thecapitol | The Crowning of Mindy McReady

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The Crowning of Mindy McReady

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.

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Cecil continues not to take Kevin's hand. Pointedly.

"It may be, Kevin, that you have heard me speak." The words fit a casual meeting, more or less, but his tone is an open declaration of war. "It may be that you have switched your radio on and heard my voice, moving through air and wire and flesh to your ears. It may be that I have spoken to you at length, and never known that you were listening."

By the end, every word is loud and measured and aimed with precision, and Cecil's narrowed eyes are fixed unwaveringly on the black pits in Kevin's face. "I--! ...am a radio host. And I am not a fan of yours, Kevin. Not in the slightest."

That hand is still waiting. It could wait all day, hanging out like that. Most of Cecil's words seem to fly in one ear and out the other...Kevin swings a little from side to side, building momentum.

"Why, what a coincidence! I'm a radio host, too!"

Swing. Swing. Like a bladed pendulum, cape hanging and rippling.

He blinks, a touch puzzled, but no less chipper.

"Well, gosh! I'm sorry to hear if my performance hasn't wowed you yet - but I promise you, the next arena I will give one hundred and eighty percent instead of one hundred and fifty! First time on the new job...you know how it is."

What, seriously? Cecil didn't know what to take issue with first! That he should share a profession with this-- this-- this person was awful enough, but that he should not even comprehend the seriousness of his crime--! That he should be so blissfully unaware--!

He follows Kevin's gentle back-and-forth motion with his eyes, though he remains rooted to one spot. "Tell me, Kevin," he growls, "What part of that one hundred and fifty percent involved strangling Carlos? How do you quantify your callous devouring of his flesh? Were you calculating your contribution in your head as the room around you filled with the scent of his perfect hair burning?"

His voice rises over the crowd around them, loud and righteously furious. Cecil's seen plenty of Arena brutality before - of course he has! - but this is different. There is brutality, and there is violence against the most perfect head of hair, the most flawless form, that Panem has ever seen; there is doing one's job, and there is-- is living for a week off of Carlos' remains.

Kevin just...watched Cecil as he ranted, swinging back, forth, back forth. Once the words were delivered, he was quiet for a few moments, looking like he was contemplating them deeply...and then he speaks again, practically chirping his response.

"I would say...about 40% overall out of my performance in the Arena? And yes, and...yes. Respectively. But I was also making the bracelet about then."

Edited 2014-05-27 03:54 (UTC)

Cecil's face contorts with horror-- and then settles into fierce, simmering fury.

"You think this is a joke?" he hisses, finally reaching-- no, grabbing-- for Kevin's hand, stopping his swing, hauling that unwavering smile closer. "I may not be able to stop you now from doing the things that all of Panem has seen you do. I may not be able to tear Carlos' lifeless form from your grasp, or unwind his hair from around your undeserving wrist-- but I will see you treat Carlos' death with the proper gravity, or I'll--!"

He pauses, hung up on the threat itself, which he hasn't actually thought through-- but Kevin can use his imagination while he puts his thoughts together.

Awwwww, this new friend wants to hold HANDS. Of course, he's also so very wrong...so very wrong.

So he breaks grip with the hand and moves past it to the forearm, pulling on it and lifting Cecil off the ground. It's easy to forget, but Kevin is...unnaturally strong. He holds Cecil there, faces very close and about level. His voice is still pleasant, but...there is a little bit of menace there.

Of course, if Cecil struggled for a moment, he could break the grip. This was just friendly conversation, after all.

"I'm sorry," he chuckles, blinking a couple of times, "Did you just suggest that I don't take my job seriously? Because...gosh, that's just...that's just not true."

It is easy to forget. In fact, Cecil was not actually aware of how strong Kevin was. Strength was deceptive in the Arena, where everyone was struggling for their lives. If he had been aware, he-- he might have thought this through a little more.

"Hey--" he gasps as he feels his feet leave the floor. The muscles of his shoulders are already burning-- he doesn't know how Kevin is keeping his voice so level. He thinks he should struggle, but he's having trouble looking away from those wide, wide, empty eyes.

"I--" He kicks his feet, searching for the floor, and finds nothing. "I am saying that-- that while there is certainly nothing wrong with taking your job seriously-- that the particular way in which you take your job seriously suggests a disconnect from normal human standards of decency that would reflect extremely poorly on every employee performance review I have ever seen!"

There weren't a lot of things that made Kevin angry. He had very few hot buttons to push, and generally, even then he was a very amiable guy. The insinuations being made here, though - the very idea that he was not performing up to par...those made that grin of his turn a little colder, not matching the look about his wide, black eyes.

"Oh, well, then, your input is important! Feedback is how a person grows," he intoned, voice smooth and just a little too dark. "But generally, training is done by management, and complaints aren't to be lodged personally. Of course...this begs the question-"

The grip on Cecil's hand tightened, and he lifted the man even closer, enough that he could not only see the spots of blood and flesh in his teeth, he could smell the viscera on his breath, almost feel the slickness of the venom in his words as he spoke again -

"Are you my supervisor?"

"N-no," Cecil replied, hastily, and tried not to breathe before he spoke again, because while Kevin's breath was not the most terrifying thing about him, it was also not the least terrifying thing about him. "No, I-- I am not your supervisor. But--" He kicked his legs, uselessly. "--But-- I am a Sponsor."

There was nothing about this to suggest from a distance that there was anything going on except a friendly conversation between two men hanging from the same trapeze (not unusual, at a certain kind of Capitol party), and that was a problem. Cecil had seen Kevin kill in the Arena. His demise wouldn't have to be slow. And so he grasped for whatever straw he could, even as his fingers tightened on Kevin's wrist, trying to lessen some of the strain on his arm.

"I am a Sponsor, Kevin," he continued, "and as such, it is my judgment of your performance-- among others'-- that will determine your reward! It is I who will or will not arm you in the next Arena-- I who will decide whether or not to heal your injuries--!"

It wasn't him specifically, of course, and he certainly hadn't sponsored Kevin in the most recent Arena, but he was speaking more on principle than reality. "I may not be your supervisor, Kevin," he finished, right into Kevin's face, and he managed to force menace into his tone-- "But I am, in certain highly salient ways, the closest equivalent to one you have."

The whole situation was reminiscent of a spider who had caught a fly - Kevin hanging there, Cecil in his grasp, big black eyes fixed as the venom in his words worked to dissolve the radio host's defenses. From the outside looking in, it DID look like an innocent enough conversation...and while it had honestly begun that way, the grinning man was now actively cultivating the image, carefully toeing the line with cunning and skill.

It was at this moment, perhaps, that it would become apparent - Kevin was obedient to a fault, compliant in ways that bordered on willful subservience...but he most certainly was not stupid.

"I see," he breathed, his voice gentle, too sweet with understanding. If the menace was received, it was certainly not bothering Kevin one way or another. "Well, gosh...that's my mistake, then. Feel free, then - tell me what it is precisely that was inappropriate to you about my performance, so that I might rectify it going forward." All spoken evenly, professionally, the only hint of what was going on below the surface the ice in his smile and an edge in his eyes. The customer was always right, but they were not always correct.

"I wouldn't want to disappoint my supervisor."

Cecil didn't feel less intimidated for having been listened to. In fact, he felt more intimidated. This was not how he had intended this to go. Not remotely.

"I-- I don't like to repeat myself, Kevin," Cecil said, and there was a definite quaver in his voice now - though it had less to do with fear at this point than with the growing strain in his arm. It felt like it was being pulled out of its socket. "But I feel I must reiterate-- for the purpose of this performance review--"

He took a deep breath, pushing the pain away, that it might be more fully replaced with all the force of his righteous indignation. He had a leg to stand on, here! ...Perhaps not literally, at this exact moment, but his complaint was valid! Was more than valid!

Cecil looked Kevin in the... void, and declared, in ringing tones (only a little hoarse at the edges), "--That you ate Carlos!"

"Yes," he replied, his tone matter-of-fact and casual, "I did eat Carlos. And he was delicious."

There was not an ounce of remorse in his voice, nor was there a hint of anything that suggested that he knew anything about what he was saying was wrong. "I was hungry, and my job in these Games is to kill. Tell me, Cecil...."

No quaver mirrored the one in Cecil's tone. No shake, no concern. Unflinching. Smiling.

"Would you rather me have left his body there, rotting and being generally unproductive?"

Ugh. Cecil had to fight down a wave of revulsion before he could speak. (He didn't want to contemplate what he might be smelling on Kevin's breath.)

"They weren't going to leave his body there!" he snapped. "That's what those-- those collection ship things are for!" There was probably a technical term, but he didn't want to break his flow to call it to mind. "Tributes don't rot in the Arena!" ...Well-- except that one Arena, but-- he felt there was enough of a trend present to qualify this statement.

He was warming up to his new role as Kevin's pseudo-supervisor (...pseu-pervisor?) now - this was rapidly turning from a desperate ploy to avoid being cannibalized to a genuine performance review. "You would know that, Kevin, if you had paid any attention whatsoever to your debriefing!"

Y'know, this was actually starting to get to Kevin a little bit! He took a whole lot of pride in his work and in his intelligence, and then along came this guy, telling him that he was wrong. That he hadn't done his due diligence.

Kevin took his due diligence very seriously.

"Oh, I know the bodies are collected," he chirped, his hand tightening a little bit around Cecil's arm. "Of course - I made sure to pay attention at the meetings. But Cecil...what would have happened to the corpse after if I had left it there? What purpose would it have served? Would it have been buried? Burned?"

A little chuckle.

"I don't know about you - but that sounds like what we would call waste where I come from."

Cecil wasn't laughing. Cecil's teeth were clenched and his face was turning red with exertion and his fingers were going numb. Cecil was unsure how many more minutes he could possibly hang here before he begged Kevin to put him down. He flexed his fingers, trying to put some feeling back into them; all he got for his efforts was pain.

There were, so far as he could see, two ways down from here: He could beg Kevin to let him go (perish the thought), or he could get him to concede the argument. Of the two, he knew which outcome he preferred.

"That's funny," Cecil snarled. "Because where I come from--" The Capitol, this place, here, but he didn't think he needed to specify that in this case-- "--We call that basic human decency!"

Kevin could do this all day. His body had been engineered for efficiency, lithe strength, and the ability to do business all the live-long day!

Of course, they couldn't do much to engineer his patience. They could condition it, enforce it, but even he had his slip-ups now and again...and this? Trying his patience. It might have seemed as if he was being terrible, but the truth was that he had no idea why Cecil was having such trouble with the concepts he was presenting. How...close-minded.

"Basic human decency? Letting the bodies of your hometown heroes and loved ones decay away into nothing? Wow, what different standards your culture has from mine! That would be the ultimate form of disrespect back in Desert Bluffs - I know if I were killed, I would prefer something useful to be done with my body. I'm actually still a little put out that no one used my corpse from the last arena for anything."

A beat. Now he had talked himself out of being irritated over Cecil and into being irritated over something else.

"I mean, I have good strong bones. Could have been weapons! I mean, with these teeth, it seems like kind of a no-brainer, right? Plenty of good meat here, too."

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The Crowning of Mindy McReady

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