She Pulls a Razor from Her Boot [Open]

[fearisinthemind]

WHO| Penny and open
WHAT| Poisoning pigeons in the park
WHERE| A Capitol park
WHEN| Week 2 of the Arena
WARNINGS| Animal death. Also, she's a sadist torturer.

Penny doesn't see sunlight often. It isn't an avoidance thing; she just works six days a week and tends to have her servants make grocery runs for her when she isn't feeling like subjecting herself to the faces of others. She loathes smalltalk, and truly only enjoys Katurian's company these days. That he hasn't answered her phone today has put her in a foul mood, and she wafts through the park like a wisp of a thunderhead signaling a storm in contrast to the bright lighting.

An Avox, one of her personal servants, carries a bag of birdseed for her. Penny sits on the park bench (the Avox must stand) and picks out one piece at a time, holding a cup of hot coffee with one hand and occasionally meting out dead-eyed stares at passers by. Her gown is too elegant for a simple park visit, even by Capitol standards, and her slippers are perfectly clean, having been brought by the Avox in a purse and substituted for more comfortable footwear.

The first pigeon seizes up six minutes in. It flutters and tries to flap away, only to fall from a height of only a few feet and collapse to the ground. Its feathers puff, it makes little chirping sounds, and it expires. The other pigeons examine it, and then another suffers the same fate. Then another. It's not long before she and the Avox are surrounded by tiny corpses.

Penny smirks and drinks her coffee.

Comments

[revvinguptheharley]

A sigh from behind her.

"Just like one of my first dates with my Puddin."

Harley was on a stroll through the park trying to shake off her blues when she caught sight of a familiar face. She recognized the girl from the TV broadcast and couldn't help but want to know more.

[thatwasme]

One of the seizing pigeons falls back to the ground further out on the pathway leading past where Penny sits, beak open, tongue hanging out as it gasps for air. The distress it feels as it passes is a palpable thing: the confusion at how its body could so suddenly betray it expressed in chirps and the fruitless tapping of wings against stone.

Barbara takes a step back, wary of anything that acts like that in a place like the Capitol. She'd be as wary back home -- dying animals were prime carriers of disease, especially when you didn't know the cause behind their distress. She lets her eyes go wide, her mouth opening in a quiet gasp as she scans the area.

It's not the only bird suffering a similar fate. The sporadic trail leads back to one woman -- one Barbara recognizes even as she exclaims, purposefully thoughtless. "Ma'am, I think there's something wrong with the pigeons in this here park."

[savedbyasong]

Shion is bundled up warmly and walking through the park, mostly because the constant stream of footage from the arena was getting too much for him. Even though he worried whenever he wasn't watching it, like just his watching it could stop something terrible happening to Rat.

It couldn't he knew, but he still worried. So he was walking in an attempt to take his mind off such things, the park was a calm place and he could mostly avoid any staring citizens.

He rounded the corner to see a bird fall to the ground, he blinked and rushed forwards turning it over expecting to see a wound of some kind. There was nothing, then he saw the other corpses. He went over to another, it was dead as well, no wounds. A feeling of foreboding settled over him, since things being dead for no reason, in a city such as this, was probably not a good sign.

It takes him a moment to see the woman and another moment to place her face, since the last time they had spoken she had been wearing a mask. He blinked at her, "Did you see what happened?" He couldn't imagine anyone deciding to drink their drink on a bench surrounded by dead birds...