INTRO LOG: A TAXING JOURNEY

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for December. Watch your step!
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: December 10th-17th
Warnings: Taxxon-related violence, teeth shoes, general unpleasantness, mass confusion.

You wake up in the dust of the colosseum with no shoes on, regardless of the state of your feet when you arrived. There's dust covering your clothing and in your hair, but other than that, there's no signs of injury or bruising. You're also not alone- nearby, there are others, either still passed out or just waking up like you are. Feel free to take solace in that fact. Or don't- some of you aren't human, and are clearly not great people either. No offense.

To your left, there is a door in the wall of the arena, supposedly leading to the halls which will then show you to your freedom. To your right, and scattered haphazardly on the ground, are a myriad of teeth shoes. These shoes might be better than going barefoot right now, but good luck finding a matching set, let alone one that fits you.

When you do eventually try to escape, be careful. The halls are crawling with Taxxons. Large and grotesque, these caterpillar-like creatures have circular mouths and multiple rows of sharp teeth. Their sense of smell is impeccable, and they will stop at nothing to feed when they scent blood. So, you know, try to avoid stepping on anything sharp on your way out.

All done with the horrible monsters and awkward greetings? Try your hand at exploring the rest of the city! Find a house, find a new monster, or simply scavenge for supplies until your little heart is content. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers December 10th-17th.
► Feel free to make your own logs, as well!
► Characters may find their own shoes scattered around with the teeth shoes if you like.
► All characters now arrive with phones that have network communication.
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Comments

johanna mason | the hunger games | open

[morphinum]

show me your teeth (shoes.)
At first, Johanna is convinced that this is simply another dream. She's lost count of the number of times she's gone to sleep and woken up in a feverish, half-real arena. Her dreams may not be wholly real, but the pounding in her chest and the fury are not. She just can't escape, can she?

It's when she notices that other people are waking up around her that Johanna becomes suspicious. There are rarely other people in her dream-arenas, much less strangers. And everything feels so real -- her senses of touch, smell, and sight are far too clear for this to be a dream.

Which means she's woken up in an arena for real this time, which is even worse. She thought she was done with this. She thought they'd overthrow the Capitol and put an end to those fucking games once and for all. Guess not. Johanna stands, quickly. She's got no time to waste being vulnerable. Her head is still shaved from the torture, and she's still in her hospital gown from when Thirteen had to sedate her. She's pale, skinny, but most of all, she's very, very angry.

"Guess you didn't have enough, huh?" she shouts at the sky. "Had to go for one more turn? Well you know what? Fuck this, and fuck you!"

She isn't going down without making some people very, very comfortable.

the very hungry...caterpillars?
Johanna's taken what little supplies she can from the dusty part of the coliseum -- namely, a pair of shoes and some rocks for throwing. She's got her axe, of course. That's a much better weapon than a couple stones, but still, it doesn't hurt to have any extra. She'll go all David-and-Goliath on an enemy if they decide to mess with her. She's done this fighting thing before, after all.

Whoever made this arena stuck some strange beasts in it, that's for sure. Those are the most disgusting worms she's ever seen. And the largest, and the ones with the biggest teeth, too. Johanna has been stepping over it while she can, but now, her way is blocked by a huge swarm of them. She can barely see the floor.

Time for death, then. She takes out her axe and starts hacking away at the Taxxons. Slimy ooze sprays everywhere: on the walls, the ceiling, even on Johanna herself. The room is filled with beast corpses, but it's not enough.

More are coming.

street smarts. (cw: drug abuse)
This place wasn't an arena, after all. The thought brings Johanna some comfort, but much. It's no better than Thirteen, really. She can't see the sky, and the trees are small, sickly things. Decaying. That's the word. It's funny, really. Johanna can't stand anything too perfect, too saccharine, but she hates this, too. She hates the rot. In some ways, it reminds her of her own condition.

Or maybe she's so angry because she hasn't had morphling in almost twenty-four hours. Ever since the training center flooded, she's been back to using and abusing it like there's no tomorrow. Johanna doesn't want to deal with withdrawal, not right now, but mostly, she doesn't want to feel like shit. She came in with a single bag on an IV she's been carrying around with her, but that'll run out soon. And she doesn't have a plan after that.

So she's walking up and down the streets, dragging her IV behind her. She's looking for a drug ring, a clinic, a stockpile -- something. The city's pretty extensive. She's got to find something somewhere, surely.

shoes.

[recinerate]

Beyond is one of those who has awakened nearby her. He's been conscious for a while now, sitting on the ground with his dusty knees drawn up to his chest, always observing the landscape around him. He laughs at her angry skyward cry, a harsh, bitter, entirely mirthless sound.

"Not your first time either, I take it."

[morphinum]

The man's calm demeanor doesn't help Johanna relax in the slightest. He's just sitting there and taking it all, as if this was some kind of game. The Games were only that in title -- no real game was so awful.

"The third. The third fucking time, and you know what? I'm sick of it."

He talks like he's been in the arena before, but Johanna doesn't recognize him as a victor. So who the hell is this kid?

"Who are you, anyway? This can't be your first time. I've never seen you before." She spits out the words like an accusation.

[recinerate]

"My name is Beyond," he says, completely straight-faced, unflinchingly calm despite both the unsettling situation and her obvious display of anger. It's not that he doesn't feel anything; the trouble is that he feels too much, the white-hot anger of injustice, running up and down his spine, all the way through to the tips of his fingers. He's just learned to keep it buried deep inside - abandon emotion, or at least make it look like the same.

"This may be my first time in this particular location," he says, glancing around the arena, "but I can assure you, I am no stranger to being meddled with."

[morphinum]

Johann finally turns toward Beyond, giving him an incredulous stare. "Meddled," she says at last, "Doesn't even cover it. You ever been in a Games, kid?" She grins, but there's no humor in it. It's an angry smile, more of a baring of the teeth than anything else. "It's a fight to the fucking death. Teaches you a lot about kill or be killed, you know?"

And with those kind words, she draws her axe. "So you're either on my side for now, or I put this axe through your chest." She snorts. Honestly, she can't believe she's even giving him a chance. Katniss definitely made her soft.

[recinerate]

Beyond remains completely still for a long moment - doesn't react to the threat of the axe, or anything she says. Then, he laughs, a sharp, bitter noise, rasping and harsh and completely without mirth.

"You can put your axe through my chest if it will make you feel better," he says, chin tipped up toward her in something like defiance, "but I can say with almost one hundred percent certainty that it won't help. I've been killed twice already. I keep coming back."

It's not to say that he won't consider a strategic alliance. Beyond just has no weapons of his own, and no desire to fight her. This clearly isn't the Barge, so it's reasonable to conclude that the Admiral isn't responsible for the current circumstances.

But someone is.

"This isn't a game." Beyond twists his head to the side until the bones of his neck make a sickening crack. "This is war."

[morphinum]

Johanna isn't put off by Beyond's laugh. It sounds disturbingly similar to her own, really. There are precious few experiences that give a person that kind of laugh, and clearly, Beyond's been through them. Johanna doesn't like Beyond. She doesn't like anyone, really. It's a matter of principle. But she is beginning to respect the man, just a little bit. She twirls the axe, giving Beyond a thin-lipped grimace. "You know, it usually does make me feel better. I'll have to take you up on that sometime. You're pretty lucky, kid. The world must really want you." She sneers. The world doesn't want Johanna Mason, so she keeps herself alive just to spite them.

"I never said it was," she says, harsh. "I was talking about the Games. You know. Fights to the death as a mean of population control. Really great fun. You should try it sometime, test that theory of getting killed. They take place in fucking arenas like this one."

Johanna is ready for war. Johanna has been fighting a war her whole life. "War? That's nothing new." She looks back to the sky, and shouts again. "Bring it, assholes!"

[recinerate]

"Perhaps I will, sometime." The last port Beyond experienced had been much like what she's describing - a carnival resort built around sadistic games of chance, pitting the Barge's warden population against impossible odds to pay off the artificial debts of their inmates. Beyond offered up an important memory to keep his warden out of harm's way, and it only ended up causing problems elsewhere. No, there were no winners in that particular game - none except the Ringmaster.

If he had to choose all over again, Beyond knows he wouldn't last a minute in the arena with whatever horrors the Ringmaster thought up, and he estimates he wouldn't stay dead, either. But perhaps death, even a temporary one, would have been the better choice, all told, in that instance.

"You're speaking of games as in the Roman ludi, yes? Gladiator games?" He's read of women gladiators in historical records, of course, but it's something entirely different to find oneself face to face with one. "Am I supposed to be your opponent?"

[morphinum]

Romans? Gladiator games? Those words all sound foreign to Johanna. She might have known about them except that Panem had destroyed most of the history of the region that wasn't direct propaganda. She knows about her games; she doesn't know about the games of other places.

Ranting about the Capitol and it's stupid fucking games is something that Johanna excels at, though, and she's more than happy to give Beyond some context. It's a twisted sort of happy, more bitter and vengeful than anything else, but it's the best she's got.

"Yeah, you'd be my opponent," she replies. "The Games are fights to the death, aired for the "entertainment" --" she says, in air quotes, "of the Capitol. Panem was in rebellion a while back, and they started these to keep people under control. You know. Send two kids per district to the Capitol, have them kill each other on live TV. What fun! What entertainment! Not."

Her lip curls.

"There was a rebellion, though. We're gonna kill the game makers, and everyone else in the goddamn Capitol." Okay, so that's not the official ideology, but that's the Johanna Mason way.

[recinerate]

"Panem," he repeats after her, rolling the word forward on his tongue. It sparks a memory, something once read and then filed away in the archive of his brain. "Panem et circenses." Yes. Another piece of the puzzle, clicking neatly into place. It's elegant, the naming of this place in relation to what it is. Beyond can, if nothing else, appreciate the elegance of patterns.

"I'm afraid I'm not from any district, or your Capitol, or your Panem," he says, still utterly, unearthly calm. "I have no wish to fight you. Besides," he says, motioning up to the arena around them, "there's no audience."

[morphinum]

No audience? That's the most naive thing Johanna's ever heard. She throws her head back and laughs, and laughs. It's gutteral, throaty, and not at all sane.

Panem et circenses. He knows the words, the motto of the people who have made her this way. The people who made her angry, who created a murderer. The people she wants to kill. Johanna turns, and kicks the man right in the face. Hard.

It's the least she can do to oppressive scum.

"What did you say, asshole? What did you fucking say? Try me one more time, I dare you."

street smarts

[64th]

Cashmere skips out on helping the arrivals. If they can't make it out of the arena, then they probably don't deserve to survive in the city. She's hoping these things will just work themselves out while she sleeps in.

She does emerge from the house later to make her usual rounds of the city, looking for anything new and interesting to squirrel away for later use. She's hoping to find a book or some clothing but instead finds Johanna. It takes her a few moments to recognize the other woman in her current state, but when she does, Cashmere laughs.

"You have to be kidding me. Johanna Mason. You look like death warmed over, by the way."

<3

[morphinum]

Johanna has to blink a few times before she's able to register that Cashmere is in front of her. Upright. Walking. Alive. That's shouldn't be possible -- Johanna threw her axe straight into the other woman's chest. The cannon went off and everything. Cashmere is dead, or at least, supposed to be dead. When it comes to murder, Johanna Mason always finishes the job.

If that wasn't bad enough, the Capitol's lapdog has the guts to laugh at her. Johanna would strangle Cashmere right now, but even she can recognize that Cashmere is in better shape than she is. Not for long, though. Johanna makes a mental note to rip out Cash's guts in the coming weeks.

She's not going to give Cashmere the satisfaction of getting angry, though. At least, not over the top angry. Johanna gives Cashmere her trademark combination of snarl and smile. "Funny you should say that, since you're dead. Or had you forgotten? Look, blondie, I knew you were dumb, but man, this is a whole new level for you." She snickers. "I'm proud of you, really. Now I can shove an axe down your throat again." That's gonna be fun.

[64th]

"Not before I tear out that hideous hair - oh! Looks like someone beat me to it. Well, I'll think of something else." It feels good to take her pent-up anger out on Johanna. At the hotel, Johanna had become an ally because she'd been the only one not to straight out lie to Cashmere. Despite that, they've never been friends, not in Panem and not now.

She doesn't even really hold her death against Johanna. If Gloss was dead, then Cashmere wanted to die to. She'd have preferred to not go out at Johanna's hand, but life in Panem never was fair.

"I'm alive and well, and I'd love to see you try and take me down. I've been so very bored." It's not a mistake that she keeps her distance, though. Johanna's a fierce competitor and from the looks of it is also completely nuts. It's a dangerous combination.

[morphinum]

Hideous hair? Is that really the best Cashmere can come up with? Pathetic. "You're right, someone did," she sneers back. "It's all the rage in the Capitol now. Snow's assistants did it themselves. Bet you would've liked that, huh? Miss D1 lapdog."

Johanna grins, but really, it's more like baring her teeth than anything else. There's no happiness to it, just anger. Cash is more than welcome to be angry towards Johanna. Johanna's got plenty of anger to deal with herself. And she's never done in in a way that's been particularly constructive.

She draws her axe and swings it, taunting Cashmere. "Go for it. You armed, sweet cheeks? Or have you just realized you've made a stupid fucking mistake? Can't blame you. You were always the dumbest outta all of us, you know.

[64th]

Okay, so witty comebacks are not always her strong suit.

Cash has always had a short temper and over the years Johanna's learned her sore spots and found the best ways to get under her skin. Both the twins have always taken offense at being called dumb, and that's no different now. She fixes the other woman a cold glare, still keeping her distance.

"I'm always armed." she retrieves the sad excuse for a knife she has tucked in her boot (it's a shank made from a butter knife but at least it's something) and waves it at Johanna. "But we have a problem. I don't think it's fair for me to attack a cripple." Cashmere looks smug. She feels pretty clever.

[morphinum]

Getting under people's skin is a skill that Johanna has always prided herself on. Cashmere's glare and evident anger just fuel Johanna's fire, and her toothy grin widens. There's a sense of power that comes from pissing people off, one that Johanna relishes in.

She draws her decidedly more lethal axe. "Well, since you're fighting with a butter knife, I think we're even." She licks her lips. "Besides, I'm not a cripple -- I'm an addict, and that makes me much, much more dangerous."

Do it, Barbie. Attack her. Johanna dares you.

[64th]

She's considering it. Cash has been in one kind-of fight since her arrival, and it's tempting to take Johanna up on her offer. Despite being perhaps over confident in her own abilities, even she knows her sad little knife is no match for Johanna's axe and her temper.

"I wouldn't give you the satisfaction," she spits back. "you don't deserve it."

very hungry caterpillars

[theresolve]

This is the third time the arena has spawned both people and monsters, and this time Rainier was somewhat expecting it, checking regular for arrivals. When activity inside becomes apparent, he's quick to head inside, fully armed and armored.

It can be confusing to get out if you don't know the way, and he's fully expecting more people who need saving then not. So, you know - the skinny girl who looks more like a plague victim than anything who is currently going at the beasts summoned this time like a dwarven berserker gets a moment of startled surprise.

One of the last of the current wave of oversized centipedes coming at him shakes him out of it pretty quick, and it's disgusting how his sword can hack it in half with one good swipe. Not clean, nothing about this is clean. The whole place stinks of blood and gore.

"Exit's this way!" Rainier yells to Johanna.

[morphinum]

Johanna takes a break from her massacring, which is at once both fun and stress-inducting, to look towards the new voice. It's a man, tall, and built like the strongest loggers back home. He's even got the stupid beard that so many of the guys in Seven used to wear. The sight almost makes her miss home, but not quite. This man is armored like no person in Seven ever would be. And that's some damn good armor, too.

"Great," she yells back, her voice tinged with bitter sarcasm. "Let's clear a path, though, because nobody writes songs about tiptoeing through fucking murder centipedes, you know?" She starts hacking at them in Rainier's direction. They're making progress. That's definitely a little satisfying.

[theresolve]

She swings that axe around like a miniature Iron Bull while having an attitude like his wayward friend Sera.

It's been minutes, but Rainier already decides that if they survive this, he likes her.

He gives a grunt that serves as an agreement, smashing his shield into the face of one of them - what is probably a face and certainly a mouth if nothing else. They're cut down so quickly and easily that Rainier can't even think of an appropriate metaphor, but their danger has nothing to do with being tough. There's so fucking many, and they're vicious hungry things, devouring anything that gets close enough, that's bleeding - even their own fallen.

Rainier really doesn't want to find out if those teeth of theirs can tear through his armor. Not when he can't get it replaced.

[morphinum]

Hey, if crazy, angry axe murderers are Thom's thing, Johanna isn't going to argue. For once. She doesn't exactly have a lot of friends. She's okay with that, though. For the most part, people generally suck.

"Hah!" There's something oddly satisfying about killing these creatures. It's a great way to take out one's anger, and Johanna has a lot in the anger department. Eventually, she's able to cut through to Rainier's side, although more are coming. She gives him a toothy, thin-lipped grin.

"You ready for the bloodbath, big boy?" Because Johanna most certainly is.

[theresolve]

People do generally suck, that much they will certainly be able to agree on.

He manages to hold his own while Johanna fights her way to his side. Rainier isn't much for moving while fighting, the acrobatic spinning and slicing is for the younger, even if he's faster than his armor would suggest - but the man is a mountain. When he holds a line, it fucking holds.

He takes the blessed breather for what it is, trying to catch his breath enough for the incoming fight.

"I've been waiting for this." he says, grin wide under his beard.

[morphinum]

Johanna lets out a wordless road and moves into the crowd. This fight doesn't need to be acrobatic -- it just needs to be relentless. Johanna swings that axe like it's what she was born to do, and it's pretty effective. More often than not she can cut a taxxon in half with one swing, it's the sheer number of them that's the problem. Johanna isn't complaining, though. These things are nasty, but it's a great stress relief.

"Take that, fatass worms!"

[theresolve]

Sometimes wanton destruction and violence are just the thing for stress relief - and monsters, you don't have to worry about moral quandaries with monsters. So far nothing the so-called Gods have brought along with the people have been sentient, and even if these things are (they are, sadly) whatever monstrous hunger that compels them has overridden that.

Rainier was made for stamina, between the two of them they'll be able to see the end of this. Even if there will be a bad need for a clean-up after.