Grounded | Clive & Ava
It was hard to center oneself when one had no sense of time. Despite the wintry atmosphere, Clive had not an inkling of an idea of what day or hour it was. The moon above that stayed ever present did not help such matters and the inability to even control or understand the most basic elements of time and space were causing him to panic. He did not know a way out and was not foolish enough to venture too far from his camp to find out himself. His only hopes were of bribery and the potential of winning.
Clive was the sort who justified killing when it was working towards a greater goal, but, since whoever started this wanted them to clearly kill each other, he was not going to stoop so low. After all, he doubted it would do much to improve their situation and that the prize would not be the freedom everyone craved. Honestly, Clive doubted there would be a prize at all, or, if there was, it’d be some sort of basic commodity like a cake with “congratulations” printed on it that didn’t even matter. He couldn’t die but he didn’t want to win, so, to increase his survival chances, he had to stay in one area and it was destroying him to not know or understand anything.
He was supposed to be in control of the situation. What had happened? Trying to connect the dots of what he had been doing before his abduction drew little results. The people who inhabited the space with him were surreal and almost seemed unlike to actually exist in the outside world. The amount of times Clive had blown off the entire scenario as a dream were many, but each time to came to that conclusion he realized that he couldn’t use that excuse to block himself from knowledge.
In his pondering, he heard twigs snap from outside of his makeshift shelter of branches and pine needles and immediately started to focus. There was a situation at hand that needed to be taken care of and so, he reached into his satchel and pulled out his pistol just in case the visitor did not have friendly intentions.
With his back pressed to the pine that he had built his safehouse against, he put as much of a distance between himself and the other end of the shelter as possible, speaking up only when the noises continued.
“What do you want?”
Preventing herself from flames and other issues that arose in this arena of oddities had proven to be not a difficult task in comparison to some of the other things Ava had faced in her little, so called adventures. However, since fire wasn't a threat to her any longer, much thanks to Wrathia, she didn't exactly have to fear the flames like many others that wandered across the expanses of the field. There was one issue though-- the game was drawing an end, and as such, people were getting anxious to collect flags, to win, and Ava wanted to avoid interacting with people until the game was well and truly finished.
Thankfully, she had made certain to gather the hidden necessities before embarking across anywhere dangerous, and quite content that her stomach of all things would not give her presence away, she set off, hoping to find somewhere she could hold off until the voice boomed across the arena once more and allowed them to return to the facilities more comfortable area, the place that actually housed beds and proper supplies-- it wasn't like the winner of this game was going to win freedom, after all.
Upon walking for another while, however, it seemed like most people had actually moved towards the conflict nearer the center and as a result, a lot of old camps were destroyed and all supplies were gone with them. She'd have to build her own-- or just, well, hide in a tree until everything was over. With such a thought in mind, the girl breathed out an exhausted sigh. Her last attempt at climbing a tree hadn't resulted in very good things, and overall Ava had made quite the show of herself, but she supposed since nobody was around, she could try again-- or so she thought at least.
It wasn't until the voice sounded out that she realized another person was in the same area she was in, and blinking around, Ava tried to locate where his voice had come from. Despite the dark of night, her eyes caught on a makeshift camp-- guess he was in there, and while she was guessing, she figured out she had probably startled the guy. Weird, this usually happened to her, not the other way around.
"U-Uh, I'm sorry," She mumbled out quickly, waving her hands in front of her face apologetically, even if he couldn't see her. "I-I didn't realize there was anyone else here, I mean, uh, I was trying to just get away from some of the fighting going on... over there." Wow, she found herself thinking, you really do have a skill for making terrible first impressions, don't you, Ava Ire?
"... So, sorry for... startling you, I-I guess."
