arrival;

[emptytrousers]

Who | Kili and anyone in the District 7 suites!
What | SURPRISE NEW SUITEMATE! Possibly barging right into your room. Also general confusion about technology.
Where | The Capitol, District 7 Suites
When | Uhhhh sometime between post-tour and the start of the arena.
Warnings/Notes | dwarves are very upsetting.


A. Kili arrives and is a little shit.

Despite having some form of explanation of what they're doing here in the Capitol, or what he's doing there specifically, Kili is still carrying about by the time he's up in the District 7 Suites. Between the questions he's trying to ask and being almost dragged along, once the door closed, there's not much decrease in the sheer amount of noise he's making.

"You didn't say what this... card is for!" He calls after them, looking at the strange little thing in his hand.

He weighs it on his palm and frowns at it. Certainly not metal, but it seems to have his name on it and a string of numbers engraved in it, which puzzles him. Credit card. And then he turns around and sees the rest of the entryway and can't help but balk at the sheer amount of glass and open space. This was certainly not home by any standard. His gaze immediately goes to the nearest piece of gleaming metal and don't mind him as he tries to pry it off the wall.


B. Kili is barging into your room whoops.
While he's exploring around the suites, Kili has little mind for the fact that people's private areas might be behind those closed doors. He makes a bit of noise as he moves about, trying to process everything he's seen so far. The first couple doors don't seem to lead him everywhere but this one, he has a good feeling about.

So here he is, pushing your door open, glancing around at your room, nevermind him.

Comments

[celebrityskinned]

Venus is actually quite used to people barging around through District Five, given that she lives with Shepard (an asshole of the highest caliber), Enjolras (social skills of a wet rag), and Initiate (noisy, crude, rude, and eight feet tall). The other residents of the District may as well not even exist compared to all the noise the latter makes.

So Venus barely even looks up when Kili wanders in, and actually double-takes to see that he's a new guy when she doesn't recognize his shoes. She's sprawled out on the couch reading something called Utopia, which she's finding excruciatingly dull, and sipping a straw to a soda can.

"Whoa, new roommate? Again? They're just pumping you guys out. It's getting crowded."

[emptytrousers]

Kili's manage to find his way around the elevators, pressing buttons at random and marveling when the carriage around him moves with such ease. This must be some kind of magic; he knew no dwarven mechanism that could do such a thing. So, soon enough he's in other districts and he's doing much the same as before, barging into rooms with little mind to who might be in them.

When he pushes into Venus's, he doesn't mind the double take because he'd been getting weirder reactions.

"Must not care how crowded it gets," he furrows his eyebrows as he goes about casually looking behind her door and otherwise taking in how her room looks. Hmm. "But dwarves don't seem a very popular choice."

He hasn't seen any of the others of the company or even anyone close to his height yet.

[celebrityskinned]

"Is that the politically correct term now?" She sets her book aside and swings her legs off the couch. Her toenails are painted a festive orange, and she's wearing flip-flops. "Come on in, you sound new. I'm good at giving the run-down on this place, because I actually understand like, electricity and stuff."

She gets up and heads over for her mini-fridge, parked beneath a desk she rarely, if ever, uses. "You want a drink?"

[emptytrousers]

Raising an eyebrow at 'politically correct,' Kili doesn't mind the extra help, really. He could use it when it came to things like the fridge.

"They've taken my waterskin," he grumbles, shaking his head for a moment before, "Do you have ale here?"

He wouldn't even care if it was warm. Just ale would be amazing.

[celebrityskinned]

"Ale?" Venus pulls a confused face and brings a bottle of beer from her fridge. "Uh, closest I got is one of those low-calorie beers. Turns out I don't really have much taste for alcohol, though, so I got no idea if it's good. You can sit down if you want."

She hands it over and sits down on her bed. "Pretty sure if you ask your stylist to go with the rough and rugged look, they'll give you a waterskin back. What's your name, stranger?"

[emptytrousers]

Well he doesn't know what these 'calories' are, but maybe it's some sort of spice. Kili accepts it with a shrug and a smile, curiously investigating the bottle. It's cold. Who drank ale cold? Such things were unheard of in Arda. Perhaps this was some sort of sorcery of the Capitol.

Regardless, he pries the cap of and takes a swig of it, furrowing his eyebrows at the taste. It's almost water, really.

"Kili," he replies, offering a deep bow like he'd been taught. "At your service."

He pauses for just a beat before asking the most important question, "And where do I get more of this low-calry beer?"

[celebrityskinned]

"Ask any of the silent people in white outfits you see around. They're forced to serve our every need, whether or not we think that's creepy." Venus shrugs her shoulders and twists her mouth to the side as if she generally falls into the latter camp.

In response to the bow, she curtsies. "Venus Dee Milo, at yours. I've done a few of these Games so I know my way around the place."

[emptytrousers]

Kili takes another swig of the beer and nods. He'd heard about the avoxes today already, but he doesn't particularly like the way they seem to linger. Or how silent they are. For a chatty dwarf, it's one of the worse fates he can imagine.

"How many have you fought in?" He asks out of curiosity.

[celebrityskinned]

"Two. Going on three, so, you know, not a veteran like some of the people here, but enough to know what's going on." She nods her head. "It's not that bad, honestly. Some people here are such drama queens about it."

She grabs a diet soda from her fridge and sticks a straw in it.

[emptytrousers]

She's the first person he's talked to who has made him feel better about this whole Arena thing. They couldn't seriously be expecting them to fight to horrific deaths, right? Venus's casual attitude made him feel magnitudes better about the whole thing.

He nods slowly, even smiling a little because it's easier to talk about the threat of the Arena like it's no big deal. "Everyone talks about it in hushed voices. Very dramatic."

[celebrityskinned]

Venus rolls her eyes and tucks her feet up on the bed. "Of course they do. It's all a matter of perspective, though. I've died twice and I'm not throwing a fit about it."

She stretches her arms and cracks her neck. "It's rough. It hurts. But they make up for it with how they treat you here."

[emptytrousers]

Kili sighs with relief at Venus's words. All those whispers and dark words were just there to get him ramped up, people placed to make him feel nervous about the Arena. Death isn't permanent and from what he's heard, it can be a party when the whole death thing wears off. Why not enjoy his time here?

"Are there any taverns around here?" He figures he might as well find the most important establishments.

A.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

The noise draws her out of her room, not sure what on earth is going on. Between the fires last week and this new bout of noise, she is not sure what to think of their district. Oh--this person was...prying metal off the walls. She watches him silently for a few minutes and raises both eyebrows. Human perhaps, but shorter than most of them. And obviously new if his reaction to all these things is to try to steal the metal.

"It won't do any good, it's not worth anything? Or rather, that card is worth more than the metal."

[emptytrousers]

Kili glances up from his task when he hears a voice behind him, his hands still wrapped around what he's decided to be his prize. The first thing he notices is the grey skin, but otherwise she doesn't look like any orc he's ever seen before. After she doesn't attack him, he figures it might be safe. After all, one of the attendants had clarified that the Games, as they were called, hadn't started for this cycle yet. Maybe that was true after all.

"The card?" He pulls it from his pocket, frowning down at it before he weighs it in his hand again. No, there's no way. "Is it made out of gold?"

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

She holds up a hand and digs out her own card, showing it off for a moment before stowing it back away. She'd kneel but she's hardly much taller than him. Comforting gestures might just come off condescending at this point.

"It is sort of like a tab at a bar? Only it automatically pays it for you if you have enough money. Something like that. We don't have these things on Alternia either and if you're new, you're owing the money instead of paying for it outright. But you don't need it for anything in the Tribute Center."

She pauses, "How new are you?"

[emptytrousers]

He doesn't mind the height differences among other races most of the time, but pats on the head would certainly not go over well. He's a warrior, not a pet. Regardless, he looks at her card then his as she explains it, curiously bending his this way and that.

" 've just arrived," he replies, not bothering to keep it a secret. "Do they not have coins?"

But his attention turns back to the metal bearings on the wall he'd just been trying to remove. He's sure he can smith it into something else, then he could have some coppers to actually pay for things. The idea of owing money of any kind in such a strange place doesn't sound like a good idea.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"I don't really know, I suppose they might but any money you might have would never be given to you in coins. Not that we get any before our Arenas. And even then, it's only if you actually kill."

She can't keep the distaste out of her voice. After a moment, she follows his gaze to the wall and frowns, "Please leave the wall alone. I'm sure you'll just get an Avox in trouble and I really don't want them to be in trouble."

[emptytrousers]

Only if you actually kill. It's hard to hear anything after that and it takes Kili a long beat before he replies. Of course, he's killed orcs before, monsters, evil things, but most of the people he'd seen so far were human. Or at least mostly looked like it, even if their skin was dyed green or their hair a horrible purple color. In fact, the Disciple is the strangest person he's seen so far.

"What's an Avox?" Because he may have missed some of that introductory information in the elevator (read: most of it).

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"An Avox is a servant. All the servants. They had their tongues cut out--or something like that. So they can't speak. They only take care of us and it's no use trying to make them speak or write to you. They aren't allowed to. I don't like to make a mess or a fuss, I don't want them punished for something I do."

It's softer that she explains why, "They were enemies of the people here. The Capitol. Silenced. And if you make enough fuss, they simply kill you outright. No coming back from Arenas."

[emptytrousers]

Kili listens with a newly somber expression. Despite thinking the Games themselves had to be some kind of joke, there's not much to be found amusing at getting one's tongue cut out or otherwise killed if they simply didn't obey the Capitol.

"They've said we're all going to be killed anyway," he replies anyway, scuffing his boots against the floor without realizing that this also isn't making any of the Avoxes' lives easier.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"We die in the Arena. I had my throat slit. My matesprit killed himself to get away from the horror forced upon him. But I'm here again and so is he. We come back because we're interesting. In our case, we're lovers forced to fight. He was forced to mercykill two dear friends. We were 'fun to watch'."

She shrugs, her pain obvious though she does not speak it, "You may come back, you may not. But for most of us, we die and come back. So we can do it again in a perigree."

[emptytrousers]

It's almost like listening to Balin tell the story of the Battle at Azanulbizar, of just how Thorin had stepped into his role as exiled King Under the Mountain, but with less happy endings. Sure, they were both alive again, but at the cost of having to suffer and die again. If nothing else, it's the thought of dying not once but several times that scares Kili.

"Oh," he says, despite it being an absolute understatement to the pain she's speaking about. "Has anyone gotten out of this place alive?"

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

She shrugs, not sure if he means back home or simply here. Is living here really living or is it simply just existing to survive. Really she's not sure what she'd do if she won. Hate it all the way.

"If you win, you can live. But if you win, you'll never leave. You have to be paraded, celebrated, living here as a Victor. Mentoring the new Tributes they bring in to take your place."

B! catching him in the middle of property damage, go you.

[asklepian]

The train ride had been terribly long, cramped, and Julian was still an emotional mess from his experiences in the Districts themselves--the people thanking him for what he was doing. Simply by being here.

He'd gone straight to his room and found it put back to order from where he'd left it--though it hadn't been particularly messy then, he'd left all the electronic parts he'd taken from the walls in neat order on his desk, trying to cobble together something that might work as a transmitter without any of the experience of a Starfleet engineer to help him.

Drat. He'd have to start again. Sighing, Julian started to prize the wall panel open when the door to his room came open--he whirled, pressing his back to the wall and staring in surprise.

omg julian he's telling everyone!!!!

[emptytrousers]

For a moment, Kili doesn't notice Julian there looking much like a Dwalin child with its hands stuck in the cookie jar. He's just taking in the room in a sweep of his gaze and then he sees the man standing there with what looked like half a wall worth of wires and metal either on his desk.

"Nice place you've got here," he says approvingly, not even aware of what could be going on with those bits of metal and wire. For all he knows, Julian could be making some kind of strange sculpture. Or musical instrument.