thecapitol | It was a rainbow coalition of dancing [OPEN]

There is a small pile of plastic pieces on the D12 coffee table, next to a cup of tea. The Signless sits on one of the couches, carefully arranging them: a base, arms (upper arms, lower arms, hands), legs (thighs, calves, feet), torso (upper and lower halves), head. His own head, with a surprisingly pleased expression considering the main selling point of the figure is that it comes dismembered. Or, as the packing put it, 'some assembly required'. It also comes with a helpful diagram for assembly, but who ever looks at those? He's going to do this blind.

Part of being a Good Tribute is being visible, so the Signless is going out of his way not to just spend most of his time in the District 12 Suites. Instead he's settled himself in the main lounge and is flipping through a Capitol magazine. He's taken well to reading English after so long surrounded by it. After all, it's very similar to Alternian, albeit with different symbols flipped upside-down and backwards. He's found that if he reads carefully he doesn't have much trouble even with the harder words.

The concepts, though, are still often foreign to him. And what better way to learn than to ask? If he doesn't understand, surely someone else will.

"Excuse me. Do you have a second to explain something?"

One of the problems with being a tribute in the Neverending Quell, the Signless has found, is losing any and all training benefits every time he dies. The fighting style Karkat's been trying to teach him since they first started training together requires a certain posture and a certain flexibility that can't be learned well in the time between arenas, no matter how much Karkat yells, and being sent back to square one every death is starting to get frustrating.

With that in mind, he's decided to branch out a little in preparation for the next Games. The station for any weapon that looks even a little bit as though it could be used to fight defensively is going to get a visit from him sometime during the week, especially if someone else is already practicing there -- he's the first to admit he is completely abysmal at handling weapons (as one would expect from a lifelong pacifist). Having someone else around to perhaps give pointers can only help. It is pretty obvious to anyone who looks at him for more than a few seconds that he's struggling and has no idea where to start.

[I'm not specifying weapon, so as not to exclude characters who wouldn't use a particular type -- he's pretty much trying anything that could even remotely be used for defensive purposes, so go ahead and choose whatever your character would be likely to be practicing!]

Passing through on his way to...somewhere, Julian pauses when he's addressed by a man who...well, frankly looks like an older version of Kankri. The resemblance is rather striking.

But he doesn't draw attention to it, because he's annoyed enough by the constant comparisons to Timaeus that he garners that he doesn't want to inflict that on anyone else.

"I can certainly try."

Albert too is making an attempt at being a 'good' tribute, though he has reservations about such. Still, even if he'd prefer it, he can't be attached to Jet constantly and the main lounge, he's found, is a good place to people watch and get at least marginally acquainted with other tributes. That and he can peruse the magazines himself, seeing how this society runs.

He's not much of a fan but it's unfortunately pertinent information.

The alien (this one and the sort of feline girl who'd helped him in the arena, they have to be aliens, right?) doesn't surprise him by appearance so much as willingness to initiate a conversation. He's been reticent to do so himself. Still, they're not trying to kill each other here, so it's not a bad idea to be nice.

He puts his own magazine aside and manages a guarded but polite smile as he turns his white eyes to his grey-skinned company. "Certainly. How can I help you?"

"Thank you. Now, I realize that human culture is very different from my own and this is probably just due to wildly different norms, but..."

He holds up the magazine so Julian can inspect it. The particular page is a spread speculating on whether or not a particular Capitol celebrity is pregnant, complete with several paragraphs detailing potential clues and photos with red circles and question marks around her belly.

"It seems strange to be this invested in someone else's hypothetical parasitic young."

Well, that was hardly what he was expecting.

Julian blinks as he takes in the page--instantly burned into his mind irrevocably, damn his photographic memory--and sighs internally. Really, he didn't know what else he was expecting.

"An embryo is not a parasite, for one. And I can hardly say. Gossip, I suppose. People with not enough to chat about in their own lives tend to find things to concern themselves with in others."

Kankri asked the Avoxes if they could take him to see Signless, him not knowing where everyone is just yet. He's hoping to at least get to talk over what happened - what's happening now - this whole situation. Signless seems good at talking to people about those kinds of things. He even thoughtfully brings snacks, little chocolate figures and medallions - no baked goods, he is done with pastries for a bit.

It's a rude shock when he sees what Signless is doing. He averts his eyes, walks over, and drops the bag of sweets on the table before flopping next to Signless. "I hope you know that's entirely morbid," he mumbles.

Carlos recognizes the gray skin and candy-corn horns of a troll, though the only one he's spoken with so far is Nepeta. Currently, Carlos is on his way back to the D10 rooms after a long day of going through the city's shopping center looking for parts for machines, and so he's pretty tired. However, Carlos was never too tired to examine something interesting, and aliens were always interesting.

"Well...sure," he said. "Now, being that I am a scientist, there are some things I'm not qualified to talk about, like art, personal spirituality, and fashion, but I'll do my best to answer any questions you have."

The Signless figures that, well, who do the tributes have if not each other? It's easy to foster discord and discourage solidarity, but he doesn't want to personally participate in that sort of strategy. That's not really his style, even with his newfound plan to be a more model tribute.

With that in mind, he holds the magazine out for Albert to inspect, open to a specific page. It's an advertisement for hair removal, featuring a silky-smooth disembodied leg (as they often do).

"I was under the impression that the whole point of being a mammal was having hair. Especially considering how cold it's been, it seems strange to want to remove it."

"A little, yes. I assume it's an attempt to throw me off-balance by making light of something traumatic, which is something they do often enough that I've resolved not to let it affect me."

He snaps the torso together, then sets it aside in favor of taking a supremely unconcerned sip of tea.

"Well. This isn't exactly about fashion, I don't think," he says, and holds out the magazine for inspection. It's an ad for a hair dye, which isn't really strange in itself. He knows that humans come with a wide variety of hair colors and enjoy changing their hair color as a form of personal expression, it would be impossible not to gather that much after prolonged Capitol living. It's mostly that this particular dye is marketed specifically as for 'hiding graying', and he has no idea what that is supposed to be. Troll hair is black from hatching to death.

"Is there something undesirable specifically about gray hair? Is hair changing color on its own a mark of some kind of abnormality?"

Kankri makes a grumpy noise as he presses his face against the cushions. "I have no idea what's going on in their heads. So you got back all right? I hadn't seen you or Karkat yet so I confess, I was a little worried."

"Oh." He frowns. "I was lead to believe --"

And then the Signless realizes the person who explained human reproduction to him was Cuthbert Allgood and decides that maybe it's not that unlikely that he was, in fact, misinformed.

"But that does make sense. Is that also the reason it's so imperative to know who contributed the genetic material necessary? Just bored curiosity?"

Edited 2014-03-06 06:15 (UTC)

"No worse for wear than usual," he says. The only change from his usual revival was the addition of a stop by the stylists to have his teeth and horns re-sharpened. It looks like that's going to be a long-term cosmetic change, at least until Cinna decides on something new.

"I'm sorry to have worried you, on top of everything you had to deal with in the Arena."

He delicately steps around mentioning exactly what he means. There was a lot that happened, most of which he's only seen now that he's been able to watch the recaps. If Kankri wants to talk about it, he can decide for himself what 'it' is.

"That's right. Unless you happen to be a physician, but even then it's really not necessary to know. Unless you're dealing with an inter-species pregnancy, that can get complicated, and in that case it's important to know at least the species of the father."

Julian shrugs, glancing at the tabloid again. He's pretty sure the general populace of the Capitol don't have this woman's health in mind.

"Not the case here, I'm sure. So yes--bored curiosity."

Carlos takes the magazine and studies it for a moment from behind his glasses. --gives your hair uniform color-- he reads.

"Oh, that?" Carlos says with easy confidence, looking back up. "Human hair turns gray when we get older. I'm nearly middle-aged, so as you can see, I have few gray hairs myself." He points to one of his temples with a free hand, where, true to his word, grows a gray streak. "I'll only get more with time. I don't mind it, but some people do. They want to look young, so they hide the fact that they're going gray with hair dye."

He hands the magazine cheerfully back to the troll.

"It wasn't your fault," Kankri tells him softly, looking up from his couch haven. He hugs a pillow close instead. "It would be silly to blame you for some crazy human hunting down redbloods."

He lets out a soft sigh. "There was a lot that happened. But I, um...what do you think of Venus?" He's a little anxious about what he's been wanting to ask Signless about.

That's not a question Albert had expected, but it makes sense that someone outside of the Human race wouldn't understand a cultural beauty practice. It also grants him some insight into the questioner; if he referred to them as mammals, what sort of physiology does he have instead?

"It's a beauty practice, purely for aesthetic reasons. When Humans first evolved, it was from primates who were covered in hair but as millennia passed and we mastered tools and clothing as a species, having less body hair became generally a more desirable trait. Modern Humans don't usually grow enough hair to function as successful insulation so it really serves no purpose any longer." He pauses, regarding the man who asked for a moment as he thinks. "May I ask you something?"

Marius is not a very self-aware person, but even he realizes that tripping over a net due to mis-swinging a trident is a sign of inadequacy in said weapons.

Come to think of it, he's not certain what had gotten into him when he decided to practice with these, apart from viewing the net as a way to both protect Cosette and immobilize an attacker without killing or wounding them. But after the third time the net tangles around his arms he concludes without doubt that he lacks the makings of an exemplary Retiarius. Besides, he would not have wanted to use the trident, anyway.

He is extracting his arm out of the net, trident resting against the impenetrable wall of the training center, when he spots Signless from the corner of his eye. He pauses and glances at him, arm still half-tangled in coarse, white rope, and manages a curt nod, a sudden embarrassment painting his freckled cheeks a light shade of pink.

The Psiioniic has been doing remarkably well at avoiding Signless. Mostly by choice, but it's also surprisingly easy to hide from someone when there's close to a hundred people in the same building. Must be like what living in a hivestem is like, people just stacked on top of each other because it's more efficient that way.

So, he hasn't seen the younger troll much. (And that's a weird thought - the Signless, younger than him, but it's one he pushes away every time it comes up.) And when he does seem him, he does his best to slip into another crowd. It's just...It's just strange to see the Signless, and even if the bitterness and anger he feels towards the man is starting to fade, seeing him still leaves him with a sour taste in his mouth and an uneasy feeling in his gut. It would take a lot for him to approach the Signless, something really out of the ordinary, and of course the Capitol is going to prove to him again that humans are really fucking weird.

"What the fuck ith going on with your leggingth?!"

Why are you wearing something with your face on it? What has happened to the world.

It's been quite some time of mutual avoidance, then. His general way of dealing with the Psiioniic being in his vicinity is to attempt to be as far away from him as possible while pretending he is just a very skinny, very yellow patch of air. So far it's worked well, in part (he assumes) because the Psiioniic is just as uninterested in interaction as he is.

But now here he is, interacting, and it takes the Signless a few seconds to even process what he actually said. He looks down at his leggings and oh, right. Those.

On the left leg of his leggings is a lovingly-rendered, red-tinted portrait of himself, and on the right is a similar one of the Disciple in her trademark green. It's clear they're supposed to be artistic and possibly romantic but mostly they're just kind of unsettling.

"I honestly couldn't tell you. I've stopped trying to understand everything the Capitol thinks is fashionable."

The Signless's rationale in heading for the tridents is that he has at least a little secondhand experience through his memories of Meenah. This is a hopelessly flimsy rationale, but it's something. He knows at least how they're held, and he knows in general what fighting with one should look like, but making it actually do the thing is proving difficult.

When Marius catches his eye he's glad for an excuse to set the weapon aside.

"Would you like some help? I'll probably be better at untangling that net than I am at using this culling fork."

He nods along as Albert explains. If he understands correctly, clothing took on the function body hair would have served, so humans now take steps to eliminate body hair because they find being hairless more aesthetically pleasing and it's not necessary anyway. Sensible.

"Oh, certainly. You were kind enough to answer my question, it's only fair I return the favor."

"Pardon if this is too prying but you have hair, yet you implied you're not a mammal. May I ask what you are in that case?" He's trying very hard to be polite but his curiosity has the best of him. Not that aliens are a new idea but non mammals with hair definitely is. The closest he can think of on Earth are some insects and arachnids that have hair-like growths. Maybe he's insectoid? Or maybe Albert's thinking too hard about this. He's no scientist, it could be his cursory knowledge of what classifies a mammal or not is all wrong.

Who even knows.

It was a rainbow coalition of dancing [OPEN]

D12 Lounge

Main Lounge

Training Center

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BONUS FACELEGS ACTION

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