gamemakers: (Default)
The Gamemakers ([personal profile] gamemakers) wrote in [community profile] thearena2013-06-22 02:42 pm

Oh my love, I know you are the Candy Man

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.]
shambler: (009)

R'll keep trying to get him but he'd be pretty easy to lose

[personal profile] shambler 2013-06-24 05:36 am (UTC)(link)
The headbutt was close enough to hit, R a second away from snapping that nose off and swallowing it whole. Their foreheads smashed together. He released Aunamee with a started grunt as he nearly bit his tongue off. White flooded his vision. It wasn't enough to kill him all over again, but head trauma was one of the few things to make a zombie stumble back from a kill and R couldn't plain see, his ears ringing. His brain felt like it was sloshing around in there.

Between the headbutt and the punch, R was kicked back a few feet, buying his prey those precious few seconds to get a headstart.

"Hugh!" R wheezed. He made an unsure motion like he wanted to clutch his head, as if he still had some human instincts still left over that hadn't decomposed yet. His hand dropped as he caught another whiff of that amazing smell taunting him from that man's direction. His vision came back reluctantly.

Oh yeah.

R came at the man again, his mouth slack, whatever spark he had in his conversations with Aunamee pushed to the side.
marcato: (to their mouths)

Re: R'll keep trying to get him but he'd be pretty easy to lose

[personal profile] marcato 2013-06-25 08:18 pm (UTC)(link)
He took the head start. There was no shame in running -- there was only shame in not surviving. But something fundamentally wrong was happening, something inside him was giving out, and as he turned from R and began to run, his joints ached and whined as though he were running through cement.

Malaise shattered his skull like a hammer. He remembered Grey pinning him against a wall in that tight cavern and squeezing his throat shut like it was a piece of wet newspaper. He remembered bleeding out at Wesker's feet. He remembered the feeling of his rib shifting and spiking through his lung, his blood on the library books, his mother with her fair hair, his father with his chipped tooth, darkness and chains and collapsing elevator shafts.

(First, she had said, it strips away the parts of the brain that take the oomph out of bad memories.)

Poison was the answer -- an obvious, terrifying answer -- and was enough to make him forsake his head start. He stopped, turned, and threw yet another punch at the poor boy's head.

"Stop," he hissed through his teeth, his limbs trembling, his jaw clenched with the building agony. "Wake up!"

They couldn't take every victory away from him. He would not allow it.
shambler: (051)

[personal profile] shambler 2013-06-25 09:16 pm (UTC)(link)
R was a few stumbling steps behind.

He didn't even try to dodge the punch, he didn't take it like a man, he didn't cry or curse or do anything at all. His head rocked to the side, lolled back, and out came R's gray hands again: always grabbing for something, grasping, trying to latch on and dig in and never able to, not really. Sinking his teeth into someone's brains was only temporary, a lottery to see if he even got anything worth killing over. R couldn't stop. He threw himself back at Aunamee, eyes locked on him like the human had a big target sign slapped on his forehead.

The words slid off R as he gnashed his teeth.

Unfortunately Aunamee didn't have that same heft to his voice someone like Julie did...and the same poison in R was taking a lot longer to work its magic because of his non-existent blood stream.

Gurgling, R's teeth snapped at the man, trying for his neck this time. Or, really, anything he could get his greedy hands on to. Whatever worked. R could be flexible, even if he'd prefer the nose.
marcato: (and the shine of his shoes)

[personal profile] marcato 2013-06-28 12:36 am (UTC)(link)
Aunamee had been inside R's head before. He knew how it felt. The cloudiness. The way hunger pushed him forward like how wind pushed a windmill. Nevertheless, it was jarring, grotesque to see the way his head snapped back into place after the punch. It didn't feel right without cringing or screaming. It was like a sun without light. Fire without heat. It unsettled him on some deep, fundamental level.

He wanted to kill R.

It came to him all at once, the thought blaring through the panic and the pain. He wanted to kill this boy, wanted to drag him down to the ground and beat him until he stopped moving, because it wasn't fair, the way he kept living beyond reason while Aunamee weakened before him. He stumbled back from the jaws and swung his fist once more --

-- except it didn't connect because his arm seized halfway.

This must have been it. The last straw. Panic won over all the other screaming voices in his head, and so he turned and ran, his body swaying with his uneven steps.