Calm Like a Bomb

[hit_girl_mindy]

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.


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.

Comments

[splendid_roman]

"I don't go looking for something that would kill me. Dying's not that pleasant," he said drily. Maybe it would be easier if he just provoked someone into killing him right at the start, but that wouldn't quite be playing the game. "But I have been poisoned and trampled and starved."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"I found that out," Mindy said. "None of those sounds like a pretty good way to go either way though. Let's hope no one actually starts getting wise to how you won't really participate. You think you can hold out though, not killing anyone?"

[splendid_roman]

He shrugged. "They can't force you to," he said over-confidently. "And it's worked so far."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Mindy shook her head. "I can do what they want, and more importantly, I have a reason to. Besides, 'work so far' doesn't work for me. I'm a little more noticeable in a way than you are."

[splendid_roman]

"If you do things like hang upside down on a rope then you definitely are." He smiled at her to show he was joking. "But men like me are probably ten a penny, but skilled girls are more rare."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Last time I was in that Arena, I was in a bear trap. If, say, I was hanged by my feet to be picked off, this way I'm ready to bounce back. Nothing worse than being helpless."

She took a look at him. "No, I'm not so sure guys like you are easy to find after seeing some of the dudes there. But you know yourself that's not a good thing."

[splendid_roman]

"No, there's nothing worse than being helpless." He looked sympathetic at her being in a bear trap - he hated to think of anyone in one of those.

"I suppose that what you want is to be noticed by sponsors and not by anyone in the arena. Which is a bit tricky to pull off."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"If I have to lose in the Arena again, I'd rather it happen with me going down fighting," Mindy said, still remembering how much it had hurt to be caught in the trap.

"Oh yeah," Mindy made a face. "Nothing I like better than being told what I was trained for is profitable. Gotta love it."

[splendid_roman]

"You trained to do all this?" He wasn't surprised that she had trained, just what it was that fitted all her skills together. "Some sort of gymnastics?" he wondered.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"More like crime fighting," Mindy said, swiveling her hips to swirl around the rope, getting pretty good speed on it, "with extreme prejudice."

[splendid_roman]

He frowned. "You're a little young for that, aren't you?"

[hit_girl_mindy]

Wow. If she only had a dime for how many times she kept getting the "oh you poor child" look or comment.

"It's not typical, but had to be done. If you train an older person to do what I do, they can, but they're slower at it, and doubt themselves too much with what they can do. I don't, and I'm fast and I get the job done. It works out pretty well, considering."

[splendid_roman]

Ian shook his head. Not because he doubted her, just because he didn't like the idea. "But it's dangerous."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Well yeah, but so's a cop's job, and people are fine with that. Me, I do directly what cops are supposed to do but can't because they have to abide by laws. I just have to make sure I don't fail."

[splendid_roman]

"And don't get caught presumably." He was worried that she had been doing something dangerous and illegal. Although perhaps the same could be said of what was going on here. "People are fine with policemen because they're adults and they understand the risks they're taking."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Of course," she said, swinging easily by the ropes now. "But yeah, people ARE fine with policemen because they think those things. I did what I did because I knew something else most people try to forget: policemen can be bought, and thereby, so can the law."

[splendid_roman]

He shook his head. "Not all of them." And he was sure that most policeman would be honest enough not to allow themselves to be bought. "Surely it would be better to make sure they couldn't be bought, than to send children out to fight criminals."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"You don't need all of them," Mindy said. "All you need is to have one stoolie. He ferrets information to the criminals, who are organized, and they do what they need to. Criminals are going to do what they want. So yeah, sometimes you need someone who operates outside the law. No one expects that to be a kid."

[splendid_roman]

"I suppose not," Ian said with a sigh. He still didn't think it was right and that there were other ways to do it, but he wasn't going to convince her. And it wasn't like it mattered anyway, since none of them got much of a choice of what to do here. "I suppose it's at least good experience for the arena."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Yeah. When it comes down to it, we have to compete or die, and I'm not the type who just likes to roll over. Think about it. What if I had no skills or knew how to fight and they brought me here? I'd be getting killed by one of their concocted monsters or traps, or someone would kill me. I think I'd rather go down fighting."

[splendid_roman]

He nodded. "Probably. But however you die you get brought back here." Unless you didn't, but if she didn't know that yet he didn't want to be the one to tell her.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Yeah, I know. Like I said, its just how I am. I can't imagine giving up and dying. That's just not me. I wanna live, and die trying my best TO live. Well, except for the last time I was dying."

[splendid_roman]

Ian couldn't really complain about that attitude - wanting to live was a good thing after all. "I'm glad. I hope you still feel the same way after a few more arenas."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Knowing they'll happen, and why, helps," Mindy said. "Its supposed to be routine, we just have to accept that it is and not hope for anything new. They have all the time in the world, and then can just bring us back as much as they feel like. It's all about how much of yourself you put into it."

[splendid_roman]

Ian nodded. "I still don't like it, though."