we wine, we dine, and everything is fine [open!]

[capitolprivilege]

Who| Everyone still in the Capitol. If the Hunger Games is a significant part of your life, or if you wield any influence at all in the Capitol, you've received an invitation. Unless you're Victory Hannibal.
What| Week 1 viewing party! It's horror-movie/monster themed, so break out your best sexy witch/vampire/mummy costumes! Also, feel free to use it for sponsor schmoozing.
Where| A ballroom, and some adjacent rooms.
When| Just before the Arena begins, and into the night.
Warnings/Notes| Watch this space for warnings. Also, feel free to make closed threads amongst yourselves, but Stephen will likely at some point come up to greet you personally. If you think your Capitol character would be familiar with the Reagan family, make an OOC note, and I'll give you a quick rundown on their sordid past.


There is a fog machine.

The fog hovers around the guests' knees and ankles, doing nothing to impede visibility or movement, but it creates a ~mysterious~ atmosphere. The ballroom is modest, by Capitol standards, able to comfortably hold about a hundred people. There's plenty of space. The room is dimly lit from concealed sources that nonetheless throw the guests' shadows into frightening shapes on the wall. There are tables laden with food along one wall, and plenty of comfortable seating, for projected onto the far wall is a live feed from the Games.

Through the doors are smaller, more intimate rooms, with cushy couches and a smaller screen apiece for watching the Games a little more privately. One pair of double-doors leads out onto a balcony with a beautiful view of the city.

Everyone who received the invitation was informed of the theme, of course: no pressure, but if you want your outfit to match (and he's sure you do), make sure it's a little bit -- spooky.

Stephen himself, tastefully attired in a shimmery black suit, cape, and vampire teeth, is moving about the guests, giving friendly greetings to those he knows, making polite conversation with those he does not, ensuring that everybody (or at least, everybody possible) is having a good time. So what if his smile looks a little fixed, every once in a while? It's a party. What could possibly be wrong?

Comments

[president_evil]

The pale head tipped, the slitted pupils so narrow the strange two-tone eyes were almost nothing but iris. A reptilian measuring the young mentor before him. (Like a snake, trying to decide if it really could swallow her whole.)

His eyes moved down to the offered 'hand,' but didn't take it.

"Always," he murmured dryly.

[hit_girl_mindy]

So. That was the kind of guy he was. Mindy might have been put off by this, as people who went out of their way to be a dick pissed her off. But it was something a little different here, it seemed. He was trying to almost intimidate her, and he was not going to be doing that anytime soon.

She withdrew the hand, still keeping the gaze.

"Figured this was a good time for mentors to talk to each other. Heard your Arena was pretty ruthless."

[president_evil]

Wesker didn't go out of his way to do anything. He did exactly what he meant to, exactly when he meant to. And he wasn't about to shake a pile of fake scissors simply because she couldn't be bothered to remove her glove first.

(And he was the rude one.)

"My arena, or me?" he asked, his snake's eyes unblinking.

[hit_girl_mindy]

He still could have shook one of them. They weren't sharp. Douche.

"Every Arena is fucked up, some more than others. Nah, I was talking about you. For some reason, Harley doesn't seem to like you, and she likes everyone."

[president_evil]

Children.

"Not as insane as she seems, is she?" he replied easily, almost conversationally.

If she expected for his feelings to be hurt, she'd come to the wrong place.

[hit_girl_mindy]

Manners.

"No, she's not that insane. Spontaneous and totally acting on her ID, sure. But she's not bloodthirsty. She doesn't think the same of you though. So I'm curious. What was going through your mind, in that Arena?"

[president_evil]

"That I was going to win."

The blond head tipped, eyes narrowing slightly on Mindy's face. He took a breath, but his senses were too muddled here, the crowd too think to give him anything than the general stink of sweat and the unpleasant chemical aftertaste of makeup and latex.

"A sentiment I would think you'd be familiar with."

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Well." He hadn't said much, and yet he had in a way. It had been implied, of course, that she was pretty ruthless in her area, but in reality she had actually been trying to be careful. She could never have killed people in the Arena like she did back home. No, that kind of thing she saved for really big lowlifes.

"Everyone wants to win for different reasons, have different stories. Me, I had something to prove. People saw me in the last Arena and thought I needed to be protected. Had to show them why I was brought here in the first place."

[president_evil]

"You did what you had to."

Including, he was sure they both remembered, shooting a competitor in the back rather than facing him on an even field of play.

"So did I."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Considering she'd been run through the shoulder with an arrow and the guy she faced she knew was a much, much better shot than she was? Yeah, she had definitely did what she had to. The odds were against her, so she had to make it count.

"Can't argue there. So now what's in store for you? Shmoozing for tributes or what?

[president_evil]

He smiled. A small, cool curl of his mouth that did nothing to warm his strange eyes.

"Tonight? Yes, I'll do what I can for my dear tributes. Tomorrow... well, that's a new day."

And he kept busy.

(Rome wasn't built, or destroyed, in a day.)

[hit_girl_mindy]

Man, even the way he talked about his tributes seemed, well, slimey. There just seemed to be something very unpleasant overall about Wesker, just as Harley had tried to warn her about. It kept her wondering exactly what he would do to get out on top, when it came to Capitol matters.

Then again, Eva had been just as dubious, hadn't she?

"Wish I understood the reason for the theme," Mindy said, looking amused. "Halloween isn't on us yet."

[pepsi_cola]

"Eugh." Victory tries to snort, but instead the sound gets stifled in her stuffed sinuses, and she ends up trying to politely sneeze into a napkin. "I'd hope they'd miss me, but I don't think they appreciate me at all, honestly. I have that one little rat of a teenager who insists on looking grungy and unkempt at all hours and running around with that awful man Joel, and the other one who would be excellent for some sort of emaciation chic if he'd let me dress him in something that showed off his ribs. Don't tell them I said that, by the way, Ellie and Howard are both lovely kids, just..."

She waves a hand and politely folds up her dirty napkin and tosses it to an Avox. "It's hard to go unappreciated."

[the_marshal]

There was a flash in Wyatt's eyes, a quick tightening in his jaw as she went on, but he managed to hold his tongue. Catching the side of it between his teeth.

"They're young," he grit out. "Goin' a bit wild's a part of the process."

When they were allowed to really be children. When people like this woman weren't sniffing and wrinkling their noses, wondering what they could do for her.

[president_evil]

"In my experience, people rarely need a reason to make a spectacle of themselves."

Especially these people, who didn't breath without making a glittered production out of it.

His eyes flicked away, watching what appeared to be a woman wearing nothing but strategic splashes of bloody body paint, teeter by on slender heels.

"Particularly if one is irony impaired."

[hit_girl_mindy]

Mindy wanted to say something in defense of-no, no she didn't, actually. Considering her win of the last arena involved her life as a superhero being paraded around like some kind of cheap bitch, and before that they were all tromped around in French affects, she knew what he was saying was true.

"I don't think these people would get what irony was if it fell on their heads from the sky like a brick," Mindy said. "There are people in my world that do something like that, and they're called hipsters. They're not looked at too favorably."

[confidentially]

"The pain is inevitable, hon. You can't live in this world without being a little bit jaded. But seeing them die over and over again doesn't make it any less significant. They're still dying for us. If they do it and we don't acknowledge it, then what's the point?" Jessica fidgeted a little, swirling her glass and watching the alcohol whirl into a spiral. Clearing her throat, she carried on.

"I call that being his mentor," she said in a guarded tone, just in case anyone was listening in. She'd gotten off relatively easy for what she'd done with Ian. She'd been lucky, able to use her relationship with him as a pass to talk to him without fear of punishment. If the Peacekeepers found out she'd been more involved than that, she risked serious injury or worse. "I'd do the same thing for any of my tributes."

[pepsi_cola]

"Oh, I know they're young, it's just that, well, born and bred Panemian children tended to be a bit easier to work with. They weren't so rebellious before the Never-Ending Quell." Victory sighs, and it's an oddly genuine sound from her. "I miss those children."

The ones who are dead and staying dead.

[hit_girl_mindy]

"Oh, I'm already pretty jaded. That's why I'm here and still hobnobbing for my Tributes. Granted, I'm not sure I'd say that everyone is dying for us per say. Lie, if someone trips and falls in a bear pit or something, I'd call them a victim of their own stupidity."

She took a sip of a nearby cocktail, apparently fairly adjusted to the taste now.

"Yeah, I know. What I wouldn't call it is being a cheerleader. It takes an effort to cheer and smile, sure, but it takes a whole lot more to put your neck out for your tribute like that. You could have just left him to his own devices. It's good to know that you look at them more than just pieces of a puzzle."

More and more, Mindy could see beyond the sex kitten persona.

[hit_girl_mindy]

This guy was...something else, that was for sure. He was definitely laughing a lot, probably because he'd had a few drinks. She'd had at least two by now, and that was enough to at least make her socialize more than she wanted to. After all, what reason did she have to talk to some pruning, hovering stylist who constantly wanted her to look pretty?

None, that's what.

"What's with the get up? Auditioning for the Capitol version of Cats?"

So what if he didn't get the reference? She did.

[the_marshal]

The ones too scared to fight back. The ones with no hope of coming back, especially if they didn't play by the rules the Capitol set for them.

Funny getups and all.

"Why'd you get into this?" he asked her, dreading the answer, but unable to hold the words back. "Could'a saved yerself the trouble, surely."

[president_evil]

"I recognize the term," he drawled, eyes returning to Mindy, inhuman pupils shifting - re-sizing - in the shifting light. "We had them in mine as well, before the end."

Then, he imagined, Darwin had gotten the best of them at last.

The philosophical world-view of its dinner mattered little to a hungry infected.

[hit_girl_mindy]

What was seriously up with this guy's eyes? Mindy didn't usually let small things bother her, but this was just making her unnerved. What was he?

"The end? What happened in yours? I keep hearing about zombie apocalypses from other people."

[capitolprivilege]

"I think it's just you," said Stephen, coming up to lean against the back of the chair opposite hers. "Honestly, I'm not surprised you're a little cold," he added, eyes flicking down to what she was wearing -- and what she wasn't -- and then back up. "Suffering to be beautiful, right?"

[capitolprivilege]

Stephen approached her with a broad smile, holding out a hand for her to shake.

"Harley Quinn," he greeted. "It's so good to meet you in person at last. You look stunning, by the way."