thecapitol | The Crowning of Enjolras

The Crowning of Enjolras

WHO| All Tributes and Victor, plus a few Capitol guests
WHAT| The Crowning of Enjolras
WHERE| The Tribute Center
WHEN| A few weeks after the end of the Arena
WARNINGS| Forced medical experimentation, needles.

The atmosphere surrounding the Crowning is both tense and secretive. The style teams flutter around listlessly, having received no information from which to draft their designs. Newspapers take bets on when it will be announced where the Crowning is being held, descending into grousing when no press release is given. Peacekeepers pour in and out of the Tribute Center, accompanied by scientists who occasionally pull Tributes aside and look at the veins in their elbows. Even the Avoxes seem jumpier than usual.

Aside from the Tribute Center's new giant marble statute of a nude Enjolras, posed like the famed David, one could almost forget the party is supposed to be celebratory.

When the day arrives, the Escorts and their assistants don't lead the Tributes to their style teams to be gussied instead. Instead, they hush the Tributes and bring them to their bedrooms, where a Peacekeeper, a white-coated citizen and several Avoxes await them. The Escorts instruct the Tributes to lay down in their bed and close their eyes, and a needle is inserted into their arms that the Escorts insist will 'take them to the party'. It's soon followed by a series of sensors taped to the forehead.

Just relax, the Escorts say, and they do their very best to make sure their Tributes feel minimal anxiety. If the Tributes resist too much, more Peacekeepers are called in, and the Tributes are forced into submission.

The first effect is a sort of paralysis - not the terrifying inability to move, but a signal to the brain that says why move? Moving is so much effort. It's quickly followed by drowsiness, and then a chill that radiates from the needle into the body, and finally, unconsciousness.

And that is when the party begins. The Tributes, now dressed in luxurious 1830's French clothing of a quality beyond even what their Stylists could manage, wake up in the front row of a large stone theater setting reminiscent of, simultaneously, Greek and French architecture. The floor of the theater is filled with buffets of every imaginable sort of food. Rose petals fall from the sky, which displays a sunset worthy of award-winning photography.

For his part, Enjolras sits in a throne made of books on the ring of the amphitheater, flanked by Marius, Cosette, Eponine, and bizarrely enough Venus Dee Milo and Ellie, seated on lush pillows and carpets made of dinosaur skin (with the heads comically attached and eyes lolling).

"Welcome, welcome, our Tributes and Mentors, to the first ever somnofestival, sponsored by Hypnogogia!" Caesar Flickerman, noted talkshow host and Games presenter, appears in a fabulous sequined toga in the center of the amphitheater. He doesn't need a microphone; the acoustics here are flawless. "And congratulations to our Victor! Let us hear it for Enjolras!"

He awaits applause.

"As you may have noticed, you're inside a shared dream, due to the just fantastic technology from the Capitol and certain, ah, biological contributions from our dear favorite Aunamee." He holds a hand out and gestures to Aunamee, anticipating wild applause. "We thought that for our most philosophical Victor yet, we should celebrate in a way that's a little bit…cerebral."

Caesar laughs and gestures at all the food, then puts a cheeky finger to his lips. "By all means, enjoy yourselves. Even the most indulgent desserts here won't show up on your hips tomorrow. The party only last three hours, so you might as well get started!"

He vanishes into thin air, leaving the Tributes to celebrate. Occasionally, the Tributes will hear voices in their heads - chatter from the Peacekeeper and scientist and Escort still in their room, in the waking world. Otherwise, this is a party like any other, if somewhat surreal in nature.

-/-

The party begins the same way for all the Tributes. For an unlucky few, however, it soon diverges as they come under an unfortunate glitch in the system.

They'll look around and find only a handful of their fellow Tributes around them. The sky, rather than being a magnificent splay of color, is now blank white, and yet the lighting in the theater seems dim. A sense of panic, detached from any conscious thoughts, surges forth in them like the tide.

For them, this isn't a shared dream. This is a shared nightmare.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Democracy. One of the few big words Orc knew. They'd tried Democracy in the FAYZ.

It...sorta worked.

"So, we get rid of who's in charge...and vote for a new guy." Orc offered trying to simplify it to something he could grapple with.

"Pretty much, yes." He chuckled. "It sounds simple when you put it like that."

"I do better with simple." He agreed.

"I'm not that smart. I could barely pass math or history...I can barely read. But I'm really good at hurting people." He did not sound happy about that at all.

"I suppose here that doesn't matter so much." Although Ian was trying not to think about the hurting people part. "It's not that you're not smart, it's just that you haven't been taught in the right way. Not everyone learns the same way."

"You think so?"

It was a concept no one had ever suggested to him seriously before. His mother had said it once but he just assumed she was being nice. She had to be nice she was his mother.

"How else is there to learn that stuff?"

"There are many different ways to learn. Sometimes it helps to try things for yourself or to have it explained in a different way." Ian was in his element, talking about teaching. It made a nice change, here. "Maybe you were taught history by reciting dates, but if you could have acted like you were living in those times, perhaps it might have made more sense."

"Like playing pretend?" Orc sounded dubious of this method. He'd never heard of anything like that before but it sounded silly. What would everyone think seeing him acting like some kind of weird pilgrim or something.

"Something like that, yes. Maybe it would work for you, maybe something else would," he added, given Orc's tone. "You might have just not been taught the elements of the subjects that interest you."

"Nothing about math is interesting." He protested and felt ridiculous doing so. He hadn't had a discussion about his poor performance in school since before the FAYZ. It felt like a lifetime ago.

Ian had heard the same sort of thing many times from various students over the years, so that statement was nothing new. The difference was that here there was no obligation for anyone to learn anything, so he didn't dwell on it.. "So what are you interested in?"

That was a difficult question. Just as it had been forever since he'd had to think about school work he could hardly remember what he used to do for fun before the FAYZ.

"Fighting." He started and then clearly regretted it. "I don't like that anymore."

Another moment and then "Sports I guess...cars." He had liked those things once right? He'd been really into hot wheels when he was younger. If he ever got home and escaped the FAYZ alive maybe he'd start buying them again.

He could see how having to fight would put someone off the idea. Ian hadn't particularly been thrilled about fighting, except for fun, but the arena had killed even that excitement.

"Cars aren't really a big thing here." And even if they were the tributes weren't likely to ever be able to afford them. And their idea of sport was the arena.

"What was it about cars that you liked particularly?" Maybe he could find something similar enough that would interest him.

Orc looked puzzled at the question. Didn't all guys like cars? Well...maybe not gay guys.

"They look cool." He muttered feeling sheepish now that he was forced to confess he barely knew why he liked the things he liked. "Strong cars I guess, like mustangs." His dad had owned a mustang. It was rusted and loud and the seats smelled like tobacco and sweat.

Ian did like cars, although he didn't get particularly excited about them. But then he'd only ever had enough money to buy something that worked - anything else was out of his price range.

"I do like a good-looking car," he agreed. Unfortunately for Orc, Mustangs were after Ian's time. "What does a Mustang look like?"

Orc set about describing a Mustang as best he could, which was not well. Orc was not the most well spoken of people even on his best days. But he at least got the basic ideas of what a Mustang was supposed to look like.

"Something like that...but I wouldn't fit in any cars like this." He gestured to himself. "I had to ride in the back of trucks."

It made Ian want to see a Mustang for himself, but the chances of that ever happening were slim.

"I suppose not." Orc was bigger than the space in an average car. "But you can still admire cars without riding them. The only nice cars I ever got to see were usually on the road going past me. Or parked somewhere where I could get close enough to see them properly, if I was lucky."

"Were you poor?" Orc wondered. He'd often heard the teachers in his school mutter that they weren't getting paid enough to deal with brats all day. But he hadn't actually considered the idea that you could have a job and still not make enough money to afford a car.

Ian shook his head. "No, not really." There were people a lot poorer than he was. "I just wasn't rich. The car I had was old and a bit decrepit. It got me from home to school and back, but that wasn't much more to it than that."

"Decrepit?" Orc had gotten into a habit of repeating back words he didn't understand to indicate they needed explaining. It was a humiliating practice but he had quickly discovered in the Capitol if he didn't make people explain things to him then he usually wound up in situations he didn't like.

"Alot of kids had to learn to drive after the adults disappeared...not that many were any good at it." He noted. He hadn't really gotten the chance before his transformation.

He nodded. "Decrepit means falling apart." At least when it came to his car it did. Fortunately he knew enough about cars to put it back together himself. "Driving is hard at first, there's a lot to think about at once. I suppose it's the same as learning anything else," he mused, "but if you get it wrong in a car you're in danger of damaging the car. Or running over people."

"Yeah, we did that alot." More then a couple kids had gotten run over or crashed into a house or lamp post. It wasn't until the older kids too charge that cars and trucks were used for actual work like carrying produce from the fields.

"When we started running out of gas it didn't matter anyway."

"That was probably just as well." Ian sounded concerned about what they had got up to. "Although that would have meant you couldn't go very far."

Orc nodded confirming his deduction "There was this big like...dome around our city and some of the area around the city...like out into the desert and ocean." He gestured with his thick hands a round shape like that would make it easier to imagine a dome.

"Farthest we could go was maybe a few hours drive."

He frowned imagining it. "What was it built for? To keep something in or to keep something out?"

He shook his head feeling a little twinge of irritation at being misunderstood. Not at Ian but more at himself for failing to explain himself appropriately.

"A monster created it." He explained though he was not aware of the facts entirely. "There's some monster...I think it wanted to kill us so it took away all the adults and trapped us in a dome." Then he paused and added "Or maybe god created it to keep the Monster in...I dunno." He'd like to think that if only to prove God still had some amount of care for their seemingly godforsaken little town.

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