hadriel_logs | INTRO LOG: A TAXING JOURNEY

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INTRO LOG: A TAXING JOURNEY

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!

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"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."

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.

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."

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!"

"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?"

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.

"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."

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."

Beyond isn't expecting to find a foot suddenly colliding with his face. Perhaps he should have expected it; he more than anyone knows exactly how violent and unpredictable anger can make a person. He's knocked flat on his back, stunned for a moment before he too begins to laugh - not because it's funny (it's not), not because it doesn't hurt (it does), but because of the sheer absurdity of it all.

He wipes at the blood trickling out of his nose with the underside of his shirtsleeve - proof that he's alive again, undeniable. A flash of memory runs through his mind - the library, Shiro. Blood all over him, wet and sticky, both his and hers.

Finally, his laughter subsides. "Which part would you like me to repeat, Johanna?"

Oops. She never told him her name, did she.

Beyond couldn't have crafted a response that pissed Johanna off more. The fact that he's laughing, that he knows her name, and his coy response makes Johanna switch from her normal anger to something more dangerous. She's seeing red, literally, because all she can think about is how much she wants to make him bleed. How much she wanted to make them all bleed.

She is at once in the arena and in the Capitol torture chamber. Men in masks are asking her if she needs them to repeat the question, and in their gloved hands is a long, thin, humming wire. It's hard to differentiate between Beyond and her former captors in that instant.

She screams, indistinct and gutteral, and lunges towards Beyond. She hits him once, twice in the jaw and pulls her hands away, knuckles bloody. She kicks him again, and if he falls, she'll stand over him, pounding her fists into his body over and over again.

"You don't know my name! You don't know who the fuck I am! Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you!"

He really shouldn't be surprised at this point. Johanna's violence may not be as subtle as Shiro's was at first, and it may not have come with vocal forewarning like Mickey's, months ago, when he'd beaten Beyond badly enough to dislocate his jaw, but - it isn't surprising. Not really. If Beyond had the space for analysis at the current moment, he'd recognize a similarity in her feral, frenzied anger and his own. When Misora came to the Barge and spilled all his secrets for everyone there in her too-plain words and lack of context, Beyond felt exactly the same, only he took his revenge on what became the wreckage of his cabin instead of another person. Instead of her, because she was no longer there.

Beyond didn't fight back when Mickey beat him. He only started to fight back with Shiro after it was mostly too late. Here and now, with Johanna's fists pummeling him again and again, something inside Beyond snaps, and he'll recognize it later, when he once again has the capacity for rational thought, as the moment he finally had enough of being a victim.

He is not strong, but he is stronger than he looks. He hasn't trained in defending himself for long months, ever since Furiosa stopped working with him. But Beyond is filled with a wild, vicious fury, coiled deep inside and dormant like a hibernating snake, and he has nothing left to lose.

So he fights back, with all the grace of a rabid animal, snarling wordlessly, kicking with bare feet, arms waving wildly - anything in an attempt to knock his assailant back or off balance.

Johanna isn't exactly glad that Beyond is fighting back, but there's something about the retaliation that she appreciates. Knocking him out cold with just a few blows would be too easy, and not satisfying at all. This makes the fight longer, and slightly more even, which is good. It detaches Johanna from her anger by immersing herself in a different kind of rage -- one that is more simple, primal, and aggressive. It's a release, and an addictive one at that, better than any morphling.

Johanna's a loud and large fighter, all roars and sharp, mighty movements. She's a little more controlled than Beyond is, despite her anger. She's made a living out of killing, and a person only gets so far on pure might and luck alone.

Johanna's able to parry most of the blows, and in one instance, she's able to catch Beyond's fist and shove it straight back into his face. He does manage to kick her back once, but she stands quickly, the fight not out of her yet. Johanna cracks her neck, bares her teeth, and charges, aiming to knock Beyond over and snap the damn asshole's neck.

Really, she's simply enforcing a strict don't-fuck-with-me policy.

Agility is the one aspect of physical contests where Beyond is competent, without the need for formal training; dodging an oncoming attack doesn't require much in the way of skill, just instinct and a good sense of timing. He quickly sidesteps Johanna as she rushes at him, kicking toward her legs in an attempt to trip her up and use her momentum against her.

He does trip her, but Johanna's been tripped before, and she curls up to brace for the impact, rolling once she hits the ground, and standing up afterwards. Johanna knows that the fight would be better if she actually thought about it -- with some strategy, it wouldn't be hard to pummel this kid. But Johanna isn't fighting with strategy: she's fighting with pure rage, because in the end, that's the most satisfying fight of all.

She's got to get close, though, close enough so that Beyond won't be able to anticipate her oncoming attacks. This time, she approaches slower, and if he lets her get close enough, she'll let fly a rapid series of kicks and punches, fast enough so that he may not be able to catch his breath from them.

She's good at this; Beyond can give her credit for that. He can tell he's hopelessly outmatched, the same way he was with Shiro - the only difference is that Johanna's combat abilities aren't supernatural, just finely honed.

No. Not the only difference. Shiro knew him, knew his secrets, inner thoughts he shared with her that she then turned against him. This fight with Johanna, it's not personal, not in the same way. She's reacting. Beyond recognizes this because it's how he too operates. It's an effective strategy for the short run, but for a long-term approach, it's not sustainable.

He's always been shortsighted, never able to envision a future past his immediate goals. Maybe that's why he's not able to fend off Johanna's next attacks - because he's simply reacting. He's knocked backwards, dizzy, and hits the ground hard, gasping for air.

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INTRO LOG: A TAXING JOURNEY

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cw blood

cw blood, torture

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