Come and keep your comrade warm

[molotov]

Who| Molotov Cocktease and open! Plus a closed prompt for D6 suite
What| Um... "adjusting" to being in the Capitol
Where| D6 suite, training room, then the Central Commons bar
When| Early morning through pretty much the whole day
Warnings/Notes| Endless smoking, senseless violence to training dummies, irritable Russian woman

i. District 6 suite, sunrise
Unlike some of the other tributes, Molotov stayed in her room for the entirety of her first night, the door locked tight. Some might have thought she was sleeping or crying or whatever else it was people did when they were brought here, but instead, she was listening.

Listening at the door. At the walls. Any passing sound from her... suitemates was noted, analyzed, stored away and categorized in the way only a spy really knows how to do.

It isn't until light breaks that Molotov cracks open her door and steps out -- hearing that there was a training room was too much for her to resist. Her footsteps are soft, and she's hoping there's no one in the common area, no one to talk to or deal with or see her.

ii. Training room, early morning
Having made it all the way down to the right sublevel, Molotov finally breathes out a sigh of relief at seeing all the weapons. She knows she shouldn't feel that way, should be maintaining her indignation, but really, this is the only normal part of this whole experience so far.

She practices at home. She can practice here, even if there don't seem to be any guns to play with.

Molotov wastes some time trying to blockade the door out of sheer pettiness, only to have an Avox continually and respectfully remove everything that she places in front of the door.

She gives up on that fairly quickly.

Nearly every weapon she can get her hands on seems to be something she's delighted to use, demolishing dummy after dummy. She runs across the room, turning handsprings and flips as if she really has to chase down an inanimate object.

Eventually, Molotov starts feeling her fury again, and that why you might (if you get there late enough in the morning) find a sweaty redhead clinging to a training dummy, legs wrapped around it, stabbing it over and over and over in the head as she grunts with anger.

Oh, and one more thing. Molotov's taste in clothing is, well, unconventional, and she's managed to modify her workout clothing to reflect it. Basically you're seeing a lot of... well.

iii. Central Commons bar
One thing Molotov has never really cared about is proper drinking etiquette. She doesn't think much of starting her day with a healthy glass of vodka and an orange. That's just a deconstructed screwdriver, right?

So it's a bit surprising to her that she's made it to nearly noon without the help of a little liquid stabilizer. After all, she's pretty sure that the situation warrants it. Who stays sober after being kidnapped to be a human sacrifice?

Even though Molotov did have the courtesy to make a trip upstairs and change, it's still not the kind of thing most people consider to be normal clothing. It probably was before Molotov got her hands on a needle and thread.

She's going to have to talk to the stylist or whatever about all these funeral shrouds in her closet, what with their sleeves and pants legs and cloth over the torso and back.

Comments

[molotov]

"Who says I am anti-Capitol?" she asks, perhaps facetiously, although honestly, she feels more neutral than anything else. "I am saying, in general, the only reason to hold things like that a secret is because you are afraid of what other people can do with it. And even the people from here cannot say that they aren't perhaps a little too patriotic at times."

She shrugs. "Things remain to be seen, I suppose. I've never been afraid of a little punishment when necessary."

[silberfuchs]

He smiles a little, as inappropriate as that may be. "It's good to talk to someone who has a pragmatic view of these things."

There are a few too many idealists and innocents, and of course the ones who fall the other direction, who have broken or are simply unrepentantly on the side of the Capitol.

[molotov]

"Is it that rare of an outlook?" she asks, although she's already spoken with enough people to understand his take on this, unspoken as it is. "It simply seems more like realism than anything else to me. But then again, I have a great deal of experience with governments."

[silberfuchs]

"It seems to be." He shrugs. "I think the opposite might be a coping mechanism for some people, but I can't say that it's useful to be blindly optimistic. I'd prefer to be prepared."

Alright, with the smoke curling around them he can't take it any longer. "Would you mind if I asked for a cigarette?"

[molotov]

Molotov lights a cigarette off her own before handing it to him -- she has more cigarettes than she knows what to do with, like whoever had prepared her bedroom knew what they were getting into. Endless chain-smoking.

"Pragmatism is the key to preparation," she says, "and I am always prepared. Optimism is for idiots. Anyone who holds dreams of some kind of massive reform is a moron. Completely delusional."

[silberfuchs]

God he wishes he could just give in and smoke like a chimney, but he just got his human body back after decades of being a cyborg, he's in no hurry to destroy it on purpose. Just... slowly, cigarette by cigarette. He puts it in his mouth and lights it, inhaling deeply of nicotine and his own hypocrisy.

"I wouldn't say that, it's just those who refuse to see the world as it is in conjunction to their dreams. There's nothing moronic about hoping for a better world, but blinding oneself to what it takes to get there is where the idiots and idealists get stuck.

The Wall did come down, after all, eventually."

[molotov]

"Not thanks to one ragtag group of dreamers," Molotov shoots back. "And even now, the government is hardly any different. It's all the same, under different names and with McDonald's instead of breadlines."

There's a deep inhale before she lets out a long stream of smoke, clearly not approving of any of it. "Besides, it is generations before any overthrown government sees real improvement. Usually the improvement is just having different faults, isn't it? Trade one regime for another, red for blue, gold for silver."

[silberfuchs]

"No, but those who made it happen had to believe it could or else why work towards it? And no offense to Russia, but the change in Germany has been dramatic in getting our own country back and united. I will give you that it was at least a generation." But he won't liken the democratic modern Germany - at least from his time - to the communist Soviet rule that lead him to make a run for the Wall.

[molotov]

"Germany is a unique case," she points out, "and the wall may have fallen, but the Party fell because we ran out of money. The wall was down for two years before the Dissolution, now wasn't it? But..."

She waves her hand dismissively. "It doesn't matter now. All I know is, twenty-odd years later, it's the new boss, same as the old. Literally, actually, in my time." There's a small laugh, an indulgent, sort of knowing laugh. "Putin is... he's something all right."

[silberfuchs]

"Mmm." It's an agreeable sort of noise, but noncommittal. He's practical too, not a dreamer in the sense of actually believing things will fall into place without use of a hammer, but he's willing to envision that better world and work towards it, even if it may only amount to as much as the labor of Sisyphus.

Maybe he just likes to punish himself.

He takes a long drag off the cigarette and holds it in his lungs for a moment before exhaling the smoke into the air above them. "You're KGB?"

He won't be the least bit surprised if she says yes and a no will likely having him thinking she's lying about it. She reeks of black ops in the way she carries herself.

[molotov]

"Not anymore," Molotov answers, and she doesn't care if he believes her. "Not since the Dissolution. It was fun while it lasted, though, when I was training with my father."

She doesn't bother mentioning that he was killed during her very first assignment. It's not worth feeling anything over something that happened more than twenty years ago.

[silberfuchs]

Her use of the word 'fun' in that context tells him a little more about her, but it seems plausible enough that she would stop after that date. "You've kept in practice. No one can go at the dummies like you were with rusty skills I should think."

It doesn't have lie written all over it, but she's holding back. Not that he has a right to pry, not without giving a little in return anyway. He takes another puff from the cigarette and leans back a bit. "I was GSG-9 after the Dissolution."

[molotov]

It should really be her father that speaks volumes -- she was raised this way, practically fed nothing but propaganda until it was all over. "Of course, it would be a waste to let so many years of training fall by the wayside," she agrees, rolling her shoulder. "Besides, what else am I going to do? Go work in a bank? Please."

She nods, gives him an appraising look. "I have known a few others. Good group."

[silberfuchs]

He snorts, unable to picture Molotov as a teller.

"It was, yes, or the near thirty years I was a member. Mostly behind a desk or training others, sadly, but I was deemed something of an antique for field work. Still, I would get missions off the books." Though he doesn't explain that those missions would be from a secondary team of veritable super hero cyborgs and not the German government, nor that his 'antique' status came from his early cold-war era integrated weapons systems (that he's now rid of) and not his age (though at around one hundred years old now, one could say that too, despite his not looking out of his 30's).

[molotov]

Well, he can hardly expect to say that and not have Molotov catch it, now can he?

"Antique?" she asks casually, glancing at him. "They might say fieldwork is for the young, but you are hardly retirement age." Her tone is light and conversational, but she looks... interested in what he may possibly mean by that word.

[silberfuchs]

"I'm older than I look." It amuses him that she would say that, an then his brain provides a reminder that he's a clone of his former self, regardless of his long memories being intact and that this particular body is still very technically teenaged despite having been scienced into looking like himself just without cybernetics. He wipes the thought away; if you're as old as you feel, then he's a hundred.

He gives Molotov a loaded look, watching for her reaction. "I was born in 1933."

[molotov]

Her only real reaction is to snort and light a new cigarette off the old one -- Molotov is too good to let any real surprise through.

"You're well preserved, aren't you?" she quips, letting her leg swing back and forth. "The Germans do not usually hold up so nicely, but then again, I am Russian, so who am I to talk?"

Yes, Molotov is fully aware that, one morning, in about thirty years, she is going to wake up as a withered, four foot tall babushka.

[silberfuchs]

He snorts at the phrasing and the truth in her words, but he also can sense the curiosity lacing them. He isn't sure he's ready to share, but really what can it hurt? Perhaps it's even better, given that they keep rerunning those damn exposes and the last thing he wants is to have to explain to yet another person that he is not a Nazi.

"It was a combination of cryogenic freezing and cybernetic remodeling." He finishes his cigarette, grinding out the butt on the floor and immediately wishing he had another. "I'm fully human again now, but I was made into a weapon. Artillery in most limbs, a combat knife, bomb in my torso."

He shrugs as if it means nothing. "Considering all that was really left was my brain and some of the nervous system after they were finished, there's not much to decay after that."

[molotov]

"Interesting," she says lightly. "The six million ostmark man. Any particular reason they chose you for such an experiment?"

Molotov isn't really surprised by these kinds of things. They're not uncommon in her world, but more personally, she finds them sort of interesting, if not always the most useful transformations. Artillery in the limbs doesn't sound so bad, although she'd forgo the whole torso bomb part.

[silberfuchs]

"A handy body? I wouldn't have been missed." He was almost dead already when the Black Ghost took him, riddled with bullet wounds from the border guard and the resulting truck crash from when he'd panicked.

"It's not exactly a comfortable thing to relive, miss." Damnit, he'd called her Fräulein in his head but this damned chip keeps his tongue speaking English. Even when he'd had his cybernetic chip he could at least choose to use his native tongue when he wanted. This is just invasive and irritating.

[molotov]

She shrugs and nods. "I understand. No need to talk about it if you don't want to," she tells him, although she thought it was a little weird that he bothered bringing it up if he didn't want to tell her about it. Whatever, Molotov was more than used to odd people.

[silberfuchs]

It is a little strange. He's found himself talking about it a little more as time goes on and he's even come to realize that others have been through surprisingly similar circumstances to his own. Maybe he's finally moving past it after over half a century of angst. Who knows.

"What about you? Any wild stories?"

[molotov]

"Nothing like that," she smirks, shrugging again. "Only your standard stuff. Olympian, globe-trotting, faking my own death a few times. The only experimentation I ever saw was in the KGB labs. The tiger-man wanted to mate with me, apparently."

She shudders. Crap like this was why she'd gone freelance.

[silberfuchs]

"Tiger-... what?" That's a new one, and to his mind considerably worse than what he'd been through. Granted the things he tries to forget from Mocawa were along those lines and it puts a dour frown on his face.

"I take it you saw to that never happening?" Maybe it's vindictive, but he hopes there's a story that ends up with one of her stilettos in said Tiger-man's neck.

[molotov]

There's a sort of dismissive wave, like maybe Molotov doesn't consider it that big of a deal. "Oh, they were working on a human/animal hybrid program for a while, trying to make weapons that would be more vicious than a normal human, I guess," she explains, "but it wasn't very successful. The tiger-women got out, tried to breed with an enemy spy, and he killed them all. They let me feed the tiger-man once and I guess maybe he was confused by my hair color or something."

Another shrug. "They're all long dead now, turns out that kind of genetic splicing does not lend itself well to a long lifespan."