PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

[unrecovered]

Who| Wash and others
What| Murderworld. So much Murderworld.
Where| All over the arena - locations are in toplevels
When| Murderworld! Late day 1, all of day 2, and early day 3
Warnings/Notes| Violence for days. Most of these have been planned using the almighty spreadsheet - if you want to plan something, feel free to poke me on plurk!

Get pulled from a perfectly benign covert mission to be thrown into a bad Hunger Games ripoff run by someone with zero sense of style or humor. Survive, probably on his own, until help comes or he manages to escape. Sure. Okay.

What could possibly go wrong?

Comments

Grif | Temperate Zone | Day 1 | Afternoon

[unrecovered]

[unrecovered]

That was not a good landing.

There were a lot of great things to be said about gathering half the Legion stuck in this little corner of hell into a single convoy hell-bent on breaking out. There were equally as many less-than-great things to be said about their inevitable failure and Arcade's subsequent scattering them to the corners of the arena. Abruptly. With no consideration for inertia.

So when Wash plows facefirst into a grassy field at painfully high velocity, he can't exactly say he's surprised. Instead, he rolls over slowly and groans. "That," he declares to the sky, "was the worst landing ever. Of all time."

[whyarewehere]

Nice landing. It'd be a real shame if something were to happen to it.

Grif pops back into existence mid-scream, bounces off of something that is quite probably human, rolls for several feet, and lays there like the dead for a good fifteen seconds, stunned.

He finally catches his breath, sits up to spit out a mouthful of dirt and grass, and looks over.

Oh, that was Wash. Sorry, Wash.

"Can I just be the first one here to say what the fuck?"

[unrecovered]

Wash doubles over, curling in on himself as something impacts his stomach and rolls off. It's like getting a gut punch from Maine, and he absolutely does not miss those.

He rolls over on his side, still curled up and struggling to catch his breath. Whatever that is - wait, it's Grif, are you fucking kidding - has knocked the breath out of him. It's going to be a minute or two before he's got a witty retort, aside from a very labored, "fuck...you."

NPCs | Temperate Zone | Day 1 | Evening

[unrecovered]

[unrecovered]

It's been less than twelve hours since Wash woke up in this ridiculous murder arena, and he's already completely tired of it. They'd been a hair's breadth away from busting out of this godforsaken place before Arcade had interrupted them (though really, that's to be expected when the person running the place cheats as often as he breathes); he'd had a hard landing from that; and he'd long since been separated from Grif, which isn't too bad - Grif has a habit of taking care of himself - but that doesn't stop Wash from worrying. He can't not worry, what with everyone being caught in a goddamn death arena.

But worrying isn't going to help them or him, so he moves on, walking through giant trees and toadstools as quietly as he can manage, looking for uninhabited shelter and listening for threats.

What he hears instead is muffled whimpering and crying echoing through the trees. It sounds human, and female, and young.

There is no way in hell that's not a trap. There's just no way.

He takes a deep breath, wrestles for a moment with his conscience, and goes anyway.

The source of the sound isn't too far away - it only takes him a few minutes to get there - but it definitely confirms his worst fear. There's a Harrubian child - a teenager at best - bound at ankle and wrist and dangling from one of the giant toadstools at what would be chest height for him. She's fallen silent aside from the occasional whimper, a terrified expression on her face and eyes fixed to a point to his left. He slowly heads around the side of the tree he's hiding behind, following her gaze, to see a wolf the size of a horse standing by another tree, licking its chops, eyes locked with the young girl.

Well, shit. It's obviously a trap - if he exposes himself, he either gets eaten by a wolf or attacked by whoever set it, or possibly both. If he does nothing, a child dies. There's not really a choice to be made.

The wolf starts trotting towards the girl, teeth bared, and Wash surges forward. The wolf hears him, pricks its ears, turns towards him-

And he plunges his knife into its eye.

The wolf rears back with a scream, and Wash manages to yank his knife out and land on his feet, When the wolf lands, he lashes out again, slashing across the wolf's nose and opening a deep cut. "Get out! Go!"

There are some meals that are worth the trouble; to the wolf, a mouthful of girl isn't one of them. The wolf yelps and turns, heading back into the woods away from the assailant with the knife. Absolutely not worth it.

Between the noise the wolf made and his own yelling, Wash knows they don't have much time before whoever set the trap is attracted by the noise. There's no way they're not nearby - you don't set a trap with live, sentient bait and then leave it. You stick around and wait to see what you catch. Wash doesn't intend to be here long enough for that to happen. He sprints for the girl and cuts her down, catching her as she falls and slicing through the ropes around her ankles and wrists. "You need to get out of here-"

There's a sharp report and an even sharper pain in his arm. He yells in pain and dodges to the side, dragging the girl with him, as another plasma blast tears through toadstool stem right where his head had been a moment before. "Run!" He pushes the girl towards the foliage and turns to face his attacker.

[murderworldtributes]

Attackers, in this case. Cashmere smirks and twirls a plasma blaster around his finger, as though it had been a trick shot that he was particularly proud of and not an attempt on someone else's life. Next to him, Gloss smiles, and it's sweet ad terrible, poison all the way down. Their trap was a success, and they can't help but toy with their prey. "Should I chase the girl?" Gloss purrs.

Cashmere gives a rolling shrug, locking eyes with the Legionnaire they've flushed. "No. She'll still be close when we're done with this one. Plenty of time to hunt her down after we've finished here."

If there's a cue, it's silent - both of them raise their blasters as one and start firing, leaping off the toadstool they'd been on and heading in semicircles in opposite directions from one another. If they can herd their prey, it'll be that much easier to kill it.

[unrecovered]

There are some days when Wash hates being right. This is absolutely one of them. He bolts the moment they start firing, heading behind the toadstool and trying to think. He's got a very short length of rope, a giant toadstool, a knife, and two people after him who won't think twice about killing him - hell, they probably think it's a sport. He's got three and a half seconds to think before they make it around the toadstool and he gets caught in the line of fire.

Two seconds later, a chunk of toadstool flies out from behind the toadstool itself, hurled from an improvised rope slingshot and aimed for Gloss. Wash doesn't stop to see if it hits - he's darting towards another toadstool, trying for cover in the less terrifyingly giant foliage growing around its base. Anything to get away from these two.

Nita | Ocean Zone | Day 2 | Early

[unrecovered]

[unrecovered]

The ocean is a beautiful place in the morning. The sunlight sparkles on the water as the pinks and oranges of the sunrise give way to the bright blue sky of a new day. It's a natural, if temporary, masterpiece.

Wash would probably appreciate it a hell of a lot more if he weren't running for his life, sprinting down the beach with a shark with robotic legs in hungry pursuit.

What the fuck is his life anymore.

[littlecousin]

The merfolk have learned the hard way that Nita can't be drowned, and are sulking out of reach, because they're sensible enough to realize that being kicked in the face and then scolded for bad behavior is at best unpleasant and at worst hideously embarrassing. Having established there's nothing too interesting in the sunken structures they haunt, Nita has let the detente stand, dozing on the ocean floor and watching the dappled play of light filter down to her. She feels like she might almost not be sticky anymore. If she never sees a gumdrop again, it'll be too soon.

All in all, not a bad morning, gladiatorial nonsense notwithstanding.

Stretching, she decides it's time to see about breakfast, and rockets back up to the surface in a stream of bubbles, grumbling about her lost ability to fly as she swims to shore like some kind of peasant. It didn't occur to her to take off her trousers, and she's primarily concerned with how extraordinarily uncomfortable sodden rip-stop fabric is when a man goes dashing past her, pursued by a shark on legs.

Huh.

Like any self-respecting Atlantean confronted with this sort of problem, Nita hauls off and decks the shark.

Master Chief | Escher Zone | Day 2 | Midday

[unrecovered]

[unrecovered]

If Wash never sees another teleport storm, it'll be too soon. This one has managed to drop him into what he's pretty sure is actual hell. He's seen Event Horizon - there's no way a living ship (or whatever the hell this hallway is in) is good news.

Right now, he's as close to the wall as he can be without actually touching it, moving at a brisk pace and trying to find an exit. Priority one is getting the fuck out of Dodge; everything else can wait.

[prettycoolguy]

It's not the first time the Chief has been teleported somewhere upside-down, but at least with Cortana it had been an accident. He's up and moving again almost immediately. Narrow halls, organic in nature. It's not a Flood hive, it cannot be a Flood hive, but a whole slew of recently developed instincts about this kind of thing are screaming at him anyway.

RNGesus Arcade at least saw fit to give him a motion tracker. He tested it during the ultimately failed desert convoy and at least knows that it works, so at least he has that.

...Which indicates something is coming this way. Excellent. He still has the backward-firing gun he was given, and though he can theoretically fire the thing in a useful direction if he holds it right it only has one shot.

At least he's probably faster than a mercenary tribute. Or even most animals. He decides to face whatever's coming up this hall head on and steps around the corner.

Ana | Industrial Zone | Day 2 | Afternoon

[unrecovered]

[unrecovered]

Wash is pretty certain he started outside. The fact that he's been inside for hours, walking a maze of rooms for what seems like hours and occasionally having to stand stock-fucking-still in order to not be noticed by mannequin amalgamates that look like they skittered straight out of Silent Hill, is starting to make him doubt his chances of ever getting back outside.

He sees something on his motion tracker and presses his back to a wall, going completely still in case it's another horrifying doll abomination taking a midday stroll.

Pidge | Industrial Zone | Day 2 | Evening

[unrecovered]

[isthisapidge]

It's never silent in the Industrial Zone, and honestly? It's starting to drive Pidge a little nuts. She came here to scavenge whatever parts she could possibly use to get...out of here...

Yeah, she doesn't have a plan. She's out on her own right now. And she has the worst feeling she's being watched...

[unrecovered]

Wash, on the other hand, has tuned the noise out. When the the soundtrack of your life is the humming of a spaceship or the constant chatter of someone with a low IQ and a lot of feelings, you get used to noise fairly quickly. (Conversely, it's the silences that get eerie, but Wash has never been one for complete quiet to begin with.)

He's caught a blip on his motion tracker, and he's following closely enough to keep them in earshot but far enough away not to attract attention. He can hope he's following a Legionnaire; worst case scenario, it's something out to kill him. Again.

Whatever it is, it's around a corner, and right now Wash is trying to decide whether the potential benefits of turning that corner and revealing himself outweigh the risks.

Casey | City Zone | Day 3 | Early

[unrecovered]

[jonesiseverywhere]

The screams and mechanical noises are like a beacon meant especially for Casey. Back home, that used to mean Kraang in their metal suits. Now it means...metal suits without the Kraang. OK. Cool. Works for him. If he registers that Wash is in a nearby hall, he doesn't show it. He figures the moment Wash hears people in trouble, he'll also be on these guys like a bad rash.

"Hey, metal dudes! You want a piece of me?" He taps his hockey stick against the ground. Actually, it does kind of look like these things want a piece of him. Like...literally. There's two of them, and he figures he's high enough in the building that knocking them out a window or something will be a cinch. He clearly has their attention, but he doesn't notice the one coming up behind him...

[unrecovered]

The clockwork robots in front of Casey are frozen, not moving while he's looking at them. It's like a homicidally demented game of statues. Unfortunately, the one behind him is out of his field of view and has no such restrictions-

Which is why that's the one that Wash goes for when it starts to move, running up to it and lashing a solid heel kick at its knees (or whatever passes for its knees). The monster goes down, and Wash works his knife through the caging on its chest and tears through the smaller pipes and wiring encased within. The thing screams through its steam vents, and Wash snarls in return. He glances up, past Casey to the Harrubian dissidents that had been cornered before Casey's arrival, and bellows, "RUN!" He can fight these things. Casey can fight these things. The Harrubians can't.

Sam | City Zone | Day 3 | Late Morning

[unrecovered]

[headinjuries]

Moments like this, Sam really missed flying.

Sam was a small town kid. Open air, middle of the desert, he'd have to hit the road for at least an hour and go to Phoenix just to see a skyscraper. And while he'd had his share of existential teenage angst about rotting in the middle of nowhere and wanting to be where things happened, and he'd at least been able to go places more since he started the superhero gig...he really wasn't in his element. He was at his best with open skies and room to do a few barrel rolls.

If he could still fly, he'd at least be able to get a better look at the terrain, but without being able to do that much, something nasty could be around any corner and he might not know until it was coming right for him.

So here he was, near one of those corners, leaning around to try and get a look down the alley as unobtrusively as possible. He didn't see anything, but was that really worth much? He crouched down to scoop up a small pebble, tossed it down the alley, and waited for something to pop out.

Or preferably, not pop out. That would be even better.

[unrecovered]

The constant refrain of "find an ally, get in a fight alongside said ally, survive by the skin of your teeth, get separated" is starting to wear on Wash. He can survive working on his own just fine; it's the repeated reunion and separation and the adjustment every time that's getting hard to handle. He knows it's part of Arcade's plan - that staying with someone long enough to formulate a strategy is the last thing he wants, and he's yanking them all around for entertainment - and so it's mostly stubbornness, the obstinate refusal to give Arcade what he wants, that's keeping him going right now.

That, and the hope of finding another Legionnaire alive and well (and starting the cycle all over again, but that's a given at this point).

He doesn't mean to sneak up on Sam - it's just that he rounds a corner and finds Sam's back to him. Um.

"Hey," he says quietly. There's not really a good way to approach this - nothing that'll completely prevent Sam from jumping out of his skin, at least - but that's not going to stop Wash from trying.