thearena | (no subject)

Who| Anyone left in the arenas
What| Count down to the finale with your friendly neighbor hood monster.
Where| Both arenas. Starting in desert, ending in candy.
When| Dead of night.
Warnings/Notes| Monster vaguely based on the stories from the Skin Walker Ranch in Utah. Feel free to control the monster as you like. Once it goes through the force fields between arenas, they are now linked as one arena. One sticky, sandy arena. Character can move freely between the two. Be sure to specify where you are in your thread header.

It starts in the desert arena.

The cold blowing wind almost drowns out the foot steps at first, making them easier to dismiss until the are very close to you. Then their booming can't be ignored, close enough it shakes the ground.

The impacts those foot steps make would be much harder to ignore, crushing foliage, and any living things that get in the way, and leaving huge, three toed foot prints that sink down into the ground, leaving impressions several feet deep. The smell is also hard to ignore, rich and sickeningly sweet. Like a dead thing.

But the creature making those sounds can't be seen. Even if it's right above you, you see nothing but the stars glittering over head. By it's feet, it must be huge, it's belly taller then any tributes head, but completely invisible.

When it gets close to you, you can hear the sounds it makes, unnerving high pitched sounds. It's hard to tell, without being able to see the creature, what exactly is making that sound within it. Is it breathing? Is the wind whistling through some strange anatomy? Whatever it is, the louder that sound gets, the faster you should run.

Because it doesn't mind snapping up a few people on it's way across the arena. And even if you can't see them, you can feel it's many, many sharp teeth.

Any tribute unlucky enough to touch it would find it unnaturally warm, with a soft skin that moves under your hand, as if barely containing something wiggling underneath it's surface. It isn't a pleasant feeling, and attacks just seem to sink into it's side. They don't seem to effect the creature at all.

But the behemoth moves forward with a purpose, straight towards the mountain, and the force field shimmering behind it.

And when it it hits that force field, the shimmering surface shudders, and then vanishes into thin air. The sudden change sets the Doki Doki's into a panic. They shriek and attack the creature, and it is happy to snap them up, tearing them (and anything else it catches) to shreds in it's teeth.

And it continues it's move through the arena, slow and destructive, before finally the sound of it's massive foot prints vanishes. Any who go to investigate can see it's tracks leading straight to the force fields on either sides of the arena, but the creature it's self is gone long before dawn.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

She could've really done without that admission. She's taking things in stride, sure, but the girl's got a limit and she's way past where it'd been drawn in the sand. So to speak.

Julie's ignoring a hell of a lot. She ignores how he looks down at their arms like a small miracle is being born between them, though in her opinion that's pretty much the truth. She misses Nora suddenly, a huge ache that tears in her chest. It's stupid to need Nora to tell her what an idiot she's being, because she knows. It might feel better to actually hear it, though.

She snorts. It's becoming a habit. Quick and noncommittal. Like a -- shit. Like a shrug.

"When I say like, I mean he thought it'd keep us alive longer." Her nose wrinkles in irritation, to hide exactly how much she's surprised to miss her dad, too. "Dad doesn't have likes and dislikes like the rest of us humans."

She pauses and chances a glance, realizing that the us had, in the heat of the moment, extended to him. She doesn't follow it up. Old habits. Whatever. "I hate it. Everything's... dead. No life. Just hot, humid silence. I'm not a fan."

While Julie's face is reduced to a flesh-colored smear against the desert, R can hear the tone in her voice take a left turn when she talks about Grigio's Survival 101. So strike off deserts for vacations. The General's right, though. R can say from personal experience now that deserts are a pretty good place to hole up if you want to avoid zombies. Take it from him. At least he can imagine the way Julie probably looks right now. She has a habit of crinkling her nose when she doesn't like something, from a smell to M being M to General Grigio's growing list of Dos and Don'ts for the post-apocalypse.

R isn't sure what to make of that "us" Julie drops. She's mentioned she could almost mistake him for human. After his display at the Cornucopia, and his leather jerky body today, it's doubtful she feels the same way now. Ughhhhhh doesn't even begin to cover it.

"Dull," R chimes up. Despite whatever's between them - or not between them now - they can at least agree on that. "Hot...nothing."

Lame. That's what this is. Lame and stilted. He knows he can groan better. Groping around for more words, R sucks in a breath. Forces it through his lungs. Show Julie he's still himself.

"Should we...turn back...?"

Maybe it's not much better; cold, just as stiff. Business-like. R wishes he could think of something that wasn't functional, if only barely.

It's pretty impossible to mistake R for human. The thing is, it tugs at her -- that he came back. He might've not been looking for her, but he was looking for a second chance. The most human of all things is to err. She's pretty sure that err doesn't extend to almost accidentally eating your friends, though.

Dull. Hot. Nothing. Kind of explains how she feels instead of the desert.

Julie groans herself, lifting her free arm and dropping it more out of exhaustion than the irritation that tackles her. "I don't know, R. I don't have any answers." To her it's either starve in the desert or starve back in Candyland. She's not eating the grass. Tried it. Not a fun time.

Maybe they'll come across the rabbit thing. She's hoping for it. Her frustration isn't with him, but he's a great outlet. It's everything. It mostly stems from the fear she won't survive this arena, either, and it won't be because she got a spear to the gut.

"Let's just keep going. We're already walking." Well, shuffling. It's close enough. "Maybe I'll join you in the cannibalism rung of life if I get hungry enough."

Hearing Julie groan, tired and raspy like her tongue's withered from lack of water, sends an unpleasant sensation jolting across R. He shoots her a look in her general direction like he needs to double check she's not gone zombie too, his teeth exposed in that mummy’s grimace (although he really does mean to grimace this time). He’s used to Julie radiating energy. Now this new Julie Grigio.

R’s already shaking his head. “No. You won’t…be like…me. Not…that food.”

They’ll find something else. She still has a choice and he knows humans, ideally, don’t eat humans. They will if they’re desperate – R’s actually run into that before, back home – but Julie needs to stay Julie. She needs to keep that spark, whatever it is that she still has even while she saw Perry’s slowly fading. He’s sure of that more than anything else wandering around lost in this desert. It’s the first thing R’s been sure of in awhile, piercing the hunger that doesn’t change no matter how hot or cold it gets here.

He falls silent, listening to Julie huffing away next to him as they both drag their feet forward. Plan, plan, he needs a plan for a change.

Nothing surfaces. All he can focus on is the sound of their feet scuffing away at the sand shifting underneath them. Far away, someone screams – a Tribute, maybe, or one of those horned rabbits. R’s head bobs up toward it, then swings toward Julie almost involuntarily. Was it someone she knew? Or just another stranger biting the dust?