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.

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A very valid question. "I'd consider everything to be possible right now." He doesn't really... trust any of this. The thought keeps coming back to him that this isn't real, so what might be happening to their sleeping bodies in the waking world? Kain dreads to consider it.

"Kain Highwind. Have you been involved in their battles for very long?"

"That's true." Perry nodded, waiting a moment until he could snag a glass from one of the guys walking by. He didn't think he had to worry about being poisoned in this place. You probably couldn't even get sick.

This was weird. "Good to meet you." Giving a shake of his head, he took a sip. "No, the last one was my first one. I got here just in time to go on some kind of mission, and then we were in the arena. The place I live in isn't that great, but that was like the ninth circle of hell in comparison."

The whole thing was weird, and Kain was trying to get his bearings in general while also dealing with... all of this. He can appreciate a comparison like that though. He's still trying to figure this all out but he just isn't getting a good vibe from any of it. "I just arrived from a land in the throes of war, myself... but something about this place feels more sinister than even that..."

He sighs. "I suppose no one has ever escaped the boundaries of an arena, that you've heard of?" If they really send them out all over the place, to other regions presumably, surely they can't control everything... or can they?

Perry frowned. "War? Regular war, right?" What they were doing back home, that was a war. But when people here talked about war, most of them didn't mean what he meant with the word. There had been a war here, which was why they were here.

Regular wars were from history books. Why fight against another human, when there weren't too many of you left? At the question, though, he shook his head, sighing along with him.

"You're right about this place being sinister." Perry took another drink. "No one has escaped the boundaries in the arena. They've been doing this for seventy-five years or so, so we would have heard of it." He paused, thinking on something.

"Check out the tapes they have, of past arenas. They show what the arena looks like for each. I know this past one, we were on a kind of island, and a sea... or what seemed like a sea... was surrounding us. No way out."

"Yes, a true war, with outright fighting of a real enemy and not... what this is." It would be simpler, in ways, if they could just be out there fighting the Capitol itself. They're the one who've arranged all of this. But as far as he can tell, that's impossible.

"So you're saying there's a means to see the arenas that have already happened? Then I'll have to look into that. If I can understand more about the structure of their 'Games'... well, it certainly could help." Mostly help his own outcome, probably, but maybe he can find out more about this world. Perhaps learn of some way out of this whole thing. They'd found a loophole, of sorts, in the war, so why couldn't there be something here?

It might take a long time to find such a way out, though, the way this all seems. It definitely does seem overwhelming, at least at the moment with everything being completely new to him.

"Not fighting other people, like lots of kids, for the chance to get more food?" Perry laughed, a sound that had no humor in it. "This really isn't a step up from anything." It really wasn't. Perry almost preferred fighting the living dead.

Then again, he would prefer not fighting anyone, but they just kept bringing him back. "Yeah, there are. This whole place is really run by videos and TV. All they do all day is watch the games, and watch reruns of the games, and interviews of the tributes in the games..." He shook his head. "If it's not on a big screen, they don't care."

Fighting other warriors is one thing. Kain could accept that and do it without question. But not even he could bring himself to want to fight children, or other civilians, for the sake of a mere game. He had his standards. He couldn't shake the bitterness, the hatred for these games and all they stood for.

"I have far better ways to occupy my time, yes." Except, if they're just thrust out there into those arenas, there really wasn't any way to avoid it. The inevitable was going to happen, eventually. "It sounds as if these people could stand to find ways to occupy themselves, as well. I wonder how these Capitol people would feel if they were forced to play instead of simply watch..."

Perry just looked at him for a long moment, eyebrow raised, and then he could do nothing else but smirk. "I don't personally care if I die or not, but that kind of talk? Watch out for it. Killing you isn't the worst thing they'll do to you if you say anything."

He went to grab his arm and then thought better of it. Gesturing for Kain to follow him for a moment, he pointed out the Avoxes standing behind the food.

"They call them Avoxes. And they cut out their tongue and do something so they can't talk. And they're pretty much slaves. Not a life anyone willingly goes into."

The worst case scenario is never death- it's unending torture. Though where might the repeated deaths count? Usually you only had to experience it once... usually. This wasn't the first that something like this had happened.

"Fighting in their arenas sounds pleasant in comparison." And if he's truthful about it, that's where he'd rather be: fighting, doing something, rather than live entirely as a captive. Especially under the conditions that those people were apparently living under. "I'll keep this in mind." It may not stop the occasional bitter remark here and there, but he at least knew better how to hold his tongue than some people he knew back home.

"Right? That's how it goes in this place." Perry didn't care about what happened to him. But if he cared about someone here, or someones. What was he to do? Start telling and selling lies? He wasn't good at that kind of thing.

"So... new topic, I guess?" He gave him a half smile, just a little bit of one. "Now that torture has been put out there."

Kain would definitely be keeping this in mind. He didn't care too much about his own death- not normally, anyway. But there were things far worse, and losing his freedom in any sense was one of them. He didn't want to be controlled any more than they technically were being, here.

"Is there anything else I ought to know about this world?" He could already see he'd have a lot to figure out.

"Everything else, pretty much." Perry shrugged, but he wanted to help. He just had to think of what could be useful to know about this place. They should have a checklist of things to go down when someone new arrived. 'Welcome to the rest of your life and your death, by the way, this is Hell' kind of deal.

"Uh... I don't know. Any questions to start out, I guess?"

Kain was definitely starting to gather that there weren't going to be any easy or pleasant answers to anything he wanted to know. He sighed, glancing around the room.

"How often do they send us out there?" He'd certainly like to prepare himself if they're bound to go straight from his party to the next arena.

"I haven't been here as long as others, but from what I've seen and heard-- check out the videos, like I said, they're pretty damn accurate-- it's every month or a little more. There's this party, right? Then maybe some down time, but then it's right back into the next arena." He couldn't tell exactly what the time frame was. One of the big things he'd also noticed was that, with so many people, the arena could go on for a long time. Over a month, at the least.

"Spend as much time as possible in the training room. And eat. You're going to lose a lot of muscle mass each time, since you're... you know, starving. So before you go in again, try to regain that."

Kain had been out in the wilderness, surviving on the side of a mountain, hunting and foraging what he needed. But something told him that this wouldn't be nearly as straightforward as that. For one, there were the other people all thrown into the same environment, competing for resources, and the other... well, he'd already heard some about how much control these gamemakers supposedly exerted over everything.

"Then there's enough time to recover between the arenas... I assume they don't ever indicate the nature of the next arena ahead of time?" It sounds like they might have to just have to make up strategy as they go, though. It's not too unlike the gods' war, he supposed, where the memory loss made each cycle new in ways. "I wouldn't plan on anything else but training, either way." He didn't care for the Capitol's idea of entertainment already, obviously, and he wasn't one for sitting around idle.

"There's enough time to recover, but you're going to be so busy that it won't feel like recovery time." Perry shook his head. Speaking of food, he grabs something from a passing tray. Fruit always helps when you're speaking of starvation and suffering.

"We have no way of knowing what the arena is going to be like." Perry took a bite of the apple, chewing thoughtfully before swallowing. "No one does, except the gamemakers. Even the people here don't know, until we see it for the first time."

With a sigh, he looks down at the apple. "One other thing. And I figure... this is really what might help you. But start making friends. Or allies. Or whatever. You might have to kill each other at some point, but teaming up for a little bit helps you."

Not that he was ever very good at recovering and resting in general, anyway. He was very likely to spend the whole time training obsessively, maybe even past the point of weariness. He nodded, figuring that from the sound of how they treat people here, the arenas must always be a complete surprise. It was surely more 'entertaining' that way.

"I don't know about friends..." He was recalling the conversation with Jecht, when the older man pointed out his tendency to isolate himself. It wasn't as if he meant to, all the time... it was just... how he was. And he recalled all of the things he'd done to those he'd called friends. There wasn't a single one he hadn't harmed in some way, in the gods' war or home, physically or emotionally, intentional or... beyond his control. It was a pretty awful thought. "...But I could attempt allies, for the sake of survival. Though from the sound of it, that would just be prolonging the inevitable."

Even so. Wouldn't an ally help make that time surviving a little less agonizing? Banding together to get better supplies, more food, or something along those lines. Or even... helping one another out so that their suffering wasn't prolonged if it came to it. He had some pretty unsettling ideas of what allies should do for one another.

Prolonging the inevitable. That's true. But Perry, personally, was not the guy who was going to lay down and wait for death to come. He went out looking for it. That's what he'd been doing in that room. He'd gone out, looking to die. So to die just because he isn't even going to try?

That wasn't him. "Friends, allies... in the arena, that stuff the name, doesn't matter. It's outside the arena that matters. You needs friends on the outside, who then can be allies on the inside. You have to do something to make people know they can trust you."

That's the hard part. That is the really hard part, and Perry is slowly working on that himself. He might stay in his room for awhile, but he was getting out of his... not shell. But something.

"Gain the trust of others... while trusting them in return? That seems like a harder task than making it through the arenas." It certainly could be... problematic. Not to mention trying to come across as someone who could be trusted. It was hard to do when he barely trusted himself sometimes. Still. Giving up wasn't in his nature, even for something like this.

Kain realized he wasn't the most open or friendly person. That sort of thing was always for someone like Rosa, or in the war, it would have been Laguna, perhaps. There were actually... plenty of others who would have done so, as well. They'd all been thrown together by a common bond of fighting for Cosmos, so there'd been a common ground to start with. He didn't really remember how he'd met any of his comrades there. But here, he was starting anew. On his own. He had to somehow build those alliances.

"It can be. Especially if you're not really the kind of guy who makes friends easily." At one point, that wasn't Perry. At one point, he could make fiends with anyone, over anything. He could do that, and it was always fun.

That was before his father died. After that, he didn't make friends easily. Which was going on now. Could he make a friend of Kain? It was hard for this. They barely knew each other.

Maybe the best they could do was be allies, and make a pact not to kill each other in the arena. "I... I don't do this much. But it's nice talking to you, and maybe we can say we won't kill each other?"

When it came to making allies, that took time. Trust had to be earned, respect gained. Kain had a habit for keeping people at a distance for a long time, until he could be certain about them. But... this situation was something else entirely. He couldn't afford to isolate the way he normally would. Not completely, anyway. Alliances of any sort would be... well, a tactical advantage. Even if it was a simple promise.

He thought it over for a few moments, before solemnly nodding. "I would be willing to honor that bargain."

It meant one less person out for his blood, and in turn he'd do the same. He pushed down any stray concerns about his past tendencies. He would not turn traitor out there. He couldn't afford to. He'd keep the darkness at bay and prove he could be trusted. In turn, it'd mean having someone to trust out there as well.

"One less person to worry about." Perry coughed, looking away and rubbing the back of his head. It was a embarrassing moment of humanity for him, if only because he'd forgotten to be human for so long. Not feeling anymore wasn't an option, as much as he might want it to be. It just wasn't. They would never let him die like he wanted to, so now he had to actually make a go of it.

"...Anymore questions?" A weak offer, but he could try. Wasn't that what he'd been doing before? Answering questions?

One less threat. Yes. That was important. It was better to have some sort of alliance, even Kain knew that. From the moment he'd arrived here, he was already thinking in terms of being on his own, but the gods' war had shown him that sometimes you did need to count on others.

"I'm not sure." It was a lot to take in, that was certain. "But I'll let you know if I come up with anything else. I hardly believe it's come to this... another world with another battle to be fought. I'll have to visit the training area at once, when this is over."

It was a lot to take in, and Perry could sympathize. When he first arrived here, he was thrown right into things. No real time to sit back and think about what had happened to him. What was going to happen to him. No, it was 'here's a gun, here's a monster, go kill it', followed directly by 'go kill people in a jungle'.

It was only now that there was downtime to actually consider what was happening that he could take the time to do that. "Smart move. If you ever need anything... I'm in District 6. Or, that's where they placed me, whatever it is they do. So sixth floor."

At least there was time to prepare. Knowing that there was at least some pattern to their madness was helpful enough. He could count on not being thrown out there without preparation, without some word that the time was approaching. Kain was going to do all he could to get ready, although he had a feeling even then he'd not know what to truly expect.

"Right, I'll remember that... and I'm in... eleven, was what I was told." He didn't know enough about these supposed districts they'd tossed them into, but they clearly weren't fighting a nice simple good versus evil battle as the one between Cosmos and Chaos had been. No, this 'war'... had its own complications.

/end?

justgaveup - 2014-03-22 21:59 (UTC) - Expand

yep works for me!

dragoon_pride - 2014-03-23 05:20 (UTC) - Expand

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The Crowning of Enjolras

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/end?

yep works for me!