(no subject)

[gamemakers]

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.

Comments

[themediator]

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."

[shambler]

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?

[themediator]

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?"

[shambler]

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?

[themediator]

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."

[shambler]

"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."

[themediator]

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.

[shambler]

"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?

[themediator]

"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.

[shambler]

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.

[themediator]

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.

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

[shambler]

[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.

Certainly. :)

[themediator]

"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?"