legionmissions | PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

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PIIIIIIIPE WREEEEEENCH FIIIIIIIIIGHT

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?

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Maybe on another day when her nerves haven't been so frayed and she'd been getting better sleep, or at least not sleeping by her own choice, she might have handled this battle. But when her own proximity tracker goes off, she makes a snap decision.

"I have a grenade!" She holds it above her head as if she's about to throw it, and hopefully whoever's following her won't notice she hasn't pulled the pin.

Well. He recognizes that voice. "If you set that off in here, it'll kill us both." No reason to come around the corner and startle her - not if she really does have a grenade.

"I know that. I'm not crazy enough to do it. I just...you know, hoped you'd think I was."

She doesn't actually put the grenade away until she peers around the corner and sees that, yeah, it actually is Wash. The relief on her face is obvious. "Boy, am I glad to see you."

"Pidge, at this point I'm willing to believe just about anything." He's seen desperate people fight, and he doesn't know how Pidge gets under pressure. She could be capable of anything, especially with a grenade at her disposal.

He moves away from the corner a bit - just in case - but yeah, it looks like it is Pidge. He visibly relaxes. "No kidding. Are you doing okay?" Stupid question in the murder arena, sure, but he has to ask.

"Well, at least believe I don't want to kill you. Honest." Even she's not sure if she's genuinely trying to reassure him or not. Does he really think she's crazy enough to blow them to bits?

"I'm fine," she says, a little tersely because what does it even matter if she is or not? They still have to survive this. "I'm looking for a way to knock out Arcade's technology, if that's even possible from where we are."

"I believe you." His tone is mild, because that's not worth arguing. He'll believe that she doesn't want to; he'll also believe that she'd try it in a moment of duress.

He does not believe she's fine. They're in a man-made corner of hell. Nobody is fine right now. "That's ambitious," he comments in that same mild tone. "When was the last time you ate?"

"I had some candy last night." A giant gum drop counted as food, no matter what he said. She may have as a sugar crash but she's been awake for awhile. It all just kind of blurs into one foggy blur of stress and queasiness if you go long enough.

"And if you have a better idea, I'm all ears. This is shaping up to be a complicated build for what resources I have."

And she has diddly and squat right now.

Yeah, that's not good. No wonder she's twitchy. "That's not going to keep you going," he says, digging into his pack. He pulls out one pack of rations and another of hydration gel and offers them to her. "Here. They don't taste great, but they'll keep you alive better than candy." He definitely looted some hallways after killing a Xenomorph. As far as he's concerned, he'd both earned these and been lucky to find them, and right now Pidge needs them a hell of a lot more than he does.

"If you really want a suggestion, I'd say go for something smaller. If you want to knock out tech, can you build an EMP?"

"Can't be worse than the Garrison's cafeteria." She's not in the mood to argue about how he might need them too, though it's the first thought that jumps into her mind. She takes them and then holds the packages in her teeth as she kind of...haphazardly piles all the usable parts she found. Somehow, this is starting to seem like fighting windmills.

"Maybe if I can generate enough static electricity -and that's a huge maybe- I might be able to overload some of his systems." The rations probably need some kind of prep so she sets them aside for the hydration gel. Time to eat some more slime.

Wash briefly assesses the pile of parts and says nothing. He doesn't see a lot of potential in them, but he's also not the mechanical genius in the equation. He's seen what Pidge can do with quality equipment; hopefully she can apply those same skills to junk.

"Let me know if I can help," he says, picking up the rations she'd set down and expertly flipping them over in his hands. Snap this, fold this, peel this back, and after a few moments he sets a still-heating meal down in front of Pidge. When you live off of MREs for a few years, you learn your way around them and you never really forget it.

"Well, right now I'm missing something to store the energy in. What I've got right now is about enough for a casing and a trigger."

She watches him with the rations and...well, she could have done that. She can use the few more moments it'll take to heat up it to gather up the parts again and throw them in her pack. She can't actually duct tape them together until she's got everything.

The banging of metal against metal that reverberates through the halls as she picks everything up...and then doesn't stop when she's done.

"Um...you do hear that, right? I'm not losing it?"

The moment the metal clanging becomes distinct from the noise Pidge's packing up is making, Wash's eyes widen and his head jerks up, as though he's trying to pinpoint the source of the sound. A glance at his motion tracker reveals that whatever's making those noises isn't in proximity, but from the sounds of it, they're closing in fast.

He locks eyes with Pidge. "Run."

Run...where? Wherever Wash is going, she figures. But "away" doesn't seem like it's going to cut it. This district is hard to navigate even when you can your time, at a run it's going to be the worst obstacle course in the world.

"Where are we going to go?"

"Away from that." He'll take hostile terrain over hostile sentients any day of the week, especially since hostile sentients in the form of Tributes have come after him three separate times already. He grabs Pidge's elbow, yanks her to her feet, and takes off, trying not to think about how whatever's coming up the hall sounds like it's gaining on them.

But the acoustics in this zone can be misleading. Foxface knows where he wants to herd them, he's not going to get tired, and he's absolutely gaining on them.

It's not that long before he comes into view, rounding a corner in massive strides. The tale-tell crackle of electricity sparks from his body, a promise that if he catches them, it's going to hurt.

Pidge doesn't miss the robot thing gaining on them, and as she runs she uses the arm not currently in Wash's hand to pull out her grenade.

It's probably her first instinct because it's the only action she can take besides running for her life. She knows, logically, that at the rate it's running, escaping the explosion would be a matter of a few strides, but it makes her feel better to have something.

Boy, does she hope he has a plan.

Ohhhhhhh shit. That looks about as bad as it sounds, and it's all Wash can do to resist putting on a burst of speed as he finally catches sight of the Robotican in hot pursuit - no sense in pulling Pidge off her feet.

Speaking of which-

He glances at her, and just as importantly, at her grenade. "Save it!" At the rate they're going, odds are that Foxface will run right past it before it goes off, and that's their one explosive wasted.

Wash absolutely does not have a plan as he pulls her down the left side of a fork in the road - right now, he's thinking on his feet as best he can and praying they don't hit a dead end or a trap they can't turn to their advantage.

She sees Foxface too and suddenly it hits her: If they get far enough away from him, she might be able to hack into whatever circuit board is driving his brain and short him out.

But before she can relay this to Wash, they have to actually get that distance. Going left was at least a good choice. Even in the hazy murk of the bad light and her own tiredness, she can see there's a door. Let's hope there's enough to barricade it too.

...But the moment they step through the threshold, it's a moot point. The door slams shut behind them. In the stunned silence that follows, Pidge can swear she hears Foxface's heavy footsteps slow to a halt and then turn the other direction.

"...Feel like we just made a huge mistake?"

Wash skids to a stop the moment the door shuts behind them. That's not good. That's never good. They already know Arcade is an uncreative bastard, which means he'll probably steal more from media he's watched or read, and a door slamming immediately shut behind someone usually means there's something worse in the room they've just entered.

He opens his mouth to reply to Pidge when the lights flicker and brighten, blindingly so, to reveal what's in the room in front of them: a simple walkway about three feet wide, with a pit too deep to see the bottom on either side.

A split second later, a steel pillar slams down on the walkway with enough intensity to make the walkway vibrate. A moment later, two more pillars slam together just above the walkway. Behind them, another pillar crashes down into the walkway. Slowly, more and more pillars start moving, striking the walkway or each other in alternating patterns, until the room they've walked into clearly reveals itself to be a chomper room.

Wash closes his eyes for a moment, using the time to bite back a frustrated scream, and then looks at Pidge. "Does that answer your question?"

Pidge makes a small grumbling noise of disgust and annoyance in the back of her throat. This whole thing is set up to push her past her limits but...

"...Did Arcade build this himself or did he just find a planet full of terrible architects?!"

OK, no, focus. "It's just a pattern. We should be able to decipher it pretty easily. Unless..."

She has the presence of mind to give the recently slammed door a few pushes, just in case. If they thought it'd be locked, then Arcade may be toying with them by not locking it but...no. It's just straight-up locked. Worth a shot.

"Pretty sure he stole it from a movie," Wash comments dryly. Oh, yeah, Wash definitely remembers seeing this one. "Pretty sure the characters in the movie talked about just how stupid this kind of trap is." He hopes Arcade is listening; to that end, he'll insult Arcade's nonexistent creativity as much as he possibly can. It's petty, but it sure makes him feel better.

He catches sight of Pidge checking the door, and for a moment he can't help but hope-

Well, damn. "It's never that easy, is it," he mutters, turning back to the chompers and setting about memorizing the pattern. "The hard part of this is knowing if there's enough space to stop between sets - I can't see the farthest ones from this angle." Not being able to stop would make this a hell of a lot harder than it needed to be - which, of course, is why Wash wouldn't put it past Arcade. After all, Arcade wants to kill them all; why make it easy for them?

"If it had worked, it would have been great television." There's no humor in it. Does Pidge look as tired as she feels? Or maybe she'd have to be actively laying on the floor.

"Alright, start counting from the first crusher." it smashes to the ground, and she starts.

"I've got six seconds between hits."

"Only if you're selling comedy," Wash replies. "This is bloodsport." Like Grifball, but with far fewer rules and potentially more casualties.

He probably shouldn't be thinking about that right now.

"That sounds right." What he wouldn't give for the timer on his HUD. Hell, what he wouldn't give to have his armor here at all. But wishful thinking isn't going to get either of them anywhere, so he cuts it off. "Do you think the walkway's wide enough for both of us?"

"There's probably someone out there watching this and rooting for Arcade." Pidge eyeballs the start of the walkway, testing it with her foot. "As long as we don't start playing tug of war on it we should be good."

And then she grabs his wrist. She really doesn't want to get separated from him here because if they get separated, that's two sets of calculations they'll have to do rather than one.

"Probably." Wash shrugs - there's always someone out there being an asshole for the sake of it.

He raises an eyebrow as Pidge grabs his wrist. That's unusual. Chalk it up to sleep deprivation or just not wanting to go it alone. "Okay. Are you counting or am I?"

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