thecapitol | (no subject)

WHO| SEMI-CLOSED - Ellie, Howard, Venus, Mindy, Orc, R, Wyatt, Hawkeye. (If you think your character has a good reason to be there, ping me and we'll see if we can work them in.)
WHAT| Ellie's birthday.
WHERE| The Laser Tag place.
WHEN| A couple days after the crowning.
Warnings| None!

The crowning had been weird as fuck, no lie about that, and Ellie was having a hard time really integrating into her new home, despite having been there since before the Arena had started. She was fairly cheerful - outwardly at least - but deep somewhere inside everything was still eating at her, slowly.

The idea of a birthday party was a welcome distraction.

She'd never had a birthday party - not a real one, anyway. She'd once gotten an extra ration card for her birthday from Riley, but that was about all she could think of. Birthdays were generally only marked with a 'oh, so you've survived this long' - kids were more mouths to feed and usually unwelcome ones, especially after her mother had died.

But this wasn't home, and no one had yet told her that dying in the arena meant that she wouldn't age - that though her birthday should have just passed, she was in fact back to herself a month or so <i>before</i> her birthday. Thankfully ignorant, however, she could celebrate. And she knew who she wanted.

Howard figured out most of the details and she had let the rest of them know where to meet - just in the lobby of the Laser Tag building, before they got all geared up. Ellie was brimming with a low-key excitement, she'd never played laser tag before but it sounded like something out of a science fiction comic so she liked it. She was there first - way too early - and waited for her friends to arrive.

Then, after everything, they'd have cake.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Howard doesn't especially want to stay around for cake. In all honestly, parties aren't really his thing, and he's doing this mostly to give himself a good distraction from preparing for the next Arena. A nice break in his routine of practicing in the training room and fattening up.

The cake, though. He hates eating in front of people. Bad enough he has to do it at parties, but in small groups it's worse - in small groups the nervous tics and the way he swallows things whole like a snake are so much more obvious.

Ellie seems to be enjoying herself, and that's good - maybe he can hold it over her head later. Howard sits on a table and swings his legs, turning the present he got for her over in his hands (he thinks she might be like Julie and like old-timey things, so he got her a keychain with a laser pointer).

"God I fucking love Laser Tag," Ellie gushes as she swings up into the seat beside him, beaming.

"That was the greatest fucking idea on the planet. I really owe you one, Howard." She pauses, and the smile grows: wide and honest.

"Thanks."

Ellie's smile is infectious (no pun intended), and Howard beams right back at her. "Yeah? It went okay? I mean, of course it went okay. I'm like, a laser tag master."

He preens slightly at the job well done.

She laughs and keeps grinning at him. "Yeah. Fucking master," She agrees easily.

But then she leans in a bit as if sharing a secret, and said: "It went awesome, Howard, honestly. No one's ever done anything like this for me before. It wasn't really something they could do, you know? I mean the capitol throws parties and shit but it isn't the same."

That brings a smile to his face as he leans in to gather the secret up in his ear. "For real? I never thrown on anything like this, so. You know. I mean, I didn't have many friends in school."

He chews at his sleeve, a slight flush to his cheeks. "Hey, that's something cool about the apocalypse, right? No more school."

"What kind of apocalypse did you attend?" Ellie says with a smirk. "We still had to go to school, it just, you know. Sucked. And was run by the army. And was mostly just to keep us off the streets and dying."

But she smiles at him anyway, broad and honest. "But that's okay. I had friends but they don't really last, you know. Dead and whatever, now. Not a lot of people my age. This is way better."

Except for the fights to the death. But those she could almost pretend didn't exist, here with her friends.

"We went to the apocalypse with no adults. No grown-ups, no teachers, you know?"

Howard knows what Ellie's talking about. The FAYZ had an abundance of people his age, but the idea that friends don't last because they die is definitely one he's familiar with.

It's one he tries very hard not to accept.

"Did you have to learn the scientific method?"

"Oh." She is actually surprised for a second, and she wonders how she didn't know that before. Did she just not ask? Or did she just assume it would be the same - ninety-nine percent adults, one percent kids? "Oh that's... that's really weird. An apocalypse that only effected adults. That must be really backwards to my world."

"Uh, yeah, a bit, but to be honest I uh - I kind of cut out before we got into any heavy science stuff. Not that I would have learned it if I had stayed, probably. If they shut down Boston I'm not sure I would have ever gone to school again."

"One day they just all went missing. Boom. No one knows why. We're like, eighty percent sure it's a government experiment." Howard shrugs, trying to sound lighthearted about it, trying to recapture how he felt those first two days. Before reality sunk in and he realized what hell a world full of children was.

"We did the scientific method like, literally every year. It's seared into my brain." He points a finger on each hand to his head. "I didn't learn shit from school."

"That is weird as fuck, and I come from the world of fungus zombies," Ellie said, completely meaning it. She tried to picture and apocalypse that would take out Joel, and she just couldn't do it. He'd survive somehow, she though. She knew it.

If only he would fucking show up here.

"Yeah, well, me neither to be totally honest. I think it was basically just something to make us do so they could keep us off the streets and shit."

"The FAYZ tends to go according to like, two rules. Is it weird? And does it suck?" Howard pops his shoulders up and rocks his head to the side. "This place is way better, death games or not."

He nods in agreement. "I think it's like that in every society. Just give a kid a computer and they'll teach themselves everything they need to know."

"Dude, you'll hear no argument from me. This place is way better than home." Except the whole freedom thing. And the Joel not being there thing. And the fact that she probably abandoned her whole world and took their only hope of survival.

Oops.

"Dude, you guys still had computers? Aw man..."

"For a few months after the apocalypse, yeah." He shrugs. "We didn't have any electricity by the end, though. I mean, you were born into the apocalypse, right? Mine hit when I was thirteen. Worst puberty ever."

He makes a deep sighing noise and kicks his feet up on the metal arcade table.

"We had electricity in the quarantine," Ellie said thoughtfully. "But I mean - they weren't going to waste it on something like computers. Not for civilians, anyway."

She pauses, thoughtfully, and frowns. "But yeah, I can't even imagine having everything and then just... having it ripped away from you like that."

"It wasn't fun," Howard says, and for a moment he gets quiet, as if the world's fallen away for a second.

"Anyway. Laser tag."

She watches him quietly for that moment, the concern etched obviously across her face. When he changes the subject, though, she lets him. She wasn't going to pry. Not now.

She was going to help him enjoy himself, and forget about the past.

"Right. Fucking Laser tag."

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Re: CAKE

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wrap up?