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

[littlecousin]

Nita looks at Wash, then back at the shark, then at Wash again, and flips her long, dripping ponytail back over her shoulder.

"Obviously?"

A short, barefoot woman with elf ears and Mercury wings on her ankles just appeared out of the ocean and KO'ed a cyborg shark, and she's acting like he's the weird one.

[unrecovered]

Yeah, Wash's sliding scale of weird is pretty much broken at this point. He raises an eyebrow at Nita - "Ooookay." - then looks consideringly at the shark, then back up at Nita. "I'm thinking breakfast."

In a futuristic land of vegans, he is definitely asking for permission to kill a shark.

[littlecousin]

"Sure, why not?" She shrugs. "It doesn't look like one of the toxic species."

While Nita's got nothing against veganism, she certainly wouldn't be one if she were given any choice, and shark's a perfectly normal food where she's from. No ratting out Wash to the Diet Police will be occurring here.

[unrecovered]

Wash shrugs back. "Works for me." He doesn't have a damn clue how to butcher or cook a shark, but that's not about to stop him.

He gives the flopping, hyperventilating shark a wide berth and approaches it from the top, drawing his knife. He takes a knee, looks it straight in the eye, smirks - "Candygram." - and plunges his knife into the shark, behind its eye. He doesn't know the first thing about shark anatomy, so it's sheer stupid luck that he manages to hit its brain, killing it almost instantly.

"Have you ever eaten a shark? Because I have no idea how to do this."

oh my god how does npc

[murderworldtributes]

While Wash and Nita are distracted by their fishy prize, behind them, a man with ocean-themed fashion sense and a large golden trident erupts from the turquoise seas in exactly the majestic way Nita didn't, hovering above the breakers.

Rather than take advantage of his moment of surprise, Finnick issues a challenge. How honorable of him!

"Legionnaires! Stand and fight!" He points at the two with his trident, as if there were some other Legionnaires around and they might get confused. "You will not win, but you can die honorably."

[littlecousin]

Nita whips around, showering some droplets from her masses of wet hair over Wash in the process. (Sorry, man.)

Whatever effect Finnick was hoping for, her reaction isn't it. Nita points at him and yells, outraged, like a gamer who's just discovered the other team is using aimbots.

"Hey! How come he gets to fly?"

[unrecovered]

For a split second, Wash does nothing. He just fought two of these assholes last night, and he is not in the mood to deal with another one so soon.

But he's here, and Wash doesn't get a choice.

He draws a plasma blaster, stolen from Cashmere in last night's battle, from the pocket of his jacket. "Oh, fuck off," he says, in the same tone that one would use to shoo a cat off the front porch, and fires several shots at Finnick's head. Look who's not fucking around.

[murderworldtributes]

Someone wasn't expecting that.

Finnick reacts instinctively, barely dodging the shots with a move that would have sent a land-bound combatant sprawling in the sand, but instead just looks kind of odd as he tumbles sideways through the air. With a wordless shout, he summons the powers of his trident, a waterspout gathering from the sea and then striking out at his foes with enormous force.

Given who he's trying to hit, it's a good thing his aim is a little off.

[littlecousin]

Wash gets another brief shower as a column of water fails to hit him...and instead slams into Nita. She has time for a surprised yelp as she's struck and goes flying backwards, her cry cut off suddenly as the water smashes her into a rocky outcropping farther up the beach.

Rude.

Nita spits out a mouthful of water and bounces to her feet, fresh as a Sub-Mariner who's just been doused with the one thing that makes her strongest.

[unrecovered]

Wash can see that attack coming a mile away and dodges for all he's worth, ducking and rolling behind the carcass of the shark. He can either go after Nita and leave himself open for Asshole Number Three up there to attack, or he can put this jackass down and make sure Nita's okay afterwards.

The latter option wins out, and Wash rights himself, firing several shots at the jerk's hand. Best case scenario, Finnick loses the hand; if all else fails, hopefully he'll drop the trident.

[murderworldtributes]

Finnick spits an oath as one of Wash's shots connects. It's not enough to blow off the hand entirely, not with an Atlantean's toughness, but the skin bubbles and blackens where the plasma struck, and he drops the trident into the shallow water below.

"I don't need it to finish you, surfacer." The arrogance is still there, but now with the veneer of nobility burned away, Finnick's face twisted into vicious rage. He drops from the air to the beach in front of Wash, ready to charge and turn a firefight into a fistfight.

[littlecousin]

Unfortunately for Finnick, he's not the only one with that idea.

With a whoosh and a plume of red sand thrown into the air behind her, Nita sprints past Wash, dripping and none the worse for wear. She's no speedster, but it's still far faster than a human could manage, and when she tackles a very surprised Finnick, the two of them go flying backwards into a few feet of water, Finnick disappearing entirely as Nita pins him to the bottom. His aquatic strength does him no good when her greater strength comes from the same source.

"You're a disgrace to Atlantis!" She draws back her shark-punching fist for what promises be a telling blow, but her anger changes to surprise as her knuckles connect only with the sandy ocean floor.

"Well, nuts."

[unrecovered]

Okay, evidently he hadn't needed to worry about Nita at all. She seems to have the fight well in hand, when suddenly it's over. That...might not be good. "What happened?"

[littlecousin]

"Teleported, I think. Arcade's a huge cheater." Nita huffs in disgust and stands back up, the water lapping at her thighs as she starts to wade back to dry land.

"You catch about where the trident landed?"

[unrecovered]

"Makes sense." Wash yanks his knife out of the shark and wipes it on the shark's hide before sheathing it. Hopefully Arcade doesn't decide to drop Finnick back on top of them later. He doesn't voice that concern, though - there's no point in giving Arcade ideas.

He looks up at her question and scans the shoreline. "It's close to shore and about five feet to your left, if the water hasn't dragged it anywhere. Can you use it?"

[littlecousin]

Nita laughs at Wash's joke before realizing it's a serious question.

"'Course I can use it."

She bends double and sticks her head into the water to look for the trident, her long ponytail floating on the surface. With Wash's directions, it's a short search, and soon she straightens, weapon in hand, its points sticking up at least a foot above her head. It looks much more natural on her than the utilitarian clothing she's wearing.

[unrecovered]

Make him feel like an ass, why don't you. Wash just raises an eyebrow and watches as Nita retrieves the trident. It's...actually quite a sight. Every so often, someone picks up a weapon that's just so right for them it's striking. He's seen it with Maine and the brute shot, and with Carolina and just about everything she picks up, and now he's seeing it with Nita and the trident.

Yeah, she can definitely use that.

He just tilts his head slightly. "You're welcome."

[littlecousin]

"I coulda taken him." It's a friendly boast--she means it, but at the same time, she's absolutely not trying to diminish Wash's role. Nita's smiling warmly at him as she wades back to dry land, trident balanced casually over one shoulder like a stereotypical hobo's bindle.

"My name's Nita. Nita Prentiss." She offers a hand to shake.

[unrecovered]

"Yeah, probably." He doesn't doubt it; he still would have been fighting Finnick had Nita not utterly bulldozered him like that.

"I'm Wash." He shakes her hand, then nods at the shark. "You wouldn't happen to know how to butcher a shark, would you?"

[littlecousin]

"Uhhhhh...I've seen it done?" Princesses don't have to do the messy parts of hunting, after all. Still, that probably makes her more qualified than most people. "Gimme the knife and we'll see how much I remember."

Nita crouches next to the dead robo-shark, ramming the butt of the trident deep into the sand with a smooth motion as she does so to free up both hands. She holds out the right one for Wash's knife. This isn't gonna work very well if she has to rip the thing to pieces barehanded, not that she wouldn't try.

[unrecovered]

"You know more about it than I do." He hands her the knife hilt-first and takes a knee next to the shark. "Let me know if I can help."

[littlecousin]

Nita immediately gets to work, holding the knife like she knows what to do with it, and slices the shark's belly open in a long cut only a little impeded by the presence of cybernetic legs. It makes a very unappetizing squelching noise.

At Wash's offer, she jerks her head to indicate a spot a little way down the beach, where there's a bundle of what looks like their standard-issue jacket and backpack sitting on a rock.

"There's a poncho in my pack. If you could grab that, it'll keep the meat from getting all sandy."

You know what's also over there? A hunting rifle.

[unrecovered]

"Got it." He gets to his feet and heads in the direction Nita indicated, picks up the poncho, and-

And finds a hunting rifle underneath it.

For a moment, he just stares. She had this the whole time, and she just punched Finnick instead, like it was no big deal.

There are days he thinks he understands his fellow Legionnaires, and then there are days like today.

After another moment, he picks up the poncho and brings it back to Nita, laying it out neatly. "Did you have that gun over there the whole time?"

[littlecousin]

"Nah, I got it this morning," Nita replies, misunderstanding the question. "Apparently someone out there thinks I'm telegenic...they're not wrong."

She grins up at Wash and starts laying shark steaks out on the plastic, though whether she does it telegenically is a matter of opinion--it's tough to be winsome while kneeling in a pile of shark guts and getting your hands all bloody. Her butchering job is far from the most elegantly a fish has ever been filleted, but the skin's off and the pieces she's slicing out are roughly uniform. Good enough!

[unrecovered]

Yeah, that's not at all what he meant. He raises an eyebrow. "No, I mean why didn't you use it."