thearena | (no subject)

Entry tags:

(no subject)

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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Tim knows panic when he sees it. Given that he's done nothing to make anyone afraid under normal circumstances, Tim assumes that it's the constant pressure of the overall situation. She should know that, if he wanted to hurt her, he could have just let her burn. Her hair obviously isn't capable of putting out fires.

But she still hasn't answered his question, and he wonders if she even heard him. Maybe the firecrackers deafened her like they blinded him. They had been loud, certainly. It's not impossible.

He doesn't move much, just keeps kneeling there as he rests a hand on her shoulder. "Easy, make sure you got it all first. That was you that healed my hand, right?

"Thank you," he says with pure earnest. "My name's Tim. This is important - did you get hit with a firework, or is there another fire? Do we need to move?"

It's not an unreasonable assumption, Rapunzel just has more issues than most. But he's not moving, his voice is earnest, and so is his face - or was; he's harder to see in without the fading light of her hair.

"It's all right," she says, quietly. "And yes. It's... it's a gift. I guess." She's healed, or at least close enough, but she's still jumpy.

"My... name's Rapunzel. Fireworks? The explosions? There's not another fire, unless they've set them. But there's... monsters. There are too many monsters in this place."

Oh good, she's lucid. That makes life so much easier. Tim nods and agrees with her, "It's impressive, as far as metahuman powers go. I don't think I've ever seen someone heal like that."

He wants to ask questions about it, because he can only think of a handful who have anything along those lines. Tim wants to know if it's some form of magic, if the song is the incantation, how much she can heal, does it weaken her, does it have consequences, and on and on, and it's not entirely for reasons regarding this death arena. It's genuine curiosity - and, if it a spell, there's a few people back home he'd like to give it to. If he sees home again, someday. No, when.

And there are more pressing matters, anyway. No other fires is a plus. Monsters are not, but he's sure that she's referring to the people in the arena that are killing each other.

Then he remembers R.

Okay, monsters are still a possibility, tries to look around, but it's no use. The stupid light took away what little night vision he'd regained. His vision is bright orange/darkness. He can barely make her out, and she's only two feet in front of him. "What kind of monsters? Where?"

Tim hasn't heard anything but her. In all honesty, he wasn't listening for anything else underneath the explosions. He certainly is now, though.

"Metahuman?" She's not entirely sure she likes the sound of that. It's not, however, the priority, not right then.

"Little ones? Ones with teeth. I think I killed some of them, or at least hurt them, but there were too many." It was better then last time, certainly, even if they'd managed to hurt her more. Rapunzel looked behind her as she pushed herself to her feet - there was blood on her hands again, her own, but that didn't matter if the cut was healed now. She didn't see anything but did she hear something? Her ears had been as traumatized by sound as her eyes had been with light. Maybe they were creeping up through the shadows.

She bit her lip, hand searching through the folds of her skirt for the metal bar hanging near her waist. It was still hot, too hot for comfort, but she'd prefer to have it in her hand than not if something came for her again.

"A human with powers that the average person doesn't have, whether by -"

It's such a bad habit, automatically launching into these long explanations whenever someone needs one. He really needs to cut down on them, but Tim thinks, with his luck, that'll be the day that someone winds up really needing the full explanation. He finishes as quickly as possible; for now, it's irrelevant.

Small monsters, with teeth. That doesn't narrow it down much, Rapunzel. A lot of them is not encouraging. Time rises when she does, slowly turning a full circle just trying to see if there really is anything. "Damn it."

Tim rubs at his left eye, wishing it would readjust. Sunspots usually fade quickly, once the retina heals. It depends on proximity, duration, and original pupil dilation. He probably has a few hours of this to go. Hopefully, it's nearing dawn. "I can't see anything."

Still... "This place is making me nervous."

Any place that he can't easily identify would, but he has no reason to not take her story for its face value. They need to move. "Come on, Tomorrowland is this way. I think."

Tim starts off in what he hopes is the right direction. He lost all sense of relative location before he and Bruce split up. He hasn't been in this area before. As he walks past the girl, he pulls lightly on her arm, nudging her along. He's not going to leave her for the theoretical pack of small monsters with big teeth, after all.

Rapunzel couldn't argue, not when it was making her nervous too, not when she was trying to stare into the shadows. She shoots a glance at him and opens her mouth to offer... what? Her hair hadn't ever had to deal with someone's eyes before, even if he already knew about it. But he was already walking, taking her arm as he moves past her. Rapunzel stumbled half a step forward when he did, and hesitates for a moment, not quite pulling against him as she tries to decide.

But he'd helped her. And wouldn't it be better to be with someone who'd helped her, and who could help her? She didn't know where Some was. And so she stopped trying to resist and started walking up next to him, as her hair stretched back further and further and further behind her, pale and shadowed. She was looking at the sky, and around herself, still nervous. Rapunzel was starting to dislike the night.

"Do you think it's really stopped?"

"Yeah, I do," Tim replied as he picked his way along. He's keeping just a half step behind her now, hoping that she won't walk into anything. "When it started, it was targeting tributes directly. We'd have been fried by now if it was still going on."

Holy hippies, Batman. Tim stops dead in his tracks and stops walking after a few yards. He tries to follow the hair to see how long it is, and there's still a pile of it waiting to be drug out. This is a liability in the extreme. How has no one grabbed the end of it and reeled her in like a fish on the line?

Without asking permission, Tim grabs her hair and starts rolling it up. He's not sure what there is to do with it, besides chop it off with his knife, but girls are so touchy about things like that. They can't go around in the dark followed by miles of shiny gold hair. Why not just hand the Minotaur the end of the string and lead him out of the labyrinth already? "How much of this is there??"

Rapunzel hesitates and eyes him a little unsurely when he grabs her hair like that and starts gathering it up, but since he's not trying to do anything but gather, she doesn't try to make him stop. She'd spent a lot of time holding it as she ran, but nothing was chasing her now. It hadn't been enough to make her think of carrying it.

"Um," she says, voice hesitant as he reels her hair in, "a lot? It can reach the ground from my tower."

A beat. Tim momentarily stops winding up her hair.

"You have a tower." His tone is both matter-of-fact and incredulous. He looks at her with narrowed eyes, wondering who this girl is with a tower. The Titans have a tower, but she isn't any Teen Titan that's he's seen record of - and he's committed all available dossiers have references. There are villains that own houses akin to castles, some of which, yes, have towers, but a villain would have strangled him with this hair by now. He sighs and finishes gathering up her hair, which fills his arms. This has to be a byproduct of her powers; her hair is ridiculous - it puts Starfire's hair to shame. But now he has an idea of how she manages it without ripping off her scalp, it's surprisingly light.

This is weirder than meeting R.

"Okay, I was trying not to be rude, but I just - why would you dangle your hair off of a tower?"

"Yeah, it's... my home?" She smiles a little, hesitantly - this is uncomfortable, and she's not quite sure why he seems so taken aback. Some hadn't, but according to Some they had known each other previously. "I hadn't... I mean I never...." Her face falls a little as she talks, and she looks away, combing her fingers through a small section of her hair. "This is first time I... left it. When they brought me here."

Rapunzel doesn't seem offended by the question, though she is slightly confused.

"There used to be a door, but Mother sealed it off, to protect me. So now I pull her up every day, so she can come home."

There is so much wrong with this that Tim doesn't even know where to start or who to be the most disgusted with. She's his age, and she's never been allowed outside of her home. His life and lack of rules and consistent oversight seem totally reckless when compared to an average teenager. But this - this wasn't just his being abnormal; she was screwed up in the exact opposite direction. Sealing her into a tower was blatant child abuse. Where the hell is Rapunzel from, that no one notices how someone shuts off their kid from the world? Someone has to have known that she existed. Babies don't spontaneously pop into being.

But he's mad at himself, too, because his next thought is that her mother was right, because look at where they are right now. They're in a death arena on another world, and Rapunzel had been set on fire. If it meant getting just one person out of here, he would gladly drag her off to her mother and tell her to seal the damn window up next time. Anything to save her life.

What could they have to gain from bringing in this sheltered girl, who's never left her house? How can she possibly make their little tv show better? She's the epitome of useless, how can she be anything else, she's -

Oh, God.

She's cannon fodder.

She's the easy target. The cheap thrill kill. The young blonde that bites it first in every horror movie.

Tim is furious, and he can't vent it now. He doesn't want to frighten her. He's not sure why the fireworks targeted them, but they were definitely one of the arena hazards. Don't piss them off. Don't shout at her, either. But the only thing left besides rage is pity. "I - I'm sorry. I didn't know."

If Rapunzel had been able to hear his thoughts, she'd have liked to argue that she wasn't quite as useless as that. That she could do, at least, some things. That she wasn't dead.

Except it would have been a lie.

She would have died if Some hadn't saved her, and here Tim was helping her now - this situation she'd mostly dealt with before he'd come along, at least, and she probably could have put herself out before enough of her caught to put her in real danger. She'd run because she could, because she was lighting rather than blazing, and it had ended up working out.

But she couldn't know what he was thinking, and so all she had left were her own thoughts, which ran along parallel lines to his. Mother had been right, she wasn't prepared for the world outside her tower. She was doing better than she would have hoped, but she wasn't prepared. If more people were trying to kill her, like they were supposed to, she'd be dead already. So she shrugs a little and looks down.

"It's all right. It's really not so bad."

"No, it really is," he says, shaking his head slightly at her. "And the worst thing, kid, is that you don't have any idea how wrong it is."

He's the wrong person to be explaining this. Tim was sneaking out of the house on a consistent basis before he left middle school, and the few times he submitted to house arrest were willing(ish). Really, he wishes there was someone like Cissie or Cassie, who could relate to overprotective mother figures. Even Kon would have more of a natural starting point: girl in a tower, boy in a tube.

Tim doesn't know where to begin to fix it. It's not important; they're here now, and the others are not. And they're never going home. They're going to die in here again and again, him and Bruce and this ruined girl.

He clears his throat and changes the subject, mentally and aloud. "You really need to do something with this hair of yours. You've gone yards past impracticality. When's the last time you had it cut? 10 years?"

Actually, at this length... it's simply not possible. Human hair doesn't grow fast enough.

"Mother brought me there to keep me safe from people who would want to hurt me, or use me," she told him, a little upset that he seemed to think it was so wrong. He just didn't understand, he didn't understand that Mother only wanted to protect her, to keep her safe. And hadn't she been right? Rapunzel had been able to handle the man who'd climbed her tower, but the people here were, it seemed, a better example of how the world worked. There were some who were nice, but there were too many who were monsters.

Rapunzel bites her lip at the word 'cut', but Tim already knows the better part of the secret, and there's no sense keeping the rest from him. "I've never had it cut. Ever." And she never would. Her mouth twisted a little as she looked at him and gave the explanation behind the story. "Someone tried to cut a piece off when I was a baby, but if it's cut it turns brown and loses its powers." Her hand steals up under her hair, to the only lock that's shorter than the rest of her hair, and fiddles with the ends. "Mother keeps me safe. Or... or she did."

She kept you there because she's controlling and abusive, Tim bites back. He can understand the need to protect someone with an ability like this - there were people who would want to use it for their own gains, but permanent lockdown was not the solution.

Tim stares at her as she explains the obscene length of her hair. That it will change color is immaterial; this is not the time for vanity. But losing a healing ability like that in a battleground isn't a good option - isn't any option, really, because it's the only advantage Rapunzel has. It's a pity that it's all tied up in her worst liability.

Tied up. Henh. Tim shoves Rapunzel's hair into her arms. "Okay, I've got an idea. What if we just ball it up into some cloth and tie it up? You'd still be dragging it out behind you, but it wouldn't be fanning out like a veil. I have a knife that we can use, if you want to try it."

Rapunzel eyes him uncertainly as her hair is shoved into her hands.

"A... knife...?" But he wasn't suggesting she cut her hair - or, at least, she didn't think he was. "I've just carried it when I've needed to run. Or... most of it, at least."

Wincing at her reaction, Tim wished that it was easier to get people to trust him. He's been spoiled somewhat by Gotham, and he never thought that was possible. To the civilian there, there was only good and bad. Everyone had handy color coded gear. They were on the news. No one confused Robin with the Joker. If you're innocent, they're here to save you.

Not so, at present. Revealing you have a knife carries weight, because it means that you can kill them. Don't get weird about the knife, he wants to say, because I know exactly where to hit you with feet and hands to kill you, too. Because I've spent years learning how not to do crippling damage. I don't need the blade. You should be worried about me.

He doesn't voice it. He doesn't want to frighten her more. "I'm not going to use the knife if you don't want me too. I only thought that it'd be easier on you if it was more constrained. I thought we could bundle it up in strips of cloth."

No, that wouldn't have comforted her. It wouldn't have comforted her at all. Tim had saved Rapunzel, he knew her greatest secret, and she was well on her way to trusting him, but that all could still be shattered very quickly. She shouldn't forget what they were here to do, and his expression makes her remember that.

"If my hair is tied up, it will be harder to use it."

"You could untie it, if you needed it. I just don't want to let people use it against you," Tim said as he ran a hand through his hair in frustration. He didn't want to make it harder to heal herself, but the logical part of his brain was against this.

He sighed. "Okay, fine. We won't tie it up, but we carry it until we split up. I don't like having it drag out behind us like a trail of bread crumbs."

Tim looked around, trying to figure out where and how he'd feel safe leaving Rapunzel behind. "Where have you been hiding until now?"

She just looked at him, confused, maybe because she hadn't realized that he hadn't realized how much she relied on it for things other than healing. To climb it, to grab things, to hang from herself if necessary. Obviously he wouldn't do something of the kind, most people wouldn't, but that was only because their hair wasn't long enough.

"I, um..."

Rapunzel tried to turn, to see a familiar landmark, but things were lost.

"That way? I think? I... Some."

She'd briefly forgotten about him, or assumed he'd be all right. But what if he wasn't?

He had absolutely no idea the skill that she had with her hair; he only knew that it healed what it touched - and glowed like a lighthouse in the fog. If he saw her in action with it, he would never question it again. As he'd only seen it limply following her, well, Tim let the subject rest, but he still thought she was being stupid about it.

"Some?" Tim immediately questioned this truncated statement. Somewhere? Some what? Rapunzel had said it with an emphasis that attached heavy significance to the word, but the word 'some' on its own had no importance at all without context. "Something's coming?"

He's been listening and hasn't heard anything that might signal danger, but she had better eyesight.

"No, my friend, his name is Some, he- he's-"

She turned, trying to orient herself, but being half flashblind in the dark was bewildering.

"I don't even know if he'll be in the same place." Her voice was very quiet as she wrapped her arms around herself. He'd been all right, right? That had to mean something. He'd told her he'd find her. He'd told her to run and it would be all right. Rapunzel bit her tongue to distract herself and tried to tell herself it would be fine.

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