Joel (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aintyourdad) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thecapitol2014-03-02 01:22 pm
aintyourdad) wrote in thecapitol2014-03-02 01:22 pm
Entry tags:
i've seen more places than i can name; OPEN;
Who| Joel and Open!
What| Joel is figuring things out, his first week in the Capitol. Possibly checking in on some people, and bumping into new ones!
Where| Various locations - see the open starters for details.
When| The last week or so of the arena, leading up to the crowning.
Warnings/Notes| Maybe some cussing. The thread with Hawkeye will undoubtedly include descriptions of gore, child death, body horror and general brutality. Also drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
[1. D8 kitchen]
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, before the world went to hell, Joel had been a pretty normal guy. A hard-working, single dad, even. One who did normal things, like errand running, doctor appointments, soccer games.
He'd even, sometimes, cooked an actual meal. He was never a gourmet chef, of course, but out of necessity - being a single parent - and also partly because he just liked himself a good chili sometimes, he'd picked up a few things here and there. Now, after twenty years of scrounging and scavenging and - if he was lucky - cooking over a campfire, he found himself presented with a large, gleaming, state-of-the-art, fully-stocked kitchen. And plenty of leisure time to mess around with it.
Right now, he was mostly just digging around in drawers and cupboards, seeing what-all they had, matching it up with his memories when he could, and sometimes just pulling something out and staring at it in confusion. What the hell is that even used for?
[2. D8 suite]
Sleeping was never one of Joel's strong suits. Sleeping for eight hours at a time, on a big, soft bed? It just wasn't going to happen. He was too, too used to sleeping on the hard cold ground, in short, bite-sized chunks, plagued with nightmares to even contemplate sleeping through a whole night. Tonight, it was worse even than usual, only his second or third in the Capitol since dying in the arena, anyway, and Joel got up out of the nest of blankets he'd made on the floor to stretch his legs.
On entering the common room, he spotted the eerily familiar blue glow of a television screen - eerie, because it had been so long since such a thing had existed in his world, and familiar because it had been so ubiquitous in his life before the outbreak. On the screen, even this late at night, is coverage of the arena. It takes him a moment to work out what it is - a highlight reel, recapping some of the more dramatic moments of the past several weeks.
When his own face appeared on the screen, he froze, tensing up, unable to look away as Ellie's death was replayed in front of him like a movie. His fists clenched tightly and his face became hard as stone.
[3. A coffee shop]
Joel mostly found the Capitol distasteful. Too many people, on the whole, and all of them dressed ridiculously. And they stared at him, like he was some kind of circus freak. Like he was the weird one. But getting the lay of the land was old habit for him, and he knew at some point he was going to have to leave the main Tribute center again - it was better to know the major landmarks, at least, no matter how nervous the crowds of people made him.
Anyone watching him would just see an older man, shoulders tense and slightly hunched - at least, until he caught a whiff of something he never thought he would smell again. Coffee.
Goddamn, but that was coffee. Words could not describe how much he had missed coffee over the years - one of the few vices he'd had, before the outbreak. And now here it was, a goddamn coffee shop, right on the corner of a bustling intersection, like some kind of miracle, like an oasis in the desert. Joel ducked inside, overwhelmed with the smell. He was going to get him some fucking coffee.
[4. Tribute training center]
Joel never in his life did anything like training. Maybe that was why this place fascinated him - this clean, sterile place for people to just, what? Throw knives at targets for a while? Do workout routines? Oh sure, he remembered gyms, fitness centers, places where people used to go to exercise back when running and hiding and killing wasn't something most people had to do on an everyday basis.
But standing around, practicing different ways of killing people? To be able to do it better the next time? It kind of blew his mind. He ran a rough hand over some of the equipment, like he was trying to figure it out. Figure out how it might be helpful to anyone.
What| Joel is figuring things out, his first week in the Capitol. Possibly checking in on some people, and bumping into new ones!
Where| Various locations - see the open starters for details.
When| The last week or so of the arena, leading up to the crowning.
Warnings/Notes| Maybe some cussing. The thread with Hawkeye will undoubtedly include descriptions of gore, child death, body horror and general brutality. Also drinking copious amounts of alcohol.
[1. D8 kitchen]
Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, before the world went to hell, Joel had been a pretty normal guy. A hard-working, single dad, even. One who did normal things, like errand running, doctor appointments, soccer games.
He'd even, sometimes, cooked an actual meal. He was never a gourmet chef, of course, but out of necessity - being a single parent - and also partly because he just liked himself a good chili sometimes, he'd picked up a few things here and there. Now, after twenty years of scrounging and scavenging and - if he was lucky - cooking over a campfire, he found himself presented with a large, gleaming, state-of-the-art, fully-stocked kitchen. And plenty of leisure time to mess around with it.
Right now, he was mostly just digging around in drawers and cupboards, seeing what-all they had, matching it up with his memories when he could, and sometimes just pulling something out and staring at it in confusion. What the hell is that even used for?
[2. D8 suite]
Sleeping was never one of Joel's strong suits. Sleeping for eight hours at a time, on a big, soft bed? It just wasn't going to happen. He was too, too used to sleeping on the hard cold ground, in short, bite-sized chunks, plagued with nightmares to even contemplate sleeping through a whole night. Tonight, it was worse even than usual, only his second or third in the Capitol since dying in the arena, anyway, and Joel got up out of the nest of blankets he'd made on the floor to stretch his legs.
On entering the common room, he spotted the eerily familiar blue glow of a television screen - eerie, because it had been so long since such a thing had existed in his world, and familiar because it had been so ubiquitous in his life before the outbreak. On the screen, even this late at night, is coverage of the arena. It takes him a moment to work out what it is - a highlight reel, recapping some of the more dramatic moments of the past several weeks.
When his own face appeared on the screen, he froze, tensing up, unable to look away as Ellie's death was replayed in front of him like a movie. His fists clenched tightly and his face became hard as stone.
[3. A coffee shop]
Joel mostly found the Capitol distasteful. Too many people, on the whole, and all of them dressed ridiculously. And they stared at him, like he was some kind of circus freak. Like he was the weird one. But getting the lay of the land was old habit for him, and he knew at some point he was going to have to leave the main Tribute center again - it was better to know the major landmarks, at least, no matter how nervous the crowds of people made him.
Anyone watching him would just see an older man, shoulders tense and slightly hunched - at least, until he caught a whiff of something he never thought he would smell again. Coffee.
Goddamn, but that was coffee. Words could not describe how much he had missed coffee over the years - one of the few vices he'd had, before the outbreak. And now here it was, a goddamn coffee shop, right on the corner of a bustling intersection, like some kind of miracle, like an oasis in the desert. Joel ducked inside, overwhelmed with the smell. He was going to get him some fucking coffee.
[4. Tribute training center]
Joel never in his life did anything like training. Maybe that was why this place fascinated him - this clean, sterile place for people to just, what? Throw knives at targets for a while? Do workout routines? Oh sure, he remembered gyms, fitness centers, places where people used to go to exercise back when running and hiding and killing wasn't something most people had to do on an everyday basis.
But standing around, practicing different ways of killing people? To be able to do it better the next time? It kind of blew his mind. He ran a rough hand over some of the equipment, like he was trying to figure it out. Figure out how it might be helpful to anyone.
no subject
Red flashed, a flare behind the lenses of the glasses, there and gone.
"And 'living it' hardly means anything. Billions fought and died without ever understanding why and how the dead had come to scratch at their door."
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"Well now, that's certainly a refreshing approach."
(If only Project Alice had believed the same, how simple it would have been, how quickly they could have cleaned the whole mess up....)
"But there is something to be said for knowing thine enemy. You can't expect to fight back, to cure it, unless you know how it operates."
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Oh, well. What was done was done.
"True enough," he mused. "I don't expect any of us will ever seen our home universes again -- we'll just our have to hope our hosts are wise enough to leave our problems there."
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It was a skybox. The best seats in the house.
"If it wasn't enough to stop them the last time, what makes you think it will now?"
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"What d'you mean, last time? Have they brought it here before?"
He couldn't imagine that was possible - this place had clearly never seen the ravages of the cordyceps.
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Eyebrow settling again, he turned and began to make his way to one of the many racks of gleaming weapons. He didn't look back, clearly expecting Joel to fall in.
"The last time it was the xenomorph. A creature roughly eight feet tall; fast, strong, wickedly smart. Two sets of teeth, acidic blood -- they had no hope of controlling it and predictably it escaped into the tunnels beneath the city and began to breed."
He picked up a knife, sized it for a moment, then began to clean under his nails, leaning an idle hip against the rack as he turned back to Joel.
"After it reduced a number of peacekeeper detachments to bloody ribbons, the tributes were sent in to save the day." He glanced up over his glasses, a flash of red and gold. "The death toll was quite high."
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It was just practical. They had the technology to bring people in from other worlds, people no one in this world would care about on a personal level. Off-world tributes would be forever isolated and alienated from the natives - and that much easier to write off, to treat as if they weren't real. The natives would have their entertainment, and would have no reason to get mad at the people in charge.
It wasn't altruistic at all.
"Ellie said somethin' about aliens," Joel said thoughtfully, almost to himself, as he followed the other man. His eyes scanned the knife racks - he wasn't much of a knife guy, truth be told, preferring disposable shivs when he needed a blade. "But they can bring people back from the dead. If they lost someone important, they'd probably just bring 'em back. The problem with the cordyceps infection is, it don't kill you. Not really, not for a long, long time."
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He trailed off pointedly, blond head tipping as he let the moment hang, giving it time to sink in.
"It's non-existent. Those who fell in the attack were not brought back to us, tribute or citizen."
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"But all the more reason for 'em not to bring the cordyceps here. Aside from the fact that infected don't die for a long time. The fungus itself spreads like crazy. Once it was here, there'd be no gettin' rid of it. The arena shit would be over, because it'd be one neverending arena, for everyone, forever."
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The knife pulled under his thumbnail, a slow, steady stroke.
"And the Capitol has made no secret of toying with the genes of tributes."
He remembered quite clearly, before falling into the dream glitch that Flickerman had told it was Aunamee's DNA that made the technology possible. Some wet part of the man greasing the Capitol's wheels.
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Joel shrugged. As far as he knew, there was no genetic toying involved with the infection. It was simply a fungus that grew, and grew, and grew. And spread itself, every which way.
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He sounded almost proud, speaking of it. Like a parent might, in speaking of a child's shiny gold star on a exam.
"Only two are known to have survived infection. Myself and another, a woman. The virus changed us, made us more. R, clearly, was not as lucky, but even so, he remains a special case of his own rate. Whether that's due to some genetic uniqueness on his part, or perhaps some natural evolution of the virus, I haven't been able to determine."
The Capitol hadn't been forthcoming with the tools and space necessary to puzzle it out.
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It was sick.
"So what you're sayin' is, they bring in exceptional types - the ones who can still think, who probably won't go spreadin' what they got unintentionally. Which kinda proves my point."
Like hell would he add Ellie to Wesker's list of super special infected survivors. Like hell.
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He finished with one hand and paused, checking his work before turning the whole of his attention onto to Joel.
"As I said, the Capitol has admitted to experimenting with tribute DNA. Their latest technology - a means of controlling the dreams of others - was crafted using genetic material from Aunamee."
And somehow Wesker imagined Joel would enjoy being injected with it just about as much as Wesker himself did.
"One can only guess what they're doing with mine, or R's, any of the others they've brought through."
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"How interesting," he drawled, sounding amused. "You doubt your return to the old world with one breath, and then hold yourself separate from the new with the next." His mouth twitched. "It must be exhausting."
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Apparently pleased with his handiwork, he returned to the blade the row with the others and leaned a hip against the table, muscled arms folding over his chest.
"You do realize, of course, that doesn't include the majority of your fellow tributes. We hardly asked to be here either."
It wasn't that Wesker honestly gave a damn what happened to his fellow slaves, so much as that he honestly loathed the Capitol for their gall.
And that building up a world to suit his liking was so much easier than rebuilding a broken one.
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"Unless you got somethin' to say to me that ain't statin' the obvious, I'll leave you to it."
The point, of course, was that he didn't care. He didn't have the emotional wherewithal to care about a bunch of strangers from other places, not when he had Ellie to worry about. Not when losing her would be so devastating. He'd lost enough for one lifetime. Or two, for that matter.
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Wesker had a knack for things like that.
"I'm sure burying one's head in the sand will work so much better here."