thecapitol | [Open] Taking steps is easy

Who Clara Murphy and YOU
What Clara just arrived and is not taking it well.
Where District 10, Training Center, Central Commons Bar
When Following the arrival of the newest batch of tributes
Warnings/Notes Maybe some swearing? Also, as is mentioned in the post, Clara thinks this is all some crazy dream, but probably won't mention that to anyone.

Clara has no idea how she got here. The last thing she remembers from before waking up and being taken before some people who were going to evaluate her for a death match is stepping into an elevator while clutching her son's hand a little too tightly as she tried to figure out how to tell him that his father was dead.

Somewhere between then and now, the only conclusion she had managed to come to was that she had to have blacked out in that elevator and this is some sort of bizarre dream. It makes more sense then the possibility that this is real and someone had dragged her away from David to fight a bunch of complete strangers for their amusement.

[01 - District 10 Suite]
Clara's mostly stuck to her room, only really popping out to go to the kitchen to grab something to eat or drink. Something's different about this trip out of her room, and instead of retreating back as soon as she's grabbed whatever she popped out for, she's decided to grab a seat on a couch and watch whatever's being shown.

Which happens to be clips of previous arenas. Her snack and drink are left sitting on the table as she watches the horrors unfold on the screen, trying to wrap her head around the idea that (dream or not) anyone would find this entertaining.

[02 - Training Center]
Clara never really learned how to fight. The closest she ever came were some self defense classes she took in college at her father's insistence. Her best weapon has always been her words, not her fists. But words don't win death matches. And even if this is all in her head and she's going to wake up from it, she wants to win this. So to help with that, she's swinging a practice sword at a dummy with no form whatsoever.

[03 – Central Commons, Bar Area]
Clara was never really much of a heavy drinker, at least not since her college days. Sure, she enjoyed the occasional night. Hell, she had a glass of red wine almost every night at home. But she can't remember the last time she drank like this.

Maybe her 30th birthday? If not then, then before that.

So she can't help the fact that her head's swimming or that she's lounging on a couch because she's having trouble staying upright at the moment with a martini glass in hand.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"I honestly don't know." Are pita chips usually vegan? If they are, are they made the same way in the Capitol as they're made back in her time? "I know the hummus should be, unless they've started adding eggs or milk to hummus recently."

The fact that he's talking about life-or-death situations as if they're a semi-regular thing is making some sort of alarm go off in her head. "Do you end up in life-or-death situations a lot? Other than here, I mean."

"Ugh, gross."

He considered for a moment, then licked the hummus off the pita chip, which he then delicately set down on the coffee table.

"Depending on your definition of--" he snorted. "No, I can't even say that without laughing. Yeah, fairly frequently, but I had a weird adolescence." He offered her another smile, and his uninjured hand. "Hi, Lyle Norg."

"I think there were some carrots in the fridge if you want those instead." Or at least she thought they were carrots. They looked like carrots.

"Clara Murphy." Clara took his hand and shook it, smiling slightly as she tried to hide her concern that someone his age has already had to deal with those things. "Weird sounds like an understatement."

"Those might belong to the giant rabbit," Lyle said. "If I'm going to pick a fight with him, I'd prefer to do it in the training center or on camera. Not much point anywhere else."

He folded his hands behind his head and shrugged. "It is an understatement, but people think I'm joking if I start with so much as 'most of my friends are aliens' without giving them at least a little warning.

He paused, considering Clara for a moment.

"Speaking of, if a sentient with tentacles wearing sackcloth asks if you're interested in bearing his unholy child, don't freak out. Reep's just a flirt, he doesn't expect reciprocation."

"...giant bunny? Tentacles?"

Clara's pretty sure he has to be pulling her leg at this point, because there wasn't a single word of those sentences that really made sense other than 'It is an understatement.'

"You're kidding, right?"

"Like I said," Lyle replied, raising his eyebrows, "most people don't believe me."

"No explanation for the bunny, I've only seen him in passing and I didn't meet him until I came here. Reep is one of those aliens I mentioned. He's from the planet Durla, which is a long-ass way away from Earth. Usually he's a shapeshifter, right now he's a writhing ball of tentacles."

"That might be because it sounds a little outlandish." More than a little, really, though she didn't want to say that out loud and accidentally offend him.

"That's...an interesting choice to go with." Except, really, if there were superheroes and the like here, wouldn't it make more sense for the Capitol to make it so it wouldn't be easy to fight back and take away their powers? And if that was the case... "Oh. Is that what he usually looks like?" How was she supposed to know what people from Durla were supposed to look like?

"I'd imagine that people whose lives aren't a little bit outlandish don't put on spandex and start calling themselves 'Chemical King' either," Lyle said, shaking his head. "And I'm guessing you don't have frequent contact with aliens when and where you're from."

He made a face and flipped his hand back and forth. "The Durians used it as their default shape, but Reep usually prefers to be a hairless orange near-human with antenna. And I'd imagine his girlfriend prefers it when he has lips."

"No, we don't," Clara said, laughing slightly. "I didn't even know aliens were real until recently." She did vaguely remember something being mentioned in the news about SETI decoding a transmission with a mention of aliens thinking humans were too stupid to make contact with, but she never found out if it was real or a hoax considering her world was turned on its head not too long afterwards.

Somehow, on some strange level, that made a lot of sense. Enough that she managed not to balk at the idea. Or at least didn't balk enough that it couldn't be covered up with a playful smile and good-natured teasing. "I can't imagine why she'd want that."

"They were definitely real in my universe, and the idea of humanity being entirely alone is just..." Lyle shudders. "That's just too depressing to contemplate. Life has a tendency to exist, where I'm from."

He laughs and winks at her. "Ask him about the time her brother walked in on them and he spent the next hour and a half pretending to be her uniform. Our telepath nearly died from mortification and our mentalist just about sprained something trying not to laugh."

"There was something about them in the news a few months ago, but things got so crazy," like almost losing her husband and signing him over to a company that promised that they could save him and everything in her life going completely nuts after that, "that I never really got a chance to follow up on it. I should get on that whenever I get home."

Despite herself and how messed up this situation is and how fucked up everything has been at home, she lets out a real, honest to god laugh for the first time in months. It isn't a huge, earth shaking laugh, but it feels good. "Are things like that normal for you and your friends?"

Lyle held his tongue in regards to the idea of getting home. He sprocking hoped that she'd get to, that they'd figure something out before any more sentients died.

But in the meantime, the show must go on.

"I wouldn't say any of us are normal for our respective species, but that sort of thing is pretty typical," he said cheerfully. "It gets pretty interesting with sentients from so many different cultures sharing one living space."

[Open] Taking steps is easy

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