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thearena2014-12-13 08:10 pm
69problems) wrote in thearena2014-12-13 08:10 pm
Entry tags:
(no subject)
Who| Signless and Psii, Signless and Davesprite, Signless and OPEN!
What| A catchall for the first two weeks of the arena, including but not limited to: fighting xenomutts, CBOT-12 shenanigans, Signless having inopportune trances, puzzle rooms, and gravity throwing a fit.
Where| All over the station.
When| Week 0 and Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Injuries, most likely.
A | Week 0 | Closed to Davesprite
This is not the first pack of the smaller, quadrupedal xenomorphs the Signless has fought, but it's the first he's fought on his own and all he has is a pocket knife (and a taser, but he isn't entirely sure how to use it and so doesn't feel like giving up the knife to experiment). It doesn't help that his usual method for dispatching small game -- stabbing through the eye and up -- doesn't work on creatures with no actual discernible eyes.
They've backed him into a corner where two hallways cross and while thus-far he's managed to ward them off, he is probably not going to be able to do so much longer. His first instinct when he catches movement out of the corner of one eye is to think oh, no, not more of them.
B | Week 0 | Closed to the Psiioniic
The Signless is exploring the hallways of the upper levels when he first hears the voice, distant and yet unmistakable.
"Help! Please--"
His Disciple is somewhere nearby. His Disciple is in danger, and if she's screaming for help then it must truly be dire. Did they bring her back? He knows that sometimes a tribute will show up in an arena already in progress: it's how he arrived all the way back in arena six. His bloodpusher skips several beats and he holds very, very still until she cries out again and he finds his feet carrying him toward her voice without input from his brain. For the first time he gives no thought to the noise his boots make against the floor or to checking around corners before turning them; all he thinks about is getting to her.
He should know that it's a trap, but part of him wants so desperately to believe he hasn't permanently lost her.
C | Week 1 | OPEN
The one downside to Signless's strategy is that, while wandering in order to have as clear a picture of the arena he's dealing with as possible is a good idea in theory, he often finds himself stumbling into places he probably could have gone without exploring. The first few puzzle rooms took him a good while to work his way through (they would have gone faster if gravity hadn't switched on him halfway through the first one, leaving him floating awkwardly near the ceiling). Now that he has the hang of them (and gravity is back to normal for the moment) they're not quite so bad -- in fact, he's starting to get good at working out the solutions.
That's why this room worries him. It's clearly built to require two people to solve, he can tell that much by the configuration of platforms and buttons. This poses a problem, as he is only one person. With no other option, he's forced to wait for another person to accidentally stumble in and hope that they'll be the sort to be more interested in solving logic puzzles than killing other tributes.
[Signless in his wanderings will probably get stuck in many impassable two-person rooms. Feel free to state in your tag the current state of gravity at the start of your thread; we can also always switch midway through, since it changes every half hour!]
What| A catchall for the first two weeks of the arena, including but not limited to: fighting xenomutts, CBOT-12 shenanigans, Signless having inopportune trances, puzzle rooms, and gravity throwing a fit.
Where| All over the station.
When| Week 0 and Week 1
Warnings/Notes| Injuries, most likely.
A | Week 0 | Closed to Davesprite
This is not the first pack of the smaller, quadrupedal xenomorphs the Signless has fought, but it's the first he's fought on his own and all he has is a pocket knife (and a taser, but he isn't entirely sure how to use it and so doesn't feel like giving up the knife to experiment). It doesn't help that his usual method for dispatching small game -- stabbing through the eye and up -- doesn't work on creatures with no actual discernible eyes.
They've backed him into a corner where two hallways cross and while thus-far he's managed to ward them off, he is probably not going to be able to do so much longer. His first instinct when he catches movement out of the corner of one eye is to think oh, no, not more of them.
B | Week 0 | Closed to the Psiioniic
The Signless is exploring the hallways of the upper levels when he first hears the voice, distant and yet unmistakable.
"Help! Please--"
His Disciple is somewhere nearby. His Disciple is in danger, and if she's screaming for help then it must truly be dire. Did they bring her back? He knows that sometimes a tribute will show up in an arena already in progress: it's how he arrived all the way back in arena six. His bloodpusher skips several beats and he holds very, very still until she cries out again and he finds his feet carrying him toward her voice without input from his brain. For the first time he gives no thought to the noise his boots make against the floor or to checking around corners before turning them; all he thinks about is getting to her.
He should know that it's a trap, but part of him wants so desperately to believe he hasn't permanently lost her.
C | Week 1 | OPEN
The one downside to Signless's strategy is that, while wandering in order to have as clear a picture of the arena he's dealing with as possible is a good idea in theory, he often finds himself stumbling into places he probably could have gone without exploring. The first few puzzle rooms took him a good while to work his way through (they would have gone faster if gravity hadn't switched on him halfway through the first one, leaving him floating awkwardly near the ceiling). Now that he has the hang of them (and gravity is back to normal for the moment) they're not quite so bad -- in fact, he's starting to get good at working out the solutions.
That's why this room worries him. It's clearly built to require two people to solve, he can tell that much by the configuration of platforms and buttons. This poses a problem, as he is only one person. With no other option, he's forced to wait for another person to accidentally stumble in and hope that they'll be the sort to be more interested in solving logic puzzles than killing other tributes.
[Signless in his wanderings will probably get stuck in many impassable two-person rooms. Feel free to state in your tag the current state of gravity at the start of your thread; we can also always switch midway through, since it changes every half hour!]
if you need something else to work with I can have roland do something else to wake signless up
The gusnlinger would have been very dead a very many times before Panem if he made a habit of stopping to wonder why Why can wait. More relevant questions here are what and how. The what: move Signless away from the spiked walls moving to box him in. The how: as quickly as possible. Roland's never been one for overdetailed plans.
A second's lost in running to the other side of the chamber and lifting himself to stand next to Signless. Another in glancing from his eyes - pupils the same size, for what it's worth, and one of these days he is going to sit Signless down to compare human and troll vital signs - to his hand, still outstretched. A third second is lost assessing the situation, running over options. Three seconds. A very long time, in situations like this.
There's the wall in front of them. The ledge just in front of the room's high door. Hard to see the rest of the chamber from here, but he knows exactly how far that ledge is. They've missed two sets of buttons so far but there's still that one on the ceiling...
"Signless," he says sharply, looking into the troll's vacant gaze and gripping his shoulder. Well, it was worth a try. With a muttered apology - who knows, Signless might hear even if he can't react - Roland bends, hefts his friend sideways over his head like a broad bag of wet concrete, and throws. He's as heavy as one, too, but the trick is to do it quickly. Some part of Signless hits the button on the ceiling and, as Roland hears the thump of his body landing on the other side of the wall, the machinery around him grinds to a stuttering halt. Nothing retracts, and he has no idea about the door on the other side of these walls, but that's a problem for later. For now he tries to look through the gap where two walls hadn't quite come together, trying to get a look at Signless without getting too close to the spikes.
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"I am the Signless. I am Kankri Vantas of Alternia and of Panem, not of Beforus. I am fourteen sweeps old. I have been in Panem for one and a half human years. I am in my eighth arena." He sits up, rubbing his temples and trying to get his vision to focus on something in the here-and-now to keep him grounded. He settles on the button on the ceiling. That was the last thing he'd been doing, right? Trying to hit a sequence of buttons? Which he shouldn't have been able to do with his mind in another time and place... not on his own, anyway.
"...Roland?"
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Later. Right now, there are more important things to make sure of. "Signless," he says, from the other side of the wall. He inspects the gap between the two walls of spikes in front of him. Not wide enough for him to slip through, but maybe-
He takes a careful grip around the base of a couple of the spikes, braces his back against the corner of the wall behind him, and begins to climb. "Say a few more facts for me, if you would. Ones I can recognize. Where we are, what we're doing. Once I get over there I'd like to check that your head's alright."
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"I can do that," he says. "It helps me to come back from it, reminding myself of the present. We are in the arena -- the eighth arena I have been in. The gravity has been changing frequently, but it hasn't been a problem yet thus-far. We were trying to get out of this room, though I'm not sure how well that's going at the moment."
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While Signless talks Roland gets high enough to swing carefully over the wall, jumping nimbly off it and settling close to where Signless had fallen. Or rather, where he'd landed. "It's going fine," he says, moving his fingers through Signless' hair to press carefully at various spots on his skull. He switches his gaze from Signless' eyes to his head and back again, wanting to make sure those red eyes can consistently focus. "Since, unless I miss my mark, we're both pretty much in one piece. Lucky thing that you landed well. That... paralysis. It wasn't something this room did to you, was it?" Probably not, given the way Signless was talking about it, but either way Roland needs to know a little more before he decides they're safe. As safe as they're going to be.
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"No. That's something I've been dealing with long before Panem. It's never happened here until now. It was a vision, a memory of the life I lived before this one. I told you about that I think, briefly."
He can't remember how much detail he went into, but he knows he got the basics in at least.
"I can get stuck in a vision until it's over or something jolts me out of it. A sharp fall, for instance."
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"Fortunate that this is the first time you've had a vision in Panem, though." Although the gunslinger does not always trust happy coincidence, for now he's willing to take it for what it seems. "Can't imagine they'd be very helpful in arenas. Unless this one told you how to finish the sequence from here?"
"There's that button," he notes, eying the one he'd thrown the other man at. "Could help to get that again. See anything else?"
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"Nothing more than that. I think whatever we're supposed to do in here, we're more or less finished with it. It's just finding whatever the final step is."
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His head stops turning, searching what he can see of the place. His gaze settles on the one spot he has not yet memorized: the corner of the ledge on which they are currently standing. "Signless," he says, casual. "How do trolls do with being held upside-down?"
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"Not badly, provided we aren't dropped on our horns. Why?"
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"... There's a button, but I can't reach it from here." He can tell without even extending an arm that it's too far away. Looks as though Roland is going to get to find out how well trolls react to being held upside-down after all.
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He hasn't had occasion, really, to take a very close look at Signless' ankles. Not until now. A little above them might be a good place. Where the calves start. He sets the 'weapon' hanging from his waist aside, then unties the old jacket from his waist and begins casually tying it around Signless' right leg. "How far, do you think? Hm. Depends on how far you can sit up, too. Otherwise I'll have to swing you..."
He is not really talking to Signless at this point. Signless won't mind though, surely.
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"Not too far. I'll definitely be able to reach it if you lower me down a ways."
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"Tell me when it's in reach," he says, balancing his own weight carefully and slowly, gradually letting Signless slide down. "It'll be possible to get somehow, or they wouldn't have put it there."
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He extends a hand but his fingers are just at the edge and he can't get a good enough grip on it to really push it down. Damn it.
"I'll need to be a little further down."
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"Take a second. Do you no good to stand too quick and fall right off again." Because Signless, of course, could not have thought of that on his own. Surely not.
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"Did that do it?" is what he asks, sitting up (slowly) and then pushing himself to his feet (still slowly).
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He slips his fingers into the gap in the door and pulls, feels it give a little. Then his right hand, of course, slips. "Come get this side," he says with just the hint at a grimace, moving to give Signless room. "Should get it if we work at it a little."
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Let's see how this door does when trying to hold up against the weight of one bag of concrete and two twigs taped together.
and nearly done?
i'd say done!