thecapitol | (no subject)

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WHO| Guy and Julian, Guy and YOU
WHAT| Guy's post-arena stuff
WHEN| Catch-all, week 6 through to right before the Crowning, some threads timed after
WHERE| All over, just state where you're catching him in the subject
WARNINGS| cw: violence and mild gore in the Azula thread

Guy's Room - Closed to Julian

Guy was not having a good time of things right after the arena.

He was a lump now. Apparently that was the next stage in human evolution where he was from, lumpdom, and the stress of the last arena had caused him to evolve. He was a creature of the lump, a Lumpy One, living in his little nest under his blankets in his room. That was the place he slept every night, rather than using the mattress, which always left him with the creeping feeling he was sleeping in some creature's open mouth.

It was a comfy nest and one he apparently had decided he was never leaving from again if he could help it.

District Six Common Area - Open

A few days had passed since the arena and Guy was feeling a little better. The feeling of being trapped in this place was growing more and more intense as time went on, so he'd spent quite some time walking around the city.

The people there and their attention irritated him, though, and the city just wasn't big enough. Other than the parks, it wasn't full of things he actually wanted to see, just endless concrete and glass.

It wasn't natural, having all these people crammed into such artificial places.

So he was back in the District Six common room because even if he had to stay still, it was safe from the outside world.

Right now he kneeling on the floor working on something, curled around it with the same interest a child might show an anthill. He'd broken a vase for the pieces and gently ushered away the avox that had tried to clean it up, planning on cleaning it up himself so the poor thing didn't have to. He was working with the multicolored pieces, sanding down the edges so they weren't sharp and scratching holes in them to make them and other odds and ends into a little necklace.

A thank you gift for someone.

Though occupied with his work, he wasn't averse to talking to people, though. (When was he ever?) So any of his district mates - or visitors passing on through - would find him fairly chatty if they struck up a conversation.

Training Area - Open

Guy knew he needed to learn to fight better, which was why he had decided to spend more time in the Training Center. There was only so much you could learn by throwing things at targets, though, and he didn't quite trust the trainers so he was hoping people he knew might be willing to teach him things.

Of course, he had plenty himself he could teach in turn, something people passing by might see as he occupied himself in the areas that taught survival skills. Fire sprang from his fingertips within seconds the times he worked on making them, and the complicated traps from vines he made snapped up the dummies he tossed into them and flung them around violently.

No reason he couldn't work on getting better at the skills he already had, right? and there was always the chance someone might be interested in learning and teaching him something he didn't know in turn.

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"This is how I eat most of the time back home. Don't get me wrong, I'm handy with a spear and Grug and my mate Eep are even better, but traps are the way we usually do it and we just work together to herd animals towards them."

He adjusted something at the base of the tree.

"People are a little harder to fool, though. I'm working on some designs that are easier to hide in the brush."

"Traps mean you don't have to be on all the time," Joel pointed out with a nod. "Don't suppose you'd be willing to share a few tips?" He would, of course, be happy to help Guy out with anything he could in return.

"Sure." He smiled. "A lot of it is improvisation, though, but I can teach you what to look for."

He gestured up at the trees they'd set up there.

"To start off with, you have to see what you have in the way of trees and how pliable they are."

"Don't worry, I'm pretty good at improvisin'," Joel said with a wry sort of half-smile. Twenty years of having to make do with whatever he could find had made him pretty adept with things like that.

"I suppose you could use strong rope or twine if there aren't any trees," he offered.

"If there are no trees, you'd usually want to go with an in-ground trap instead. There's not much you can get in the way of tensile strength if you don't have something flexible like branches or a tree trunk. Sometimes there are things you can do if you have anything like rope with you if there are rock structures nearby, like to trigger some falling rocks, but if there are no trees, you look to the ground inside."

He nodded up. "But we have some trees right here. Lots of vines - and some logs. Generally, if you can help it, you want to let grabbity -" which was the name he had for the invisible hands that pulled things to the Earth "- do as much work as it can, so I'll show you one of my favorite ones."

"What about diggin' pits? I guess that'd take a while, might not be worth it in the arena space," Joel asked speculatively. "For a longer-term camp, though..."

"That's what I mean about moving to the ground if you don't have trees to work with. Or if you want a mix of both."

He looked up.

"How good are you at climbing?"

Edited 2014-04-10 01:59 (UTC)

"If it'll hold my weight, I can usually manage," Joel said with a nod. Climbing to the top of a frail, skinny tree was probably not in the cards for a guy his size, but he was more than used to clambering up and over all kinds of obstacles.

"You'd want to find a tree like this one," he said, starting to climb one. It didn't have many branches that could support his weight so he climbed up by gripping the bark with his fingers.

"Bigger than a sapling but young enough to be flexible. And one that's near other trees. Normally with animals, you don't have to worry as much about hiding it but with people, the leaves of the nearby trees can hide it when it's bent."

"Interesting," Joel said thoughtfully. "I can trap a rabbit or a squirrel in a pinch, but anything bigger than that I usually have to hunt down myself. D'you hang it from a branch, then?"

"Nope, the whole tree."

He caught a hold of the trunk near the stop, tied the vine rope he'd made to it, then leaned out, hands on the vine, feet against the trunk, his weight dragging the entire top of the tree down in a slow losing battle with gravity. About halfway down, Guy's slow descent stopped, so he climbed his way down the vine rope, hooked a foot through the branch of a fallen log and started bodily hoisting the top of the tree closer to the ground.

"That's why you need a young tree - something flexible enough to not break but stiff enough that it wants to snap back into place."

Joel let out a surprised bark of laughter - but it wasn't at Guy's expense, really, more like a shock at his cleverness - it wasn't something Joel would ever have considered, using a whole tree as a way to trap a larger animal.

"Ain't that somethin'," he said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest. "Not sure what the chances are of findin' a tree that would work, but not bad."

"More than you'd think but it - mmf - does take some looking." He pinned the vine tied to the top of the tree under some heavy rocks. "That's part of what you have to learn - what to look for. You can tell from the bark - the smoother the better. And if the leaves look green and like it's been rained on recently, it's more likely to be flexible."

He started to get some sticks and lifted one of the main rocks up, using them to prop it up. Then he tied another vine to both the main vine and the the sticks, and started working on a snare.

"See, the sticks are propping up the rock that's pinning the vine rope. The snare catches their foot, attaching them to the top of the tree but also pulling on this second vine attached to the sticks. The rock falls off, taking the weight off the main part of the vine, tripping the trap. Because it took so much force to pull the top of the tree down - more than your body weight since you're using something on the ground to help you pull the top of the tree down - the tree snaps back upright when the trap is tripped - very quickly. Now you can either tie a knot that'll cause the snare to release after they're thrown, which means they'll get snapped up and fall and hit the ground - usually fatal - or one that holds on and leaves them dangling if you're worried about accidentally catching an ally. They might get thrown around a bit but then you can cut them down. Then you cover everything up with leaves and branches, so it blends in."

He started doing just that, even tying some branches from the nearby trees with a little bit of vine so it helped cover the bent tree.

"I do know what a counterweight is, I just never thought to use one with a tree before," Joel said almost amused - he doesn't feel patronized in the slightest, which is a little strange, because if just about anyone else were explaining this in such detail, he'd probably assume they thought he was an idiot who needed his hand held.

But it was obvious to him that Guy didn't think that at all - that he was explaining the principles to him because he thought they would be genuinely helpful for his understanding of what was going on.

"You just figured all this out yourself, huh? Nobody taught you? Parents?"

He didn't think it in the least. It was mostly that he wanted Joel to understand the basics of how it worked in case he needed to adapt it to slightly different circumstances. he was going to show him as many knots as he wanted for that, in fact, in case he didn't know some of them, so he could use whatever would be most useful at any given time.

As for being taught, Guy shook his head.

"I figured it out myself. Most of the trees are a lot more flexible back home. You have to look harder at the trees here to find a good one, but back home they're all pretty flexible and you notice that kind of thing. I figured it out one time when I was being chased by a terror bird - I pulled on a sapling and snapped it in its face - and it just went on from there."

He gestured to his head making a strange flappy gesture and crouched down to make more vine rope to show Joel any knots he didn't already know.

"I just kept thinking of new ways to use it. My parents taught me a few things, like fire, but I was really little at the time so I still had to figure it out again on my own later. And after my family was gone, I didn't have anybody - at least until I met my buddy Belt - so I just got really good at figuring everything out on my own. Even with Belt, though, he doesn't really have opposable thumbs 'cause he's a sloth - just those little claw-hook things -" He made a hook with his fingers "- so I was doing most of it by myself."

Apparently, for all his talk about how people as a whole worked together to survive in his time, that hadn't worked out that way so much for him.

Edited 2014-05-01 02:43 (UTC)

"Sorry to hear that," Joel muttered, almost automatically - like he was supposed to say it, though he couldn't bring himself to really mean it much except in the most cursory way. It wasn't anything personal, really. Just that everyone in his world had lost family, loved ones. After a while you just stopped asking about it.

"I'll return the favor if I can - I know a few tricks, myself. You ever made a sound alarm? Non-lethal, but it can help keep you safe if you set up a perimeter around your camp. And for lethal stuff, if you can find the right supplies, you can make some explosives."

It was something he'd long since come to accept himself, and even despite the Capitol throwing it back in his face more than once, that hadn't changed. They were gone and it was sad and nothing would ever replace them but life moved on.

That was what life did. You had to do your best to survive it and if you managed that, to enjoy it, and find other people to love. They'd never replace what you'd lost but they'd still be something you'd gained.

So he just nodded in appreciation of Joel's condolences and pulled together more vines.

"Never have, but I'd appreciate it. I spend a lot of time alone during the arenas, but that makes it hard to catch sleep and be safe. Also, the explosives would be handy for certain...people."

There were some he just did not want to ever go hand to hand with, even with more training.

"C'mere and I can show you some of the knots I use. You might be able to make some of 'em but I know some of you people use that weird rope stuff and it's little different with vines."

Joel leaned over to watch Guy work - it was true, there were differences between ropes and vines. Some vines may have had more flexibility, but rope was a little stronger.

"Try the buddy system sometime," he offered too. "Big groups don't work long-term, but find one or two other people, that helps. You can stick with me and Ellie next time, if you want."

"I visit people but I might do that more. Actually stay with them."

For someone with so many social ties, who seemed so trusting and willing to protect other people, he did spend an awful lot of team each arena alone.

But that was because he knew not everyone was like him. Barring Mindy - who was a mentor now - and maybe Signless and Hawkeye, he still didn't know for sure what others would do when backed into a corner. Even the ones he was close to.

"You're welcome to stick with me and Ellie if you want," Joel reiterated. "I know she won't mind - she likes you."

And, needless to say, Joel liked him too, which was really rare. He was unobtrusive and could pull his own weight, which he appreciated.

He thought about it for a few seconds then gave Joel a little nod.

"Okay. Okay, yeah, that'd be good."

He added with a little smile, "I can do all the tree-finding for you guys. For traps. If there are are trees this next one."

"If there are trees, you got a deal," Joel said with an almost-half-smile of his own. "If not, well, you can make yourself useful in other ways, too."

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