☆ 90th pts's ☆
Feb 24, 2022 21:51:16 GMT -5
Post by nolan goode 10m / kaitlin. on Feb 24, 2022 21:51:16 GMT -5
You sit in the waiting area, patient, hands folded across your lap. You breathe in evenly, paying attention to the motion. There is nothing else in this room that deserves your attention.
You've spent every day learning the ins and outs of the mechanical workings inside that room. Each session, you've searched for the control panel to take out the lights, even think you found the sliver in the wall where you could bring down the barrier between you and the GM's if the right projectile were to make it's way there, but you're not sure, and more importantly you're not interested.
This is a show, not a threat.
You go over your preparations in your head, quickly, take note of where each item is at the moment. In corners and crevices you've hidden traps for you to take out during your private session, little devices rigged to blow, pressure plates turned little land mines ready to be placed. They told you that you weren't supposed to do that, that special items were to be declared and asked for ahead of time, but.
You've always preferred being unexpected.
Besides, you didn't feel like sitting in that room fiddling with wires and a set of pliers. It's a skill, surely, one that years and years of paying far too close attention in math and science classes has taught you, but it's not really what you're trying to show off.
When you walk through the door, you go for the bow first, take a hardpoint arrow and draw it taut. You know that a standard likely wouldn't be able to break through the metal. The angle is odd, pointed slightly up and looking almost directly at the gamemakers, but your eyes aren't on them. There's a control panel to the right of their little box. An arrow through the metal casing it in, and the lights blink in and out a few times as the panel crackles and then pitches the room into darkness.
An eerie light glows over the edge of the GM's viewing box, the lights there controlled from another location. You expected as much.
You creep through the shadows, duck behind the pillars and various stations, hiding from their sight. Darting between darknesses, light feet lightning quick, girl turned shadow, you set your playing field.
You've hidden your devices across the room, five different traps for the automatons that you had requested join you in this fight, only the final strings needing pulling. You've fought these kind of machines before in Four, remember taking down versions of them at the Academy, practicing your land mines on their pathetic mechanical legs. And you didn't even have all the materials there that you have here. Six traps total, two you've set for yourself, and you're ready.
At the end of running through the shadows and doing the final riggings on the traps you've been prepping all week, you know that the time you asked for is almost over. You'd requested five minutes exactly, and you're counting them in your head. Twenty-seven seconds left, you grab a stuffed training dummy off the rack and dump it unceremoniously in the middle of the practice ring, give the GM's another example of your skills and set the goddamned thing ablaze.
You had to do something for your brother. Just one.
The image of the gamemakers in their safe little box flickers behind the flames, shifting with the light, and you think yours must do the same for them. Good, let them see you only in flashes. Let them see you distorted.
Six seconds to spare, and they send them in early.
The first trap is basic, a wire pulled across the door the machines enter through. Rigged to a simple bucket hung over the door, out falls one of the weights. You don't blink when the machines head disappears into its shoulders, caved in. There's four more coming behind it.
You don't know if they have night vision or not, but half this show is about stealth, dexterity, avoidance, so you slink back to your shadows and try not to let them see you. From where you hide, you throw one of the daggers at your hips, aiming for the chink in the armored exterior where knee meets shin and send it toppling forward over itself, the clanking of metal scraping against the floor grating at the very least.
The second trap is fun, the kind of thing that makes even you smile. A large pressure plate placed near the plants station, the floor explodes up from underneath them like a landmine. You'd had to fiddle with wires so delicately you thought you'd go cross eyed, but the end result is worth it. With the explosion, glow in the dark paint. Now your enemy is shining in the dark like a beacon, neon pink against the shadows, and you notch another hardpoint and aim. Bright pink scattered upwards across the machine's body, you lodge the arrow where carotid would be.
Intentionally, you trigger your own trap this time. And then a second, a mad dash of dexterity as you dart out of the way of a falling spear from the rafters. It'd taken you twenty minutes to figure out how to crawl up there the first time, had to shimmy your way up between two pillars, but you think the sight of you avoiding it just about makes the aches you'd felt in your hips afterward worth it. A pressure plate under the trip wire creates a mini explosion you have to avoid and you have to leap up at the same time, spin around yourself and do a sideways flip for fear of leaping too high and finding said spear in your throat.
This one is right under the GM's noses really, near the wall closest to them. No way for them to miss it. You don't look up to check.
The machines saw it, too.
The two left charge at you, but one of them gets stopped when they trigger the third and final tripwire trap you've set, spring made from a mousetrap this time. He gets clobbered when three massive metal balls roll off a rack and knock him out at the legs. It's not taken out, but it's down for a moment, and that's all you need have enough time to shoot your last hardpoint arrow from the quiver into the others faux eye socket. It shudders, starts to stumble, and you leap at it, push the arrow in further towards where brain matter would belong and then dig a dagger into its other eye with your left hand.
The thing falls backward as you do so, clatters against the floor loudly, but you don't even stop, continue forward until you're tucking and rolling, coming up on one knee. Out of arrows, you thwack the remaining machine with the bow on a backhand swing, swooping it forward to knock it off balance. One of its legs is barely hanging on, nearly crushed by one of the balls, and it goes down gracelessly. You make quick work of sticking your dagger in its temple.
The message, you hope, is clear. You have never been one for a show, but that has never meant you are not one for winning.
You'll hide if you need to, set traps if you need to, maybe even make allies if you need to, but you'll take them all. If they make it through your shadows, you'll take them head on in the light. And you'll do it without blinking.
You trigger the trap the machines missed without ceremony, take the bow and hurl it towards the land mine you built underneath the very station you used to make all of these traps. A flurry of nails explodes out from it, lodging into the walls and scattering across the floor like caltrops.
Let them miss nothing.
When you leave, it's without word or a bow. They will make their judgements no matter what you say.
You've spent every day learning the ins and outs of the mechanical workings inside that room. Each session, you've searched for the control panel to take out the lights, even think you found the sliver in the wall where you could bring down the barrier between you and the GM's if the right projectile were to make it's way there, but you're not sure, and more importantly you're not interested.
This is a show, not a threat.
You go over your preparations in your head, quickly, take note of where each item is at the moment. In corners and crevices you've hidden traps for you to take out during your private session, little devices rigged to blow, pressure plates turned little land mines ready to be placed. They told you that you weren't supposed to do that, that special items were to be declared and asked for ahead of time, but.
You've always preferred being unexpected.
Besides, you didn't feel like sitting in that room fiddling with wires and a set of pliers. It's a skill, surely, one that years and years of paying far too close attention in math and science classes has taught you, but it's not really what you're trying to show off.
When you walk through the door, you go for the bow first, take a hardpoint arrow and draw it taut. You know that a standard likely wouldn't be able to break through the metal. The angle is odd, pointed slightly up and looking almost directly at the gamemakers, but your eyes aren't on them. There's a control panel to the right of their little box. An arrow through the metal casing it in, and the lights blink in and out a few times as the panel crackles and then pitches the room into darkness.
An eerie light glows over the edge of the GM's viewing box, the lights there controlled from another location. You expected as much.
You creep through the shadows, duck behind the pillars and various stations, hiding from their sight. Darting between darknesses, light feet lightning quick, girl turned shadow, you set your playing field.
You've hidden your devices across the room, five different traps for the automatons that you had requested join you in this fight, only the final strings needing pulling. You've fought these kind of machines before in Four, remember taking down versions of them at the Academy, practicing your land mines on their pathetic mechanical legs. And you didn't even have all the materials there that you have here. Six traps total, two you've set for yourself, and you're ready.
At the end of running through the shadows and doing the final riggings on the traps you've been prepping all week, you know that the time you asked for is almost over. You'd requested five minutes exactly, and you're counting them in your head. Twenty-seven seconds left, you grab a stuffed training dummy off the rack and dump it unceremoniously in the middle of the practice ring, give the GM's another example of your skills and set the goddamned thing ablaze.
You had to do something for your brother. Just one.
The image of the gamemakers in their safe little box flickers behind the flames, shifting with the light, and you think yours must do the same for them. Good, let them see you only in flashes. Let them see you distorted.
Six seconds to spare, and they send them in early.
The first trap is basic, a wire pulled across the door the machines enter through. Rigged to a simple bucket hung over the door, out falls one of the weights. You don't blink when the machines head disappears into its shoulders, caved in. There's four more coming behind it.
You don't know if they have night vision or not, but half this show is about stealth, dexterity, avoidance, so you slink back to your shadows and try not to let them see you. From where you hide, you throw one of the daggers at your hips, aiming for the chink in the armored exterior where knee meets shin and send it toppling forward over itself, the clanking of metal scraping against the floor grating at the very least.
The second trap is fun, the kind of thing that makes even you smile. A large pressure plate placed near the plants station, the floor explodes up from underneath them like a landmine. You'd had to fiddle with wires so delicately you thought you'd go cross eyed, but the end result is worth it. With the explosion, glow in the dark paint. Now your enemy is shining in the dark like a beacon, neon pink against the shadows, and you notch another hardpoint and aim. Bright pink scattered upwards across the machine's body, you lodge the arrow where carotid would be.
Intentionally, you trigger your own trap this time. And then a second, a mad dash of dexterity as you dart out of the way of a falling spear from the rafters. It'd taken you twenty minutes to figure out how to crawl up there the first time, had to shimmy your way up between two pillars, but you think the sight of you avoiding it just about makes the aches you'd felt in your hips afterward worth it. A pressure plate under the trip wire creates a mini explosion you have to avoid and you have to leap up at the same time, spin around yourself and do a sideways flip for fear of leaping too high and finding said spear in your throat.
This one is right under the GM's noses really, near the wall closest to them. No way for them to miss it. You don't look up to check.
The machines saw it, too.
The two left charge at you, but one of them gets stopped when they trigger the third and final tripwire trap you've set, spring made from a mousetrap this time. He gets clobbered when three massive metal balls roll off a rack and knock him out at the legs. It's not taken out, but it's down for a moment, and that's all you need have enough time to shoot your last hardpoint arrow from the quiver into the others faux eye socket. It shudders, starts to stumble, and you leap at it, push the arrow in further towards where brain matter would belong and then dig a dagger into its other eye with your left hand.
The thing falls backward as you do so, clatters against the floor loudly, but you don't even stop, continue forward until you're tucking and rolling, coming up on one knee. Out of arrows, you thwack the remaining machine with the bow on a backhand swing, swooping it forward to knock it off balance. One of its legs is barely hanging on, nearly crushed by one of the balls, and it goes down gracelessly. You make quick work of sticking your dagger in its temple.
The message, you hope, is clear. You have never been one for a show, but that has never meant you are not one for winning.
You'll hide if you need to, set traps if you need to, maybe even make allies if you need to, but you'll take them all. If they make it through your shadows, you'll take them head on in the light. And you'll do it without blinking.
You trigger the trap the machines missed without ceremony, take the bow and hurl it towards the land mine you built underneath the very station you used to make all of these traps. A flurry of nails explodes out from it, lodging into the walls and scattering across the floor like caltrops.
Let them miss nothing.
When you leave, it's without word or a bow. They will make their judgements no matter what you say.
"No one loves a try-hard."
And boy oh boy, was Parker Lochlan trying hard. It all came to her effortlessly, perfectly: annoyingly well-executed. By far, Parker's was among the best of the career showings, and he knew even as he was watching her that a hefty score was in store for her.
Cricket even began applauding there at the end. Hades didn't, even though he was also impressed with her clear prowess and the potential storylines he could use her for. Technically speaking, none of this had been approved by them and there was absolutely no reason that the training center should've been littered with traps without someone noticing.
Not to mention, he would've been much more impressed with her overall if she'd done more of it in the moment. Spend a week preparing in the arena, and the fight will surely have found and beaten you to death before you're ready to make your move.
"Though, I don't think love is what she's after here... No, I don't think she wants love at all."
Then what?
Fame? She lacked the likeableness. Blood? Perhaps, though there were much simpler ways to go about that if its what she was truly after.
Glory.
"She's in it for the sport."
Maryn first scribbled down a 1, and Hades arched an eyebrow in her direction before she scoffed.
"Actually, let's give the others a reason to kill her. 10."
That, combined with her +2 in the training assessments would've given her a perfect 12 as a final score. He considered whether her showing was deserving of that. The boy from Two had been far more... charismatic? Easy to root for? Maybe Maryn was right and this would get her killed, and Hades was not yet entirely sure he wanted that to happen, but he did like the storyline of calling someone perfect and seeing them either struggle to live up to the expectation or rise to the occasion as a certified badass.
He looked to Cricket, who agreed.
"Final score: 12. Let's see how she fares playing by our rules."
