A Big World Out There Like the One I Saw On the Screen [OPEN]

[vissernone]

Who| Eva and any Escort, Stylist, Mentor, Sponsor or Avox
What| Mentor green room party!
Where| Training center
When| As the arena begins.
Warnings/Notes| None yet.

Watching the Cornucopia isn't for the faint of heart, and even after years of seeing it, Eva has to be a few drinks in to see it in company. She's already on her third glass of wine when she arrives at the Tribute lounge dressed in a red and brown dress decorated in antler, vertebrae and a pelvic bone. With all the Tributes gone, the lounge is open to Stylists, Escorts, Sponsors and Mentors, and Eva's hosting a little get-together.

By 'hosting', she mostly means she's bossed the Avoxes around into bringing up enough wine and crackers to get her through the evening. She has her fingers crossed that few people do show up - Elias, Cinna, Ariadne - and that a few invitees don't - Baron, Billy.

She settles onto a couch, careful not to catch her unwieldy outfit on anything. At the very least, it should keep people from sitting right next to her. A television's counting down - five minutes until the Arena begins.

[OOC: please go forth and mingle!]

Comments

[buildingreality]

Ariadne did indeed decide to show up, if for no other reason than because it had been Eva who invited her. Her own outfit wasn't nearly so out there or extravagant, perhaps because she had told the Stylists again and again that minor events don't require dressing up. They still insist, and she still lets them, but she did make a point of keeping it fairly dressed down.

She found a drink of her own upon arrival, mingling around the back of the room as if that would somehow allow her a modicum of detachment from the Cornucopia. She didn't know what to expect - she never did - but that didn't change the twisting in the pit of her stomach, absolutely invisible to anyone who looked at her.

[vissernone]

"Oh, that's a classic," Eva says as she watches R take a bite out of someone on the television. "Didn't think that boy had it in him. He seemed so sweet..."

She wanders over to Ariadne, carrying alcohol. She offers the younger Mentor a glass. Eva's demeanor is much different than it was around Ariadne before; here she isn't proud and warm but loose, messy, broken. "Here, take it. Crowd like this, you're going to need it."

[buildingreality]

Ariadne found, as always, that the Cornucopia was strange to watch. It wasn't like the rest of it - it was brutal. She remembered vividly the round when she had curb-stomped Wyatt as she watched R take that bite; her thoughts didn't show on her face.

She accepted the glass without a word, only a glance over to Eva and a nod. Choosing to study her fellow Mentor instead of the screens, she merely tipped her head to one side curiously. It was nice - well, not nice, per se - to see the older woman open up a bit more. "I usually do. The Cornucopia is the worst part of it."

[vissernone]

"Well, if you are what you eat, that one's a people person," she says, waving a finger at R on the screen.

"I find the nights the worst part of it. That's when you see how people really are. The ones who'll strangle their partner in their sleep. You see that Mentor over there?" She gestures to Billy. "Lit his allies on fire in their sleeping bags."

[buildingreality]

A mile smile at that, her eyes flicking up to the screen. She wasn't that squeamish, but there was something about how glorified the Capitol made everything that turned her stomach anyway.

Her eyes followed Eva's indication then, studying Billy curiously. She wondered if he wasn't the same way now as he had been in the Arena; people didn't change that much, after all. And even Ariadne still wondered if she wouldn't be capable of killing now, outside of the Arena.

"There was that one Tribute during the last round. He stabbed someone to death in their sleeping bag," she recalled. "But fire. That's an interesting method of keeping warm."

[vissernone]

Eva laughs heartily at that one.

"The two teenagers, wasn't it? I saw that. Reminded me of the old days." She picks at a cheese platter. "Although the bit about avenging the French girl was a new twist. No one had time to fall for each other in my day."

Which was part of what made Peeta and Katniss so unique.

"I guess romantic subplots like that and like some of the others here make it easier to pretend it's all just a movie. Well, makes it easier for people who aren't us to pretend." Whereas for Eva it makes it all the more humanizing, but she can't let that show in front of mixed company. She can only play along and hope Ariadne can parse the falsities from the truth.

[buildingreality]

"A bonus of going into the Arenas over and over again," Ariadne stated dryly, her smile remaining plastered onto her mouth, as false as most of the Capitol citizens's bodies. There was something almost better about not getting attached to the Tributes, though; if they were all dying each round, instead of the way things were now, then it was easier to disassociate from them, and the fact that you were killing a human being.

She could follow Eva's tendency to hide things in her words now, though she was more partial to being completely forthright about her thoughts on things. It would probably get her killed one day. She merely nodded, sipping her drink. "So when they meet the Tributes, it's more like they're meeting an actor playing a character. It makes sense - we're always watching them on the screens. It's like they're all starstruck," Ariadne mused.

[vissernone]

Eva tilts her head from side to side in a disoriented drunken tic, then drops a piece of cheese from her platter on the floor. She makes no effort to pick it up.

"No one asks me for my autograph anymore." She sighs, a little too melodramatically to be honest. "Now it's more like watching television than a movie. Everyone prays to get renewed, rather than going in knowing they're doomed."

[buildingreality]

The tic didn't go unnoticed, but Ariadne wondered if it was put on or legitimate, if the other Victor really had had so much to drink. She didn't doubt that Eva would put on all manner of facades for the Capitol, after all; she was learning quickly enough to put some up for herself.

"You're probably right. The positivity does some people good, though. I can't imagine going in with the negative kind of attitude, and still hoping to win."

[vissernone]

"You'd wonder if they'd start hoping for more. It's one thing to hope to win now, but with so many chances for trial and error..."

She picks up another piece of cheese and fumbles with it, frowning. "Some people might start poking at flaws in the system."

[buildingreality]

"I suppose that's always a possibility. If you're there enough, after a while, you'd start getting curious about the whole thing," she mused, taking another sip of her drink, taking care to watch what she was saying this time around.

[vissernone]

"Curious instead of just desperate. Now that's a change." Eva strokes a lock of her own hair a bit. "Did you know that they penalize Victors who use Arena glitches to their advantage? It's how they used to discourage people poking at the seams."

[buildingreality]

Ariadne tipped her head to one side, nodding slowly. Curious would be a different turn of events from everything else. "I didn't. I guess that makes sense, though - it's not like they would want their secrets shown off for everyone to see."

[vissernone]

"Exactly. That's the thing, though. They didn't publicize that information, so people kept trying, and over the Games, if you watched enough of them, and closely enough, you started to notice patterns. With the chips, for example. Oh, the alcohol's getting the best of me."

She suddenly changes subject. "Do you know sign language?"

[buildingreality]

The first bout of information went immediately to her head, filed away for future nitpicking and future reference. It wasn't every day you managed to get ahold of something that was actually useful, of course, and though Ariadne had noticed the force fields around the edges of the Arenas - enough people had gone near them, after all - she wasn't entirely sure what was meant by the chips. The tracking chips, most likely, but what about them?

"Unfortunately, no. I never got the chance to study it much beyond the basic alphabet."

[vissernone]

"But the basic alphabet, do you know it?" Eva's body language is still drunk, but her tone is clear, her eyes bright.

[buildingreality]

"Well enough, if I'm watching closely enough." She was selling herself perhaps a little bit short, but she hardly wanted to promise something she couldn't necessarily follow through on. That said, Ariadne was already running through the letters in her head, finding that she remembered more than she thought she might have.

[vissernone]

"What if you were watching at the Noir restaurant?" Eva signs something against her own neck, just A...B...C..., making clear that it's tactile.

[buildingreality]

Her eyes followed the movement, subtle as it was, and it clicked. "I could manage that."

[vissernone]

"We should go, sometime. I have an opening next Saturday at noon. It's usually pretty quiet at lunch." She picks at a piece of cheese. "The food'll be better there than here. This cheese tastes like it's been regurgitated."

And with that she sways off, yelling for an Avox to bring her something 'actually edible'.

[buildingreality]

"I'll be there," she replied softly, turning aside to take a sip of her drink and try a bit of that cheese. Eva was right - it really wasn't that good. Then again, after having Parisian cheeses, not much was.

[bangbangkerpooow]

When the night is mostly through, after a good number of the guests have left and many of the tributes lay sleeping in their shelters, Billy finds Ariadne. He's new to all of this other world nonsense, at least from the perspective of a mentor. Sure, he watches the new matches just like everyone else, but the people up there on those bigs screens are strangers. He sees none of the children from his District, no daughters and sons of family friends or relatives. The people in these last matches, they feel less real.

He knows them in the same way that he knows television characters.

"Well, well, well," he says, and although he holds an empty wine glass, he's completely sober. He clicks his tongue. "Arena Four. How's this fine evening treating you? "

[buildingreality]

"Three," she corrected carefully, dragging her eyes away from her cursory scan of the televisions for her Tributes and over to him. Ariadne had seen him around the odd time, but she couldn't put a name to him. Her own fault, she supposed. Still, if he was going to call her by which Arena she won, she'd feel less bad about it. "But it's fine. There's nothing I like more than these screening parties," she deadpanned with a mild smile, just to soften the comment.

[bangbangkerpooow]

"Arena Three," he says, drawing out the 'eeee,' playing with it on his tongue as though it were a piece of gum. His smile goes crooked just slightly, the only part of his expression that acknowledges the mistake. "People call me Billy. Comes from my initials, BIL." Every initial is enunciated with care. He speaks like a performer. A radio personality. "I also accept Best in the Land."

He slouches backwards onto the counter, supporting his body with one arm and extending the other for a handshake.

"Belated congrats on the whole mass-murdering thing."

[buildingreality]

"I see," she replied, vaguely amused at how he was toying with the word. He wasn't all there, Ariadne decided, not that she was all that shocked; it was rare to find older Victors who were completely sane. There was something about the winning process that really messed with a person. Not that she was all there any more either. She knew that. "I'm Ariadne. It's nice to meet you."

Sort of.

"Thank you. I think."

Because how else did one respond to that?