So throw on the black dress, mix in with the lot [OPEN]

[isthistheregion]

Who| The Creature and Open
What| Testing the boundaries of his "freedom"
Where| The Training Center
When| Sometime between Christmas and New Years
Warnings/Notes| No initial warnings. In terms of tagging in: Avoxes and District 8 Mentors are welcome to tag him in his room. Otherwise, your character is the other person to call the elevator at the end.

Once he had been taken from the room he'd woken up in, once he had been brought to the training center and evaluated, the Creature had spent days in his room.

At first, it had been out of despair and confusion. They had taken him away from his master, from his purpose, brought him into a city greater than any he had ever seen even at a distance. The scale of it, the sprawling man-made structures and the teeming population had been oppressive, unable to be faced except by viewing it through his window -- and even then, at times, it would overwhelm him, and he would be unable to bear the sight of it.

Hours passed. A day. Despair and anger melted into a sober confrontation of reality. Frankenstein was lost in more ways than one. Even if the Creature could escape this place and navigate north and somehow locate his creator, there would be nothing there but a frozen corpse.

Probably. The remote possibility that he might stumble upon some outpost, be given aid and be drawn away from his pursuit was enough to make his rage flicker back to life. He consoled himself with the thought that Frankenstein would not allow himself to linger in one place for too long. Even without the signposts the Creature had been leaving him, his need for revenge was too strong. He would take up the search again. And he would die on the ice.

The Creature mourned. The sun set and rose again.

Over time, he began to consider his current situation more closely. He discovered how to work the device that made flickering images come to life, and the things it showed him were in turns illuminating and confounding and an assault on the senses. He examined the smaller device his captors had given him, discovered how to make the map appear.

The room began to feel small, the walls too close. Where he had at first been determined to stay put until they came to collect him for these 'games,' he wanted to wander.

They had told him he was free to do so, after all. He wondered, if he made his way toward those mountains... how far would he get? What would they do once he got there?

He chose clothes that would cover him as well as possible. Trousers made of rough blue cloth. A hooded shirt. A scarf, which he wrapped around the bottom half of his face before putting the hood up. Simple, canvas slip-on shoes. He had never had a need for shoes, but until he got to the mountains, he wanted to stand out as little as possible.

He slipped out of his room, toward the small room that moved -- the elevator. He remembered enough to know how to call it, and stepped in when the door open.

And then he was faced with the other buttons. He had thought the floor he would want in order to leave the building would be obvious. But -- no. Floor 1? Central Commons? What was a sublevel?

He hesitated, but then there was an electronic tone, and the door slid closed before he could enter a command. Someone else had called the elevator.

The Creature put his back to the wall, his head and eyes angled downward.

Comments

[acroodawakening]

The little man stepped into the elevator without really paying attention at first, but then he couldn't not pay attention when he saw the hulking figure standing there, a man even taller than his adopted caveman father.

The hulking figure had skin that looked sewn together like the skins Guy wore back home.

The height difference between them was significant. Even though he was fairly tall for his world, Guy was fully grown and had topped out at a whopping 5' 7", shorter than the average in most modern societies.

"Uuuuuuh."

In the time he'd stood there staring, the elevator doors closed behind him. Guy backed into the corner of the elevator, reaching behind him and hitting a button. Any button was fine, really.

"Hiiiiii," he said slowly.

Then reason took over. Grug was tall and scary-looking and had once tried to pummel Guy into a fine, meaty paste before, but he was a big softie at heart. R had been terrifying to behold but the zombie had been a sweet guy underneath the blood and bits of human liver. He himself, so far, had been called savage, simple, even dirty, by some.

Who was he to judge?

His voice was hitched just slightly with fear as he spoke but he was clearly trying to be friendly.

"Are you new? You look new. What's your name? I'm Guy."

[isthistheregion]

The Creature had watched Guy through all that -- silently staring him down, studying him, which could not have made the whole ordeal any more comfortable -- with his yellow eyes gleaming slightly from under his hood. The sutured scar running over the bridge of his nose wrinkled at the introduction. He'd long since given up on ever having a name. The assumption that he must have one was nothing but a reminder that he'd been pulled into a world he could never expect to fit into.

His eyes finally broke contact with Guy, his chin jerking toward his shoulder before his head rolled back to sitting on a straight neck.

"Guy," he repeated. If he didn't have an introduction to give in return, he could at least accept the one offered him. "Are you a gladiator?"

[acroodawakening]

"I don't know what that means but if you're asking if I'm a Tribute, one of the people being forced to fight in the arena, I am."

Ugh, yellow eyes. Ughughgugh. The staring had been unnerving but now that it had stopped, Guy found his curiosity growing greater and greater, outpacing the fear. 

The elevator dinged as it stopped at a random floor. Not the one Guy had wanted, but he found himself not wanting to skip out the door to run as much as he had when he first hit the button. 

So he hit another button and this time it was just as random. He did this sometimes. Rather than just using things as they were meant to be used, he would keep hitting buttons for the novelty of seeing what they did and seeing if they would do the same thing every time. The end result was sometimes chao; because of Guy's experimentation and repeated flushing, he'd flooded his bathroom by playing with the toilet until it clogged, for instance.

"I love this thing. It takes you to all the different floors. I wish I could find out how it works."

[isthistheregion]

Those eyes flicked toward the door when it opened. The layout was similar to the floor they'd brought him to, but everything was sparkling lights.

Probably not the one he wanted, either.

But Guy... he was playing. Easy to conclude he'd done something like this before. All the different floors. The Creature took one step closer to the front of the elevator, examining the buttons again.

"Which floor leads to the exit?"

[acroodawakening]

"That one."

Guy hit the button for him.

"If you go outside, be careful, though. The people in the city are terrible and crazy and there are great big crowds of them. And if you try to leave the city, there's a great big wall and the only ways through it are guarded by the bug-people. They don't let anyone out."

He still thought the Peacekeepers were some kind of species of bugman because of the armor.

[isthistheregion]

That was enough to make him wonder, for a second, if his initial plan of remaining in his room until they made him leave wasn't the worst idea.

That being the part about great big crowds. He would want to move quickly. Keep his face covered as best he could...

...and just like that, his resolve was back. He had to get a view of this city from something other than his window.

"What happens if someone tries to get out?"

[acroodawakening]

Guy shrugged.

"I, ah, didn't stay long enough to find out. What with the bug-people starting to chase me and all. I ran back into the city." He took a stab in the dark: "Presumably, pain. That's what I figure."

[isthistheregion]

"But not too much," the Creature said, hazarding his own guess, a touch of resigned bitterness in his voice, "or we wouldn't be able to entertain them later."

With a tone, the door slid open. The ground floor was different: wide open and slightly echoing. There were people there, only a handful milling about -- all, for the moment, focused on their own matters. The Creature stepped forward, toying with the scarf around his neck, preparing to pull it back over his mouth and nose at an instant's notice.

[acroodawakening]

Guy hung back in the elevator for a moment, almost long enough for the doors to close but he darted forward through them just in time.

"Do you need someone to show you around?"

He knew what it was like to be bombarded by the Capitol rabble and finding your way around while fending them off wasn't easy.

[isthistheregion]

He had paused there on the outside of the elevator, casting his eyes about for the door -- there it was.

"I need a path to the mountains."

But now his feet wouldn't carry him forward. A moment's trepidation. He only needed to push past it.

[acroodawakening]

"There isn't one."

Now Guy stepped forward even closer, concerned that this...man. He was concerned that this man might wander off and get himself killed by the rather uncompromising people in charge here.

"The wall goes around this entire place - they call it a 'city.' The gates are all guarded. If you just try to leave, they'll hurt you. They might even kill you. You have to be careful."

[isthistheregion]

The mountains were outside the walls. Which did not help the sensation of being closed in. But he wasn't going to let it deter him.

"The tallest building in the city, then." He held up his communicator, deftly navigating to the map, which sprung up in its three-dimensional hologram. The Creature pointed to the one building that towered over the rest. "That one. How do I get there?"

[acroodawakening]

"No idea. I still can't find my way around really well, either," said Guy unhelpfully. "The last time I tried, I wound up getting hit by a thing I've been told is a 'car,' splattered with paint, and forced to hide in the bushes from the people with scary wigs."

He illustrated that last part by flaring his hands out at the top of his head to show how large and scary the wigs were.

"I thought they were live animals in some kind of threat display."

He added helpfully, as if he was afraid the Creature might be scared of them when he didn't need to be, "They're not. By the way."

It had been an experience, one he'd had to spend time in his room with hot cider and a blanket over his eyes to calm down from. He didn't even want to imagine how things might have gone down if Mindy and Hawkeye hadn't gotten him and if Hawkeye hadn't stolen a woman's wig and engaged in that weird little act of his that'd scared them all off.

[isthistheregion]

Somewhere near the end of Guy's story, there was a sudden rushing noise from outside, a deep growling like an animal, and a blur of color as the thing -- the car -- raced past the building. The Creature's head snapped toward it, startled.

Everything moved so fast here. At least, it seemed that way from the images he'd seen on that device, his interactions with his captors. People spoke fast, moved fast. He'd only been here a few days, but it already felt like weeks.

He turned his attention back to the map.

"The building should be visible from most points in the city," he spoke out loud largely for his own benefit, still working to focus through his anxiety. "The streets must follow some sort of logic." Which one was the Training Center? If he could work out the path himself...

[acroodawakening]

"I didn't know what streets were before I came here so I couldn't tell you if they did," said Guy.

He quirked an eyebrow.

"Why do you want to get to the big building, though?"

[isthistheregion]

Ah. There. He thought he had it, and if not, he had a decent enough start. He shut down the map on his communicator.

"I am going to climb to the top of it," he said, before finally turning toward the doors.

[acroodawakening]

"...Why?" It seemed a very pressing question.

Mostly because people in this place could sometimes be kind of crazy. There were a lot of ways someone could get into trouble from the top of a very high place, especially in a place like this.

[isthistheregion]

"Because I can't climb to the top of the mountains." The logic was perfectly straightforward in his mind. Higher ground meant a better vantage point. "I need to see this place--"

That was more or less the end of his thought, but it was interrupted, cut off by the front doors of the building sliding open in front of them, and the rush of sound and motion from the street outside hitting him with full force. A couple more cars zoomed by, and the Creature started back, nearly colliding with a couple of women dressed head-to-toe in purple. They let out small sounds of alarm before continuing on, chattering to one another like birds.

[acroodawakening]

"Yeah, you have to be careful of those," said Guy helpfully. "Those are the 'cars.' If you go on their hunting tracks and they see it, they try to hunt you down. They're vicious."