thecapitol | Calm Like a Bomb

Entry tags:

Calm Like a Bomb

WHO| Mindy, Open
WHAT| General hope for CR interaction, basically
WHERE| I'm going to have her in the training center/tribute tower
WHEN| This week
WARNINGS| Swearing and likely dialogue of the adult situations. Mindy just rolls like that.

1. The training room was becoming her home away from home.

Which, honestly, it HAD to be. Home was where dad trained her, home was making herself ready, finding the tired, aching in her bones welcome after the drudgery of the games forcing her to be alert almost constantly. That had happened too soon after her attempt to conform to real life. Even in her "roll with it" personality demanded the switch, it still left her in a hard place, untrained for fucking wilderness and traps.

She knew better now. She'd eaten more, even allowed herself to get dolled up every so often (two random days) so she could regain a little bit of herself. It just helped her regain a foothold back to what she did best: training her body to shatter some bones. A run n the gymnasium cleared her head. A few choice weapons of the stabbing variety kept her senses sharp. A rundown on long ranged weapons told her how much more she had to go. Everything she did, she recorded on a notepad for herself.

There was no more dad here to keep tabs on her: kill or be killed. Mindy wasn't going to go into the latter category easily.

Right at the moment, she was suspended from a rope, her eyes closed. One of the exercises she had set for herself was sensing everything around her. She had lost the previous games because she blundered into a set trap. That had been reckless, and made her feel even dumber for falling for it. She'd make sure that didn't happen again. This meant sensing everything around her, disciplining her body in the case someone or something had to be detected. This, she knew, would be harder to do suspended like this.

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2. It was hard to get to sleep sometimes. Between nightmares of her father and her leg getting torn up, her head was becoming a space of unpleasant imagery and that was not something she needed. She was in a faux lap of luxury suite, she didn't need her mind reminding her how desperate everything was: all of this was wrong. So she regressed back to her over sized shirt and walked out of her suite, trying to gather her thoughts.

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"Yes, well I do be training her and she do be being much stronger than she did be being." Pruna took anyone claiming Sandy in need of training to be a direct afront, and her nose wrinkled angrily.

But at the same time she was happy that Mindy was glad she was dating Sandy, it was a lot of confusing conflicting feelings all at once.

"So you have?" Why the hell hadn't Sandy mentioned that? Here she thought that Sandy was pretty much going into the Games blind! She was going to have to talk to her about that.

"I gotta know: where did you learn to fight, here? Where I'm from, kids doing what we do at the games is not something that happens unless the country is in pretty dire need."

"I do be." She nodded and then wrinkled her nose again and shrugged. "I did be learning all my life, it do be being my job." She saw no need to hide it here, people didn't follow the gods and though she still didn't feel like she could be open about her beliefs she could at least admit her training, since she figured it was pretty obvious.

Mindy grinned. "Heh, no kidding? And here I thought we were so different. I guess you could say it was part of my job too. You're pretty young though, so I gotta ask: you from one of those dimensions where you're actually much older than you look? I pretty much threw reality to the wind when I saw a ninja turtle moving around."

Seriously, she was waiting for fairies next.

"I did be knowing we did no be being different, it did be being you who did be being blind even though you," she pointed, "Did be having more eyes than me." She shrugged, she had no idea what a ninja was, but she knew turtle and she knew Don. Aliens and stuff had seemed weird to her when she first arrived too.

"I do be being eleven, or maybe twelve." Her birthday might have passed already she wasn't sure.

"Product where I'm from: kids don't do what I do unless they're, well, born into shit, I guess. I would say if you were picked you know how to deal with yourself. It's Sandy that bugs me. She's...like, good. Innocent, I guess? More than me, I guess. I don't get why they dragged her here other than a half baked theory."

Man, it was hard with all that past tense being thrown at her.

"So you are old as me. Huh. Your world's probably pretty hardcore then."

"My world do be being really hardcore." She had no idea what that meant, but it sounded like something good, and so she agreed.

She wrinkled her nose at the comments about Sandy though, "Sandy do no be being that innocent." Pruna did not see innocent as a good thing at all, babies were innocent. "She do be being brave when she do no be thinking about it. She did be killing a huge tooth, point tailed monster in the last arena."

Mindy nodded. "I mean innocent in that she cares. It's one thing to kill a monster: they're just minions out to rip and tear, killing them doesn't really require consequence. But how easy is it for her to kill a person? Her heart's not in the Arena, not that I blame her. But you and I can kill, and do when we have to. The arena just makes it so we have to do that more than usual, right?"

Pruna wrinkled her nose again, truth was she had probably killed less people here than at home. Alright so killing solo at home was a relatively new thing, but helping to kill, or finishing someone off was something she did on a daily basis. Here with the time between arenas she killed less and found it hard to adjust to being the person she was supposed to be in the arena.

"That can be something she can be working on. I do be helping her be learning to be killing."

"I don't know if she'll have the heart to get into it, but try to teach her how to defend herself better. I don't want her to get killed like the bitch that got me."

Sandy could be a downer but she generally liked the girl.

"She will no be getting killed." She pointed her finger, "You can be counting on that."

She wrinkled her nose, "Who did be getting you?"

Mindy privately hoped that was the case. She knew Sandy still felt frustrated with doing nothing while people got killed and brought back over and over again.

"That girl Azula. Bear trap that pretty much tore my leg bad enough. Tried to kill me on the spot after too...so I took her eye. She got the message and left me to die."

She was glad she could talk about it casually now, because it hurt like fuck back then.

"You should be avoiding the leg eaters." Words of wisdom from Pruna there. But she gets the casualness, it's the same tone she used when talking about her own deaths. "Did you be killing anyone?"

"Yeah, told myself that after it got caught in the trap. But that won't happen again, I can tell you."

At the question, she grimaced. "No. Too busy starving and gaining information."

"Well you will be doing better next time." She told her, maybe. She seemed tough enough.

"I did just be killing one person this time, and he did be being just a stupid kid."

She had to get better, she had been aiming for at least three, but her eye had gotten in the way.

"Next time I won't be asking questions and talking to people," she said. "Sucks, but I'm not exactly in a forgiving mood now."

Well. She wouldn't kill Sandy. Or Ellie. Not unless she was forced to.

"Good on you. A kid huh? Wonder why they're so keen on throwing kids in with adults."

"I can be handling adults, I have been killing adults before." She shrugged, she didn't really see why they wouldn't throw them in together, it would be complicated if they had to do seperate arenas.

Killing adults was primarily what Mindy had done until now, actually.

"From the way I heard it, the Hunger Games started out with just kids. I'm just wondering what made them change their minds and throw adults in. It might not mean anything, but if I'm stuck here, I wanna know why."

"Maybe they could no be finding enough kids." She shrugged, "Or maybe they did be wanting more stronger fighters, and there do no be being many kids as strong as us."

"That makes sense," Mindy said, though maybe she should ask Katniss about this. Speaking of that...

"Hey. How did you find about that girl, Katniss Everdeen? I mean, you know, outside her being infamous and all that."

"She do be being my mentor." Pruna told her, wrinkling her nose. She was pretty sure they had explained this. But Mindy had been new and the arena had probably been confusing.

"She do be being from district twelve and I do be living in the twelve suites. Then me and Sandy did be going to the library and learning about her."

It had been a very heated interaction, and from what Mindy remembered, neither girl had left a favorable impression of the other. But that explained a lot.

"There's a library. Figures. Guess I'm gonna have to go there right after training room from now on. Guess I'm gonna be sorta be in school, in a warped way."

"What do school be being?" She asked wrinkling her nose, but nodded. "I can be showing you the library if you do be wanting. Do no be asking the stupid lady there anything, she do no be knowing nothing."

"You're kid-school? You know, where you learn your ABC's and math and writing and shit like that? Even if it doesn't exist in your world, hasn't someone here mentioned it?"

Usually preceded by "you're just a kid, you should be in...?"

"The librarian sucks that much, or just another government leech?"

"No." She shook her head, "I did be learning maths and writing from my guardians." She had never heard of school.

She shrugged, "She do just be being stupid."

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