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

He fought. Oh, of course, he fought. In the very beginning it had been easy feigning loyalty, but as the arenas stretched on, Aunamee's mind crumbled, and as his mind crumbled, so did his control. As he was led to his bed, he felt like a cow being led to slaughter -- and he feared he was, knew he was, and so when the darkness finally descended, his legs were sore from kicking and his wrists were bruised from the restraints.

Normally he would recover quickly. He excelled at it. In one moment he could crush a chair with his bare hands, and in the next, he could smile as brightly as a movie star. He was prepared to smile, he was prepared to get it over with, but then --

biological contributions from our dear favourite Aunamee

When the sky darkened, so did his eyes. He crumpled his hand into a fist.

As the sky darkened, so did the rest of the world around Aunamee. Gone were the graceful marble columns, the grand theater. The bright, festive tributes disappeared - a flock of colorful birds flown away.

The delicate rose petals burned away, turned to ash, drifting down from the hollowed, blackened eyes of abandoned buildings. Long-burning fires like flickering eyes, watching from the glassless windows. Discarded vehicles, clogged the broken street beneath Aunamee's feet, left to die in metal packs.

Somewhere, in the distance was a low wail. A primal, mindless, sound of pain and hunger, faint on a hot breeze.

This was Wesker's world. Or what was left of it.

Dead... but not empty.

Somewhere, something dragged. A slow rustling.

Above, the sound of wings, a leathery flapping.

And there, in the darkest shadows, Wesker himself.

Hunting.

Oh, those abandoned cars. Oh, that ash in the air, tickling his tongue. Aunamee was always destined to be the one standing amongst the fallen. He was always supposed to be the savior.

The world was ruined, and this was good.

But this was a nightmare, and nightmares have a way of twisting the good into abominations. His heart rolled in his throat. His hands trembled. He needed a weapon to survive out here, but his fingers were either too sticky or too big or too broken to reach the knife he always kept in his jacket. He could hear that things were out of place. Uneven. Something alien whistled in the air.

(biological contributions from our dear)

He had been taken. That was right. He had been taken and then something was taken from him.

(biological contributions from our dear favourite)

But no, it wasn't the air that made that sound. It was his mind. Something alien whistled in his mind and reverberated in his bones, his lungs, his heart. It took over his entire body. It forced him to listen.

It was Wesker.

So obvious in retrospect. So horrifying in the present. Aunamee's mind was catching thoughts from the other man that barely even sounded like thoughts. They sounded like blood rushing through constricted veins. They sounded like teeth against teeth.

He watched. Waited.

Wesker was his own greatest creation. Expounding on Dr. Isaacs monumental failure - on that silver lining, threaded through the bloody pieces that remained - he'd done what no other had. (Save, of course, for Project Alice herself.)

He had survived. He had evolved. Chosen by the virus.

Adam reborn.

...Until it had begun to fight him. Until he'd realized the bonding was not complete. Until he'd realized that there was still some secret, locked away in Alice's blood.

He'd discovered a way to hold the balance, a dam to stem the tide of wild replication and mutation, but it was never meant to be permanent. As soon he'd gotten The Red Queen back under his control, as soon as Alice was trusting foolishly, at his side....

But they'd taken him. They'd snatched him away and left his best laid plans undone and now it was too late.

Beneath the red, humming haze, the man was quiet. Lost.

It was hunger now, and pain, and fire.

Instinct.

The mindless need to feed. To spread the virus within him.

The ultimate bio-weapon.

He stalked through the shadows, called by the siren drumming in Aunamee's chest. The rush in his veins.

There was no warning. Just the strike. The slap of dark, wet muscle. The flash of teeth, curved and wicked.

But Aunamee had a warning. It was different from the rumbling growl that flooded his system -- it came to him in a soft hush like a child telling a secret. There. Step over there. He is coming. There.

The future was there for him again. It smiled at him. It held his hand.

It saved him.

He tore away from the blow, dodging with a reaction time that could only be explained by him knowing. His knife was in his hand as though his brain forgot that, moments before, he was unable to reach it. He stabbed forward, not at the monstrosity, but at the man who stood behind it. The true enemy.

There was enough to feel the rush of air as he struck nothing, for the first hiss of frustration-- then, the knife was flashing and pain was arcing through his body, a sharp snap and sizzle in his blood.

His head snapped back, a piece of dark flesh tumbling through the air, black blood spraying as the Aunamee cut free a piece of the mandible, one waving tendril curling independent of the others.

Wesker staggered, shoulders bowing as the mandible shuddered and waved and the rush of blood slowed to a drip.... stopped as his eyes flashed, that bloody smear where his eyes should be.

Aunamee didn't laugh, but he did smile. He could feel the muscles under his skin guiding his lips upwards like mechanical gears.

"Albert," he said. The first name seemed more proper, didn't it? Harsher. "I knew it would come to this, one day."

Memory was a funny thing. In the very beginning, he had been certain this was a dream (they told him so, didn't they?), but reality was growing more and more distant by the (minute day week year) second. What was the waking world? How was it any different from this?

"You were always set to lose control."

Albert.

No one called him that anymore. There was no one left to know it, no one left who dared if they did. He was their Chairman, their President, their God unrealized....

Eva... had called him that. In the garden as they'd stood beneath the sun, weighing the uses of good men. The sweet scent of dying flowers - drooping red and white blooms in the elegant glass vase in his quarters.

There were no flowers in this place.

They were back there. Out there.

A cerebral celebration, the mouthpiece had said. He heard the echo again, a whisper inside his head, fighting over the hiss of the virus.

The ruby glow dimmed, faded.

Wesker blinked. Focused.

Straightened, the mandible curling - cracking it folded slowly back between his lips, swallowed down.

The laugh was rough, his throat ragged and burning. As guttural as a growl.

"It would seem... I'm not the only one."

Edited 2013-12-24 11:10 (UTC)

But now Aunamee was in a good mood. Even as the nightmare surrounded him, lapping at the corner of his mind like a greedy dog, he stood tall and proud. The animal chattering within Wesker's thoughts was growing quieter, after all, and the future was whispering to him its sweet nothings.

When Aunamee was in a good mood, the world was perfect. He had never lost control. He would never lose control.

(the sun, flowers, a cerebral celebration -- )

"How simple you are," he said, wetting his lips. "How desperately broken."

He turned the blade in his hand. It was his own blade, now, the one he kept back home. Its handle was bright white and never stained.

"Your power is killing you."

"Perhaps."

A cold, flat admittance. (Wesker did not run from the truth. He did not cower in the dark. He faced it. Twisted it. Forced it to suit his needs.)

He straightened, a ripple worming up his spine, bones cracking softly, slipping back in place. His shoulders rolled, his neck popped.

A settling, back into his skin. Back into control.

Just a dream. A dream of the Capitol's design, but still just a dream.

"But I'm not dead yet."

And then, without any other preamble, he whistled. A surprisingly sweet, musical sound. Decidedly out of place, as he tested just how far this new technology of the Capitol's could be stretched.

From them a gentle, rhythmic sound took up. A tick-tick-tick, that grew louder as it drew closer.

Claws against the pavement. Eight paws, four each for the pair of Dobermans that melted out of the alleyways, out the shadows themselves. Horribly mutated, their furry hides hanging in bloody strips, bone flashing as white as their teeth in the red, dripping muscle of their flanks.

Project Alice wasn't the only one with friends.

"And I've still got my pets."

Aunamee felt a fluttering rise up from his chest.

A warning, perhaps.

But warnings had little use. His mind followed Wesker's, piggybacking on his thoughts like a leech. (Just a dream. A dream of the Capitol's design, but --) The ground underneath his feet was clean even though everything else around him was so, so dirty. The dogs that Wesker called in looked sickly and rotten. Just a dream. Just a dream.

He tossed his knife in the air and deliberately caught the blade between his unprotected fingers. Blood trickled down his palms and onto the clean ground beneath him. He felt no pain. It could have been a costume knife.

-- Not just a dream. They were using his abilities. The Capitol was using his abilities.

"I wish," he said through gritted teeth, flipping the blade in his hand so that it faced Wesker, "I could slaughter your waking mind."

The dogs trotted up to Wesker's sides, dripping shadows, heeling obediently, watching silently but for the drip of saliva from the ripped jowls. Muscle and skin hanging in ribbons beneath their ragged teeth.

The virus in them, knowing of the virus in him. Each a child in their own way, each a beast.

"There's no one here to stop you," Wesker said, hands opening in invitation, closing in threat. "No one here to protect you."

(Now I lay me down to sleep...)

"Shall we find out what happens, should you die before you wake?"

"I don't die."

His clenched teeth slipped into an unnatural grin, tooth scratching against tooth like a series of broken gears. His hand had finished bleeding, but he could still feel the sticky blood between his fingers as he tightened the grip on the knife.

He was not going to strike first. He was not going to be the unstable one, the man flinging wine across the table.

"Send your children," he says. Hisses. "The three of you can learn together."

"The corpse they left rotting in the desert would say otherwise." A purr, rolling on the edge of a growl, separated from the flanking hounds by degrees.

But otherwise, there was no verbal command, not noticeable direction. The dogs simply moved - together, a surge of red and black. Cueing as if they were the ones able to read their master's mind.

They streaked forward, Wesker's chin lifting behind them, and crossed in front each other - one attacking directly, the other leaping onto the battered, blackened remains of a car in a cry of popping metal and scratching claws.

Wesker waited. Patient. Then, with a flare of ruby, moved.

He saw the dogs run before they ran, their predicted trajectories flushed red like a laser pointer. It would be difficult, fighting all three at once. In his own world, he had learned to take injuries and play dead when he was outnumbered, only to rise up from the ground like the living dead and take his revenge. It was a strategy he didn't want to follow this time. He wanted it to be straight-forward. Clean.

He deserved a kill like this.

He drew his knife at the dog who lunged at him, seeking out its stomach.

Edited 2014-01-03 23:55 (UTC)

It wasn't going to be that easy. The dogs had already died once, and the state had not been strong enough to stick. That little knife has hardly going to be enough do the job either.

The animal took the blade in the gut and gave a sharp yelp. It twisted on the ground, but didn't still, didn't stay - didn't die. It found its footing again, the handle of the knife sticking out like a rib unbound.

It came again as its partner struck from the car, leaping toward Aunamee's shoulders. They attacked together, and Wesker loomed up from behind, ready with a closed fist for when the man dodged away.

Aunamee fought (bled) like an ordinary man. Although he could anticipate the blows (the teeth) and sense Wesker's mind waiting just out of sight (just off-stage), he could only move so quickly, only punch so hard. He kicked and elbowed and took back the discarded knife from the dog's belly at just the right moment, but that didn't stop the skin from hanging off his arm in bloody ribbons, that didn't stop the jaws around his throat, that did not stop the blood and the pus and the bone.

But Aunamee did not slow like a normal man. His strength did not wane. He sought out breaks in the patterns, exits, and eventually he escaped the dogs, if only for a moment, his bleeding body holding steady as can be.

When he escaped, he dove for Wesker with the knife.

Aunamee was resilient. Wesker had watched him in the footage of previous arenas, had watched him suffer and survive things no mere human should have been capable of.

He might have been impressed... if he, himself, weren't capable of the same. Weren't capable of doing better.

He saw the knife coming, a flash of steel, but didn't dodge. Didn't struggle.

Didn't have to.

The blade plunged down, slowed but not stopped by the leather of his bodysuit (the one he'd come in, a black affair, tight to allow ease of movement, leather to deflect shrapnel), and sank into the flesh of his chest. It skipped off a rib, nicked an artery, and his heart lurched in a painful wrench.

He staggered back, choking on his breath... but didn't go down. He caught himself on the trunk of the car, held himself steady as the virus set to work.

His heartbeat returned, just as strong, beating impossibly through the damage, and he reached up and yanked the knife free.

Blood oozed, but too slow, too little, for such a wound.

His lip curled in a biting sneer. The dogs gathered themselves.

And they struck again.

Aunamee inhaled Wesker's pain, even though he knew (he could see) it was temporary. He expected the give and then the take, but it still made his stomach churn when he saw Wesker remove the blade, when the blood refused to come.

And then the dogs came.

This was torture. This was destruction by small degrees. He could see every bite before it happened, could feel the tiny imprints of future claws in future wounds. There was no pain, but it did not matter. He could not indefinitely fight dogs that wouldn't die.

Not with his bare hands.

It occurred to Aunamee that, in his old world, he had always carried certain items on his person when he was expecting a fight. The first was his blade, clean and perfect and nearly unbreakable, which Wesker now held. The second was a collection of smoke bombs. The third was a small vial of neurotoxin, deadly when mixed with food, but even deadlier when dissolved into the smoke bombs.

He could feel them in his jacket. Yes. That was right.

Yes.

When he reached into his jacket for an ordinary smoke bomb, his pinky was dangling by a thread of bleeding muscle.

It fell off completely when he smashed the bomb down into the dogs at his feet.

Snapping and tearing, one of the dog's mouth was open, all but swallowing Aunamee's hand as the bomb came down. Uncaring for the different between flesh and metal, realizing something was wrong only when the man's arm tore away (all ribbons of meat) and the bomb remained, a foreign, choking lump in its throat. It gagged and struggled... and imploded in a spray of bloody chunks and biting shrapnel made of bone and steel.

It peppered the car, flattened a tire in a hiss of air. Struck the other dog, taking it off its feet, destroying a leg, ripping into its chest, spilling out the remains of its rotted insides. (And yet still, it lay alive, shivering and whimpering, working legs kicking instinctively.)

A roar rose up from deep in Wesker's chest, an inhuman sound of rage - his pets - and a leg snapped up, spearing toward Aunamee's back in a vicious mustang kick with all his preternatural strength behind it.

There was no way to escape both the explosion and Wesker's supernatural kick. The blast (stronger than he remembered, too strong) singed his hair and burned the skin from his shins, and then he felt Wesker's foot against his spine, a crack --

He was flung forward, his head noisily colliding with the concrete, his torn up arms doing little to brace his fall.

Wesker's breath snorted from him, like a bull, like a dragon, his nose flaring on the force of it as he pressed forward. His hands flexed at his sides, bones cracking as his fingers stretched and splayed and curled.

He kicked out again, flipping Aunamee over onto his back so he could look down upon the bloodied face. Could see his eyes.

"I can smell it, Aunamee." He sneered down at him, lip curling over his white teeth. "How pathetic you are. What a liar you are."

He flipped over easily. His body was a rag doll. Something inside him had snapped, something fundamental. His eyes were too wide and his blinks were far too long.

But still, he moved to sit up.

His spine crackled and popped, his back bending at an unnatural angle as the parasite took over. The parasite did not know that his arms and legs were paralyzed. It did not know that blood had begun to flood his lungs measure by measure. Aunamee was no longer muscle and bone, but a bundle of invisible energy wearing his flesh like a glove.

He grinned through broken teeth, manic.

"No," he said. "You can't."

Wesker's foot came out again, heel in Aunamee's chest, a stomp to force him back. To put him down again. To hold him place beneath Wesker's boot.

"I can hear it."

Every snap and pop of bone, every rip and tear of flesh. The struggle of his lungs and heart to carry on despite the damage. The thickness of the beat, the gurgle in his chest.

Like sweet music. A lullaby befitting, finally, the Capitol's dream world.

"You can't lie to me."

Aunamee had lost. That much was obvious. He had lost, but he wasn't going to die. In his home world, this would have been enough to enrage him, but here (after everything) it brought him giddy relief. Wesker could defeat him, but he could not destroy him. He had missed this knowledge. This security.

Mortality had robbed him of so much.

He hiccuped, choked on the blood that welled up in his chest. His heart lurched, stumbled, lurched again, and he thought, let it die. He didn't need it.

"I can hear what you hear, sweet Albert," he said, his voice thin. Clogged. He brought a hand up and began to stroke the boot softly, calmly, as though it were a cat. "I hear every lullaby you ever dream about."

The Crowning of Enjolras

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)