thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| Maximus and YOU, OPEN for Mingling - All District 3 will be 'Asked' to attend, but everyone else is welcome
What| Come get Combat Training from the Cyborg Gladiator
Where| The Training Center
When| Two days after the Motorcycle Races
Warnings/Notes| Nothing so far! Maybe violence, but nothing with gore since it's just training weapons.

Maximus was a regular in the training center, but today was different. Today he had set up a good portion of the hall exactly as he wanted it - a large training mat (one of the better inventions in the last few millenia), a large rack of swords, shields, and spears. He couldn't find pilla, but spears would do well enough. The day before, he'd gone around to each of the rooms in district 3 and told them to report to the training center the next day, or face consequences. He also, however, asked Wyatt to attend, and mentioned it to anyone else he thought could use some training.

It didn't really matter who showed up, he would treat them all the same.

It took more than a day to make a soldier, but perhaps at least he could begin to get some of the tributes thinking like one.

Or maybe they would start seeing the benefit of working together.

His Sabertooth Tiger, Ferox, prowled around the edge of the training mat, watching the tributes as if one of them might make a good dinner, and occasionally coming up to rub its large head against Maximus' prosthetic leg.

[OOC note: Each tribute will be greeted, have a rough assessment of their skills taken, and then given a series of instructions for training. Trainees of a similar level will be grouped together, for team activities. Feel free to either tag in for the greeting/assessment, or create an open post for other people to tag you for mutual training.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"The Arena is more a dream than a real place," Maximus tried to reassure him. "Though sometimes men fall and do not return-", his mind flashed to Javert, Morrigan, "- most of us wake from our deaths."

His prosthetic leg shifted under him as he moved, observing Joly's movements, a constant reminder that inside of the arena and out of it were two very different places.

"You can still fight your old enemies, to make new allies. A man's strength is not only in his arm."

"Indeed." Joly shuddered a bit at the thought that someday someone would not return. "Much as I was glad to be alive, something of waking there was...disconcerting, I suppose?" He mused. "I must admit that medicine has changed much. And some of the new things I woke to were a little...unnatural."

Very different places indeed. Here, Joly felt safe enough to speak of these things, to acknowledge some of what he would not dare when he was certain cameras were focused on him now.

"Some of those enemies, yes. It seems that they survive here, and in any world." Ignorance, Want, the abuses of those in power, were enemies he had striven against, as much as he had hoped to hold back pneumonia, sepsis from injuries and the dreaded cholera that had seemed to appear out of nowhere.

"That IS something of a relief. I've never...we do this for fashion at home, most of the time. Here, fighting with weapons is suddenly much more than a thing rich young men play at. That has been hard to adjust to."

"There are several doctors that treat wounds in the arenas themselves," Maximus continued. Joly talking about rich men fighting with weapons reminded him of Commodus. He wondered if it was the same - where the rich could play at war, and the poor gave their lives for it, but he did not speak those thoughts aloud.

"Regardless, it is best to learn to defend yourself, and to learn to put every talent available to you to use."

"Then that sounds well enough as something to be done." Joly mused, pausing a bit. "Though, are the cameras...is that considered acceptable by the audience?" There is no doubt it is the right thing to do, but there is a part of Joly that wants to know what he is getting into when he does this?

"At least, I wonder what I should be prepared for if I follow that example. Are there things I would need to depend on myself for because I've made myself vulnerable by helping?" And he shuddered a little at the thought of that, hating the idea that he must weigh these things.

"I AM quite willing for that to happen, if it means saving someone, but I would rather be prepared than not. And yes, defending myself becomes rather more essential in that case."

He may have to kill someone he'd helped,or be killed by them at some point. So far, Joly had held back on killing anyone, and wished that he might keep it that way forever, but he could not count on never being attacked, of course. A grim thought, but there, nonetheless.

Maximus rolled his shoulder in a long shrug.

"The crowd is fickle. If all they cared about was war, the games would be different. They seem more obsessed with the relationships between tributes than with our swords themselves. I do not think it will do you a disservice, unless you attempt to help someone who has no intention of letting you survive the attempt."

"That explains, well, rather a good deal," Joly muses. "There are so many from some worlds, and the broadcasts from the last games did focus rather more on how everyone was interacting, as opposed to only the amazing kills."

If it had been like that, then Joly would have likely been more out and out disgusted as opposed to disturbed. The manipulation of emotions seemed to feel far worse though, somehow.

"Good then. That is easily managed, I should think. It will become easier too, to find out who those people are as time goes on."

Maximus didn't really care either way. A slave was a slave, whether the mob wanted them to kill each other or lay with each other, the end result was the same. And really, even in ancient Rome, it has always been both.

"Good." He offered a smile. "Then I'll leave you to train. If you should have need of my services, do not hesitate, but as it stands I think you have a basis with which to move forward."