The Crowning of Enjolras

[etcircenses]

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.

Comments

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

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."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

"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.

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

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."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

"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.

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

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."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

"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."

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

"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."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

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."

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

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

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

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.

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

"Oh." Ian was somewhat taken aback by that and didn't quite know what to say. It sounded so unlikely, but then so did the TARDIS. "That's terrible," he said sympathetically. "Perhaps you're not so badly off here after all."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

Orc gave a little nod "Yeah...I figure that too. At least we're not starving to death here." He shrugged as if talking about such things was boring and average. "No giant bugs or horrible diseases that make ya cough up your organs."

OK so maybe he didn't need to bring up the last part, but he was still a young boy and there would always be a bit of vindictive pleasure in seeing the shock of adults when they heard everything he and the others had lived through. It was a bratty selfish thing that he only took minor pleasure in.

After all it was only easier to talk about the horrors of your life after you'd survived.

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

He got his wish - Ian was shocked. Up until now Orc's home hadn't sounded that bad, but this was a whole new level of horrors.

"No, there aren't," he said a little weakly. Although he hoped that wouldn't give the capitol ideas - he wouldn't put it past them.

He managed to pull himself together to go on and say, "That's awful," in sympathetically. "Wasn't there anyone who could help?"

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

Orc found himself shrugging alot.

"We did our best. There was a girl who could magically heal people...but she couldn't do everything. We had people fishing...I went up to the farm and would help get vegetables and stuff that people planted. But alot of us died."

It was oddly satisfying to see that his life had been just as horrible to hear about as it had been to live it.

"We did our best when we weren't fighting and killing each other."

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

"That's... good." They probably would have done better if they hadn't fought at all, but that was a bit much to ask of anyone, let alone children. "At least you came out with skills that'll help you survive the arena."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

Orc blinked slowly, looking puzzled.

"But...I haven't survived the arena. I've died each time."

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

All but one person died, of course, but since it was only one the more important question was how long you survived and Ian considered lasting a while to be surviving.

"But you didn't die right at the start, did you? That's good enough for anyone."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

"Oh yeah...I guess not." He agreed and then corrected himself.

"Well actually I died right at the start that one time when a bunch of us died and woke up in the other arena..." death came differently for him each time. But it had always seemed a comfort when it finally did.

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

He nodded. "That happened to me too. It was unexpected, but at least it wasn't too bad."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

"How many times have you died?" Seemed like that would be a rude question to ask but Orc was nothing if not blunt. He didn't filter his thoughts much on the whole.

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

Ian thought back for a moment before he replied with, "Four." He didn't consider the question rude, given that dying was what happened a lot in the arena. "I think it gets easier with practise."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

"It took me a long time to die the second time." He recalled. "First was the Coyotes. They ripped me apart. Then I kept trying to kill myself but I was too much of a coward to get it done right." His voice did not waver in the slightest showing no shame in the idea that he had tried to take his own life.

"Then I wound up here and they poisoned me. Everything just kinda...stopped working and I died for the second time."

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

Ian's expression was a mixture of sympathy and horror at what Orc had been through. "Dying slowly's not what it's cracked up to be." He certainly wasn't going to judge anyone for taking their own life. "Last arena I died of dehydration, the one before I was trampled after I was poisoned."

Re: Orc

[paidinbeer]

Orc pulled a face that looked both sympathetic and disgusted.

"They've been playing these games for a long time right?" He glanced idly to a nearby TV that was showing some commentators discussing the last arena in detail. "How much longer before they run out of ideas or get bored do you figure?"

How many different ways could a man die?

Re: Orc

[splendid_roman]

He nodded. "If they haven't got bored or run out of ideas by now I don't think they ever will." The tributes would be sick of it long before anyone else. "Maybe them bringing in new people is because they got bored and needed to do something different."