Hope stuck to herself when they first all started to wake up, watching, not speaking, but trying to feel anything she could. She could tell she still had her powers, and from what she saw others did as well. She didn’t know what was going on but she didn’t like it.
When the voice overhead started to tell them what was up, she felt her heart sink. Of course, she thought to herself if someone was going to get trapped in this without anyone she knew it was going to be her. Hope didn’t waste time rushing to the pile and grabbing a couple of things dodging something that flew at her before making her way away. Using her werewolf side she jumped and flipped into a palm tree not too far away from the pile that she couldn’t see what was happening but far enough to keep herself hidden. She didn’t use her magic to hide her, at least not yet. Looking at the things she’d managed to grab. A water bottle that looked to have a filter and was full, some matches which she supposed could be useful if her magic went out and a bivy. Hope inwardly gave herself a hard time, she knew she could have been better.
As it started to get dark she used the bivy as a bag and wrapped it around her shoulders a little awkwardly. Jumping down she kept her hands free and ready to use a spell if she needed to, keeping her steps quiet she carefully moved towards the sound of running water, pausing she hid behind a rock when she heard footsteps she stood up ready for a fight.
“I really don’t want to hurt you.” Hope didn’t want to hurt anyone, she knew she’d be okay going it alone but she’d learned over the past few months here and from her time at home that working with others wasn’t always a bad thing. “I will if I have to, but I’d rather find people to work together with.”
The only reason why Clarice hadn’t gotten herself more goodies was the sheer disbelief and terror that had froze her in place upon finding herself in another strange place, no John or Lorna or Marcos in sight, then hearing the announcement. She had read The Hunger Games, she knew what the hell this was about. And it was fucked up, and bad, and who knew, these days, if it was real? Maybe it was an illusion, a dream like the one Marce had been stuck in. Maybe… it wasn’t. And that was a terrifying thought.
She had ambled on towards the “goodies” with wide eyes and a little bit like she was on autopilot but someone else was in charge while she took a backseat in her own body, and picked up two things at random before hearing someone scream “BEARS!”. The proof was right to her left as actual goddamn bears made a beeline straight for the pile.
For some reason (probably because her hands were full with the whole two things she had gathered) Clarice had taken off running instead of portalling even though she had managed to explore a little bit after waking up, cursing up a storm and looking around for John.
At some point though her instinct had taken over as she blinked from place to place for cursory looks and headway, deciding to stick by Julia Wicker, the magic person with the future twins. Magic was good and she was cool by all accounts, so after finding out that her loot had been two pairs of socks (awesome but useless in the grand scheme) and a box of matches, there was only hoping Julia wasn’t cutthroat in games like this. She sort of trusted Julia not to go murdery out of the gate.
At night, as it became cold and Clarice thought up a few more uses for her socks, she stopped using her portals because of the obvious noise and brightness of them and started looking for water. She was hungry now too. As she heard a voice, Clarice froze in place in the darkness.
“What? I don’t wanna hurt you either!” She yell-whispered, slowly following the voice to find its owner. “I don’t even wanna be here. I’ve read The Hunger Games, I know Battle Royale, this doesn’t end well for anyone.”
Hope didn’t really know Clarice but she did at least recognize her. Hope was still ready for anything but she relaxed her stance just a little bit and stepped out of the shadows she was hiding in a little bit more.
“Books about dystopia and kids killing each other right?” Hope had sort of read them, well, she skimmed them for a class and didn’t really enjoy them. “That explains the last person standing piece, but I’ve never really been one for arbitrary ultimatums.” She paused deciding it was probably better to put a little bit of trust into possibly working with someone else.
“I’m Hope,” she said softly.
Julia was just behind Clarice, maybe by a few minutes and the followed the sound of the two voices. Hope’s was one she recognized from the magic department, which normally would have reassured her, but in here you couldn't be sure. She'd read The Hunger Games, she knew how it went and people could get really selfish and vicious when it came to their own survival. She knew that first hand, she'd done some things she wasn't proud of in the name of survival or revenge or whatever.
“Hey, Hope,” she called, stepping into the open a moment later. He hands moved quickly to cast a quick spell that would mute their voices to anyone else nearby, just to be safe. The supply pile had been rough even before the bears had come and they couldn't assume everyone in here was a friend right now.
“Yeah books about this very thing pretty much. I don’t like those either. Actually, in one of the books I think that’s how they win? They refuse to kill each other but threaten to kill themselves? Or something.” Clarice replied, exhaling in frustration at the entire situation. She looked to Julia, who had stepped into view now too, for confirmation before realizing she hadn’t even replied to Hope’s introduction. She gave a low, awkward wave. “Clarice. I don’t think we should threaten to kill ourselves, for the record. Just if we don’t play at all they lose.”
Watching Julia move her hands in a mix of Madonna’s vogue with Bollywood dancing, Clarice surmised she has been casting a spell but had no idea what. “Are we cool now? Protected?”
Hope outwardly gave the appearance of relaxing but she stayed ready, she focused on some of the calming tricks they tried to drill into her at school from time to time, or the lessons Marcel taught her about outward appearances.
“If the bears are any indication, I think we’ll have plenty of other things to fight during the course of the next few days.” Hope didn’t really know the books that well but she had heard Lizzie make vague comments about them from time to time when people weren’t doing what she wanted. She was wishing she’d actually fully read them instead of skimming them. She felt the magic that Julia put around them and nodded to Clarice’s question, even if she didn’t fully understand the magicians magic, Hope could feel it.
“As safe as we can be,” Julia answered. There was no telling what was coming for them next. It probably wasn’t just the other people they needed to worry about if their past experiences with COS were anything to go by. “If anyone else if creeping nearby, they shouldn’t be able to hear us, but I don’t know how it’ll hold if COS decides to, like, rain down lightning on us or something.” Julia was less worried about herself - being a goddess made her really hard to kill - but she wanted to keep Clarice and Hope safe, too, even if she didn’t know them really well.
“In the books and the movies, every arena was different. If they’re copying The Hunger Games, I think the only thing we can expect is the unexpected. I don’t think we can rely on the only threats to come from the others who are trapped in here with us.”
With some relief at both magical people’s confirmation, Clarice nodded, listening to Julia when she explained. “It’s seriously better than nothing, so thanks.”
She snickered. “Yeah, if the bears were any indication, you’re absolutely right. Not to mention atmospheric and environmental crap we might not be equipped to deal with. So what’d you two know about surviving in tropical whatever place this is? Cause I have no clue and I’m hungry.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever been stuck on a tropical island, but there usually are some good fruits and things, if we can find a coconut we’ll be able to get some electro-light filled water and something to eat,” Hope looked away from them and looked around. “We should probably be wary of any of the berries, you never know if they’ll be poisonous or not.” She looked towards where the fresh running water was and took a few steps.
“Fish,” she looked at Julia. “Between us, I’m sure we can get a fire and mask the smoke to cook a fish or two.” Hope did better when it came to doing things rather than waiting for them to happen.
Looking back at Hope, Julia nodded. “Fire is something I happen to be really good at,” Julia admitted. The outdoorsy camping and survival stuff, not so much, but with three of them, she thought they could probably figure it out. “So who knows how to catch a fish?” She paused to look through her pack at the things she’d managed to grab from the pile. “I have an axe,” she offered, pulling it out. “Oh, and some trail mix.” She pulled out the bag to show them.
It felt useless to point out she had matches when magical fire was available, so Clarice decided to keep those for if and when they got separated. She pulled out her two pairs of socks. “I have socks, that’s all I have because bears happened. I was a little shell shocked I guess.”
As for the fish problem...she narrowed her eyes, nodding as she looked at the water. “You think I could portal a bunch of fish onto land? I think I could. Easier than fishing. I’m going to try, hang on. Stay clear because water will also come through.”
Hopefully, the noise would be cancelled by whatever Julia had done. Even concentrating she couldn’t see where fish were, but she opened a wide portal in the middle of the stream and made its other end appear in front of them, careful not to send fish sputtering onto anyone’s feet. She caught a few, some rocks, a lot of water. Looking up at the two others as the fish died on the ground, She shrugged, smirking.
Hope laughed softly. “I don’t think an axe is the way to go, it might take it apart too much.” She did have a fun mental image from it though.
Hope was about to say she didn’t have anything that would help but could probably catch some with reflexes, or if she shifted, she stood back as water flooded in front of them. Hope moved quickly using a spell to end the fishes suffering, she wasn’t against eating fish or meat she just didn’t really need to sit and watch them suffer.
“Well, that takes care of that problem,” she smiled at Clarice. “That was awesome.” she spun around finding some sticks that she could use magic to sharpen, holding them under water she nodded to a rock that had a good edge and hand size, “we should probably descale them.”
Julia had kind of meant they could use the axe to cut some branches for a fishing pole or whatever, but Clarice’s way worked, too. She jumped back at Clarice’s warning, but not quite fast enough without any kind of superhuman reflexes and did get a little wet. That was easily ignored as she watched Hope nod toward the rock.
“Do you guys know how to do that?” Julia hadn’t exactly done a lot of roughing it in her life. She hadn’t really been camping or hunting. She was fully aware that she’d grown up kind of privileged and she felt a little out of her element here. Julia had some pretty damn powerful magic, but not too many other skills that lent themself to surviving on an island like this. She felt pretty lucky that Hope seemed to know what she was doing.
Clarice grimaced at the fish writhing all over the place and was thankful that Hope had a way to make that stop. “Yikes, sorry guys I didn’t… I’m not into animal cruelty. Even when they’ve got like...two brain cells or whatever.”
Now, Clarice had roughed it in urban scenarios, never in the actual wild, but she had a few notions that might help. “I worked at restaurants as a dishwasher and a bunch of other crap where the customers wouldn’t see me, and I learned a couple things. They usually got their fish mostly descaled but I think it’s like shaving, you scrape against the hair’s direction. So like… Exfoliate the fish against where the scale’s growing.” She told the girls. “And then I hope we have a knife ‘cause there’s a lot to fixing the fish for eating that won’t be easy with an axe. But it’s doable!”
Hope didn’t say much just nodding to both Julia and Clarice as she got the sharp rock from Julia and picked up a fish and started to descale it. A guy her mom dated had been a chef and she’d picked up a few things from him, and even though her family was really well off, she’d learned a few things camping here and there.
“Worst case, we’ll put them on sticks, rotate them over a fire and just flake off the filet meat,” Hope looked back up at them. “If you want more flavor to it, we could get some sea water to add salt, but I’m not sure if that’s a good idea given everything we’ve got going on here.” she frowned looking around. “We might be able to find something else though.”
“I’m not sure we should risk it for the flavor,” Julia said. “Unless one of you knows how to tell the poisonous stuff from not poisonous. If COS stuck us in the Hunger Games, I’m not sure how much we should trust the water or anything else.”
Julia gathered a bunch of sticks, using her magic to bring them to her and pull them into a pile before she summoned up a fireball and used it and the sticks to make a small fire they could use to cook the fish. She might not know how to descale or clean a fish, but the fire was something she could definitely handle.
Hope nodded. “Well, plain fish it is.” She said getting to work.