penthouse sweets - ladybugs vs the horde [day 3]

"I'll lead the way."

Not spiritually, but physically. Elsie has begun to learn her place in this game. It's Tammy who draws up the grand plans, and it's Elsie who navigates through the terrors. Maybe it's a blessing that she experienced what she did on that very first day. Watching Janet and Vino be torn apart, standing there like a fool and unable to will her body to move. To fight, to run, anything. Fate gave her three chances to live, and the number three has proven to be lucky.

The cleaner bots they fought yesterday were hardly frightening. Not like the clawing hands and gnashing teeth. She has learned that she can handle faulty wires and sharpened brooms. Heck, she can even handle traveling through the expanse of the arena, her stamina carrying her through the journey. With Tammy at her side, or a few steps behind her, Elsie feels that she can do anything. They've gathered a good amount of supplies, learned how to use their weapons with calm precision.

Her heart still flutters at the idea of using the blade against another tribute, someone whose innocence looks like her own. She whispers below her breath as they approach the door with the neon glow shining through the gap. The sound of distorted club music is playing, like a vinyl record that has begun to scratch its existence away. The romantic voice gurgles, trying and failing to croon. It seems to be a luxury suite, a wider distance between it and all other connecting rooms.

"Please. No tributes. Anything but that."

Tammy believes there's reason to suspect a bounty of goods are hiding inside, and Elsie knows better than to question the girl's logic. She pushes open the door with a low, rusty creak. The neon light blinks and shifts, motes of dust suspended in the air. There's a brief moment to notice the furniture, the grand space, the decaying signs that a luxurious party was thrown here. And then there's the scent of death.

The sound of something stirring in the dark, the sight of shadows starting to move. She doesn't have the chance to open her mouth and warn her friend as figures dart out from the blackness, their shapes briefly lit in the blinking neon lights. There are bladed fans glinting in their rotten hands, beautiful clothes torn to tatters. Elsie listens to her instinct and flattens against the wall as one of them trips over her legs, growling as it stumbles.

But in her adrenaline, she has left a wide open path for the other to lunge for Tammy. All she can do is watch in horror as the sharp edge of the fan slashes across Tammy's throat, and for a moment there's so much red that she's certain the other girl's cannon is going to echo through the suite and she'll find herself all alone. But all she can hear is her own racing heartbeat, the surge of energy she needs to fight coursing through her veins.

"Get. Away. From. Her."

Elsie grips her knife and begins to charge.

This can't be real. She thought it a dozen times in that moment, desperately clambering across the room to create any amount of distance she possibly could. She could remember the use of the undead in Hunger Games past, but in completely different context than this. Past tributes brought back for a hellish nightmare on a frozen hillside. Skeletons picking up swords and joining the battle. Stone knights gifted animation long enough to horrify tributes all across an ancient forest. But this-

There were so many. And Tamerlane recognized none of them. They weren't important to history, they were just... decor. Taking the place of the lions and the tigers and the bears. Doing what the defective little cleaner robots could not do.

She climbed up onto a bar, jumped as high as she could to catch the chandelier dangling overhead. It took every ounce of effort she had to pull herself up to the waist, laying over the top of it as the chandelier began to spin in circles with the added weight. She aimed her axe and tossed.

[tamerlane attacks the zombies, throwing axe 1/8]
P3IP1LqaTCthrowing axe
[result]

[uses auto-targeting chip]
throwing axe
[4]

She makes a vow to herself that she will never become like these corpses.

Trapped in a cage of their own hedonism, draped in fineries that have long since decayed. The chiffon is stained, the tulle is torn, the silk is rotten. What was once beautiful now reeks of death. An envious girl, she used to find herself dreaming of a life where she could live in a suite like this, so high up that she can see the grey clouds just outside the window. Wearing designer clothes, and not sewing knockoffs.

Is this what becomes of the privileged? She regrets ever wanting in the first place. If she could leave this room alive, with Tammy by her side, she makes a vow that she will never wish for anything more. She's nothing special, but she's breathing, and she still has the urge to dream. What do the dead want? Do they ever sleep? The grey outside the window turns stormy. The emotions in her heart swirl to match.

Elsie leaps from the chandelier, a bladed fan scratching her exposed arm, but when she lands she sets her jaw and moves through the pain. "I'm right here, freaks!" she yells, holding up her arm to show off the red stain, the meal these zombies are drooling over. She knows what they'll do to her if they catch up, the same thing they did to Janet and Vino and all the others who died on the first day.

When they come lunging, she lashes out with her blade.