Calm Like a Bomb

[hit_girl_mindy]

WHO| Mindy, Open
WHAT| General hope for CR interaction, basically
WHERE| I'm going to have her in the training center/tribute tower
WHEN| This week
WARNINGS| Swearing and likely dialogue of the adult situations. Mindy just rolls like that.

1. The training room was becoming her home away from home.

Which, honestly, it HAD to be. Home was where dad trained her, home was making herself ready, finding the tired, aching in her bones welcome after the drudgery of the games forcing her to be alert almost constantly. That had happened too soon after her attempt to conform to real life. Even in her "roll with it" personality demanded the switch, it still left her in a hard place, untrained for fucking wilderness and traps.

She knew better now. She'd eaten more, even allowed herself to get dolled up every so often (two random days) so she could regain a little bit of herself. It just helped her regain a foothold back to what she did best: training her body to shatter some bones. A run n the gymnasium cleared her head. A few choice weapons of the stabbing variety kept her senses sharp. A rundown on long ranged weapons told her how much more she had to go. Everything she did, she recorded on a notepad for herself.

There was no more dad here to keep tabs on her: kill or be killed. Mindy wasn't going to go into the latter category easily.

Right at the moment, she was suspended from a rope, her eyes closed. One of the exercises she had set for herself was sensing everything around her. She had lost the previous games because she blundered into a set trap. That had been reckless, and made her feel even dumber for falling for it. She'd make sure that didn't happen again. This meant sensing everything around her, disciplining her body in the case someone or something had to be detected. This, she knew, would be harder to do suspended like this.


2. It was hard to get to sleep sometimes. Between nightmares of her father and her leg getting torn up, her head was becoming a space of unpleasant imagery and that was not something she needed. She was in a faux lap of luxury suite, she didn't need her mind reminding her how desperate everything was: all of this was wrong. So she regressed back to her over sized shirt and walked out of her suite, trying to gather her thoughts.

Comments

[hit_girl_mindy]

"That's not lucky," Mindy grumbled. "Well, I mean, it sucks the bitch caught me in a bear trap, but I DID take her eye too. And hell, I even had someone mercy kill me. Pt wa pretty intense."

Nevermind what Guy did after. If she was interested, she would talk about it.

"You just need practice. No one gets just automatically good at that. Only superheroes can do that shit easily. You just need to be very quick."

[onlyimmune]

"Yeah that sounds intense as fuck," Ellie agrees. It is a weird thing to talk about, but here, playing upside down and far away, it seems like a distant story rather than something that actually happened to her friend. Or actually happened to her.

"Wish I had a mercy kill. I just had some fucking lizard guy stab me like eight hundred times."

She snorts at the word 'superheroes', and twists around upside down.

"I can be a superhero. A really, really dizzy superhero... wow, I can see spots!"

[hit_girl_mindy]

"The bear trap was the worse. I knew that the blood loss was going to kill me, but I, like, knew it was gonna take awhile, and I was too new to get any First Aid. Next time I guess i'l get all doe-eyes and 'pwecious' so if I'm bleeding out I can stay in a little longer."

Another flip and she was upside down again.

"Shit, who does that to a little girl?! Heh, just fucking with you, I couldn't even keep a straight face there. If it were me I would have bashed his head in. But at least it would have been quick. People I don't like, I maim. Now I think I might not be liking lizard guys next time I go in."

If you got her drift.

"Don't knock them, they're pretty cool! I think I heard we might have had a few..."

[onlyimmune]

Ellie snorts at the 'little girl' joke and nods to the rest. "Yeah, don't worry, if I see him next time I'm going to give him a piece of my mind."

If you got her drift.

"Really? We have superheroes here?" She asks, arching an eyebrow as she tries to pull herself up on the rope so that at least her head is above her chest and she doesn't need to get super dizzy. "Well I guess-- There are some pretty super people, yeah. Orc's got rock for skin after all. I shouldn't be surprised."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Just gotta get a name first," Mindy said, rotating on the rope now. "Then watch the footage. The usual shit."

She nodded, removing her hands and swinging again. "I think I met Bat girl. Wait, there's somebody here with a name like Orc? What's he like?"

[onlyimmune]

"Uh... A bit like the name suggests, I guess," Ellie said a little apologetically. "Big guy. Rock. He's a friend of Howard's and he's uh... got a temper on him. But he's alright. Gave me a potato in the arena."

A twist of guilt tore through her stomach then.

"I... hurt him. Bad. Killed him. It was just an accident, he kind of got into a really bad rage, you know? Came right at me, and I had my spear down, and..."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Sounds like The Thing," she said, shaking her head. "I met Howard though, so I'm actually sorta curious how those two wound up being friends to begin with."

She stopped, giving Ellie an impressed look. "You took out a rock guy?! That takes guts. It must have sucked to do it, yeah, but he probably would have got you first."

[onlyimmune]

"I think they met back home," Ellie said. "Like, from the same world." She didn't sound sad at that at all. Nope. No siree. She was not at all completely jealous about having people from home here.

Not in the slightest.

(Liar.)

"... Yeah. Well, he more took out himself. Spear went through his mouth, pierced right to the other side." She looked very uncomfortable. "I should have just ran. He really didn't deserve it. He was just mad because some fucking asshole hurt Howard."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I guess that's luck," Mindy said, shrugging. "Knowing mine though, it would just be some bastard I knew that I needed to kill. Not that it would be a really bad thing, to take my aggression out a little."

She shrugged. "Hey, its the Arena. The last thing you need to be doing is losing your cool. I don't get how you can just mess your own self up unless you're stupid."

[onlyimmune]

"No, I know," Ellie said, but she frowns. "I know that it wasn't really my fault and there wasn't a lot I could do, but... He's kind of my friend, you know? Need to look out for him better."

She sighed, and shrugged. "Need to look out for everyone better, I guess."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Mindy frowned. "Ellie, you can't protect everyone, and that's something you gotta remember when you're in that Arena. Dying fucking sucks, so do what you have to to live. I mean, he's a big ROCK guy: he already starts with one defense you haven't got."

She pointed at herself. "And if you gotta take me out too, you DO it. I'm not that girl easy to pick off. You want to win, don't you?"

[onlyimmune]

That made Ellie laugh. "Yeah, uh huh, that'd be a fight," She said with a grin. She was good with a knife, but she'd met Mindy.

"You'd kick my fucking ass."

She carefully didn't answer the question about winning. (She couldn't really answer when she wasn't really sure.)

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Look, you think me being able to kick your ass should stop you? Snipe if you have to, hell, find a way! No way the other guy's not gonna be thinking that, you know? You have to be ready for anything."

[onlyimmune]

Ellie laughed again.

"Alright, alright, drill sergeant. I promise that if you look like you're about to take me out I'll do my best to do you in," She teased.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Good. I'll give you a promise too, and its something I think is pretty important. If it ever comes to that, you verses me, I'll do it face to face, no hole in the ground, or surprise trap. We'll fight head to head until someone wins."

Clearly this meant a lot to Mindy.

[onlyimmune]

Her grin faded - she could tell Mindy was being serious, so she took her seriously.

"... Yeah. Alright. Face to face. I promise." She wasn't entirely sure if she meant it - didn't think she could really hurt Mindy if she wanted to. But it obviously meant something to her, so she'd try her best anyway.

[hit_girl_mindy]

She didn't like thinking about it. As far as Mindy was concerned, when she was in the Arena, everyone was game, because they'd be after her too. That was the nature of the games, to divide them. It would suck though: she hadn't had an actual friend until now.

"I just don't want a hesitation meaning we get iced by some sniper in the trees. If I have to die, rather it be by you, you know?"

[onlyimmune]

"Yeah," Ellie said, carefully reaching up to untie the knot around her ankle.

"... Yeah, I know. Don't worry, Mindy. If the time comes, I... I won't let you down."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Relax though," Mindy said, punching the girl in the arm. "I'll make sure that I'm so interesting that I don't get killed for good, ok? And if we do have to kill each other, no hard feelings. The Arena is made to break us down in the first place."

wrapping this up c:

[onlyimmune]

Ellie couldn't help it, breaking into a laugh as she was punched, before lowering herself down to the floor. She grinned up at Mindy.

"Yeah. Right. No hard feelings. Let's give them a fucking show."

Re: wrapping this up c:

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I always do, whether I want to or not."

That was literally the truth.

"You not too dizzy? We could go out to eat or something."

[onlyimmune]

"Just a bit," Ellie said, not wanting to admit how much better Mindy was than her at this, but she gave a little grin anyway.

"Yeah. Let's go find something to eat. I'm fucking starving."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Mindy knew that the girl needed to get better: how many people, let alone adults, could easily do what she had just done? Only those with decent training, she bet.

"Cool. What kinda food do you prefer?"

[onlyimmune]

"Dude, I just like food. I didn't even know food came in kinds before I got here." She grinned.

"You gonna recommend me something?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

Man. Maybe her world WAS way worse than hers.

"In that case, we can just try with a cheeseburger, ok? They're usually pretty good."