The Crowning of Mindy McReady

[etcircenses]

Who| Everyone who's anyone.
What| The Crowning.
Where| A warehouse on the edge of town.
When| Starting from early evening till late into the night.
Warnings/Notes| Be sure to check the linked thread for plot purposes, even if you don't tag into it.

The party is brightly colored.

The theme, subtly, is super heroes. Boldly paints city scapes are splattered across the walls, and hallways are made to look like dingy, potentially crime ridden alleys. From the upper walkways of the warehouse, party goers can get hooked into harnesses and swing out over the dance floor. Above them, tributes and VIPS can find themselves on a clear plastic dance floor levitated above everything, looking like they're hanging in air.

Masks are passed out in plenty, and capes are easy to find, while brightly colored drinks themed around super powers are plentiful. None of them actually work, but many of the Capitol people are happy to pretend, mocking super strength or invisibility with each new beverage.

Under the dance floor a catacomb of tunnels and rooms full of obstacles is splashed with black light receptive colors. Party goers are given vests and laser guns, marked green for villains and red for heros, and set loose to hunt each other in the laser tags playground. The screens in the dance floor keep a running tally of which side is winning, displaying the players on the screens around the room, along with clips from the arenas.

About half way through the night, everyone is gathered to the main stage for a special announcement.

Comments

[aintyourdad]

Well, that was easy enough. Joel still had a hard time wrapping his head around the idea that he could just ask for something and get it. After so many years of wistfully fantasizing about little things he'd always taken for granted before the outbreak, this new and sudden overabundance of luxuries was going to take some getting used to.

"She's a good kid. Tough. Tougher than almost anyone I know," he said with a vague shrug. "She'll be alright. Not that I'm not agreein' with you, mind." He waved his hand at the crowds around them. "This - these people - what they do - it's sick, is what it is."

[futilecycle]

It relieved Sigma greatly to hear that Ellie would be fine, and the Doctor responds with a sympathetic smile. Howard, after all, had stabbed him when first they met, but the boy concealed extraordinary vulnerability... he was far younger than he seemed. Sigma wondered what sort of world Joel and Ellie came from, if it was anything like his own.

"Children grow up too fast, and faster here than I have ever seen," he answers with a nod. "These people know not of how they harm them. My world was not unfamiliar with competitions to the death, and so perhaps I have no right to condemn these people, but it does not stop me from doing what I can." By then the Avox had arrived with Joel's drink, and Sigma accepts it and passes it to the other man.

"We started off on the wrong foot, the two of us. I was not lying when I told you I do not care to win. If there is ever any help you need from me, I offer it freely..." He's just drunk enough, brave enough, to follow with his assumption. "...From one father to another."

[aintyourdad]

Joel froze a moment at the last words - but he knew the other man meant well by them. He also knew he'd made enough enemies already to understand that making another just because the word father sat a little uncomfortably on his shoulders was a bad move.

So he nodded after a moment, taking a sip of his drink.

"Thanks. Ellie - she knows how to kill, everyone in our world has to know that to survive, but we don't do it for anyone's entertainment."

[futilecycle]

Sigma could see his words had hit somewhere too close for comfort, and he recoils guiltily. He takes note that the other has shrugged off the offense for his benefit, and is careful not to take this privilege for granted.

This time, he approached the subject carefully rather than forcing it. Joel was an ally Sigma had decided he wanted to keep. "Yes... it was the same for us, as well. It was believed that from suffering and death emerged great character. Ridiculous...." Unbeknownst to Joel, he is self-deprecating, now. "Would you mind if I asked..." he starts quietly, almost silent under the din of the crowd, "if this place is as different for you as it is for me?" It's an indirect request for Joel to continue his train of thought about his world, and his 'survival' he had spoke of.

[aintyourdad]

"We don't believe anything of the kind," Joel said with a snort. "It's a simple matter of life and death. You kill, or you die. It ain't about ideals. Just about livin' to see tomorrow. That's my world. That's how different it is."

[futilecycle]

Sigma nodded in sympathy. If Tenmyouji had come to Panem in Sigma's stead, the Doctor knew he would find a much closer peer in Joel, and Joel in him. The two were old survivors, he found, alike in a great many ways. It was almost as if Sigma were talking to the man himself.

"I see." His robotic eye whirls in contemplation as he loses his focus on the party and draws inward. "Well, there are others from my world who would say the very same thing. Fortunately or unfortunately, my family and I spent most of my life in what you might call 'Quarantine.' A haven for the uninfected, at least. It was a vastly different world, there." He sighs. "I know that I have had great privilege."

[aintyourdad]

"Sounds exactly like my world," Joel said with a shrug. "Infection. Quarantine zones, if you're lucky. If you're not lucky, you're on your own outside the zones."

[futilecycle]

Very interesting. Awareness returns to the Doctor's eye, Sigma lowers his wine and his full attention is now on Joel. "You don't say," he hums curiously. "Were it not extremely unlikely, I would almost have guessed we were of the same universe. After all, the death games were covert operations," he explains. This, of course, suggests that Sigma knows something he should not, but he hopes Joel will ignore this slip of the tongue. He quickly finds something to fill the silence with. "I was a young man when the outbreak happened. Billions died and their numbers never did recover. Until I came here, I doubted they ever would." A beat. "...Forgive me, I am straying far from party conversation," Sigma chuckles, though it was never quite appropriate to begin with.

[aintyourdad]

Joel shrugs. "Wouldn't know what party conversation is, anyway," he mutters into his drink. "Never learned how to make small talk. This - " He waves a hand to indicate all the dressed up, laughing, drinking people with their plastered-on smiles - "It hasn't existed in my world for twenty years."