earthborn: (pensive mood lighting is how i roll)
Commander Jane Shepard ([personal profile] earthborn) wrote in [community profile] thearena2014-02-06 10:50 pm

Good Hunting

Who| Shepard, Garrus, and All Of You
What| Attempting to murder some folk, or at least cause injury
Where| various floors
When| Week Three, et all
Warnings/Notes| Probably language, game-typical violence

Shepard: Good Hunting in the Hallways, any floor
The second time, she’d been caught by surprise and normalcy of the challenge. The first, by the novelty. But in every arena, there was a simple rule— they would do something unexpected. Same recipe, like variations on a theme: this arena had sprinkles, that one had Dinosaurs, this one had… Well, still Dinosaurs, but considerably less terrifying ones.

By now, she’s no longer surprised, merely grateful for the shallow comfort of long lines of sight and well-defined shadows. Grateful for the way that having bare feet is an advantage rather than a hindrance, and for the weight of the bundle on her back, heavy with food both perishable and otherwise. It’s wrong; she should be angrier, but rage can’t solve her problems right now, and hiding is no longer the order of the day— she’s hunting, and if she finds you, she will kill you.

Garrus: Dioramas, Floor Two
Bullets were great but not having a gun to use them limited their functionality. If there was a gun to be had that fit the bullets, Garrus figured the best place to look would be the dioramas of human history. If nothing else, he would look a few of the spears and consider taking those. It wasn’t a great place to hide but his plan was to get in and get out of there as fast as possible.


Either or both: Elevator, any floor
Ding!

Beautiful thing, a choke point. Every bell meant something. A person. A sponsor gift. A tense waiting moment for everyone on the floor. A vantage where you could see the elevator but not easily be seen was worth more than anything right now. The perch just outside the door where one might lie in ambush was risky, but damned useful— as were the Elevators themselves.

Which was why most people took the stairs, it seemed. Which was why Shepard and Garrus had largely been taking the elevator. So far, it’d been nothing but empty corridors and tense breath-holding moments. Once or twice they’d pressed a button on their way out, send it down to the basement, send it up to the roof, just to see if anything would happen, to watch rushing feet kick up bits of roof-gravel as they scattered over the skylight.

But it was possible, this way to draw out the targets. Which was, after all, what Shepard wanted most right now. And what the Commander wanted, was what she usually got, in the end. No matter how many people had to die before she got it.


Just say which one you're responding to,
or which person you want to thread with in your entry thread, thanks! <3
googledox: (084)

Hallway, 4th Floor

[personal profile] googledox 2014-02-07 06:07 am (UTC)(link)
Bright green really wasn't the best color to be in an arena like this. Brainy might have perhaps had better luck in the last arena, with all its lush rainforest, but this arena was all dust and shadows. The darker places that were good for hiding in were all cast in dim grays.

Even when he clung to the shadows, his skin caught what little light there was and reflected it back a color shadows weren't supposed to be.

He froze when he saw movement, saw someone entering the fossil hall.

For him, freezing and hiding wasn't enough.
googledox: (013)

[personal profile] googledox 2014-02-14 07:55 am (UTC)(link)
Hey hey hey, he's made for thinking, not...doing most stuff.

While he was a competent fighter thanks to the same training with Karate Kid most Legionnaires had, he'd never bothered with most skills that were useful for combat or survival. Who needed stealth when they could stand there and let their forcefield deflect energy blasts?

"Motherfucker."

Another "sprock" helpfully translated for the home viewing audience.

He bolted, knowing that with his current state of exhaustion that there was no way he could outrun her if she was in remotely decent physical shape. It was to buy a few extra seconds.

"LYLE!"

Just a few extra seconds. She'd catch up to him first, though.
Edited 2014-02-14 07:56 (UTC)
googledox: (096)

[personal profile] googledox 2014-02-19 04:28 am (UTC)(link)
Adrenaline was his friend this time, adding a little more pep to his step. It helped that he'd retained his super-intelligence and such extreme control over his cognitive faculties. That meant he was able to lift open the sluice-gates and allow for a stronger fight or flight response.

He was still running, running, gauging how far she was behind by the sound of her footsteps, running, stopping -

Stopping?

He stopped suddenly right when she was nearly upon him, reversing direction, turning and diving into a roll back towards her, ending it by launching into a sweeping kick aimed at her feet.

Exhausted and outmatched though he was, he certainly wasn't helpless. And he wasn't about to just let her run up and bash him in the head from behind.
atippleoftransparency: (Default)

[personal profile] atippleoftransparency 2014-02-21 08:47 am (UTC)(link)
Which was about the time the friend turned up.

Lyle had been trained to run silently, but he'd sacrificed stealth for speed when he heard Brainy screaming for him. Which meant, if she wasn't too focused on the chase, that she might have warning enough to dodge before the impact of knuckles against a pressure point made her drop her crowbar.
Edited 2014-02-21 20:26 (UTC)
atippleoftransparency: (pained)

[personal profile] atippleoftransparency 2014-02-28 07:27 am (UTC)(link)
There was no way he was going to dodge that. Thank god he'd trained for this sort of thing specifically, at the hands of sentients with superior-to-human strength

Roll with it, ROLL WITH IT--

"Whooft!"

Lyle hit the floor hard, with the wind knocked out of him and his side on fire. He tried to move, or failing that, to fade from sight; but he couldn't do the latter because of whatever the Capitol had done to suppress his powers and his attempts at the former could have been knocked aside by a month-old kitten until he could get his breath back.

I don't wanna have my head smashed open in front of Brainy...
googledox: (088)

[personal profile] googledox 2014-02-28 07:38 am (UTC)(link)
He didn't yell his name - it was a waste of breath, but the rage that hardened in Brainy's eyes as he lunged forward and aimed a kick at Shepard's head could have probably cut glass.

They were alone in this place together. After having lost so much, to be detached from the Legion, from what they did have, was already painful. All they had in this place was each other. By themselves, they were certainly heroes, but only together could they be Legion, even if it was only a legion of two.

Of course, the ferocity wasn't just that. There was also the fact that before all this, they'd spent an awful lot of time together and this was the first mission or life or death situation they'd been in after spending that awful lot of time together.

That was possibly why Brainy was half-focused on Lyle, making it so his kick was angled in a way that didn't have much power to it, even if it was fast. The fatigue from starvation wasn't helping either.
atippleoftransparency: (caution might be less fatal)

[personal profile] atippleoftransparency 2014-03-05 04:26 am (UTC)(link)
His hero. It was a good thing Lyle was too injured to jump up and plant a kiss on Brainy, because this was not the place he wanted to have any kind of relationship talk. He struggled out of his prone position, muttering a wheezy litany of curses as his ribs objected to the continuation of existence.

"Go, go, go, go," he panted, staggering in Brainy's direction. Like sprock he wanted to stick around here for the crowbar-happy lady to recover!
googledox: (011)

[personal profile] googledox 2014-03-09 05:08 am (UTC)(link)
Easier said than done when both of them were battered and exhausted. Brainy's hand went for Lyle's elbow to at least stabilize him before they both booked it but it meant he was slow to start running himself, a bad thing when he honestly needed a head start more than anything.