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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.

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Wyatt wasn't sure it was even a game he wanted to play, this pretend shootout, but her reaction to the possibility was sure interesting. Considering how Ellie had been quick to ask him to join hers.

"We can't?" His leaned back, weight shifting onto his heels, eyebrows quirked down at her. "Here I thought the point of the game was to win."

Mindy was always up for laser tag. It was the closest, for now, that she could get away with doing it nonviolently. It was the fun of a shoot em up at a rave without all the annoying people!

"Are you kidding? We would cream the other team. Ellie is supposed to be a sharpshooter, you're, like, one of the most famous gunmen ever, and this was pretty much my profession. we'll estroy."

He grinned.

"Ah, so yer tryin' to be sportin' about it," he chuckled with a nod. "That's awful fair'a ya. An' lucky enough, it ain't anythin' ya really gotta worry about. I ain't sure this is the game for me."

Mindy raised her eyebrow.

"What makes you say that? We're not really doing violent things, its just fun. Not into all the flashing lights?"

He glanced at the children against, pulling the triggers on each other, making popping noises and whooping in delight as their fellows suits lit up.

"We'll be back in the arena before long, killin' each other for real," he replied after a long beat, looking back at Mindy. "That'll be soon enough for me."

"This is for fun," Mindy said. "And think of this as strategy. You don't get that at the Arena: everything is just thrown at you all crazy, and you have to really only on your wits. This is just, you know, response to outer stimuli and movement and shit."

Yeah, the downer was knowing they would have to be in the Arena at each other's throats, but why dwell on that?

"I wanna train, the Tower's got a whole room for it," he said, fixing his steady blue stare on Mindy. "I got no desire to mix that an' everythin' it means with the little time I got to enjoy with those I care about."

He'd been here for over a year. Facing down death every other month, watching his friends die - some to never return.

He'd had his fill.

Mindy met the stare. It was honestly pretty intimidating, and she could see by looking at him that he meant every word. Who was she, really, to tell him that he should feel differently?

"You know," she said, "my mentor always said sometimes adults can't really dig the shit kids like, but they go through the motions to please the kid. Way I figure it, its her birthday, and she wanted you here because she wanted to spend time doing a pointlessly violent activity that isn't what we have to do. In a way, I guess, she just wants to play a game we chose, not the one they make us play."

Wyatt didn't know her, but that still stung a bit. Her snap judgment that he was letting Ellie down somehow by not wanting to strap on a gun and pretend to kill more people. People that would likely have to watch die for real, right in front of him.

If he didn't die first.

"It ain't a game for everyone. Ellie understands that."

Or at least she'd seemed to, when he'd told her he wasn't sure he was up for the game.

Unless she'd been pretending.

Mindy had to admit to herself that it would have just been fucking cool to have Wyatt Erp as a player in laser tag. Of course the stupid fucking capitol would have to find a way to ruin that too.

"Well, all right." she said, "guess I can't twist your arm. It would have been cool though."

"Well, I ever change my mind an' decide I've got a. hankerin' for it, I'll be sure an' let ya know," he offered, as best an olive branch he could offer.

He wasn't going to stop her or anyone else from playing who wanted to, but he wasn't going to be forced either.

"Cool," she said, grinning. "Actually, its kinda awesome an older guy showed up for Ellie's party anyway. She's the type that should get that, I think. Been through a lot."

From what she heard, anyway.

"She's a good kid," Wyatt agreed with a nod. "Saved my life in the arena. Comin' here, helpin' her celebrate's the least I could do."

"No kidding?" Jeez. Ellie really was able to stay a decent person in the Games. That was commendable.

"That's pretty cool. Met her in the Arena too, and we just clicked."

He smiled again then, a small, gentle thing.

"She's got quite the knack for that," he said. "'Clickin'' with people."

He slanted Mindy a look.

"She save yer life too?"

"Yeah," Mindy agreed. "Got some scars too though. Her world sounds pretty rough."

She shook her head. "Nah, we were both starving at the same time though. Somehow we bonded because of that. I was killed later, helped along by this black haired bitch. You might have seen her. Has these intense, like, golden eyes."

Wyatt's eyes narrowed for a moment, thinking over the description Mindy gave and trying to match it up with women he'd met. Hair sounded like Eva's... but not the eyes, and while he'd said she could be a hard nut, he wasn't sure he'd use the word bitch.

"Don't ring any bells," he said finally with a small shake of his head. "But if she's a tribute, 'spose it's only a matter of time. We all end up in the same place."

"She's a mentor," Mindy said, looking more than a little irritated. "Did my homework, just because I was curious who left me to die. Goes by Azula. Ring any bells now?"

The corners of his eyes tightened at that, at the idea of her - of anyone really - being left to die. He'd even made sure Aunamee, as little as he'd deserved it, was dead, before he'd left him.

"No," he shook his head again, "I ain't met a lot of the old mentors. Not outside my district."

But he'd be sure to keep an eye out for her now.

"Lucky then," Mindy said. "I thin you could take her though. She's a good fighter, seen her in the training rooms a few times. But I still go more than she does. Kinda lives to talk down to you. Talk to her a few minutes and you can see the face and the words of the Capitol like a mirror."

Wyatt snorted, weight shifting on his heels.

"Sounds like a peach."

He could understand the old tributes wanting to protect themselves by playing along. They'd been children once, forced into these games when death was far more permanent. They'd had a lot more to loose....

But that didn't mean he had to enjoy having the Capitol's lies rubbed in his face.

"I'll keep that in mind, if an' when I bump into her."

"Yeah, one that sat and rotted in the sun," she said. "I owe her a beat down I can't even do though, since she's a goddamn mentor. Which she loves reminding me of, and apparently wonders why I took it so personal."

She got it was the games, it was still how she did it that pissed her off. She'd at least have more respect for her if she'd killed her face to face.

"That propaganda goes a long way, and probably brings out the worse in people."

"Some of 'em believe it," Wyatt mused, brow furrowed into a thoughtful wrinkle. "Some of 'em are jus' scared. Used to be a whole different game for them."

He sighed a breath through his nose.

"But that don't make it pleasant, any way ya slice it."

"Still learning," she reminded him. "The only thing that I know for sure about the games before was that it was more of a district thing, with only the children. Technically, shouldn't people be more relieved their own children aren't being offered up for the Games?"

He'd been here so long now, he forgot sometimes, that others hadn't. Just how new everything could really be.

"Two kids, from each of the twelve districts," he clarified. "A boy an' a girl. Used to be a yearly thing, the kids chosen at random by lot. Not long after I got here, they gave us all a lesson on what the games were 'sposed to mean. 'Parently there was civil war some time ago an' the districts lost. The Games were the Capitol's way of remindin' 'em."

Of never letting them forget where the power was. That there was nothin' they could do, but watch their children be snatched year after year.

"They were more permanent then. Before us, nobody came back."

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