thecapitol | Stay Calm and Where's a Pirate Hat When You Need One

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Stay Calm and Where's a Pirate Hat When You Need One

WHO| Sirius Black and open
WHAT| Sirius messes around in the Training Center
WHEN| During the mini arena
WHERE| Training Center
WARNINGS| None, will add if any crop up

Sirius figured that the best way to blend in was to go to the Training Center regularly. And right now, it seemed that keeping under the radar was exactly what he needed to do. Plus he didn't care to see any of the arena going on now. He couldn't stomach it yet.

Sirius tried to build a shelter, finally getting the hang of it and making something presentable. Then he examined the kind of fruits, nuts, and berries he could eat and those that would kill him straight off. Given the recent arenas though, he was going to bet that he wouldn't use that skill. Finally, reluctantly, he took a look at the weapons. Selecting a sword, he balanced it in his hand. Or rather he attempted to. It was a great deal heavier than he expected and harder to swing smoothly.

"I am so going to die," he muttered as he tried to slice through an imaginary head.

He could pretend to be Sirius Black: the worst pirate of the seven seas.

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"Well that's no way to think," said a voice, a bit lower than earshot. It was Mindy, who had the nifty ability to not be seen when she felt the urge. Right now she was just coming into the training room, eager to get in another day's work, when she came upon the new guy. She'd seen him, on and off, but never got to introduce herself.

"Might wanna start with an easier sword to carry though."

Sirius immediately tensed at the sudden voice. After so long on edge against the Death Eaters, always bracing himself for a possible ambush, he had an overdeveloped startle reflex. He pointed the sword at Mindy, not as he would a blade but as if he held an over-sized wand. He caught himself a moment later and lowered it, laughing. Just a child and he was far from Death Eaters.

"That would help, wouldn't it?" He smiled.

"Yeah, because any experienced person with a sword would have knocked that shit out of your hand," Mindy said, a little tense at having a weapon pointed at her. "That one's too heavy for you, and swinging it around without the right stance is going to have you on your ass."

She thought he still wasn't that bad though. He knoew...SOMETHING, though not swords.

Sirius shrugged. He didn't appear to be too concerned about it. "You know a lot. I guess you have to learn fast when you're here."

That was something, it seemed, he wasn't particularly worried about doing. At least not with the sword.

"Pretty much have to," she said, shrugging. "You don't want to lag too far behind if you're still competing."

In Mindy's case, of course, that made no difference.

"So have a weapon you actually favor?"

Again, Sirius wasn't fussed and went to put away his sword, glancing back at Mindy to see if she would follow.

"Not really," he said. His best weapon was his wand and it was absent and not something he could mention. As far as anyone else was concerned, he was some poor innocent sucked into this mess, incapable of fighting anyone.

Mindy was already putting hers back. He seemed to be keeping things brief enough anyway.

"If that's the case, might want to start testing these out, don't you think? Gonna need something if you're to be put in the Arena over and over, right?"

"I'm not interested in killing innocent people," Sirius said. He didn't turn to look at Mindy, instead letting his gaze slide over the other weapons on the rack.

They didn't seem terribly efficient to him-- or elegant, for that matter. There was nothing that really beat the beauty of a wand fight although he could admit that watching sword fights on the telly was its own kind of exciting-- not to rival the rush of battle. But only against someone who deserved it.

"Maybe not, but you're probably interested in not getting killed, right? I mean, if some motherfucker came at you with a knife in hand, are you going to let him stab you? You can, I guess, there are people like that, but believe me, the Capitol starts to notice after awhile, and they will punish you for it."

She was hoping he wasn't though, because really, she didn't get people who took this bullshit so seriously that they would never lift a finger to save even themselves. That lack of self preservation made zero sense to her.

"I wouldn't let him stab me, but if he was forced into it I wouldn't kill him." There was a tinge of irritation in his voice. So this was what happened. The Capitol had given this attitude to some girl. Well, if that was their goal, Sirius wanted no part of it.

Sirius, you knew nothing about Mindy if you thought the Capitol taught her self preservation.

"How would you know the difference? Did you see the guy who one recently? He's all smiles and business suit, but I watched him work. It's pretty chilling. Hey, if you don't want to be prepared to take a guy down, its your choice, but keep in mind the only other weapons you get is what you can grab at the Cornucopia and whatever gets thrown your way by a sponsor, usually a knife."

"Yeah, I know. I did my research." His words were a little clipped. Honestly, he wasn't a complete idiot. He might be a pacifist but he wanted to know his stuff.

"Look, thanks for your concern. But this is my choice. I'll deal with the consequences."

Mindy shrugged. "If that's the case, why even come to the training room?"

"So I don't starve to death when I'm out there." He picked up another sword, a lighter one this time. He flashed Mindy a grin. "And so I can play with swords. I never got to do that before."

Mindy found this a little perplexing. How would the training room help you when you were starving?

"Oh, you're looking to practice your hunt for, like, game, I guess. Makes sense. Just hope they don't give you one of those shitty arenas like my first time, where anything you try to eat is poisoned."

Well, the lessons on what foods were edible and how to make a shelter were helpful.

"Yeah, I noticed that about this last arena. I'll have to take my chances." Of course, now that he'd said that, he was sure the Gamemakers would give him something where he couldn't eat anything at all.

"The annoying thing is that you actually never know what kind of place they'll put you. I heard once they put you in some weird candy land place, but sometimes, they'll put you in the Jurassic and you have to fight dinosaurs or something. Oh, and I might suggest learning the weapon skills. You may not want to kill a person, but sometimes its not just people you have to worry about. There WAS that zombie one, after all, and for all you know, you might have to fight fucking worm people or something."

O.K., now this kid was getting on his nerves. But he couldn't come right out and say that he wasn't going to play any part of these people's game. That would be too rebellious and, while he would take any punishment that came his way, he wasn't going to seek it out.

"I get the message. What's your name, anyway?"

Sure you did. But if he wanted to go get himself eaten or impaled, was it really her business? Likely she was starting to get way too invested with people around here anyway, considering the last few weeks.

"Mindy Macready. How about you?"

"Sirius Black." He shifted the sword to his left hand so he could hold out his right to Mindy. "I've heard all the jokes."

"Best I could manage is that it sounds like a goth kid's dream name, but that's it." The name was weird, but not TOO bad. It wasn't Raven's Darkmatter or anything stupid like that.

Sirius's eyebrows quirked up in mild confusion. "Goth kids?" The goth subculture was only just starting when Sirius was from and hadn't become well known yet.

"Kids that try to be cool by wearing black and giving themselves stupid names," Mindy said. She knew that was oversimplified, but fuck it. "Most of those names sound all dumb and creepy. Yours sounds more like something straight out of a fantasy book or something."

Yes, she didn't actually READ them, or she'd known his name pretty quickly.

Edited 2014-07-30 20:07 (UTC)

"Yeah, it's a family name. There are worse I could have been." Like his brother's name...

He sobered a little at that thought and lowered his hand.

"Nice to meet you, Mindy." Sort of.

"True. It's not really a bad name. Sounds important."

She laughed. "You think so? I dunno, you looked pretty pissed at me when I was talking."

"Pissed?" Sirius laughed. If she thought being a little short with her was angry he didn't know what to say. "You'll know when I'm angry, Mindy."

"Cool." She had detected a bit of frost from him, so of course she was curious about that. "Same here, I guess."

"Well then, I'll try not to annoy you." And Sirius hoped that Mindy would do the same. "Now, if you'll excuse me." He tilted his sword up, keeping it away from Mindy. "I have a new toy to play with." He grinned.

Mindy looked at the sword and nodded. Yeah, he was going to do his own thing, and so long as he wasn't in her District, he'd wing it on his own. After all, Mindy only cared about kids as much as her tributes. They'd need the help.

"Right. See ya later."

"If you aren't accustomed to weaponry I wouldn't recommend a sword," said a voice from behind him. After what had happened in the last arena it was clear that the Signless had at least some kind of affinity for blunt weapons, and he'd already done a small amount of work with staffs, so here he was to hone those two things into a serviceable ability to defend himself.

"And finding a blade in many arenas if you don't make it in the initial rush is going to be difficult. I'd suggest a type of weapon you can easily improvise."

"I mostly wanted to hold it." Sirius tried swinging the sword again lightly, slowly cutting through the air. "I've never had one before."

He lowered his sword and finally glanced at the person behind him.

...Well, that was interesting.

Sirius's eyes widened for a moment as he took Signless in, then returned to normal. "I'm sure I'll figure something out in the arena," he said casually though he still eyed Signless.

The good thing about having been in Panem for so long was that Signless was more than used to stares from humans he was meeting for the first time. Most of them weren't used to the idea that any other sentient species could exist.

"I'm a troll," he said, gesturing to himself. Might as well just answer the unspoken question right-off. "It's not impolite to ask. My name is Signless."

He purposefully left off the 'the'. Humans usually had an easier time with troll titles without it, in his experience.

Sirius snorted in response. "Sorry I stared but you don't have to have a go at me."

He held out his hand. "My name's Sirius Black. Are you really Signless?"

He wasn't going to rule out the name as he'd done with the declaration that this guy was a troll. He knew that people could have strange names. In fact, he was constantly reminded of it whenever people made a crack about his own.

The Signless took the offered hand and shook. His hand was callused and firm. Even after a year in Panem and a year of them doing their best to pamper all the rough edges off him there was only so much that could be done.

"I am, yes. Why? Has someone else told you about me?" More importantly, what had they been saying?

Sirius's hand was only callused in certain areas, from holding his wand and having his hands on his bike, but even those weren't terribly pronounced. He withdrew his hand.

"No, just checking that's your real name and not you having a laugh." He smiled to show there were no hard feelings if Signless was.

It didn't occur to Sirius that there might have been a miscommunication here.

"No, no, that's very much my real name. Title, technically, but I've found it goes over easier when I don't make the distinction. Explaining troll names and titles is more complicated than it's worth when the function is the same."

He smiled back. His teeth were very large and very triangular.

"Alright, Signless. I know all about trolls so you don't have to pretend to be one." What are you really? went unspoken just because that bordered on rude and Sirius could be mindful about that. He could.

Sometimes.

... Wait, what? Was Sirius one of Karkat's humans -- but he'd recognize the name if so, so that couldn't be it.

"I assure you, I know my own species."

This had better not be a 'you're a mutant and mutants don't count' thing, if some other troll had explained trolls to Sirius prior. Because if that was what it was, Sirius was going to have a very loud and very impassioned sermon about personhood on his hands.

There was definitely a miscommunication here, he just wasn't quite right about what kind.

"Yeah, I met a troll once and studied all about them. You're intelligent, at least enough to speak fluently even with the translators at work. And you're not huge, not green, and you've got horns. Sorry, you're not a troll. That's not going to work on me." Sirius wasn't mean when he spoke, rather he was very matter of fact.

Oh. Oh! An expression of understanding dawned on his face. Now everything made sense.

"I think that what 'troll' means where you're from is vastly different from what it means where I'm from. That's happened before here when two people are from wildly different cultures. You could call me an Alternian, if that would be less confusing for you? It's still technically correct."

"Alternian?" Sirius repeated. He frowned for a moment as he processed it, then shrugged it off. "I see, sorry for the mistake. I thought you were just having a laugh. We're from very different worlds then. I've never seen anyone like you before I came here."

"Alternian," he affirmed. "As in, a native of Alternia, which is the planet I'm from. It's alright. I've found most humans haven't seen anything quite like me before. If it helps, I'd never seen a human before coming here."

Ah, Panem: broadening everyone's cultural horizons.

"You're an alien?" Sirius asked in surprised. He figured he was just some other near human creature either that kept to themselves before being discovered or from some similar world to his.

"And they dragged you all the way here." Well, that sucked.

"Relative to you, yes, I suppose I am an alien." He wasn't annoyed though, his smile communicated that much. He'd had this talk enough times that it was just an extension of meeting someone new.

"Are you familiar with aliens where you come from? I haven't met many humans who are."

"And I suppose I'm an alien to you." Sirius smiled, glad that Signless hadn't minded the slip.

"No, I haven't met any aliens. As far as we know, in my world they don't exist. Except for Mu-- movies."

Damn, that would have been a bad slip there.

"Well, you certainly will with that attitude."

Lyle had just finished spending some quality time with the punching bags and had been going for a short staff to swing around when he heard the man with the sword muttering to himself.

"I wouldn't go with a sword if I were you," he continued. "Not if you don't know how to use one."

"A man can't have a little fun?" Sirius swung the sword again for good measure and flashed Lyle a cavalier grin. "We have to make what we can here. They're not handing it to us on a silver platter."

He was getting used to the whole training advice. He supposed he should expect that here.

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Stay Calm and Where's a Pirate Hat When You Need One

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