Oh my love, I know you are the Candy Man

[gamemakers]

Although the mood in the Capitol is...taut, once the Tributes are in the transportation craft, things seem to lighten. The peacekeepers almost seem jovial - as jovial as peacekeepers ever seem. About half the Tributes are checked over and given an injection into their tracking device.

In the underground room, the stylists have all their prep teams running busy, dressing up the tributes in bright costumes, chatting with each other, clearly excited to have so much freedom over what their Tributes are wearing in. Each one is dressed in a personalized costume, elaborate, and entirely soft.

Finally the Tributes are placed on their pedestals and sent on up, all gussied up.

25 - 24 - 23

The light is blinding for a moment, before the candy-colored world around them comes into focus. And it's not just candy-colored - it is actually candy. Some Tributes might be reminded of the game Candy Land, if it was something in their home world. Music plays, scarily cute animals roam, and every thing just looks so gosh-darn happy.

20 - 19 - 18 - 17 - 16

The Cornucopia sits, candy-striped itself, and over-flowing with a generous bounty of food, weapons, and supplies. Even these all reflect the nature of the arena, brightly-colored, and cheerful-looking, just begging to be gathered up.

11- 10 - 9 - 8

They've all been warned not to step off their pedestal early. But as the final number ticks off, those Tributes that had their tracking devices adjusted in the transport suddenly feel a sting starting in their arms. A slightly diluted version of what Ariadne was given the day before is dumped in their veins.

The dilution doesn't help them, of course; it just causes the poison to take effect more slowly.

5 - 4

3

2

1

Go.

The burning is starting for half of them, spreading through their body, lighting their nerves on fire. Within 10 minutes it's effecting their motor skills, causing them to stagger, twitch, to move against their will.

Those who are small fall faster, barely lasting 15 minutes in the bloodbath. The stronger and bigger among them might make it 30 minutes at most.

By the time the bloodbath is over, the Cornucopia is surrounded by corpses. Half of the Tributes have fallen without even a single competitor having to touch them.


[OOC: Don't forget the OOC Arena post, especially those of you running for the Cornucopia. Every Tribute must post to this post. There will be a Cornucopia thread, and anyone else feel free to post as you will. Please add a tag with your character's name.

Those who were poisoned are anyone in group 2. You will have a second post up shortly.]

Comments

Poisoned!

[brentwood]

Do or die.

18. 17.

His heart's beating hard and he'd almost swear he could hear the blood rushing through his veins. He knows the costume is just fabric but it's like it's weighing him down all the same as if it were actual armor. Don't step off the pedestal-- why? What happens? Tim finds himself wincing at the thought-- it actually hurt to think about the next couple hours. His eyes are surveying the land. Modified environment. Cameras must be everywhere. They're all dressed like clowns, even if he has to admit his style is much better than some. --oh. There's Steph. There's... other people he knows. His peripheral vision catches the clock counting down.

11. 10. 9.

It's actually ticking really slowly. He's wincing again at a ghost pain the next second.

4. 3.

Okay, so the clock's counting quick. More time, more time, they need more--

1.

It's a frenzy. Some people rush forward, others back to hide. There are goods up ahead-- tickets to survival? Maybe. Yes. His legs are carrying him forward before he knows it. Then his mind catches up and it's an obvious mistake. Tim stops on a dime, feeling already winded by the sprint, and he takes a half of a second to turn tail and flee the other way. A concentrated group of panicked people eager to get their hands on weapons or the like is just asking for a blood bath. No, no, no, how stupid! How could he almost get himself caught up in that? He needs to avoid others. Because it's obvious in some of the company's eyes-- not everyone is against killing.

Try as he might, colors and panic (sure, he can admit it. he's just been tossed into a death match) make him stumble early but he regains his footing. His lungs are on fire. That he's been poisoned doesn't cross his mind-- only traitors to this government get that treatment, right? It's not until he takes a micro second to slow down and check for some cut on his arm (it's burning really bad) that he realizes not all is as it seems. He'd been blind to other Tributes before but now... some people are just dropping like flies. That that will be him in the next minutes is a fact Tim finds hard to swallow, or ignore.

Ian (dying of poison)

[wantwhatiwant]

Ian had no idea why his stylists had thought it a good idea to dress him as a na'vi, at least he knew what he was which was less than he could say for some of the weird costumes around, but he didn't like it. Unless you were actually a na'vi it was rubbish for survival, and he was blue, with bare feet and the tail attached to his loincloth would probably trip him.

Before the countdown even finished he had more important things to worry about, like the pain wracking his body. He had felt nothing like it and stumbled forward trying to concentrate through the pain.

about 20 minutes in?

[wantwhatiwant]

Someone barreled into him, or rather stumbled into him as they didn't seem in control of their actions. If Mickey could see past the blue body paint and long wig he would see it was Ian, and he didn't look well.

Pain wracked his body, and he was finding it hard to move, his muscles seemed to have a mind of their own. "Sorry." His words were slurred, he hadn't yet recognised the mouse.

[misscabernet]

With the weight gone, she barely had enough time to scramble back up onto her hands, blindly reaching for the bat. Where the fuck had it gone? There was chaos, probably bodies falling around them, and all she could do was keep her eyes on the zombie, wipe the fuzz of tears away --

"R?" His name was an exhale, barely enough time for Julie to suck in another breath before the zombie was back on her, grabbing her leg. She froze. Stupid, stupid fucking human instincts.

Except it wasn't instincts. It was the memory of her dad's face, stretched by giant screens, shouting they are not human. They may look like your wife, your brother, your children, but they are not human. And wasn't it so fucking stupid of her to even think for a second that he was anything but a goddamn corpse? Days ago she'd been thinking he'd never looked more human. There wasn't a trace of that soft, unsteady humanity left.

It was that pharmacy all over again. Perry shouting, Nora ducking under a desk. The zombies slamming the door down and spreading out like a living, biting wave. This is what she'd missed, what Perry had seen. R's black drool, his snapping mouth. Maybe he'd eat her brain, too. Find out all the stupid shit she'd thought. They could be Dead together.

That unfroze her. She kicked his face as hard as she could even with the light sandals strapped around her ankles, nails digging into the soft soil as she crawled backwards. "R, stop!" Better than an exhale, but her voice still cracked in its urgency. "Stop!"

Re: Doc Holiday

[celebrityskinned]

It's when Holiday's finally running away from the Cornucopia that Venus, dressed like Catwoman without the mask, collides with her, in a graceless manner that isn't suited to how she normally moves. She's got good endurance, but she's exhausted now, frustrated by not scoring anything or making any kills at the Arena, and she chooses to look back over her shoulder at the exact moment that Holiday crosses her path.

Venus slams into Holiday and the two of them tumble over each other. Venus scrambles to get her hands and feet under her and looks in surprise at the woman next to her on the candy-coated ground.

Shion if anyone wants him before he dies of poison

[savedbyasong]

Shion should have known that it had been a bad idea to tell the stylist how he had gotten his scar. He had hoped that by knowing the story behind it, and what it had come to mean she would stop her attempts to change him.

Instead it had got him dressed like this, and they had injected him with something and now he felt sick. Sicker than he had felt before.

He barely had time to take in the arena, the other people, what was about to happen before the pain started. Added to the costume it was like Rat extracting the parasite from him all over again and he had not gone very far when he stumbled, barely able to continue. He was probably one of the first of the poisoned tributes to fall.

Re: Karkat (4 Eliot 'n' Venus)

[retrieverchef]

Eliot grimaced at the costume Valeria had put him in this time. He wasn't even sure if it had been her idea. It was more crass than anything she'd come up with before for him. The shoes weren't going to work for him. Ridiculous heels. He'd give his right arm for his normal carbon toed boots. Not to mention any one of his other costumes.

And then the gong went off. There was no time to get rid of the damn shoes now. He ran.

[shambler]

Speaking again. A word - a name, the ghost of a name because he didn't have one anymore - and that was enough to make R's grip on her ankle loosen a fraction. What happened next even he could've predicted. The girl mule-kicked him hard in the face with her cute little sandal, enough to break his nose and rattle his teeth in his skull. Miraculously his eye didn't get kicked out a second time around. What counted for his blood didn't gush. It oozed out his shattered nose and mouth, black against the cottony pink around them.

That wasn't what made R let go.

R, stop! Stop!

The words caressed his brain, first like a soft push, and escalated to a gunshot's strength smashing right into the frontal lobe, nice and sniper-clean, stopping R dead in his tracks. With a gasp he finally let go of the girl, Julie!, releasing her leg before he could bite a chunk out of it, the hunger whining and complaining the whole time like a backseat driver. He couldn't make it as a human - now he couldn't even cut it as a walking corpse. R struggled to focus past that red haze as he fell back, sick with horror, suddenly aware of how close he'd come to ruining Julie's life. Just like Perry. Worse than Perry, because Julie still tried to find things to live for and he didn't need to eat her brain to know she really, really wanted to live.

Now R's groan was miserable instead of desperate as his head hung low, his mouth working as he tried to come up with anything to say at all before Julie booked it out of Dodge. Between the hunger and that weird...feeling burning up through his body, even syllables felt impossible today. R tried anyway.

"Ju...lie...?" R finally got something out, hoping she could pick out actual words. "Sss....ssorr..."

oh me! I volunteer

[tis_allgood]

Bert grabbed a unicorn horn blade and a few things from the cornucopia and is now looking for the quickest way out of danger. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately for Cuthbert, this means Sandy, who had ended up not far from him.

He hesitated for a moment, but just a moment. She was young, and he hated to have to do this, but he didn't have to kill her, just get her out of the way. Bert gripped the dagger tighter and took a swing for her shoulder and upper arm.

Yay! how much of a fight does he have in him? I just need to know if she will need a rescuer as well

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy had been so focused on the items that she almost completely missed the boy swinging for her with a blade.

Instinctively she turned away from the slash but unfortunately for her that didn't stop it from coming and the blade buried itself in her left shoulder. She let out a piercing cry and one of her bare feet slipped kicking up cotton candy grass as she crashed into her attacker.

[lessthanelementary]

Neffa hauls in a hoarse, horrified breath, and somehow, he doesn't let it out in a scream-- he manages to compress it into a low "aaaaah" that's half-exhalation. He's not sure which part of it's the worst - the grind of teeth on metal and the burst of wire from the open wound, the blood-that-is-not-blood, or the horrible, horrible familiarity of the way Sigma spasms. He can't make a very convincing false corpse - every muscle is tense with miserable, helpless fear. "--the same as Ariadne," he whispers, and doesn't need a nod of confirmation. He saw her die, too.

The thought of but no one struck him is there, burning in the part of his mind not occupied with watching this man die in front of him-- we only just got here, it's telling him, it's too soon, he shouldn't be dying, not yet--

Another second, a moment to take in the implications of this, and he will scream. Instead, he throws another glance toward the Cornucopia-- the scuffles haven't ended, and they're still alone. He drags himself inches closer, rests a shaking hand on Sigma's shoulder, partly in an utterly futile attempt at comfort, and partly to try to bring him back, to anchor him to the present long enough to answer the disjointed, half-formed question at the front of Neffa's thoughts. "Who did it--? At the Cornucopia--?"

poisoned!

[edsidlemirth]

Eddie did his best to keep his cool when they injected the tracking device when he arrived. He's suspicious of the second, and isn't too keen on the needle, either, which is totally a priority when being taken to a death match. But, he's well-behaved, fairly quiet, alert. Anything that happens could be important to know.

They put him in a tacky jacket made out of plaid flannel, and a clashing tie, none of it green, straight out of an old game show by way of cheap fabric. He's doing his best to ignore that, too. Nervous? Sure. This is some intense stuff, and he's determined to make the best show of it that he can. He needs to get himself some room to act, though. There are too many people in too small an area, and that is exactly not where he wants to be.

When he goes up on the pillar, he raises his arm to shield his eyes, trying to get a good look at his new candy surroundings as quick as he can, and he sees the abundance of prizes. That has "early elimination round" written all over it. He'll run away, go for a good spot, bank on being able to improvise and pick supplies off the lucky survivors. He can anticipate all sorts of spectacular trouble to raise with this bizarre setup. So much potentially useful giant, garish candy scenery! So many annoying little animals!

But there's that stinging in his arm. He attributes it to the needle itself, but once the countdown's up and he's off running away from the cornucopia, he can tell something is wrong. He is not a sturdy guy, but he should be able to run, damnit. This is So. Not. Fair. He did not do anything wrong, here.

He doesn't make it anywhere near as far as he'd hoped, before the poison fixes it that he can't make it any further. He only manages to sink to his knees and then fall over, near inadequate cover. Not fair.

[carnagecarnival]

He gives her a grin, that's more fury and pain and grinding fangs than anything friendly; but it's an answer to her question. His palms are just short of bleeding and his hand visibly shake.

He could try and kill her now, but he's not going to place bets on what the poison is going to do. He's already got an idea, after what they were made to watch, and he imagines she does too.

He needs to find the Helmsman. Speaking of...

He snarls through grit teeth, over the sound of fighting tributes, "IF THE YELLOWBLOOD CROSSES PATH HE IS TO BE UNFUCKINGHARMED!" Or will find you and make you hurt, Partner or not.

He huffs and gives a small bow of head and horns out of habit, forgetting for a single moment that she's not his higher up, he's hers. Then he's running again.

Re: Karkat (4 Eliot 'n' Venus)

[sleeplessinalternia]

Fuck fuck fuck. There's a human adult in his way--one in a really stupid outfit, too. He looks like that guy from A cinematic adaptation of a notorious stage musical in which two recently united moirails are caught up in the bizarre scientific and sexual extravagances of a hedonistic scientist; a terrible murder is uncovered; a number of characters engage in taboo-breaking sexual practices; a respected authority figure has mysterious connections; space aliens prove untrustworthy; characters implied to be stuffy expose hidden lustful depths; multiple characters wear glittery undergarments; 15 song and dance routines; numerous references to popular science-fiction films, many of which humorous; 18 puns of varying quality; 1 instance of unwitting cannibalism; 7 scenes of violence & 12 legally classified as debauched. Suddenly Karkat feels slightly better about his own outfit. The skirt might be ridiculously short, but at least he has one.

He's too big to shove over--too big to jump over too, probably, especially since this stupid outfit has tall boots with rubbery soles and not the soft soled cloth shoes that Karkat's style of fighting really requires. Try to run around him or through him or--

Yeah, okay, diving forward toward a shiny package and trying to trip hedonistic science guy is not the most elegant move Karkat has ever pulled but you try fighting in something that looks like it came from an East Alternian anime.

[polyturtle]

"GnnnGHAAAARGH!!"

Unfortunately for Don, the 'no pain' part of the poison wasn't kicking in yet. He truly wished it would, so he wouldn't have to go through the transformation once more. Which he knew was happening, whether he liked it or not. The veins in his upper thigh were surging and bulging in response to the lowering of his cellular defenses. It actually left him hoping the poison would just get on with it. Not because of the pain. But. Hopefully. This poor girl wouldn't come back to him wanting to eat her. He slumped to the side, teeth grit, spasming.

Maybe it was best if he didn't focus on the inevitable. Or. Well. The other side. Look for something else. Maybe better times. Maybe Ariadne or Lottie. Or...

...What was in that injection? What poison? Spasms and quick death...the stripping of pain receptors. Anatoxin? Seemed the most likely. How ironic. He was trying not to think about what was happening and the first thing he thought of was-

After a point, he wasn't sure whether he was laughing, spasming, or transforming. Or all three. Well, probably for the best, then. Close to twenty minutes had passed by then.

[alldeduction]

"Don't thank me," Sherlock said, completely seriously, "Thank John."

He never was good at taking gratitude - at least not when it wasn't a case. Gratitude from a case was only natural. Gratitude for saving the life of a boy that you didn't particularly like from the clutches of a woman you hated? No. That was basic. Maybe, though, just maybe it might go a little ways to having John forgive him, in the end. Not everything I do is for myself. I can do things for the good of others, it just rarely looks that way.

None of which he spoke aloud.

They finally reached the base of the Gingerbread cliffs and Sherlock's eyes scanned relentlessly across them until he caught the dark outline of a figure.

He hoped to hell it was the man they were looking for.

[69problems]

He doesn't immediately notice she's there -- all of his mental strength is focused on continuing to move forward -- and so he discovers her by twitching sideways and stumbling into her. For a moment he's terrified this is it and she's another tribute come to kill him before he notices her face. Even under the wrong horns and obscured by shades, he knows that face.

It's harder now than ever to separate her in his mind from his Disciple. There were too many near misses, too many times he had to wait all day for days in a cave for her hoping she wasn't dead, too many times she'd come staggering back bruised and bloody and fiercely insisting the other guy looked worse, too many times he'd wake with a start and have to check to be sure she was still breathing before he could sleep again.

"Meu--" He shakes his head violently (which doesn't help his dizziness much). "Nepeta. You can lean on me."

Blaine's Reaction to Posion [OTA, but it will be short]

[mediumdrip]

Blaine waited for the countdown by looking around the area. He couldn't believe how pink and bright everything he was. He was pretty sure that this was even worse than the Disneyland themed Arena.

He's dressed in a purple and green outfit with musical notes for buttons. There's a fedora hat with a very exaggerated feather and a visor with a musical note. He even has on a red wig and makeup on one of his front teeth to completely the look. He tried to scan the circle of Tributes for Kurt, but there's so many of them now and with the costumes it's even harder to track him down.

When the timer goes off, he has to run back from the violence as he tries to find Kurt. Time goes by, people die violently, and still he can't find Kurt.

Then... Everything seems to go wrong.

His entire body starts to rebel against him. He didn't understand what was happening at first. He was just suddenly in so much pain and parts of him were twitching. He fell to his knees. "What...?" he managed to ask, confusion and a sense of betrayal clear on his face. That was the only word that formed though, before he cried out in pain. The convulsions started and he could do nothing more to stop his body from painfully and horrifically shutting down.

Clint

[from_a_distance]

Clint used the time it took to raise him up to the arena to calm himself, center himself, breathe slowly and relax. As soon as he could see the area, he quickly cataloged everything in front of him. (He cataloged his costume as well, but he could worry about that later.)

There were bows. Glittering, tempting, more than one, but he had his eye on the closest one too him and as soon as the countdown reached zero, he was off his platform, sprinting for it. One of the other Avengers could worry about food and water. If he could get to a bow, they'd be set.

Nikola

[ps_you_look_hot]

Nikola had no plans to run for the cornucopia. If he didn't have his powers, he stood very little chance of surviving that way. Instead, when the countdown ended, he ran away from it, but he had only gotten a few feet before he felt the drugs affecting his system. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he kept going, intending to get as far as he could in the time he had.

OTA

[morethathityou]

Callista's jaw was set from the moment that she was lifted into the Arena. Her outfit was a small halter top t-shirt with a red and yellow S printed on it. She had a small blue skirt, white gloves and a tiny red cape. While they hadn't changed her hair to blonde, they had gone through the trouble of straightening it to make her look as much like the character as possible.

She started at the Cornucopia as if she might go for it, but when the timer went off she ran off in the complete opposite way. Once again, her goal was to find a place to hide so that she could spend this Arena doing nothing. She did not want to provide them with even a little bit of entertainment.

[and_my_pickaxe]

In a dead sprint towards the Cornucopia, heels and all, Lin's eyes fell on a beautiful set of shortswords glistening pink in the light. She'd decided immediately those were hers, and it was just too fucking bad for everyone else.

Black wig whipping against her cheeks, Lin craned her neck to survey her competition, Tributes that ran neck and neck with her. A pedestal nearby had released a pretty young woman with black hair, her white robes trailing in the wind. The laywer looked ahead: where their trajectories met there laid a backpack of supplies.

Lin glared at the woman with an almost animal snarl, and picked up speed. She'd get the swords, then the bag, if she had to tear it out of the other woman's cold dead fingertips first.

[misscabernet]

"Shut up." No apologies right now. She didn't give a shit about an apology. It didn't mean a goddamn thing. Her heart was slamming so fast she could barely breathe over the beat of her pulse, rapid-fire in her neck. An inch or two. That's all he'd needed. One bite and she was gone and hell if she knew whether the Capitol would bring her back human or not. They sure as hell hadn't cured R, had they?

The moment where she just stared at him, wide-eyed, seemed like forever. His nose was crooked. Broken. Chin covered in black, stinking saliva, the Dead black sludge that was their blood. Then the Arena crashed back into her head with the yells, the screams, the feet on soil. Crunching of grass and, in the distance, the soft singing of god knows what.

He'd saved her before. More than once. The favors were repaid at this point.

"Come on." She shoved to her feet, her legs shaking with the combination of fear and adrenaline. And her fucking bat, there it was. A foot out of her reach. She grabbed it, squeezed the handle with one hand. She shuddered to do it, but her other hand reached for R's shoulder. Her bag was still on her back, though she was pretty sure the star had cut through it, pierced her shoulder. She got what she wanted. Time to leave. There were too many tributes here to watch and now she had a half-mad zombie to keep safe. "We have to get away from the Cornucopia!"

Re: Karkat (4 Eliot 'n' Venus)

[retrieverchef]

Eliot does trip, thanks to the damn heels. He angles his fall to hopefully pin the troll before he can get to the package.

Have some Danny! | Group 2

[danno_williams]

He'd protested, loudly, at the outfit his stylist had stuck him in. It was just embarrassing. No really it was. The Elvis thing was bad, but he could live with Elvis. REally, he could just be a short blond Elvis, but they hadn't just stoped there... NOOO. They'd died his skin blue and slapped a character cap on his head.

He was a short, blue, human sized version of Stich.

It really wasn't funny.

Seriously.

He'd trundled into his tube, been briefed and then fussed over by the stylists. It was all normal. What wasn't normal, was that just before closing the door, some nameless faceless capitol drone had shot something into his tracker.

And it burned.

Oh, this can't be good.

By the time he'd been ejected into the Arena it was starting to burn up and down his arm.

Fuck.

For the first time, he just avoided the melee at the Cornucopia. He'd run into Sherlock, or John, or Tony. The powers that be liked sticking them together. Or so he thought. Right now, he had to figure out just what the fuck the Capitol asshats had done to him. Did it have anything to do with the fact that he'd basically been tagged and collared after the execution? He didn't know.

The weakness and pain was spreading as he wandered away from the Cornucopia. He'd blame the fact that the drug was screwing with his head later because he didn't notice the poor ball of black and sparkly cloth until he'd tripped over it.

"Hey, Hey, you alright there?"