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.

25 - 24 - 23

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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3

2

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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She casts a warm smile at her two allies getting along. She doesn't know if it's easier with the possibility of all three of them getting out alive (of the two of them getting out alive - she still isn't sure how she'll strangle an artful suicide out of this Arena too), or if they're both just cordial enough in the Arena. Courfeyrac was, after all, kind enough to Kankri, persnickety as her favorite troll was.

"Guy Crood, but I haven't seen him yet. He'll probably be a bit hard to find, he's good at the survival skills thing." With the three of them, it's easy enough to keep an eye on all possible directions, and Venus tucks her machete into the belt loop on her pants. "On the note of survival skills, what's in the pack, Wyatt? And I take it no one's found any of those tokens or items or whatever we're supposed to get yet?"

She rubs at her neck, where the necklace she never took off until last week used to lay. It takes a moment to remember she gave it to Ellie.

"No," Wyatt shook his head as he slung his pack around to pull at the closure. "An' we got twelve of 'em to find, each."

And by his guess, with the time lost to find each other, and the time gained back by whatever poor bastard the bells had been for, they had less than eight hours to do it in.

He reached into the bag, fished about, pushing the contents around to get a look at it all.

"Some food, water, looks like a medicine kit... Ain't much." He drew his hand back and tugged the bag closed again. "Seems they really don't want us hangin' about."

Edited 2014-04-05 17:26 (UTC)

"I cannot say that I am surprised. Our survival is counter to the rules, especially in this particular arena." Courfeyrac's grip tightened around the axe handle. He frowned, considering the contents of Wyatt's bag. How much good would food really do them in an arena with a tight time limit?

"I suppose it would be wise to begin our search, in that case. If we are to win, we must collect the tokens." Or risk an empty and permanent death. All the more reason to get moving. "Perhaps we will cross paths with Monsieur Crood along the way."

What was that bit about hard to find? Because Guy came running around the corner from the direction of the Cornucopia like his butt was on fire, ie the way people usually did when trying to motor away from the Cornucopia. Without even registering who was standing there, he dove through a gap between two of them, tucking into a roll the arm that wasn't holding a large knife and then zoomed off.

Then when he registered what he'd just seen, he skidded to a stop almost cartoonishly and looked back for a better look.

"Oh. Hi."

He waved an awkward hello.

Venus springs immediately into action at the running, but Guy is both fast and small enough that when he ducks under her arm, between her and Wyatt, she doesn't have time to move her machete from its makeshift holster. It's fortunate; she might have accidentally killed him.

It still takes her a moment to snap back out of attack mode, to put her hands up - less to tell Guy to be calm than to make sure her other comrades see the gesture - and wave back at him. She takes a step forward, putting her in the middle of all these high-alert men, all of whom mean the best but she's sure are only a hair-trigger away from panic.

"Hey, Guy." She gestures with both hands. "These are our allies. Courfeyrac, Wyatt, this is Guy Crood, and we can start searching now."

Wyatt to his credit, blinked, and slanted a long look at Venus out of the corner of his eye... but then merely rolled his shoulders, resettling his bag.

"Right then," he murmured, bemused, before turning back toward Courfeyrac. "So, anybody got a preference?"

He looked up again, but it was impossible to tell direction, the sun high and directly overhead.

He'd nodded a polite greeting to Guy, watching the man cautiously for a moment before relaxing ever so slightly. It was hard not to feel as though they were already under siege with allies popping out of nowhere. Next time they were happened upon, he'd probably have to use his axe. The thought was rather sickening.

"Might I suggest that we head for whichever token is closest?" He knew he oughtn't be left in charge of making decisions, but he was glad to chime in nonetheless.

"Makes the most sense. We wouldn't even know which way to go to find the ones farther away. Our best bet is to keep moving and just try not to backtrack by marking where we've been."

He nodded over to where Venus had already cut a V into the brush, not knowing what the letter stood for but figuring it as a mark to leave behind.

"Does everyone remember what we're supposed to get, in case we ever get separated? They might trick us by putting more than one type of item there hoping we'll forget." He recited, "It's a diamond, marble, a circuit (whatever that is), a fish hook, a loop of wire, a lug nut, a wood chip, a ribbon, a biscuit, beef jerky, an apple, and coal. If they do mess with us by putting more things there than we need, one of you's going to have to pick because I don't know what some of those are."

He really didn't put it past them to put the things they were supposed to get mixed in with other things they didn't need and they only had so much they could carry things with.

Edited 2014-04-07 04:37 (UTC)

Venus pulls a most impressed face at Guy, then gestures down the way. She certainly hadn't remembered all the items; she just knew there would be one for each District, and assumed she'd be able to figure it out from there. Planning ahead has never really been her strong suit.

"The walls that way turn to canvas. That might be where the District Eight stuff is, maybe? So the ribbon?" She shrugs. Now that there's a group, she isn't willing to step up and be the leader. It isn't in her nature. Coordinating, maybe, but leading, not so much. She looks almost hungry to defer to Guy or Wyatt, to instead act as the guard dog or the canary instead of the masthead.

"We have to get one for each of us, and if people are already murdering each other I think odds are high that someone might try and scoop them all up to screw everyone else over." It'd make them a target, too, but only if someone else knew they had all the things. "Ribbon might be able to help us carry the other things anyway."

"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.

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