn't make him any less of a zombie. At least, she didn't think it would.

Carefully, Suze leaned in to examine the fish. Her nose scrunched up at the smoky smell. She supposed there really wasn't a huge variety of food choices when you were pitted in a battle to the death. Whoever was pulling the strings around there knew what they were doing. A lack of food was bound to make most people desperate. She sighed, causing her bangs to puff up and down again. Then she straightened up and looked at R.

"Okay, well if this is where they were, then I think it's safe to say that they aren't here anymore. Why don't we get away from this oven and try looking somewhere else?"

"Sounds like...a plan. Maybe they...dropped more...fish?"

R found it easier to concentrate when Suze was there investigating and poking around with him. It kept his focused. More or less focused. Zombies weren't very awesome at focusing, so basically R was trying. R stared as she blew out a breath, her hair flipping up and even that looked Alive to him.

Having someone agree and give an outside opinion made R feel better. He wasn't used to panicking and now that he suddenly had humans he felt responsible for, he was getting a crash course in it. The look the zombie gave Suze was mostly Dead but also grateful, even if he didn't have the words right now to get that out in the open. Later. I'll do it after this. We have time.

Chuckling softly, Suze began to walk away from the ride. "Like a trail of breadcrumbs, huh?"

She wasn't sure if R would get the reference especially with the blank look he seemed to favor, but it was something to say. It was a tendency of hers to say something witty the worse a situation got. She shrugged and looked over her shoulder at R.

"Let's try this way. As much as you seem to not really care about it, you'll start to barbecue if you stick around here much longer."

More like a trail of piranhas but - yeah. Close enough. R thought they were on the same page. He was still a little rusty on human/zombie protocols here, mostly because before there weren't any. With Suze, R didn't want to burn any bridges by looking at her and getting any funny thoughts. The problem was he got she was a bright girl, the kind of girl any normal Dead would look at and start drooling over.

R hurriedly looked away from Suze, as if she could read his mind.

"That would...sssss - " R's words whistled out through the stab wound in his chest, weeks old. "Suck. I guess."

R tried to hobble faster after Suze. Was it him, or did the fireworks stop?

At his words, Suze looked back at R and just started laughing. Laughing probably for the first time since she ended up in the arena. The laugh was especially loud since the fireworks seemed to have stopped completely.

She gasped and covered her mouth and stopped laughing. Now that things were quiet, anyone might have heard her if they were close enough. She stopped walking and glanced around, but no one seemed to be within sight. Sighing she sighed and ran a hand through her hair.

"Sorry. I just...well, it wasn't something I expected to hear from a zombie." Her lips cracked into a smirk again at the thought. "But then, I never really expected to meet one in the first place. That is what you are, right? A zombie?"

The laugh startled R when it cut into the night, razor sharp. The zombie gave a delayed jump - a flinch of his shoulders - and swung slowly around to ogle his new human friend. Helper. Whatever he should call Suze. There had to be a word for the oddball Living who dropped what she was doing to help a zombie.

Apparently he had skills with the girls. R had no idea he was so good at making them laugh - first Julie, now Suzie. It was like a new track record. He'd take laughing over screams any day of the week.

"Yeah. Sorry," R added. "I won't...eat you," he threw that in too, almost defensively. "I'll be...cool. Fun...ny too."

There. R paused to shoot Suze a puzzled look.

"You've...never seen...other...zombies?" Really?. What kind of paradise was she from? Was it too late to hitch a ride there?

Suze spoke more softly now, as if she were trying to compensate for the volume of her laughter. "Of course not," she said. She gave him a look that said that something like that was common sense, but then she quickly realized it obviously wasn't for wherever it was R came from. She couldn't help wondering what kind of place R was from, if there were any human left, or if zombie were all that there were.

She glanced at him, looking hesitant. Zombies were new, but the dead were not. It wasn't something she went talking about to just anyone, but she was already treating R like one of her ghostly visitors, thank to his...condition.

"I do work with the dead, though. Just...not your kind of dead."

"There's...other kinds of...Dead?"

R sounded surprised-surprised, not zombie-surprised: slight difference there. He was starting to think there were other types of Dead out there, between the Boneys and whatever Karis was, but it wasn't often he ran into someone like Suze to confirm it. And what did she mean, she worked with them? If she was a survivor, R would've assumed "worked" meant "shot, re-killed, burned" but she hadn't reacted to him like the humans back home.

So maybe it was something else.

R plodded along with Suze. "You said...working. I don't...get."

She shrugged and walked along quietly for a moment. She really just wasn't used to explaining her whole...deal. Suze wondered if ghosts were even a thing where R came from, or if everyone who died just defaulted to zombie stage.

"I mean ghosts. Spirits. Back home I would help them with...well, whatever it was they needed help with."

Often they were simple tasks; finding a family heirloom or leaving a note for an old flame. Sometimes things got more tricky. Like her last job that had almost gotten her killed, not to mention a few broken ribs and a concussion. She was just glad that had all healed up before she had been brought to the arena. She probably wouldn't have made it this far with the injuries she had received.

"Ghosts?" So he got he wasn't her typical brand of Dead, then, but it was still awfully nice of Suze to stop and help him out. "What happens...after you help...them?"

R wanted to ask how she even fell into a job like that. He couldn't picture most Living people wanting to actually stop to lend a hand - or brain or other body part for dinner - and how would you even fill out that resume? Objective: I want to help Dead people and I'm a go-getter and a workaholic?

"They move on." She held up her hand and waved it in the air. "To wherever it is we go when we die."

She'd never found out where that was exactly. It could have been anything; heaven, hell, reincarnation, maybe even something that no one knew about. She didn't ask, and the ghosts never told. They probably didn't even know. They hadn't gotten there yet, after all.

That was one way to stump a zombie. R stumbled along, falling quiet, thinking and he knew he had tons of questions and four syllable chunks to get them out for Suze.

"What if they...don't move...on?"

What if there wasn't anywhere to go when you die? R had pictured, at best, a big gaping nothing, but maybe it was even worse than that. R's head turned to face Suze, his gray eye fixed on her.

Suze was quiet for a minute while she considered this. There were ghosts she knew who hadn't moved on, but that was mostly due to the fact that she didn't know what was keeping them in the land of the living. Her dad refused to tell her, though she had her suspicions that it was about her and her mother. And then with Jesse, even he didn't know what was keeping him there.

She shrugged again as she moved along, keeping an eye out for any kind of movement around them.

"There were a few cases where I had to give them an extra...push because they were causing trouble for the living." Amateur exorcisms had kind of become her thing.

[OOC: Basically I think I'm getting overwhelmed with tags, going to try to close up some Arena tags if that's cool]]

"Extra...push? Do you...?" R thought she was using a euphemism but he wasn't sure - he was rusty on anything fancy.

The zombie mimed the one thing he assumed was the most permanent way of sending someone Dead off. He brought his finger up to his head, in a kind of bang-bang gun position only drooping, and aimed it right at the temple. Instant-kill for any black-blooded zombie. R had no idea if it would work the same way with Suze's spirits. She was the professional here, not him.

"Hm?" Suze carefully watched R's miming before shaking her head. "Oh, no. I've never shot a gun before, actually. Wouldn't do much good on a ghost anyway. Usually it means an exorcism, which means a lot of trouble and plenty of mess."

Up ahead Suze saw a decently clear path. If she had been running from a flaming mountain of doom, this was the way she probably would have run. "Let's check out this way, okay?"

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Would it be alright if we started moving to a fade to black?

Certainly. :)