etcircenses: (Default)
Panem Events ([personal profile] etcircenses) wrote in [community profile] thecapitol2013-12-15 06:36 am

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.
twoklimmen: (Of all that you can never change)

[personal profile] twoklimmen 2014-01-15 12:30 am (UTC)(link)
Sigma did not mind at all discussing his age to the Initiate. He imagined if anyone ever pressed Akane about her age, she might retort, half-seriously, oh, perhaps a million years this month! and leave it at that. Sigma was not a fraction of the practiced esper she was, however, and did not have reason to count the infinite time he had spent outside of his own world as a part of his age.

"I was sixty-eight years old in July," he answers plainly. He remembered there was another troll who had remarked that human lifespans were an enigma to them, and followed up with a casual, "Comparatively, that is quite old for a human male. When I was born, the average lifespan was about seventy-four years of age, but I do not think I have much to fear," he chuckled. The fact that he had been given a score of nine was a testament to his training regimen; he'd needed his body to look and act as close as possible to what it did when he was 22 years old. This was not to mention that no one seemed ever to age when they were slain in the Arena and brought back. "Other than the odd flu, of course..."

As for his second question, Sigma often wondered this for himself. Did he lament being picked for The Capitol in his older body instead of his younger one? Not necessarily... It let him have relationships he perhaps would never have had without it. Still...

"I... suppose so. I did not have the opportunity to 'live' in the same way the youth here do," he meant, of course, those born in the Capitol and not the Tributes. Their lives did not involve much living, either. "There was a lot I did not accomplish in my life that I would have liked to. It is not that I dislike being old, per se."
carnagecarnival: (At our root.)

[personal profile] carnagecarnival 2014-01-15 01:22 am (UTC)(link)
"You merely wish for more time," He finishes for Sigma. That he understands, or, he thinks he does. That makes sense. He wishes for it too, not for himself, Messiahs know he has too much time, but for certain others. Groups even. So maybe if he ever does get old one day... He pushes the thought aside.

"WOULD OFFER HIS OWN SWEEPS, IF ALL WITHIN ABILITY MOTHERFUCKING THAT WERE. Only one troll capable at of that though and ain't no one want for her shit," He says, offhand. "GET OLD. But ain't a thing for many trolls at to get aged. WOULD SAY PERSONAL IT MEANS ALL A BROTHER BE REAL GOD DAMN GOOD ALL ON LIVING." He smiles wryly, trying to ease himself, and the mood of the whole conversation. "Get like to having a motherfucking mastery it all does make to seem. MOTHERFUCKING CONGRATULATORIES AT FOR PROVING FORMIDABLE."