thecapitol | (no subject)

(no subject)

Who| Everyone
What| Lockdown
Where| Tribute Training Center
When| Starting around dusk
Warnings/Notes| None atm. If your character tries anything extravagant, shoot the mods a pm.

Dusk was falling when it started.

Anyone in the District 12 suite's would have heard heavy sounds above them moments before a loud explosion rocked the entire building. The electricity flickers once, twice, then goes out, replaced by cool, blue glowing lights running along the ceilings. Avoxes appeared silently, as they do, herding people from one room to another.

Once the door shuts, it doesn't open again until the last person is there, sealed shut. The windows in the rooms with them were darkened, and the computer would not respond to any request to show anything. However, food could be called to the room, the trays appearing as they normally do. But the doors would not budge, and the cool blue lights stayed the only light source, the only power.

Although there was nothing to see, there was lots to hear. Banging, foot steps in the halls, on the floors above, explosions, straining metal collapsing, scraping down the side of the building. Occasionally the repetitive rapping of gun shots. Yelling. Screaming. Those near the top of the building could smell smoke, at times strongly. The elevator can be heard moving up and down, even though it doesn't respond to any calls from those trapped.

The sounds last into the late night, finally quieting around midnight. Finally, at 1 am, a calm, cool voice comes over the loud speakers.

"The rebellion forces have been repressed. We will be clearing the building for the next few hours. Please stay patient and sleep well."

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Alpha had not been intending to visit the ballroom. He hadn't even known there was a ballroom in the building, although considering this society he would have been surprised if there hadn't been.

He's still not feeling the urge to socialize, so he separated himself from the others forced out of the elevator quickly, listening intently at a far wall to the sounds, eventually making a scoffing noise of his own.

Rebellion, wonderful. Wasting his time on some ridiculous attempt to fight the sort of people who could bring the dead back to life. Figures.

The problem with the ballroom, Howard finds, is that there is absolutely nowhere to hide - something he realizes with lightning celerity once he steps out of the elevator. His breath gets stuck in his lungs and he leans back against the wall, using it to keep from falling over as he keeps his eyes on one of the very people he was hoping not to run into.

How long are they going to be stuck here? Alpha's got his ear to the wall, his back to Howard at this moment, but there's no way Alpha will just face north all night. Howard feels his hands shaking, his jaw shaking, but he can't seem to move. There's nowhere to move to.

All he can do is stay very, very still, like someone in Jurassic Park. Like a rabbit under the shadow of a hawk.

When it all turns to silence, aside from the rustling and whispering of the others shoved into the ballroom with Alpha, he shrugs and gives up on hearing anything of interest. A rebellion, ha. Caroline would have loved it, and that thought does nothing for his mood as he turns to scan the room for something interesting, something to pass the time or provide an escape route.

His eyes land on Howard. He smiles. After a moment's thought, he holds out a hand and beckons, a silent request for Howard to come closer. They are surrounded by people and, more importantly, cameras being watched by now high-strung guards. Even if Alpha hadn't already decided against gutting the kid first chance he got, he wasn't going to attack him here.

He was curious to see if Howard would think of that.

Howard's mind starts racing, faster than it was already, that is. He looks around, sees that no one else really sees what's going on except that there are the ever-present cameras above. He looks back at Alpha, and there's no way he can interpret Alpha's smile as anything but sadism.

But Alpha wasn't sadistic, was he? Not like Aunamee. Alpha was going to quickly slit his throat, not draw it out, and that was just business, the side-effect an alliance gone sour. But all this factual information runs contrast to the threat Alpha gurgled out in the cave, and Howard doesn't know what to make of any of it. His thoughts are a jumbled, contradictory cloud, with the only clarity being fear.

Howard's body does two things. He violently shakes his head, nuh uh, no way, no way. But he also takes a step forward. And then another. Like a fish being reeled in.

Alpha waits, as patient as ever, until Howard is near enough for Alpha to slap a hand onto his shoulder, to pull him, gently, closer, to stand by his side. "Well, kid, we both kinda screwed the pooch on that one," he says cheerfully. "I wasn't expecting you to get killed quite that fast, but hey, I bought you a little extra time didn't I?"

Somewhere in his head Ballard is screaming and Alpha's smile widens.

It goes without saying that it was not the response Howard was anticipating, and he doesn't know what he should do. Under Alpha's hand he's tense and stiff, his feet dragging into place, and he's oddly reminiscent of a child being forced into a family photo with relatives they hate.

He's unsure if Alpha knows, if Alpha intends, to make Howard shudder with mention of his death. Or by calling it 'fast' when it was so painfully slow.

He can't quite match Alpha's smile, even fake. It's all he can do to match the casual tone, and he doesn't notice in time that he's let some bitterness slip into his words. "Not really, you didn't. Don't flatter yourself."

"Well," says Alpha simply, his eyebrows raised. "That's the last time I let someone stab me to death in a cave. There's gratitude for you." Despite the faux-offended tone, Alpha still smiles, and he even removes his hand, gives Howard the option to leave. Where is there for him to go, after all?

Howard knows that removing his hand is an empty gesture, but he relaxes a slight bit nonetheless. "Why did you..."

No, he knows better than to think he'll get an answer from that. "Thanks for telegraphing you were going to pounce on me by lie, forty-five seconds. I'd have been dead if you waited until I was sleeping."

"Trust me, Howard," says Alpha, and is not instantly struck down by the heavens for his audacity, which is always a pleasant surprise. "If I'd wanted you dead, you would have been waking up in a Capitol lab before you knew it. And I still had to force the knife into your hand in the end." He shakes his head. "I may have overestimated you."

Howard's brain is filled with bright red bold-fonted letters: ALERT ALERT ALERT ALERT.

Was he supposed to believe that Alpha gave himself a muscle seizure while pinning him down with a knife? But then again, what else could explain what happened? He needs to rewatch the tapes, but...

"So what, it's your attempt to ego boost me? Doesn't work if you undermine it afterwards."

Or maybe make him look more competent to the Sponsors? Then why did he whisper when he put the knife in his hands?

"I gave you a chance," Alpha corrects sharply. He's trying to make the kid think they're still partners. He doesn't care about seeming nice. "I don't have any interest in coddling your fragile self-esteem. Just because I assumed you could manage to survive the final stretch without me holding your hand doesn't mean I have high hopes about your chances in a more brutal Arena."

He forces himself to relax, to appear annoyed rather than angry. It's a delicate balance. The kid's too smart and too jaded to believe Alpha's willing to help him out of the goodness of his heart, but desperate enough for someone he can count on that Alpha's got a chance of convince him he's still interested in a mutually beneficial relationship.

And then, once there's a sense of trust built up, beyond their shaky alliance on the glacier...well, Alpha doesn't really know what will happen but. Brutal is a nice word.

Howard's upper lip curls a bit. He doesn't try to hide that he's angry, although it's tempered by the fact that his fear is still written all over him. His pulse is visibly fluttering in his neck. His wrists are shaking.

"What are you going to get out of giving me a chance? At your expense?"

"I believe in long investments," says Alpha, glancing around, both for the cameras he can see and the cameras he can only guess at. Then he moves closer, carefully telegraphing his movements so Howard doesn't run off and turn this into a waste of time. "I have no intention of staying in this gilded cage of a city," he continues, fast and barely audible. He can't keep the Capitol from finding out he wants to leave or plans to try and make that happen, but that's most of the Tributes anyway. The point is putting up appearances and not letting the Capitol realize he actually has a chance of making it happen.

"I can't do that alone, despite my many, many talents, and if you didn't notice, we had something of an alliance going on at one point. I help you in there, you help me out here. Plain enough for you?"

"Yeah, we had an alliance before you tried to kill me." Howard highly resents the 'being pinned down by his ally' thing, all the moreso when the second time it happened he got bled out on the ice. But that's not Alpha's fault, that's Aunamee's.

Hard to tell apart, in a way. He can keep them straight factually but the emotions bleed into each other, the fear of one amplifying the fear of the other, the doubt in one tainting the other, tugging him between the two.

"But yeah, that's pretty straightforward. But you can cut it out with the insults, okay? I can find allies who aren't going to call me stupid and helpless."

It takes every last bit of Howard's nerve to say that, and he looks spent for the effort. His shaking intensifies and he can't help but cringe slightly, as if Alpha's going to attack him here and now for his insolence.

Alpha stares at him for a long moment, purposefully keeping his face blank. But there's such a thing as overplaying it so he grins finally, shrugs. "Fair enough." He even sticks out a hand to be shook, because he can never resist a bit of theatricality.

"You keep harping on that whole 'tried to kill you' thing," he adds casually. "I'm not the one who was stealing supplies, you know."

Howard looks less like he's reaching to return a handshake than like he's sticking his hand in a box of dirty needles and razorblades, but he shakes.

He winces, because he doesn't have an answer to that, but he's glad that at least Alpha didn't pick at Howard's somewhat faulty ability to choose allies. That would have been too much. "Can't help it. I got sticky fingers."

And he knows Alpha might not have been stealing, but he certainly wasn't adding much to the pile.

Alpha let's Howard's hand go and manfully resists the urge to comment on his grip. This 'no insulting' clause was going to be hard.

"Just aim those sticky fingers at someone else from now on and we'll avoid these little scuffles."

"Deal," Howard says, but it's more a whisper than anything else. "Mutual gain."

He's clearly trying to convince himself, and his body language screams that he's still petrified. "Seen anything shiny you think my sticky fingers should introduce themselves to?"

Point him in a direction. Give him something to do, give him a way to save face and put some distance between him and you, Alpha.

Alpha raises his eyebrow. He's eager, Howard, though whether he's eager to prove his usefulness or just for something to do before he faints from fear, Alpha's not sure. Either way, Alpha's got nothing else to pass the time, so he looks over the crowd.

"Now? Because I could always use a spare communication device," he says, and it's a genuine desire as much as a request. At the moment, the problem of Ballard is even a higher priority than getting home, if the man is going to keep distracting him like this. "Can you pick a pocket? Burgle a home, a public building?"

Can he steal with people around, when not in the Arena with only a few dozen others around to worry about? If not, it's possible the time to teach him the basics would be worth having Howard as his handy fall guy.

"Easy." Howard tries not to look relieved that Alpha's asked him to do something entirely in his wheelhouse. "I been doing that since I was eleven."

And he slips away from Alpha and towards a security guard, an unsuspecting victim. It's not his first choice, but he doesn't want to try his luck with another Tribute after the incident with Sherlock.

Alpha watches him go, watches his progress, though he's careful to make it look like he's just watching the people huddled in the ballroom, so no one else starts the kid too. This was really only meant to be a game, a way to torment both Howard and Ballard at the same time, but if he can get some use of Howard at the same time, all the better.

It doesn't take Howard long - even though he got a bit rusty in the FAYZ, since he returned to the Capitol picking pockets has been a welcome distraction from everything else. He gets a communicator, plus a wallet, deposits the wallet in a third party's jacket to throw off suspicion if it comes his way, drops off the communicator and returns to Alpha in about fifteen minutes. He doesn't come straight back to Alpha, nor does he appear to be hanging out with him when he returns, instead leaning against the wall and looking at the crowd again.

"Communicator's in the potted plant." He's still clearly shaky, but somewhat invigorated by the successful little heist. "All yours."

Alpha lets a few minutes pass without saying anything, as much to stress out Howard as to make sure there's no one paying undue attention to the two of them. "Howie," he says, sliding over to throw an arm around Howard's shoulders. "I think this is the restart of a beautiful alliance."

Those few minutes feel like an absolute eternity. Howard wants to sink into the floor and vanish entirely.

Howard squirms his shoulders as if someone's dripped ice water down them. "Yeah. Yeah, it is," he says in an apologetic little voice.

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