Test Drive Meme

[etcircenses]

Welcome to Panem. You have been selected to participate in the 75th Annual Hunger Games!

Premise: This Arena is designed to be a small mock arena not all that dissimilar to the in-game arenas we run here at The Games. The party is similar to some of the gathering logs we have inside the Capitol when an Arena begins. Our hope is to give new and prospective players a place to get their feet wet, and get a feel for the fun (and bloody) mess that goes on around here.

This meme is open to anyone and everyone who would like to play. Current cast members, veteran and new, as well as anyone just wanting top drop in and have some fun!

How To Play.

Current cast members - you may tag into this arena in any way you choose, even cast members who aren't or are no longer tributes.

***An important side note, as it is within the confines of the Area in-game, all powers are lessened/nullified to bring any character down to a vincible level. (I.E. Make more magical/super-powered characters easier to actually kill for a normal person). Rule of thumb: If it's a physical difference, the Capitol will not mutilate it out (wings, etc), but other wise it's gone.

The Arena.

Tributes are raised in a circle around the Cornucopia; they are all dressed in safari outfits, including the little hats, and slathered in bug spray and sunscreen. They look amongst each other at the start of the Cornucopia. At the center of the circle is a fountain where a dancing hippo spits water into a circular pool around it. There's an engraving in embossed letters around the one-foot rim of the pool: PANEM NATIONAL ZOO.

Floating in the water of the brass fountain are supplies that the Tributes should find useful: medical kits, sleeping bags, and most importantly, weapons. Ropes, bo staffs, nunchuks, daggers and spears are all in ready supply a mere hundred yard sprint from the Tributes.

There are four paths away from the Cornucopia - into a swampy pit to the south, which, unbeknownt to Tributes, hosts alligators and crocodiles who've missed their scheduled feeding. To the west, into a dark building where boxes cut into the walls reveal that there were once tanks for creepy crawlies, but the glass has been removed. Through a gift-shop to the north, stuffed with plush animals (many of which are filled with razor blades, or other sweet little surprises). Or down an asphalt pathway to the east, winding through tall cages that may provide shelter from the other Tributes - but not necessarily the enclosure's inhabitants.

The countdown blares out in the humid air.

3...2...1...

Let the Games begin.

-/-

The Party.

Back in the Capitol, the Cornucopia is being celebrated with a lavish party. Animal couture is all the rage, and Capitol celebrities have dressed for the occasion by having their teeth elongated and their irises surgically altered to give the appearance of slit pupils. The wine is flowing freely, and the centerpiece of this particular viewing party is what appears to be a pig the size of a hippopotamus being roasted on a spit.

Screens throughout the large ballroom in which this takes place are showing the gruesome footage of the first bloodbath of what promises to be a delightfully ugly Arena. Tongueless Avoxes carry platters with little quail eggs in cups, silently offering them to all the guests. Caesar Flickerman, trademark blue hair now replaced by what appear to be feathers growing directly from his scalp, announces every gorey detail between oohing and ahhing over the dinner. Tributes die; Citizens feast.

Everyone who's anyone is invited.

Comments

Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III | How to Train Your Dragon | Party [cw: talk of nonexistent gore]

[boobhat]

Hiccup knew how to deal with people. Admittedly, he knew how to deal with Vikings, who, while people, could possibly qualify as their own exceedingly hairy subspecies, but village hero, quick wit, mostly comfortable in his own skin (except all the times he wasn't) blah blah blah. It all translated to knowing how to draw people into conversation and keep them there, and there just really wasn't much to these Capitol weirdos.

They enjoyed violence (who didn't? besides, you know, him?) but they just didn't have the decency to be decent about it like the Hairy Hooligans and the other island Viking tribes were. Even when the island Vikings raided another village, the expectation was that they should leave the people they were stealing from in good enough condition for them to be able to try stealing everything back. It was only sporting.

The Capitol people were just Berserkers and Outcasts at heart, or like the crazy Mainland Vikings Hiccup had heard stories about, but without the bravado to endanger themselves for the thrill of the kill. They dressed up their cowardice in diamonds and silk and self-importance instead. It was painfully simple to understand.

Which meant they were painfully easy to manipulate. He was already figuring out how to wrap them around his figure, which was possibly his only chance at long-term survival. Without Toothless he was just a slightly undersized nineteen-year-old with a quick brain and a false leg. (One that, apparently, really did not hold up well in muddier-than-Berk conditions, as the arena had proven, even if it could be used as a bludgeon to knock someone unconscious, as the arena had also proven.)

Any Tribute nearby would be able to hear him work his charms. "- oh yes, you def'nitely know your history, that is exactly what Vikings do to all their prisoners. Except after we pull their lungs out through their flayed-open ribs, that's when we pour salt on them," Hiccup lied conversationally, gesticulating with violent, animated jerks of his hands. "Can't have a good blood eagle without a whole bucket o' salt."

He leaned in conspiratorially, holding a hand up to his mouth as if sharing a secret. "In fact, we have a joke on Berk, that all our prisoners are pickled to see us." The Capitol people he was talking to immediately tittered. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go quell the fires of my inner barbarian rage with a cold drink."

He slipped away, aiming to mingle with any Tributes immediately nearby. He needed a break, anyway. Running off his mouth and making up ridiculous things they wanted to hear as he went - and keeping track of them all - was exhausting.

[ruffntumblenut]

As it stood, Ruffnut was becoming somewhat of a punch line in the Capitol. Her deaths had been violent and her boasting usually proved itself to be unfounded.

Worst of all when she was pouting she could be downright rude at a party.

"Hey! Did you get eaten by a crocagator? No? Then shut up and give me more of those meat balls." She demanded in a sharp contrast to Hiccups light and conversational manner.

She was clad in a fringe filled faux leather outfit, feathers coming off her arms and most humiliating, a glues tending golden, jewel encrusted helmet with no horns.

She had almost thrown herself out a window to avoid wearing it.

"What are you smiling about?" She snorted at Hiccup as she shoveled meatballs into her mouth getting the grease on her dress.

[boobhat]

"Oh, this?" Hiccup said, grinning an even toothier grin, one that looked entirely sincere. "This is completely fake so nobody I'm talking to realizes how much I'd rather be mucking out dragon stables instead of talking to them."

The corners of his mouth twitched in a way that was subtly more genuine as he nodded off in the direction of the people Ruffnut had yelled at.

"I see you're dealing with the people here with, ah, your usual charm - and what is that on your head?"

The stylists apparently had liked Hiccup's natural biker Viking look so his outfit wasn't all that different, albeit it had a few too many extra buckles and spikes.

[ruffntumblenut]

Ruffnut shot him a scathing look, still adjusting to being teased by him rather then her brother.

"I keep telling them I want my helmet back but this is all I get. Some big shiny hat that makes my neck hurt." She rolled her eyes.

"It's stupid, the meaner I am the more they laugh. But I throw one punch and suddenly I'm pinned to the ground and getting shocked." The corner of her mouth curled into the ghost of a smile. She actually kind of liked being manhandled and shocked.

[boobhat]

Seeing that the helmet was a sore spot and that she'd been forced into it made Hiccup drop it. Unlike Tuffnut, other than his general wry commentary about his friends, he didn't enjoy teasing them about things that really bothered them and he knew having to wear all this frilly stuff probably had Ruffnut taking a hit to her self image.

"They're laughing at you being mean because it makes them feel like they're civilized in comparison, with their fancy clothes and delicate manners."

He held up his hands in a delicate way, briefly doing an impression of how the Capitol people carried themselves.

Then he collapsed into a nearby chair, picking at the weird little leather straps at the wrist of his jacket.

"They think this whole thing they do is proof they're some kind of noble society and anything we do that they see as 'uncivil' is funny to them because they take it to mean they are as advanced and special as they think they are. And that also means they think they deserve to do what they do without getting punched in the face back. They're not like Vikings at all - they want to cause violence but unlike Vikings, who understand the price of a good brawl might be losing a few teeth, and the price of killing someone might be a blood feud, they don't want any of the risk. And despite being -" His voice dropped low, and he looked around to make sure no one would overhear him before saying the next word quietly, "- cowards that way, they want to feel like they're still important anyway."

Ruffnut - like most of his friends, really - wasn't exactly queen of social graces and that was why he was hoping he could help her understand how the Capitol people worked and how they justified things to themselves so she didn't make any mistakes navigating it.

[ruffntumblenut]

Ruffnut listened...about as well as she ever did. Hiccup had grown alot over the years and that meant he was better at keeping her attention.

But she was still prone to losing interest after the first few sentences so she had to keep herself from wandering off. This meant eating more of the food she had swiped. When he finally stopped her cheeks were puffed out like a chipmunk, full of meat. Swallowing hard she tried to piece together what bits she had followed.

"So basically they're jerks and cowards and kind of idiots." And she was aware that she really wasn't one to be pointing out other peoples intellectual failings.

"Well that would explain why they got us and not some other vikings less likely to cause trouble." To that point she casually sent her plate sailing through the air to shatter against a wall. Rather then the shock and dismay she was hoping for the crowd laughed and clapped politely making comments like "Oh isn't she precious" and "Such a primitive expression of joy!"

From the look on her face this was not what she had been hoping for.

[shambler]

R was both horrified and impressed with the level of sadistic violence Hiccup was talking about. A little impressed because it was a level of, uh, creativity zombies just didn't think about. Mostly he was horrified.

It didn't help that this Tribute had a way with words, painting an image that even a corpse's creaky imagination can picture. It took R only a few delayed seconds to realize what Hiccup meant by "blood eagle" - it didn't help that R knew form experience what that looked like. Throw a hunting party of too many zombies at not enough humans and you had a lot of ripping and tearing and dismembering going on (the good news was Food was usually - hopefully - dead by then). Blood eagle sounded too poetic, if you asked him. Glorified, even.

He caught up with Hiccup at the buffet line: rows of food in just about every color, shape and size, and all of it smelled disgusting to him. It was probably all pretty and crafted by some master chef.

R wedged himself before the lamp pot roast, facing Hiccup as he groaned. "True? Your...people?"

Honestly, he almost wished they weren't as bad as his stories because there wasn't much of a distinction between these Vikings and the Gamemakers. R's grey face was a mix between slow awe and even-slower disapproval.

[boobhat]

"Oooh yes," said Hiccup as he piled food onto his plate at the buffet. He didn't look up at who was talking to him yet. "We also make fences out of human body parts. The smell gets terrible after a while but they really are an underutilized material for construction, when you really think about i -"

That was when Hiccup actually looked up to see who he was talking to and the moment he did, the color drained out of his face.

R was dead. R was very clearly dead. And yet walking and talking.

Hiccup dropped his place and before it had even crashed to the floor, he'd already vaulted over the buffet table to the other side of it, pointing at R as if he planned to jab him to death with his index finger if he came closer, for dearth of any weapons.

"Draugr! You're a draugr."

He was not superstitious by nature. In fact, he as the one more likely to doggedly prove Berk superstitions weren't in the least bit reasonable. He'd still heard the stories growing up, though, and if anything was possible in this place...

[shambler]

R has to pause to think about what a "draugr" must be, his mouth flopping open in a gape as he processes that Hiccup suddenly went from his side of the table to across it. Clearly he'd run into corpses before, because he'd put a table between them and that's actually a fairly decent survivor tactic R's run into. Hardly perfect with a swarm of Dead but with one or two? Almost as good as a barricade.

"I...guh-guess...?" R assumes that means monster, corpse, zombie - whatever. He prefers zombie or Dead, personally. Monster's true, but it still sits wrong. And corpse is so...medical, and cold. "Not...eat...you. Okay?"

R holds up both hands - he has both hands again, after getting them shredded to bony splinters last Arena - and he's proud to say they're gore-free and there isn't even a spot of blood or anything stuck between his fingernails. His Stylist team outdid themselves. One of them muttered something about desperately needing a vacation after this.

He tries to ignore the accusing finger stabbed his way, trying very, very hard to remember if he's killed anyone who looks like Hiccup. So far he's drawing blanks.

[boobhat]

"Somehow I am not comforted by the fact you need to actually tell me you're not going to eat me out loud. Rather than it being implicit. It really seems to me the kind of thing that should be an very unstated given," Hiccup said, his voice rising somewhat in alarm as he spoke.

However, R wasn't attacking him, expanding to a huge size to crush him, or driving him mad with his evil undead powers. So if he was undead but wasn't a draugr, that just made him an unknown. Fortunately, Hiccup was pretty comfortable at accepting the unknown.

At least when he knew more about it.

"A draugr's an undead thing that supposedly eats people or sucks their blood, or drives them crazy. We have stories. Ones that probably aren't true but -" he gestured to R "- apparently similar things are elsewhere." He didn't sound hostile, though. He started to look at R now as if he wanted to understand him enough to not be spooked. "So, uh, what are you if you're not one?"

[shambler]

...Yeah R can see how his attempt to be reassuring and non-threatening didn't quite pan out when it's put like that.

R shakes his head: while zombies do eat people (the blood sucking is just kind of incidental, really), he's pretty sure they don't intentionally drive people crazy. That part seems like it happens on its own and he can say that living in the wasteland of a city you might've grown up, seeing neighbors and family and coworkers all being eaten alive, and he thinks he can see why people spiral. In a way, it's easier to be a corpse. Less complicated. Things don't shock. Things don't have much of an impact and he's always wished for something more, but sometimes he can see why it might be considered a perk. At last Hiccup hadn't screamed his head off or gone for the carving knife by the lamb. He'd been worried about the screaming the most.

"Zom...bie," R carefully enunciates it for him, working it out behind the muzzle. The word "draugr" actually has a kind of a ring to it and it does seem less offensive than being called corpse or it or thing. "Some...things same." He wants to get that out there, be truthful. His hand comes out toward Hiccup.

The dead boy wants to shake. When he sees that look in Hiccup's brown eyes, curious, honest but a little nervous, he wants to talk like real people.

[smarterthanthem]

"So do you really pickle people?"

Hiccup can be forgiven for missing the presence of this party-goer during his performance, she's really, really short. Because she's eleven (there's also a history of less than stellar nutrition but mostly it's the youth that's responsible).

Clementine leans against a buffet table, her arms folded across the front of her ridiculously sparkly dress, black with layered skirts.

[boobhat]

"Oh yeah. Then we serve them up with a nice plate of herring."

Cannibal jokes. Wow. He was making cannibal jokes. This was what his life had suddenly devolved into. Pretending all Vikings were brutal monsters instead of talking about the contingent that were all explorers and colonists - and now, dragon-riders - and talking about cannibalism with small children.

He couldn't do that to a kid already immersed in so much horror, so there was a slight twinkle in his eye, as he grabbed a glass of something that looked like wine from the tray of a passing avox. At least he hoped it was wine, becuase it was the only drink he'd seen that looked remotely familiar and there was no way he was drinking anything that was bright blue or glowing.

"The Vikings of Berk are also amazing explorers. We've figured out way to row a longship all the way to the moon," he said, making a sailing motion with his free hand.

[smarterthanthem]

Clementine smirked back at him. "You might want to dial it back a little, they're dumb but you're trying a little hard." she watched him take the wine, relegated to juice or soda herself, even the Capitol was careful not to let children drink, even if it would let them fight to the death. "So you're really a Viking?"

[boobhat]

Hiccup just smiled at her comment that he was taking things too far.

"Hey, hey, I was perfectly believable when I was talking to them. I just threw in the moon thing so you weren't afraid I'd try to throw salt at you mid-conversation."

He sat down across from her in a nearby chair, wine glass in hand.

"And yep. I'm a Viking. Though my people are less with the torture and pillaging and more with the colonizing, trading, and exploring." He added, "And dragon-riding."

He wondered if she'd buy that one or think it was another tall tale. In fact, he wondered if other worlds even had dragons. A few he'd talked to had come from worlds that didn't.

[smarterthanthem]

Clementine grins, "Well they don't look kindly on tributes fighting outside the arena, so you wouldn't want to.

She looks interested. "I remember watching a show about Vikings once. They never mentioned dragons though. Do you all wear horned helmets?"

[grimbiker]

Sirius knew that the other Tributes played the game. That was how they coped. Sirius, he was more interested in drinking and having as good a time at this party as he could while thinking about how much he wanted to bring the people hosting it to justice.

"You know back home, we pickled people all the time." He spoke casually, teasing. It was better than breaking his glass over the nearest person and screaming at them.

Though that was tempting.

[boobhat]

"Good to hear. It's a lost art these days," Hiccup said glibly, picking at a plate of baguette slices covered in some kind of pate as if trying to figure out what it was. Then he started poking at the bruschetta as if the tomato bits utterly mystified him.

This was because he'd never seen tomatoes before.

"To be perfectly honest, this is almost a welcome break from all the mayhem back home," he said, looking sidelong at Sirius with a twinkle in his eye that made it clear he knew Sirius was onto him. "These people are clearly so moral and decent about their gratuitous violence that I couldn't possibly hope to understand their peaceful ways. Something they've made very clear several times now."

He popped the bruschetta and toast in his mouth, opting to give it a try.

[grimbiker]

"Oh yeah, I know. Back in the day, I used to hex anyone who came close to me." He mimed waving his wand with his hand. "Whoosh. Like that. You should have seen the way their bodies swelled up and turned blue. Now these people..." he gestured back to their fellow guests. "No sense of fun at all. Have to keep it to the arena."

Not that Sirius was particularly violent in the arena. Or at all. But at least he could joke about it.

[boobhat]

Hiccup raised an eyebrow.

"Hex? As in magic? Actual, real magic?"

[grimbiker]

"Yeah." Sirius started to take a drink then stopped. "You didn't know that? I'm a wizard. I was a wizard. The Gamemakers don't like magic in the Capitol. Sorry, no party tricks." He gave Hiccup a twisted smile.

[bindsthedead]

Sabriel was looming. Her natural height helped, but what really did it was the black dress festooned with skulls and the ridiculous eyeshadow.

Then she smiled as she approached, and the entire impression of a sinister necromancer vanished, replaced by a resigned and amused young woman.

"They do love stories, don't they? I just hope they don't expect you to do in the Arena." Her own inability to enter Death even on the occasions she had her powers had helped her to explain to disappointed sponsors why she never enacted any of the bloody rituals she described, but this young man didn't seem to have such an excuse.

[boobhat]

The sight of a looming person wearing skulls really wasn't something unusual for Hiccup, though that was definitely a lot of black and the eye makeup was new.

Rather than being upset she saw through his lies, he chuckled in a way that verged on giggling.

"Oh no, see, it's all part of my cunning plan," he said, tapping at his noggin. "If they ever find out I'm lying, then I'll just keep making up new lies. I'll be the compulsive liar Viking guy. Then they'll be left wondering about my myyysterious past."

Hiccup wiggled his fingers.

"They've already been playing me up as some kind of dashing rogue or something as is." His stylist had already strong-armed him into getting an ear piercing. That'd been a fun afternoon. "Although that isn't the most inaccurate reputation I've ever had. At least this time they don't think I'm ten feet tall, with the strength of a dozen men."

Trans9 AU Firelord Zuko

[prodigalfirelord]

Zuko, by contrast, still only knew how to deal with a small cross-section of humanity. As brutal as fire nation nobles could be, they lacked the decadently hedonistic sadism that was Capitol fare, and decadent sadism had never sat well with Zuko.

But it translated well as disdain for common peasants, and that was reasonable to expect from a warrior emperor. He was getting away with it so far.

"How long until I can challenge their president to an Agni Kai?" he wondered under his breath to Hiccup, as they met at the punch bowl. "You'd think with how much they like violence, they'd participate in it once in a while."

That would make things so much simpler for Zuko, who was still dangerous even without his firebending. Possibly even more so, since swords had always been more of a talent of his than firebending.

CRAU Hiccup

[boobhat]

"Any time you like as long as you're ready to be executed five minutes later," said Hiccup cheerfully.

He was sitting at a table, drinking some kind of...blue thing, that tasted very strongly of blue. You got used to blue-tasting things when you ate food from all manner of worlds and cultures.

He held up a hand and lowered it to indicate Zuko needed to dial down the temper a notch. He knew (or at least hoped) that Zuko was playing up the enraged emperor thing and that was good but they also had to make sure he didn't go so far that they thought he was a genuine threat.

And that was what Hiccup was there for, the good cop to Zuko's bad cop. They always worked like this, in tandem, helping to balance each other in situations like this when they needed to.

"They'd never stick their necks on the line like that. Not these people. Looks like we're in this one for the long haul."

They hadn't been sure they'd be revived. Their brands that allowed for teleportation back to the ship had been deactivated which made them wonder if the Capitol had managed to view their history through dimensions and realize the risk of capturing two of Stacy's crew, but perhaps they couldn't view their full histories when large chunks of them involved popping around through time and space and in between dimensions.