TEST DRIVE ARENA 002

[gamemakers]

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

Premise: Something has gone a bit wrong with the device, and it's pulling in more people than the Capitol had planned. Extras, doubles, or even the same exact version of someone already pulled into Panem, with or without their memories! It's a mess. But somebody has to clean it up. And what better way to do so than to have a televised death-match!?

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. 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 they choose. Even cast members who aren't or are no longer tributes. Since this meme is taking place between Arenas 03 and 04, you may play your character as though they have been sent into this arena after Arena 03, CR and in-game history intact. OR. You may play your character as having a clean slate; as though this is their very first Hunger Games. Or, at least the first one they can remember.

This meme may not count for in-game CR because it will not be considered as having actually happened, plot-wise.

Guests - welcome to Panem. This is your first time here. Your first Hunger Games. Run for the Cornucopia. Hide in a corner and cry. We don't care. Go crazy. Have fun. Make new friends. Profit.

***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.

Below, you will find a description of the setting for this arena as well as a few details regarding weapons, supplies and hazards.

Setting.

The building is old and musty, light filtering down through the dust particles that every movement sends into the air. It was obviously once a grand and beautiful place, a bustling hub, but this is far from true anymore.

The building consists of multiple levels. The main concourse is a huge, cavernous room, a hard place to hide in, but where all the cornucopia goodies can be found. Blue paint speckled with gold can still be seen clinging to what's left of the room, but any design has long since eroded away. Below that, a floor that ones held business and restaurants of all natures, and lower still levels of tracks, now long past the days of holding trains. Some of these tracks can be followed down a bit, if you want to make the jump down into them, but eventually all end short, either collapsed over the years or long since flooded out, ending in dark, murky water.

You have been outfitted in a pair of heavy cotton denim jeans, solid boots, a light cotton t-shirt and a heavy cotton hoodie. The upper floor can catch a draft, especially as night comes, but below the temperature is moderate, even warm.

Many thins are falling apart here, but the bulk of the building, made of cement and marble, has stood against time well. However, window have long since broken out, and store fronts, benches and counters made of woods have not fared as well.

Al thought electricity stopped here long ago, the Capitol has rigged partial power into the arena. Sometimes. The flickering lights are dim, and unreliable, and seem to always come and go at the worst times. Expect to find yourself exploring a tunnel by flickering lights, to suddenly be plunged into the kind of darkness you can only find under ground. Just you, the rat, and the person following you alone in the cozy darkness.

Supplies.

The Cornucopia is your first, most important resource. Around it are scattered the available resources:

Weapons:
-crowbar
-six-inch serrated hunting knife
-night stick

Equipment:
-day-glow orange backpacks containing the following items:
waterproof matches, high-tensile metal chord (12 feet) iodine
-small crate labeled "apples"
-chords of nylon rope
-metal quart-sized container presumably full of water
-flash lights


**IMPORTANT NOTE!!!!

Since this is a meme, we are going to allow each character the pick of ONE weapon and ONE equipment item, if you believe that your character would risk running for the cornucopia. Just remember. These are high demand items and we rather encourage you to fight over them ;) So long as you all remain civilized about it, of course. If things get out of hand, a mod will step in. Have fun with it, but be realistic too.

Immediate Hazards.

-The rats. They are big, nasty, and hungry. And there are MANY of them, especially if you go into the tunnels.

-Debris. Broken glass, rusted metal, broken concrete, rotten wood. This place has been falling apart for years and you weren't given a tetanus shot before you came here.

-Cave ins. The tunnels have not been maintained. They are not as stable as they once were after years of flooding and damage with no one to patch them up.

-The Water. Easy to acquire but bad to drink. Maybe you should pray for a rainstorm...



Wildlife.

**Columba livia. Common city pigeon. They are available in mass, flying in from the broken windows and holes in the roof. They are flighty, and messy, but not particularly smart.

**Loxosceles reclusa granda. Aggressive and unnervingly large brown spiders native to the area and love to lurk in dark corners. Their bites are incredibly poisonous and will begin to rot away the surrounding flesh if not treated promptly.

**Rattus norvegicus. The common rat. Edible if cooked. Known to be carriers of diseases. (Especially if they were put here to do just that...) These guys are EVERYWHERE and some of them get to sizes that might make you wonder if they are cross breeding with stay dogs. And if you explores the tunnels, beware the mythical rat king a massive bundles of rats whose tails have knotted together.

Foodstuffs.

Both the rats and pigeons are edible. In additions, some of the restaurants might have food tucked into the back, in various states of edible.

Dripping water can be found in many places. Drink at your own risk. Some is fine, some...not so much.

As always, we here at The Games would like to wish you a very happy Hunger Games!

May the odds be ever in your favour.

Post apocolyptic grand central image from here

Comments

in which R is the least helpful

[shambler]

Yikes. This is awkward. He didn't realize a machete was that big a deal. All he knows is they're pretty good at lopping off Dead arms and legs and the Tribute who attacked him didn't know how to use it, not really. It’s only a big deal now because Julie decides it’s a big deal, her eyes wide, eyebrows first shooting up and then knitting in that way that Perry used to think was cute. Her “scrunchy face”, that’s what Perry used to call it in his head. It really is scrunchy.

“An…hour?” R’s moan actually sounds sheepish. He isn’t sure, he doesn’t usually keep track of silly things like time. “…More?”

For a zombie, an hour isn’t long at all. It’d probably take him an hour just to get from Security to Lost and Found. An hour could be forever to a Living girl like Julie, though, and that’s the problem. Someone could’ve decided to dig through the ribs and leftover meat he left behind in an hour, easy. Just because he moves slow doesn’t mean everyone else does. Not here. R looks down at Julie that step below him, her hair still bright against the flickering lights, her scrunchy face out in full force.

R isn’t qualified to say what’s cute these days but he does know he thinks it’s a nice expression. It doesn’t change the fact there’s a Schrödinger’s machete floating around.

I'm crying about everything

[misscabernet]

Maybe it's not the most threatening thing when you can survive losing a few limbs, but to the Living, that's as good as she'll get to a gun without actually getting one. She knows how to use one, which makes it even more dangerous.

Or maybe she's just grasping at straws here. It's always better to have something to do. A mission -- ugh. That's Dad in her, turning people into tools. Giving them a reason to live other than living.

Dammit. An hour. That's probably an hour in Dead-time, too. She shakes her head, crossing her arms over her chest. Look, she's really trying her patience already, and she can't help the nagging voice that reminds her that having a Living friend here would give her better odds. Both of them would have better odds.

"It's not worth it." Not since it's probably gonna take another hour for R to shuffle his way back. As human as he can be in other ways, moving still isn't one of them. And staring. Julie's noticed that he doesn't blink, not near as much as he should. Guess she's used to it by now.

"Come on, let's keep going down here." Away from the scream. Maybe they'd be lucky enough to find whoever'd gotten that machete. As long as she was quick enough to avoid losing a limb.

This time when she peers up at him, there's a bit of a mischievous edge to her lips. She's already let that machete go. Nothing was permanent at home, she's guessing the same goes here. (It's not so bad, being alone with him. Not getting chased by the Dead or those Boney things.) "Don't tell me you're trying that 'cause you're scared of the dark down there." She didn't miss that he decided to remember this halfway down the damn escalator.

Excellent

[shambler]

Julie deciding it’s a lost cause actually plays out on her face in real-time. R watches, fascinated, as disappointment transforms into something else. Evolves.

That’s a better word: evolves. Better sound. R likes it starts with a vowel.

R twitches his mouth into a frown. “Not…scared. Can’t.”

The zombie tries to look as unscared as you can even get for Julie. He thinks he succeeds. Sorta. Okay, maybe not so much, but he gets points for trying. It’s hard to look anything when your facial muscles are frozen in rigor mortis 90% of the time. R doesn’t know how to tell her that he did feel…something looking into that darkness. The words just aren’t there. They bleed out like he probably did out when he died. He needs time to digest it, that’s all. R only gives a shrug, as if to drive in how totally not scared this corpse is, and swings his head down to the shadows pointedly.

“I’ll…go first,” R says, suffering a moment of chivalry. He thinks it’s chivalry. There’s no point to holding doors for girls anymore. The least he can do is take point.

R starts to push past Julie, actually glad he pigged out. With that Tribute he ate buzzing around his cells, his brain, R doesn’t feel much of that tug toward Julie, pointing at her being Living and demanding he fix it. For now R thinks he’ll have no problems concentrating. Julie deserves better than wandering across rat-shit covered escalators with a dead guy, in his opinion, and she definitely doesn’t deserve any of those Tributes gunning for her. R surprises himself by grinding his teeth together at the thought. Anything happening to Julie seems to set off that reaction, come to think of it - M coming at her, the Boneys trying to pass judgment because she was anti status-quo and could actually motivate. It’s a dangerous word to the Boneys, “motivation”.

She brings that out in people, R sees that now. It just…didn’t work with Perry.

[misscabernet]

With his answer, she starts to suspect he might've taken that as a personal slight instead of a joke. Just for a half a second, she's reminded of Perry. Gettin' scared on the job, Pere? And then that face, like it was personal, like the lightness in her voice didn't make it obvious he wasn't supposed to take it seriously.

At least it's the first time she can say she's seen a zombie look indignant.

(Kinda proves her point, though. Taking the lead.)

Julie lets him by with a stifled laugh, just so she doesn't have to suffer some kind of male ego bruising here. And -- okay, look, she's not that thrilled herself about stumbling around in the dark. The lights keep flickering on and off, just daring her to get stuck somewhere shitty so they can shut off and leave her in total darkness. Can zombies see in the dark? Pretty sure no. They stumble around badly enough in the daytime; it probably gets worse at night.

It's really startling, the kinda stuff she has to think about when a zombie's on her side. Temporarily or not.

"Can you even see down there?" So curiousity takes advantage of her. Maybe they should be trying to find a flashlight. Or a lighter. Desperate times. "Or can you, like... smell your way through?" It's important to know. She's seen more than her share of zombies sniffing the air, and the whole blood-on-her-face-thing... yeah. Let's hope that never happens again.

[shambler]

Don't think R doesn't hear that little indelicate snort behind him. It's like a giggle if Julie lassoed it back before it morphed into a laugh. He likes that too, right up there with her scrunchy face. She knows how bad this is – how bad it all looks – but she’s still able to laugh and he thinks that’s Something. R rolls his shoulder in a shrug. Trust him, there’s a shrug for every occasion and R’s had plenty of time to come up with every variation in between. This is the “I’ll make it work, trust me” flavor.

“Lots…of…smells,” R admits. He’s the first to make to the bottom of the escalator, R peering into the shadows. He can’t see much more than she does, but the smells do jump out at him. Life…here and here and oh yeah, over there. Small. Not what that hunger needs. Probably more rats. They don’t pull at him with the same kneejerk reaction he gets around, say, someone like Julie. They’re there, though, if he concentrates past the general smell of rot and mold and dead things in the dark.

“…Cuh-clear.”

Maybe he’s playing at being an army puke today or maybe it’s something he remember from his Living days. Too much Call of Duty or Medal of Honor? Who knows. All he does know is he gives it his stamp of approval, for all that’s worth, and R even flaps a hand at Julie to give his all-clear. He’d give her a thumbs up if he knew how. (R wishes he had a machete to give to Julie, though).

R stands there waiting for Julie. He refuses to shuffle off until he knows where she is. She brings this weird, funky little focus spearing through his grey matter and he’s determined not to disappoint. Maybe he didn’t nab her a machete, but he can at least help her through the tunnels, maybe nab her a little dinner if she doesn’t mind rats. R’s hand comes back groping for hers.

[misscabernet]

Yeah, lots of smells. Shit and rats and mold, probably festering all over the walls, covered with a thin sheet of algae. It smells like the last place she wants to be stuck in, but it's definitely not gonna help her claw her way through the dark. He seems to be doing a better job than her. Or he's just pretending he is. Either way, she knows he wouldn't miss someone sitting in the dark, waiting for them to get too close. They'd always managed to find her when she pulled that kind of crap.

She snorts again, obviously very dignified. Unfortunately, she was raised by a general. She recognizes the sign for what it should be.

"You really gotta work on those." Plenty of time later. Right. She clears the escalator, the lights clicking off completely the moment she hits the ground.

Knew it. Knew it was gonna happen.

A hand hits her hip and she stifles a noise that's much closer to a gasp than a snort. "Hey, watch it." Guess she's really stuck holding a corpse's hand in the dark. (If he decided to eat her now, she wouldn't have a chance.) Her fingers slip between his, steady steps next to him. As much as she's not up for letting R lead the way, she's gotta admit he has a slightly better chance of maneuvering. Mostly because she's impatient as hell to find her way outta this.

"We're fine." Yeah. She takes a breath, exhales. The darkness closes in, more than choking. "Try not to run us into a wall."

[shambler]

Holding Julie’s hand, even in the dark, does things to R he doesn’t understand. He knows it’s hand against hand, flesh against flesh, close enough to be aware of her blood vessels doing their thing and his…not doing theirs. He gets it. But there’s something else, something that makes R feel lighter, like his spine isn’t crooked from years (decades?) of hunching over, like he could lift her in his arms and shuffle right through every single Tribute gunning for her without even losing a single body part.

It makes him think miracles can happen.

He's still off in his own little daydream, not doing a very good job “watching it”, when he registers Julie speaking again. Sheepishly R snaps back to attention. She knows he has a habit of drifting off and that’s decent of her to be willing to work around that. It’s not decent to go wandering off in his head when she can get ambushed any second if he doesn’t keep it together. R slaps that daydream away, tries his best to forget about feeling that Something, and focus on the now.

“Will…do…” R groans.

He isn’t sure how long they travel in the dark. Not hours, probably. R shambles along, shoes scuffling despite his best attempts to keep quiet. Julie breathes behind him, loud, almost as loud as her heartbeat. Is just him, zeroing in on her being Living? Is he imagining it? R can’t begin to tell the two apart at this point. His head hangs down, eyes forward as he trudges along with Julie. They reach another fork, R veering toward the right one as if something pulls at him. The service tunnel widens into a set of train-tracks, R pausing as he glances around like a dead kid looking both ways before crossing the street, his head flopping first one way and then the other. Maybe he used to be paranoid before he died. Didn’t seem like it helped him in the end.

Peering down the tracks, he can see that one way is blocked by a lot of debris, more scummy water trickling down. The other way looks more or less clear. If they follow the tracks…

R likes what he sees. “Maybe…train here. Shelter.”

[misscabernet]

He does a pretty good job, she'll give him that. There's holes in the dark she stumbles over occasionally, easily righting herself after. They don't run into any walls. It helps holding on to someone, having that extra sense of gravity and balance. Something to hold onto so she doesn't float off in the sensation of touching nothing but the ground. She's always had company in this fucked up world. That sense of gravity might be what's kept her from losing it like Dad.

It's weird, though. She doesn't want to mention it -- least to all him (where the hell was Nora when she needed her?) -- but it kind of sucks, being in the dark. Not because, hello, she can't see shit, but because she can't see him. There's something curious there, that's all. Something to watch. The kind of thing that had her trust him in the first place; it wasn't the Sinatra or the snowglobes or him protecting her. Honestly, that all helped, but it wasn't that something. The cant to his head or something.

She wonders if he's cautious or just slow on receiving new information. She's never felt like he's slowm not in general. The staring's kind of creepy, yeah, but she shouldered it as gracefully as she could.

-- Right. Tracks. Only one of them is daydreaming.

She follows what she can see of his gaze, the lights down this tunnel buzzing like flies, but working. They're dim like they're about to blow, but it's something. Enough for her to see the outline of the tunnel, the shine of the tracks.

"Wow. Not bad for a dead guy," she pulls him towards it, agreement with the plan. She hopes it's not another plea to shove her somewhere and protect her, but she can admit the break might be nice. Might be food. Doubtful, but there might be. "You're not doing too bad for yourself, R. At least you get to be stuck with reasonably good company."

[shambler]

Cool, he gets the Julie Grigio stamp of approval. It feels more like a high five.

R realizes he wants to hoard those too. It’s a brand new collection. Just started a few days ago.

The zombie doesn’t resist as Julie takes the lead this time, lurching after her (he gets a cobweb to the face, giving the spider a nasty wake-up call), and trying not to get too caught up with the whole hand-holding thing. R follows along, his face doing funny things. It’s trying to smile again on him. He wracks his brain trying to think of how many times he’s tried in the past. There’s not many. In fact he can count them and this is coming from the guy who can’t even count to three on the bad days. Now he twitches his face into a smile behind Julie and it feels good, right, dusty but he can work with that.

R groans from behind her. “Good…company? Try…great…company.”

Not exactly Mr. Smooth here but since he’s Mr. Zombie, R thinks he has an excuse. He can do cheesy instead. Cheesy makes Julie smile. R gives her hand a squeeze.

The train they find is slanted at a sharp angle where it ran up against the wall, most of the doors blocked or crumpled into sheet metal. R doesn’t like that the windows are all shattered, exposed, and then he realizes he’s still thinking like a Living survivor, trying to put himself in one’s shoes, and that’s impressive he managed to hold onto that for this long. Usually it slides away into the murk. It’s easier to hold onto things with Julie here, for some reason. Don’t ask him why: he doesn’t get it either.

[misscabernet]

She missed the smile at first -- or the attempt at one, if she's being really nice about it -- but she turns and grins at him, a brow cocked in suspicion. No way. A zombie's trying to pull the moves on her? She doesn't believe it, but a laugh escapes, and after a second the sound grows, exacerbated by the look on his face. It's like a smile and a frown at the same time.

She can't believe she's seeing a Dead guy smile. It feels pretty sweet. In the weirdest way possible.

"You're really wasting your flattery, Mr. Zombie." Cheesy works, and it's obvious. Try being stuck with a no-nonsense, no-humor general as your only company; anyone would start loving cheesy after that.

Maybe it's not completely wasted, because she squeezes back and leads them inside through a door that's been pried open, or else never got the chance to close before the system died. Broken windows aside, it'll work for now, until they get a solid plan. Solid map. She remembers the path here enough to draw it out if she can find something to draw with. Besides, the windows might be a way for someone to get in, but it's also a way for them to get out. Never trap yourself in a corner. The wall that protects you turn into the wall that breaks you.

She wonders if the train's an other attempt at bottling her like that plane, but she figures he knows better. It's not gonna work. She just wants the break, then they're off again. She's gotta find food soon anyway, whether she's hungry now or not (she is), and water's a must-have. Only way she's drinking tunnel water is if she's absolutely desperate. Not quite there yet.

The seats are mostly in order inside, but the room gets tight near where the walls have curved inward from the train slamming into the wall. She takes one, legs laid out in front.

"I'm starting to miss your records, R. They set the mood pretty well."

[shambler]

R grunts out an amused “unghh!” at Julie’s response. His flattery isn’t wasted; he can feel the tension in the air relax slightly, no longer as razorwire taut, that eaten Tribute with his missing weapon sliding just a little bit further away between them. That grin of hers lights the world up, the decayed parts of his brain flashing like sparklers.

He’s dazzled all over again.

The zombie has a slightly harder time squeezing into the train after Julie. Usually his height’s an advantage when he brings down a full-grown man trying to fight for his life, but when narrow shoulders and a smaller frame are the name of the game, suddenly it’s not helping. R ducks in awkwardly, using the crushed door to force himself inside, feeling even bigger and clumsier than usual and bringing his head up to see Julie glancing around, like she’s casing out the place. Makes sense, her being General Grigio’s daughter. In retrospect, he wouldn’t have been surprised if she hadn’t done the same with his 747. Maybe she rooted through his collection and realized there weren’t any possible weapons. Food for thought, R guesses. It makes him look back on the last couple of days differently.

R finally manages to squeeze his way inside. If he has this much trouble, it means the other Tributes his size might be in the same boat.

“I’ll…bring them next…time,” R says. He stops himself before he shrugs. “Promise.”

The silence that falls isn’t comfortable or awkward. He isn’t sure what to do with it. R stands there while Julie sits and, after a long moment, finally comes up with the idea to sit across the aisle. With the train car crumpled, they’re close enough that he can almost bump knees with her.

Since they’re not going with his previous plan, R tries to be proactive. It’s harder than it looks, trying to look forward into the future and make plans and trying makes him all too aware of the cobwebs and dust in his head. R drops his stare from Julie’s pink flush to his own hands in his lap in order to concentrate.

“Metal…here. Weapon?” R looks up. He mimes a pulling motion, back and forth, aping Julie and him working a piece of it free. It’s no knife, but it’s something, right? As far as he can tell, the other Tributes are all Living. They tend to roll over even if they get injured in the stomach or anywhere that’s considered Not a Big Deal to a zombie. The problem is the same applies to Julie. She makes things…complicated.

[misscabernet]

It's not the worst place she's been in, not by a longshot. While she's scoping the train out, she glances behind her a couple of times to watch the zombie try to squeeze his way in. Oh. Hadn't thought of that. She suppresses another laugh, a hint relieved he finally makes it in. Would've really sucked to watch him get stuck in the opening. She counts the broken windows, the ones which have just enough broken shards to still be a hard way to break in. Easier to break out. Kick the remaining glass and it'd all fall out.

She picks her head up to follow his gaze, a look of satisfaction crossing her mind. There you go, she thinks, surprised that maybe she's all up for trying to get him, you know. Kickstarted. Into being something a little closer to Living. Weapon. Makeshift, but it's totally better than nothing. A nice clock on the head from even some pipe is gonna get a lot of people down and out.

"It'll work." She really hopes he's stronger than his spindly frame looks. Looks like it's been loosened by the crash, so that might be in her favor. She motions him to grab it first, then she follows behind. A couple of tugs give them an unsettling creak and the whole train kind of swaying under them, but at least she ends up on her ass with a sizable chunk of damn metal in her lap.

"Awesome." Well. Part of the plan's sealed. Now the rolling in her stomach is making itself more obvious. "Now if we can find water and food before I starve to death, we'll be doing really good."

[shambler]

R grabs the piece of metal when he's prompted, wrapping his hands against the edges without worrying about kid stuff like tetanus. He saws away at it jerkily. Grace he isn't, but mindless brute force he can do. Totally do. Between Julie and him they get it out in no time because there's no I in teamwork.

At least he thinks there isn't. It's not like R can spell it out.

He turns to find Julie fell on her butt over with that last tug, the big, almost spear-like shard of metal laying in her lap. R sizes up the shard, gives a sagging nod of approval because it looks long enough to impale a grown man, easy, and starts to reach down and help Julie back to her feet. He also adds that "awesome" to his collection while he's at it. Multi-tasking gets easier and easier the more he does it.

"Water...everywhere. Rats...could be…food?" R tries to sound productive and optimistic. “Not…so bad. Tastes…like…ch…”

The rest of what he means to say slips away. Instead he shrugs. Again.

He can’t look horrified at the idea of Julie starving to death, not with this face, and R can only stare at her, his eyebrows trying to knit together. It’s not a pretty image. He’s seen both Living and Dead starve. Other zombies wither and stop. With the Living, it’s a lot worse. Quicker, but ugly. (And wasteful, but R refuses to share that with the class). R feels a surge of protectiveness claw up in him again, so strong it makes him want to gasp for air. He shoves away the image of Julie becoming hollow, all sharp angles, withering to nothing in fast forward. It’s harder now to maintain his positive thinking with that hanging over their heads.

[misscabernet]

It's a hefty enough pipe that she feels like even she might look intimidating. Slightly. The difference might help her between these Games and home, though. These are a bunch of kids, younger than her and maybe a few older. Home is adults, kids, in-between. Everyone. Five feet looks like a lot more when you're only thirteen.

"Don't," she raises a hand signalling stop. He does it on his own, thankfully, but she's already rolling her eyes, taking her seat back. She lets the sharpened point of the metal hit the floor, a metallic noise rolling through the car louder than she expected. "I can't believe you're trying to pull the tastes like chicken spiel, R. I wasn't born yesterday."

And she's eaten worse than rat, but she's also spent days laid up in a broken, abandoned car, leaning out the empty window holes every now and then to vomit from food poisoning. She'd kill for a Carbtein right now. Just to know she'd have something over nothing at all.

"Only if I'm on the edge of dying or something. It'd be easier to go a few days without eating instead of catching something from them and nuclear vomiting for a week." Not so bad, though. Look at this guy. Undead food connoisseur. "Zombies eat rats?"

[shambler]

R’s mouth snaps shut. Is he that obvious?

He stares at Julie as she brings up “nuclear vomiting”, whatever that is, and opens his mouth to disagree with her battle plan. He knows enough about Living to know a few days without eating will slow her down, like, a lot, and make her easy pickings – he’s killed enough starving humans to see the difference. Being slow is on the verge of dying. It takes a few long seconds for his face to catch up, his corpse slowly starting to scrunch its muscles and wrinkle his nose at the idea of Julie on the edge. Unable to dodge while another Tribute comes at her with a knife and too slow to do anything but bleed out.

By then she’s already jumping to the topic of rats. R wants to sigh.

“If nothing…else,” he replies reluctantly, nose still wrinkling. “Junk…food.”

It’s better than nothing, if not by much. Anyway, R thinks he’s going to be okay for now since he had that Tribute only hours before. He won’t take as long to starve as Julie. R tries to steer the conversation away from a zombie’s idea of junk food, thinking he’s smart enough to know a distraction when he sees it. At least he thinks it’s a distraction.

R leans forward, insistent, even if his face feels like it’s either frozen or sagging half the time. It’s a weird combo. “Hunt soon. You…need it. Can’t…live without.”

The problem is he thinks Julie’s definition of what counts as food is way too limited. The zombie way is preferably human, but anything with a heartbeat and warm flesh is fair game if push comes to shove. R guesses asking if Julie would like to turn temporary cannibal, just for the Arena, wouldn’t go over well. If she’s not willing, then that leaves them without a whole lot of options. R tries not to worry.

[misscabernet]

Apparently undead food connoisseur was hitting the nail on the head. Sure, they might be talking about the chance she could starve to death, but she can't help but be amused. "Seriously? Junk food? Instead of chips, you grab a little rat and crackers?"

Aw, man. Fuck. Forget that, she didn't even remember the last time she'd had chips. She'd been lucky as hell they'd ever found pad thai in that airport. Chances of that happening? Slim to never again, get used to it.

Sucked a hell of a lot. Maybe she'd luck out and find, like, a snake or something. She could nibble on the tail.

Maybe not. "Hey, I'll be fine." As much as she's a little -- okay, she admits it, she's a little touched by his concern -- it's still enough to get a little grating. What, he thinks she survived this long just because she had Daddy to take care of her? (She wants to not think about how that might be right.) She puts a hand on his knee, hoping it's a little comforting instead of creepy. Might be creepy. He would know.

She's not gonna think about how that's been happening a lot more lately. Seriously, where is Nora when she needs her? Nora'd be smart enough to smash some sense into her, having a. Whatever this is. With a zombie.

Shit, she should be smarter than this on her own.

"Come on. Let's move again." She pulls her hand away and stands up, not nearly as cramped by the lack of room. There's bags thrown on the floor, suitcases on the shelf above the seats, but they've all been obviously raided. Torn open with ties and sleeves hanging out of them like rotting guts. "Food's not gonna show up here if we hang around long enough. I'll even rat hunt."

[shambler]

R can ramble on and on about the differences between rat and human flesh.

Julie’s hand on his knee makes him forget what he’s going to say. It flies out the window. R’s mind blanks as he slowly glances down to look at her hand as if he sees it for the first time all over again, the spark of…something sizzling through him. R swears he can feel it like a kick to his brain stem. What are they talking about again? The warm touch isn’t comforting and definitely not creepy: what it is, though, is really, really distracting, R trying to scramble for his words like he has two left feet. When she touches him, suddenly it feels like the years worth of words he’s hoarded aren’t enough.

“Uhhh…okay. Sure,” R seems more dazed than usual as he catches up to Julie, watching as she casts about the place for any supplies. When her touch pulls away, everything fades back to that gray again.

The zombie starts to lurch back to his feet, remembering to keep his head hunched over low so he doesn’t brain himself on the caved in ceiling. He looks at what everyone left behind, luggage and Granny’s cane and what might’ve been a babystroller under all that rubble and it’s the same story like back home where they come from. Glancing over at Julie, he thinks he can see it there too, that realization. But there’s also something else in that Living face of hers: she’s planning, calculating and discarding faster than a corpse ever could.

“Catch…extras while…we’re at it,” R tries to be helpful. “Could…bait other Tributes…? They’ll…be hungry too.”

R feels extra sneaky with that suggestion. Zombies aren’t exactly plan-prone, so this is a brave new world. First thing’s first, though: feed Julie, strike that off the checklist, move down to the next item on there. R carefully pushes past Julie and heads for the exit, his hands groping for purchase as he starts squeezing his way out of the train. With his head hunched down, he misses the flicker of movement in the shadows, the nearly silent skitter of someone trying to be quiet while they scope the place out.

[nursegreene]

This? This is crazy. Beyond crazy, in fact. Psycho. Batshit. Nuts.

Wasn't the whole point of curing the Dead with love and fuzzy feelings to resurrect society and put an end to the whole apocalypse thing? Nora's had her fill of the end of the world, thanks. She spent her formative years fighting her way through the crumbling remnants of humanity; doesn't she deserve a break? They found the Cure. It's over. Nora's supposed to be on Rounds right now, replacing Mr. Fletcher's catheter and doling out band-aids and antiseptic to the kids in school (they've gone back to teaching them the real subjects again, as much as anyone can remember them; art and math and history and English and where the hell is anyone going to find The Catcher in the Rye in all this?), not digging around the ruins of some train station in the dark with a knife she'd pulled off the adorable and impossibly busty pink-haired tween who had tried to kill her with it.

At least Nora thinks it's a train station, or had been at one point in time. It's completely falling apart, more ancient-looking than even the most bombed-out ruin she's crawled through. Supplies are long gone; generations of looters picked this place clean long before she even got there. It's surprising that Pink Hair'd even managed to find that knife in the first place--usually those are the first thing to go.

Despite...everything, Nora is surprisingly calm. She's reeling, sure, but she's managing. Sorting things out. She has no idea where she is or why she's here. Her last memory is of falling into her bed after a long shift at the clinic; she was asleep before she even hit the pillow...and then getting jumped by a twelve year old with double-Ds (and where does anyone even find pink hair dye in the apocalypse?). She wants to freak out, yeah, but she knows she can't. Freaking out won't help her survive long enough to figure any of this out. She keeps to the shadows, ears open and eyes peeled, ready for unfriendly company. It's been more than a year since she's had to do this, since she's been alone and separated from everyone else (and this time she doesn't even have a gun to rely on), but it's all kind of like riding a bike, isn't it? Letting your guard down gets you killed. Gets your loved ones killed.

She learned that the hard way.

Nora hears voices and ducks behind a cracked pillar. It sounds like...

Shit, no way.

"Julie!"