thearena | Mini Arena 1

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Mini Arena 1

The mood is strange, even for an arena. Every stylist is different, of course, but this arena has thrown people for a loop, and they adjust to them differently.

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The clothes are simple, and the tribute are loaded up quickly. Obviously the stylist have been informed what to tell them, what warnings to give. That there will be two sounds, one for a murdered death and one for an accidental one.

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The platforms lift them up, and they are in a tight ring, all facing outwards, in a courtyard ringed by a tall stone wall. To one side is a ring of weapons laid out, brutal looking things. To the other is a ring of supply bags. The pedestals all sit directly in the middle. And beyond them a series of entrances to the maze beyond.

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They've all been warned, don't step off your pedestal early. They have also been warned to put on a good show. Don't kill yourself off, and make sure not to be in the arena when the time ends, without having won. Or else you might not be coming back.

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The sound of the gong plays crystal clear across the opening. Let the games begin.

((OOC-feel free to play out cornucopia here, and then start your own threads just like any other arena. There is still some OOC plotting going around, so I am going to say there are 10 people murdered and the arena lasts 22 hours.))

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"Wherever they are, safe to say they won't jus' be sittin' out waiting for us," Wyatt offered, looking back the way Courfeyrac had come, then down the way Venus pointed. It seemed as good a direction as any. So long as they kept their wits about them.

Turning, he started that way. Happy to let Venus watch his back with her blade.

"The Capitol might not want things goin' on too long, but ya can be damn sure they don't want to end too soon neither."

Why else throw in the promise of more time if they murdered each other? The threats of permanent death?

"Could be anythin' in here." Wasn't there an old story, about a maze and a monster? Half-bull, half-man? Something to do with string, wasn't there? "Everybody keep an eye an' ear out, an' don't be afraid to give a holler if somethin' looks off."

Courfeyrac nodded, falling into step behind Wyatt. He was glad to have the pressure off having to make the major decisions, though still very much on his guard as they entered the area of canvas walls. He wasn't the sort to spook easily, but he wasn't about to let anyone get the jump on them.

"We should move quickly. If we gather all of the items quickly, we can find a place to wait out the clock." A barricade, perhaps. His specialty, it seemed.

Guy's gaze was constantly scanning their surrounding as they walked, his mind ever alert for any possible threats.

"Unless they chase us out of that place by throwing a monster at us," Guy pointed out, voice creaky with anxiety. "Or shooting lightning at us, or setting part of the maze on fire, or having the hedges try to eat us like those vines did in the arena before last, or having a giant death bird fly down from the sky and try to claw our eyes out..."

He waved vaguely with his free hand, as if to say 'and so on and so on.'

"I'll stop right there instead of continuing to be a little ray of sunshine." He looked at the hedges around them suspiciously as if they might suddenly try to take their legs off at the knees and wasn't much more relieved as they started to change to canvas around them (probably highly flammable). "But my point is this is not going to be the usual arena. In most arenas we make our allies, we protect our friends, we talk to people and hope they don't take our heads off, we find our little hiding places - and if they thought that was good enough we wouldn't be here right now. They're doing this to shake things up and that means we can't expect it to be the way it usually is. I don't think they're going to let us hide and we have to be ready for that."

"Better idea is to find the exit and then return there each time. Maybe we'll meet likeminded people who'll tell us where they got their stuff." She feels downright naive saying that, stupid. She's anything but inexperienced and innocent, but sometimes conflating strategy with hope has that effect. The thought goes unsaid, although likely between all of them, that they could kill the people they run into and take any totems off of them.

She sighs as she listens to Guy. He's right, naturally. She doesn't make the mistake some people do of taking being primitive as a sign of stupidity. She rubs her hands over her cheeks, then hacks a V into the canvas corner of one of the walls they pass by. There are hunks of metal in the path, mechanical forms that look like people but turn out to be sewing machines when she looks more closely at them. All the thread spooled across them is blood red.

"That's creepy," she says. "There's more of them up ahead..."

More and more, making it harder to get through the path.

Wyatt paused at the next corner, fingers flexing thoughtfully at his side as he warily considered the clusters of machines, growing together along the path like gnarled trees, bent and lifeless.

The back of his neck prickled just looking at them.

"What'a ya have on these thing's bein' somethin' we should be lookin' out for?" he asked, glancing back over his shoulder.

(A posse. A proper band for the first time in so long, for a moment he thought he saw the ol' boys there. Bat and Charlie and Bill where Venus, Courfeyrac, and Guy stood.)

Rolling his shoulders, he shrugged off the bag and pulled it around in front of him where he could see it and keep it from bumping into things as he started slowly forward, turning sideways to slip between two machines. He half expected the things to come to life once he'd past them, but they remained silent and still.

He turned back, brow furrowed.

"Maybe if we leave 'em be, we'll be alright."

Edited 2014-04-09 21:15 (UTC)

"I say we don't touch anything while we are here. We must get in and out with the ribbon with as little complication as we can manage." The machines are bothering Courfeyrac as well. He almost thinks the shadows of the figures are moving as they walk past them. More troubling, he can not tell at first if he is seeing thread or blood. More concerning is the fact that the path seems to be narrowing the further they advance into the metal mess.

His eyes are definitely playing tricks on him. His body too, sense of depth perception seeming suddenly skewed.

"Eh," he laughs nervously, twisting his body to squeeze between two of the rusted machine pieces. "It is very tight in here."

This is all quite concerning all of a sudden.

Guy was looking at the thread and how the machines were threaded together, wondering what it led to. It was all a part of something big, that much was clear.

"Get ready to move," he said nervously. "Whatever this is, it's probably going to go off any minute."

"Try not to touch the threads," Venus says, although she doubts it's necessary. For whatever reason, there's something foreboding about those spools dripping red into their path. They remind her of spiderwebs.

She squeezes in after Courfeyrac. Size may make it a little bit easier, but it's still difficult to navigate between the machines, and in a moment her hips are caught. She makes a little grunting sound and pushes the machine to try and squeak through.

Just like that, there's a rumble in all the machinery around them. Rather than giving way, the pressure on her body intensifies.

"Guys, guys-" She starts calm and then her voice takes on a note of alarm. "I'm stuck. It's pushing- ah!"

It was instinct, Wyatt's active mind taking a backseat to allow his body the freedom to move, to react, that had him leaping to Venus' aid even as he called out to the men.

"Go! Go!"

Wrapping a muscled arm around Venus' hips, he jerked - all his usual gentleness forgotten as he tried to pop her free before she was crushed.

Around them the other machines were coming to life, the walls seeming to close in, pressing the metal bodies closer. All sharp angles and edges and crushing weight.

"Move! Don't stop!"

In this moment, Courfeyrac is wondering if it wasn't poor planning to let whoever was the smallest among them go on alone while the larger members of the party stayed behind and didn't risk getting squished, but the time has already come and gone for such ideas. Instead, he's stumbling forward, trying not to trip over the stringy hazards which seem intent on snagging around every limb to hold them tight while the machines and walls seem to move and give.

He just about trips face first into one of the pieces of machinery when a taught line of string snags on one of his ankles. It is by some strange twist of fate or intervention of balance that he does not injure his head right then and there.

"Damn!" He slows down slightly, enough to catch his breath and reach behind him to urge the others along. "It cannot be much longer, can it? We must be nearly to the end!"

"Under here!"

Everything was closing in around them but there was a gap, even if it was low to the ground. Some of the sharp edges were closing in around it, though, so Guy kicked down one of the machines to try to jam both sides open for however long it would last before it got crushed and they closed in.

Venus is tugged out of the crush, but not without serious bruising and scraping. True to form, she doesn't complain about it as she gets low and pushes against a machine threatening to turn Guy's skull into so much pulp.

Her other hand grabs Courfeyrac's. "Lead the way. I can't see as far ahead as you can." She ushers Wyatt around, trying to still protect Guy with her body. "I can't see over all these machines."

A neck of the machine whips about and swings a taut thread at Wyatt's throat like a garrotte.

Already ducking to squeeze through the rabbit-hole Guy had dug for them, the noose missed Wyatt by inches, passing close enough over him to ruffle his coffee-colored hair. The whistle of it echoing in his ears, clammy fingers played up his spine like a laugh.

Death, having a joke at his expense.

Gritting his death against it, he shimmed through the gap, and stuck a hand back after him. Reaching to yank one of them through behind him.

"Grab a'hold."

Edited 2014-04-14 10:41 (UTC)

This is all too close for comfort. Courfeyrac's heart is racing as he ducks in after Wyatt, grabbing fast to the other man's hand. It's awkward to climb into the hole and he's just barely able to squeeze through the gap. Clearly he should've listened to Max when she mocked him for getting too fat.

"This way! Quickly!" He tugs at Venus, so that he won't lose her or Guy in the chaos.

"Go! Go!"

He let Venus get pulled through first.

"I'm the smallest, I'll go last."

He was taller than Venus but not by much and muscles aside, he was just built far tinier and thinner. If they had to go single file anywhere, it meant he had the best chance of squeezing through the worst of the gaps as they closed.

Venus feels a tugging around her ankle, feels her foot going numb, then a trickle of blood, cool and wet over fuzzy pins-and-needles flesh. Some of the thread's thin enough that it tightened around her to cut off circulation and sliced her until it snapped. It doesn't even hurt yet. "Careful for the threads, they'll cut right through you!"

There's a sound of metal slamming on metal behind them, and figuring there's no way that's good, Venus picks up her pace even more, wiggling through the entrance as it tightens. She reaches back through for Guy. "Move! Come on!"

They're almost clear.

Like the jaws of some animal, the metal came together, like jagged, broken teeth, cutting at them as they pushed their way through. Shoving at a sharp edge, trying to make room, Wyatt's hand slipped and heat ripped up his arm.

Squeezing his fist against the bloody tear, he fought to ignore it. Knowing he could worry about that, after they saved their hides.

There had to be a way out, it had to end somewhere....

There. He glimpsed the archway beyond the tumbling machinery, the pavilion beyond like something from the other side of the pearly gates.

"This way! Come on!"

The warning is an ominous one, reaching Courfeyrac a second too late. A piece of metal seems to out at him, taking a bite out of his thigh. Gasping in pain, he somehow manages to limp onward, eyes fixed to the beckoning archway above. He doesn't even have it in him to encourage the others, all he wants to do is get in, get the ribbon, and get out.

"Can you see it? Is it there?"

"It better be there," Guy said, his voice equal parts panicked and sardonic. "If someone took them all, they will die. All the deaths! Every death."

Murder murder murder murder murder.

The only reason someone wouldn't leave some for everyone was if they were the very worst people.

Guy shimmied his way through, sometimes having to duck through closing gaps, sometimes having to climb on parts of the debris to keep his legs from getting skewered, his hands getting sliced up in the process.

"Who thought sewing machines would be such- god- damnit!" She feels blood on her lower back, where she managed to push too hard against something sharp. It feels like that one scene from that toaster movie she saw as a kid, the one in the dump.

"I'm out, I'm out!" she says, reaching a hand back in and grabbing Guy to help pull him through. She sees Courfeyrac emerge a few feet away, Wyatt ahead of her, and they are now free of the metal and thread nightmare. "Are we all in one piece? How many of us are bleeding?"

Tetanus shots for fucking everyone.

Behind them, as Guy and Venus popped free, the trap slowed with a low, rumbling grind of gears. It stopped, a tangle of sharp gleaming edges, and shining strikes of blood where they'd taken pieces of them as they fought their way through, and then began to move again, the walls crawling back.

Readying for the next unfortunate tributes to stumble into the web.

Shaking his head at it - at the Capitol, her citizens, eating this up - he turned to the others.

"Anybody off bad?" he asked, looking between Guy and Venus, both with dark, red stains blooming under their uniforms. "The kit don't look like much, but we might have somethin' to help."

Courfeyrac shakes his head, swallowing the shooting pain in his leg. He isn't willing to waste time or supplies on himself. They have to keep moving forward, otherwise they'll never escape this place alive. "I will be fine. We've no time to lose, my friends. We should press on while we still have the energy to do so."

His hands were cut but they weren't deep and that would scab on its own, but quite a lot of blood was running down Guy's back and soaking the top of his pants so he twisted around to try to get a better look at the damage over his own shoulder.

"Uh. You mean like that?"

He twisted around so they could see his back.

His shirt was slightly shredded in the back and there was a massive cut that ran horizontal across his whole back. It wasn't likely to be fatal but it definitely needed tending.

"Does that count as bad? I might need to take care of that. Yeah."

"Yeah, that'll need tying up. Anyone here can do stitches?" She looks over her own injuries - bloody, but not terribly deep. She doubts they'll be in the Arena long enough to need to worry about infections.

She glances up, as if aware of the clock and the strains, the guilt, the impatience that will come with it.

"We can figure out a strategy while that happens. I can go with someone and try to get the ribbons. That's what it is for this District, right?"

Wyatt stepped over, frown deep as he looked over Guy's back.

"I can do this." It'd hurt like a bitch for Guy, but Wyatt could stitch it.

He glanced up, turned to Courfeyrac as he reached for the closure on his bag. "You up for goin' with her?"

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