thecapitol | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| De, Lottie, Elias, Effie and open!
What| Choose your own adventure! Each character is cruising around the city.
Where| Around the Capitol. Check each character for details.
When| Over the course of the week.
Warnings/Notes| Just lemme know who, and if relevant where and when in the subject.

She already hated this city.

It was everything De loathed about being in a big city, rolled up and amped up. If she thought preppy hipsters were bad...well, she'd take an army of Hipsters over these soul less assholes. Everywhere she turned, there were primped, phony looking people. She wasn't even sure most of them counted as human anymore. And there was no escape.

She sought out what she could find. The roof. Bars. The hot springs. The arcade. Places that on some levels felt normal for her. She knew she should be sucking up hard to sponsors, but she just couldn't bring herself to grovel to the people doing this too her. It wasn't happening.

The one things she did do was watch the videos. Study her competition. If she was going to win this, it wasn't going to be because some rich dick bought her out of it.

---

Lottie was sucking up. She wanted out. Momoko has lit a fire under her fluffy butt, and she was sucking up to every sponsor she could find.

She knew she was good at it, too. The entertaining part. She just also knew they all realized what a hopeless bet she was. Still, after Momoko's win, maybe...maybe they'd take a chance on her.

It was exhausting though, going from party, to performances, to things that bordered too close to dates for Lottie's comfort. And in between, she took in the sights on her own, or tempted out a friend. Indulgent spa days, shopping trips, museums. Busy, busy, busy. Busy enough she fell asleep quickly, deeply, and hopefully, with minimal night mares.

Of course, keeping herself always running till exhaustion, sometimes that exhaustion struck at terrible times. Like in the common room. Or District 8's dining room. Or a bench in the training center. She would take it where she could get it these days.

---

This was getting ridiculous.

Every day, new information for the Escorts to deal with. Longer hours. Effie hadn't seen her own bed in what felt like months.

The Training Center, of course, had exemplary lodging. But she wanted her own bed in her own room in her own house. And a day off. Oh, when was her last day off? Of course now she was helping Cinna with this history fashion show, and that was more work...but in a way it was nice to have a break. To be doing something else.

Work took up her days. Work and getting sponsors, sweet talking the rich of the city took up her nights. It use to be her favorite part of this job, entertaining and rubbing elbows with the elite...now it was just another few hours of work, work, work.

She took her free moments where she could get them, setting work to the side and just enjoying a quiet moment.

---

Elias was using his mentor position to watch and study everyone around him. No one question a mentor sizing up the competition.

Of course he wasn't really sizing them up for competition. He took those notes as well, too. He wanted his Tributes to win. But he was also looking for other things in the Training room, the Commons, pouring over the tapes.

It was nice that he could obsess over this completely legitimately. Nights he left his work behind, roaming the city. Often to court sponsors, but just as often to tend his own mind, letting the things he'd seen shift through and find their places. Finding quite places to wander.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Atticus had no illusions that he would ever manage to win this thing, but he wanted to at least attempt to give himself a fighting chance. It was gruesome to watch, and he occasionally flinched or looked away. He liked a violent movie as much as the next twenty-something, but the knowledge that this was real made it a hell of a lot harder to swallow.

So this guy was either completely normal (As far as she'd seen) or a were wolf.

Those were not really the best chances for De. And here it seemed moot but...in the Arena? yeah, she wanted to know which she was facing. And what his rules were. Cause they sure weren't any were wolf lore she knew. And now seemed a much better time to figure out then in there.

"So, are you tall, dark, and furry or just tall, dark, and handsome?"

She flashed a toothy smile, snagging the chair across from him and sitting down.

They looked quite a lot alike, but there were definite differences between Atticus and Blaine. For one thing, Atticus could never quite keep up with his need to shave, so there wasn't so much a five o'clock shadow as there was a midnight shadow pretty much all the time. That and he didn't have a helmet of gel guarding his head, though his curls could probably take a defensive stance if they needed to.

He seemed taken aback by the question, and though he knew that people must have seen him change in the arena, he'd never actually told anyone else that he was a werewolf. Not anyone who wasn't also a werewolf, at least.

Also, tall? Probably the first time he'd ever been called that.

"I'm sorry?"

When you were De's height, everyone was tall.

"Well, there's two of you around. One's all polished up, and there's you. But dressed...or undressed, as the case may be, in the arena...after a few days you two start to look alike."

She shrugged, before smiling again, trying to keep it all light and friendly seeming. As friendly as asking someone point blank if they were a were wolf could be managed. Personal space invading friendly.

"So I figured I'd see who was who, now you are both out and about."

"Oh, right. Um...well, I'm Atticus. Blaine's the other one," he offered, smiling a little.

"I'm De."

She offered out her hand, and another warm smile.

"So does that happen all the time?"

There really wasn't a delicate way to approach this, but she also wasn't trying too hard.

"Getting confused for Blaine?"

He could totally pull off that he thought that's what she meant, right?

"Yeah, pretty often so far. I figure people will work it out eventually."

"I actually meant the whole...wolf thing."

Yeah, now she'd got the two of them pinned down as who was who, she didn't much care about the twin thing.

"Oh, right. That."

He frowned and rakee a hand through his hair. "Um...that's the first time it's happened like that."

"Like that?"

That could mean a lot of things. It hadn't seemed like the first time he had changed, but...maybe it was. Who the hell knew what this place did to people.

"Yeah, you know...without the moon?"

And that just felt weird to say. Of course, everything about this felt weird.

Ah, nope, regular old were wolf.

She sat back. A regular were wolf, and now she had that knowledge...what now? She wasn't gonna kill him here. In there, maybe, but that wasn't hunting, it was cheap entertainment.

"So...was this like a Teen Wolf thing, or what?" Because it seemed weird to just suddenly not ask him something.

"Um...I guess?" Atticus said. He wasn't really sure how to answer that. He was still pretty confused on the whole thing himself. "It's fairly...recent."

"Being a werewolf?"

That had to be a shitty week, or month, or whatever. become a were wolf, end up in death arena.

Even shittier than that, actually, but yeah. Pretty shitty.

"Um, yeah? I guess."

He really didn't like that word.

Was she about to do this.

She chewed it over. He was a werewolf. But here, he was on her side. In a weird, twisted way.

"I know a lot about werewolves. May not be your kind, but..." She shrugged.

"Really?" His eyebrows went up, and he couldn't quite help looking hopeful. "Um...what do you know?"

"Well...tell me what happened. Tell me what you know."

If nothing else, she'd get more of the information she needed. And maybe she could help him figure out what he needed.

She didn't know how she felt about this.

"It's...um..." He rubbed the back of his neck. "It's kind of embarrassing," he said quietly.

"Dude, you turn into an over grown poodle, we're past embarrassing."

De's mind flickered to Madison, to her own excitement over such a "classic" case, to how quickly that spiraled into her sister's heart break.

Yeah, she was gonna help this guy out.

Atticus made a face at the description, but he supposed it was fair enough.

"There was this guy. I went home with him, and he...bit me."

"Did he know what he was doing?"

The concept, of someone turning some one like that...those were the kind of creeps De always wanted to gank the hardest.

He gave a cynical laugh. "Considering he did it twice more? Yeah. I'm pretty sure he knew."

She scowled.

"Dick."

She taped her fingers, racking her brain for her were wolf lore. "So you normally turn at the full moon, yeah? How does silver effect you?"

"Umm...I don't know? I mean, I can, like, touch it okay?"

It wasn't something he regularly dealt with outside of jewelry.