thearena | open

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Who| Akane and you!
What| being new and getting her bearings
Where| Fantasy Land
When| Late week 4
Warnings/Notes| nothing as of now

Who wears bright red to a survival game? Ignoring just how bothersome the dress itself was, it also cut down her available choices of hide outs. It's not like red really blends in with the trees after all. So Akane went into an area that was populated with buildings rather than wildlife: Fantasy Land.

Akane, of course, recognized the arena quickly. At least the gamemakers weren't being subtle about their definition of entertainment. It was just a good thing she wasn't the sentimental sort. It was already destroyed back home anyway. No, there was much more pressing matters. Like supplies. She wasn't aware that the game had been going on five weeks now, but the area around the Cornucopia was obviously picked clean. So she would just have to search carefully around the arena, starting from the center.

Which is where we find Akane, walking circles on the merry-go-round. The rusting horses provided a fair amount of protection but that was all. It wasn't the most stealthy of scouting missions to say the least, she was hardly crouching as she walked. Her fresh and intact clothes gave away her status as a new tribute as well. It was almost as if she was asking for someone to ambush her. It would be quite easy too. Every few minutes she even leaned against one of the horses as if to catch her breath, masked by an act of taking a closer look at a far away building.

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Howard doesn't want to let a complete stranger in on exactly how much of a wreck he is. Most of his injuries are evident, but he doesn't need to advertise how badly his leg hurts or that he can't use his right hand worth anything. "For a given value of al-"

He pauses as he hears beeping, and then he starts running, remarkably fast despite the shooting, nearly debilitating pain in his leg. Beeping is not good; there's been barely any electricity so far in the Arena, and after the fireworks, Howard is gunshy. He doesn't care about Akane at this second, doesn't care that she seems to be an old, concerned woman who might get blown up by the Gamemaker's sadism, doesn't care that by bolting he's putting himself in the open and making himself vulnerable in case she's armed. He moves.

And that's when the dynamite hits.

[OOC: bailing Howard out of serious injury with 100 of Maximus' credits.]

The beeping catches Akane off guard. She had already been readying herself to combat his evasiveness but that wouldn't do any good anymore. The running was a valued hint though. She is still new. By herself she would have had to wait to see what the beeping meant, granted the assumption was nothing good but skipping assumptions at all is better. And so she runs a split second after Howard bolts.

She heads in the opposite direction, with the vague hope that the bombs would follow the boy rather than her. The closest cover was still the merry-go-round and she headed there by default. In the back of her mind she was aware that plastic shrapnel wasn't going to be pleasant but it had to be better than a point blank explosion.

However, her sprint didn't take her the whole way. The first explosion hit and the shockwave threw her skinny body off balance.

Howard pitches forward, landing painfully on his injured hand. The pain shoots all the way from his palm up to his lower spine, like an electric wire suddenly lit up in his body. He screams. A piece of shrapnel hits him in the shoulder and slices through his sweater, but not his t-shirt.

There's a whistle, cutting even through the ringing in his ears, as the other Dumbo shoots overhead. He scrambles backwards, in the direction Akane took, flattening himself against the ground as the second missile hits. His nose is bleeding, his sweater's caught fire, and he can't hear at all, but he stumbles to the merry-go-round and crawls behind the base, unaware if a third attack is coming.

It doesn't. He's just on fire.

[ooc: I forgot to note that I will use Akane's 100 credits to avoid serious injury.]

Luckily, Akane did not have any prior injuries to aggravate like Howard but it really meant little in the barrage. The trip turned out to be worse than expected as it sprained an ankle. Unable to quickly get back to her feet the rocks and debris pelted her, cutting her dress and skin. All she could do was cover her head with her hands but it meant the rocks bruised, and broke, a few of her fingers.

The lull was all Akane needed to get up and let the adrenaline carry her the last few feet to shelter. It was hard to miss Howard down the way. The last thing they needed now was the old ride catching fire or something. She bolted towards him while unclasping her cape. It would be difficult to pull the sweater off so her plan was to smother the flame. That is if he allowed her to get that close without freaking out. Between her coughing because of the inhaled dust and both of their temporary deafness it didn't seem possible to warn him that she wasn't trying to kill him.

Words ring in Howard's head: stop, drop and roll. Unfortunately, they don't translate into anything he understands, the meaning blasted away with the rest of his sense in the explosion. He's purely panicking, and while he can keep repeating the mantra - stop, drop and roll, stop, drop and roll - over and over, he can't remember what he's supposed to do.

He tries to yell for help, but coughs instead. And who's going to hear him, anyway? He can't even hear himself. The world is a blurry hum.

And then Akane's on him. Howard's first instinct is to panic, but as he tries to get to his feet his arm gives out from under him and he cries out again. Tears roll down his face, carving away some of the dust that's caked on them from the explosions. He lays flat and lets Akane do whatever she will to him.

Akane moves as quickly as she can in her dazed state. She fumbles, the cape tangling in her hands as Howard falls to the ground. But with him in a workable position she finally pins and wraps him to the best of her ability. It isn't gentle to say the least. There is little time to consider his past injuries when she has to keep the wool close enough to smother the flames quickly. Nor her own injuries for that matter, applying such pressure was making her hands flare up with pain.

After what felt like an eternity, although in reality it probably didn't even last a minute, she released her hold of him. Her breathing was heavy, taking in big gulps of air before the dust clog her throat again. The fire couldn't have been more than a smoldering of fabric at this point but there was no way she could take the sweater off of him by herself.

He thrashes when she pins him, but he's small and injured, and it's not a coordinated movement. It's ineffective. He whimpers and coughs and gags on smoke as the dust settles, as the burning fabric leaves him with new injuries. It's only once Akane releases her hold of him that he realizes she wasn't trying to hurt him in the first place.

He sits up and rocks slightly, moving as if that'll help his escape the pain in his bad hand. It was impaled a few days back. It hasn't been healing so much as degenerating. He looks up at his savior, then out at the areas around the merry-go-round, but there doesn't appear to be another attack.

"That was close," he says, hoping she can read lips. "Are you okay?"

Akane lets him sit up in his own time, her attention now on herself. Flexing her fingers confirmed the suspicions of broken bones but that could heal relatively simply with quick splints. There was nothing to do about the dull throbbing from her ankle, arms, and back though. After the surge of adrenaline began to wane all the small pains rolled over her. She couldn't even disinfect the cuts lining her arms and back. On the bright side, her dress wasn't as bright a red as it used to be.

No, the problem that was distracting her was something else. Imminent danger and threat of death was usually the catalyst to unlock psychic powers. She went through such things long, long ago. And yet here she survived two explosions and it didn't so much as spark her powers at all. They were really gone...

So engrossed in her own thoughts Akane almost missed the question. The ringing in her ears was settling into a high pitched whine, hopefully it would pass soon. Until then she nodded and smiled. She circled her hand forward and pointed at him, a silent "and you?" that she hoped he understood. Then she laughed. Maybe this time he wouldn't sidestep around the question after being asked if he was alright. Honestly, if she was thinking clearly she would have realized how strange her lighthearted demeanor would appear after they had almost died.

His attention is also preoccupied enough that he nearly misses the question, but for him he's merely checking Akane's silhouette over to see if she's armed. She may have saved his life, but that doesn't mean he trusts her. He barely catches the movement on her lips, but understands it from context.

"I'm oh..." His head twitches to the side, some compulsive muscle spasm, and he winces. His hearing is starting to come back, not clearly but as if his voice is coming from inside his ears rather than his throat. "I'm okay."

The way he winces and twists his small body tells a slightly different story, but he's not about to detail the extent of his injuries. He brings his good hand up to make sure the bandage covering the hole through his cheek is still attached.

Laughter doesn't even strike him as strange. Not at all. What else are you supposed to do when you survive a missile strike by flying Dumbo cars?

"I'm Howard," he says slowly, enunciating so she can read his lips.

Howard should be happy, Akane isn't carrying a single thing. No knife, no water, no food, no nothing. Although considering his state her bare hands, injured as they are, would probably do enough damage. Not that she is thinking of such a thing.

She doesn't press the issue of his health. He doesn't want to tell her and she doesn't need to know. It doesn't matter to her in the long run whether he lives or dies just so long as he lives long enough to tell her what she needs to know. But that isn't the best front to be showing so the worried frown is back, like a grandmother who just got told that a scraped knee wasn't a big deal from her grandchild.

"Howard?" She repeats, just to make sure she read his lips correctly, "My name is Akane." Her voice is grave because of the throat irritation. "Does this happen often?" She remembers it being called a game but, really, elephant missiles?

"Akane," he repeats. Her voice seems to be coming from far away, but at least he can hear it. He tries to shake his head, but his neck spasms again, so he just says, "the elephants are new."

He looks over his shoulder and scans over the base of the merry-go-round. His uninjured hand is shaking; the other one's twitching. He gets to his feet and stands up to get a better view of whether or not there's danger.

"They shot fireworks at us last night. We must not be killing each other fast enough for their amusement."

Akane stands up after Howard, hovering next to him. He probably wouldn't appreciate the concern as it calls attention to his current weakness but she doesn't skimp on her roles. The high pitched whine eased enough that she was able to hear Howard without closely following his lips. The sounds were muffled but workable.

"That's horrible." So they really were watching the games, and even had a time table they were following. "There is really no way out?" She knows the answer just looking at Howard. No one would stay long enough to get this beaten if they knew a way out.

"You can die your way out," he says, but clearly he hasn't taken that option. He's been clinging to life despite the Arena's valiant attempts to make him reconsider.

He cringes away from Akane. He doesn't like parental figures. Bad associations.

"We need to get out of here. The crazies will come to see if the explosions left us vulnerable."

"I suppose there is that way," a sigh that probably can't be heard past all the damage to their ears. It doesn't occur to Akane that Howard's comment could mean anything other than regular death. It was a reasonable answer, especially coming from a defensive person like him. They would have to take out the corpses at the end of course.

She heeded the warning with a nod and stepped off the platform with her good foot. "Are there many of them?" Hopefully the majority of tributes would be like Howard who would ask questions before killing, but having an idea about those who would do the opposite could only help. She scanned escape paths while waiting for an answer. She wasn't naive enough to assume Howard would invite her along with him after all. She was a wounded old woman, hardly high on the necessity list.

"At least five?" Howard makes as if to count on his fingers, but since only one of his hands can play along it just calls back to attention how injured he is. "I know of at least five people who kill and torture for fun. Four guys and one girl at least."

It's not happy news to impart. Howard points down a road. "This way."

Five was a workable number. Even more so if she knew the total amount of tributes here, but the arena was large. She just had to avoid five people.

Well, that causes her to raise her eyebrows. But she limps over to Howard anyway, as she had been keeping her distance. Another quick scan and then, "Let's move." After a few steps she adds, "If I slow you down you can leave me." A bit of a stretch considering she was the healthier of the two but it gave him control of the situation. If he was leading her into a trap it might even make him feel guilty considering the show of trust.

"You're not the one who's going to slow us down," Howard says. His eyes narrow. He can't tell why she'd say that because there's no way she honestly believes it, and as such he suspects a trap - although has no idea what.

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