thecapitol | open

Who | Skye + you!
What | Skye arrives and is upset with this entire situation, to absolutely no one's surprise.
Where | Training Center, various locations therein
When | Now
Warnings/Notes | Mild language warnings.

[ District 6 Suite ]

At first when Skye wakes up she thinks Hydra must have her, and it's only the nausea and disorientation sweeping over her that prevents her from trying to physically assault one of the peacekeepers when they come to lead her away.

(Portals are such a bitch. Thanks for nothing, stupid Nordic alien gods.)

It's once they get her to the Training Center and give her the vague welcome spiel that she realizes how wrong she was. This isn't Hydra. This is, if it's even possible, much worse.

She drags herself into the bathroom and stares at her reflection in the mirror, feeling numb and cold as she tries to process what she's been told. A battle to the death. Things were just starting to seem like they'd be able to make a go for the better, and now she's here, trapped in some foreign world for a celebrity deathmatch. Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? And then: there it is, anger, bubbling up hot and fast. She wrestles it down.

First things first: she needs more information, and she needs to see if she can find her team. Skye pushes her hair back and steps out of the bedroom to meet her suitemates.

[ The Commons ]

She's fiddled with her network device by now, and already figured out the vast breadth of digital information is locked to her--for now. The Tributes list and network had no records of her team, but that doesn't mean anything. They could be here off the record, under lock and key. She knows nothing about how these people operate.

On the other hand, she did see several other familiar names and faces, and her stomach flipped nervously when she saw them. Really? They're pitting a Level 1 agent up against the Avengers? Talk about unfair play.

So in the meantime, she's stuck to good, old-fashioned info hunting. Which is to say, she'd changed into a brightly-colored dress upstairs and is now approaching strangers downstairs with a stunning, confident smile, one hand held out to shake. "Hi! I don't think we've met yet. I'm Skye."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Venus is used to picking out the fresh meat either by the way they throw themselves into their exercises at the gym or by the quiet, shy disorientation that pushes them to corners, to trying to be inconspicuous if they're not outright drowning their fears. She isn't really used to being accosted with friendliness, but she finds she prefers it a hundredfold to the usual glumness.

She's in a similarly colorful dress, plus big sunglasses with rhinestones on the sides, when she meets Skye. Her handshake is firm, if slightly defensive - a hold that could quickly be broken or turned into a throw, depending on the need. Her other hands holds a half-cup of bright red smoothie with a little yellow umbrella peeking from the top.

"I don't think we have." She greets Skye with an equally wide smile, the not-entirely-genuine one that once was the face of a toothpaste ad back home. "Venus Dee Milo. You're a Tribute?"

She isn't dressed like a Stylist or Escort.

There are new parts of herself Skye has started to discover in the course of her training. A sixth sense she's begun to develop, for her body and the bodies of the people around her: the weight and leverage she'd need to disarm them if needed; the distance necessary for an effective gunshot. It's not something she's always comfortable with, but she still thinks of them as other people rather than as targets, and she's going to cling to that for as long as she can.

And it could save her life.

So when Venus shakes her hand, she feels the looseness of that grip--and maybe the other woman means it as an out for herself, but Skye can feel an out for her too.

"Ding ding ding. Good to know it's so obvious, I was wondering if I shouldn't have come down here wearing a neon blinky sign that says NEWBIE."

"For what it's worth, it's not just you. All the new people arrive here with this deer-in-the-headlights kind of look, or they jump into the gym like they actually think they're going to win."

Not like Venus can really knock the gym, given that she spends more and more time there lately. It shows in her body, which has tipped over to the 'athletic' side between bombshell and badass in the last few weeks.

"The secret," Venus puts a finger to her lips, "is that you get people to like you. All the pushups in the world ain't gonna help you with that."

Skye's still undecided on how to approach the gym. On the one hand: she needs to keep up her training regimen, with or without May. On the other hand: she's not sure she wants to show precisely how much she can and cannot do.

Maybe she can talk to Stephen about getting a heavy bag set up in her room, although it's not like there's likely a whole lot of privacy there either. It's probably mined over with hidden cameras getting nice candid shots of her ass for pervy old men.

Isn't that a comforting thought.

"Oh, good," Skye says. "I hate pushups anyway. Getting people to like you isn't so bad." She managed to succeed with May and Ward, after all, and one of the two was a murderous double-agent so bonus points there.

"You'd be surprised how many people here seem to struggle with it." Venus, on the other hand, has always been good at playing a darling. To succeed in your business you either have to be lovable or love-to-hateable, and though circumstances have occasionally pushed her into the latter she has, like many people, preferred to stay in the former.

It's because she's genuinely a friendly person that she has that camera magnetism. It shows now. "Have you really gotten the lay of the land, yet? It's a lot for first-timers so if you need any advice, I don't try to sabotage people before the actual Games."

"That's so sweet of you." And not at all terrifyingly crazy. Skye makes a mental not to keep an eye out for this one.

She doesn't say that she doesn't plan to play along for long.

"I've got the level one infodump, more or less," she says. "Other world, celebrity Highlander, sometimes we come back to life afterwards, et cetera. Anything I'm missing here?"

Probably wise, Skye. Venus has the highest kill count of any Tribute in the current Arenas.

"No, that's the basics of it. I was thinking more about where the best spots around here to catch a bite and shop are. You get a hundred assi for every kill you make, whether you're the aggressor or it's self-defense, so depending on how you do each Arena you might end up with some cash to burn. And if not there's always credit." She pushes her sunglasses back on her forehead.

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