thecapitol | You can't have good reconnaissance on and empty stomach

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You can't have good reconnaissance on and empty stomach

WHO:Meg and OPEN
WHAT: Meg arrives, yells loudly and then eats the world
WHEN: Before the after the jailbreak, before the arena
WHERE: District 7 commons, then the Tribute Center ground floor
WARNINGS: Meg is a warning. Meg and her lack of care for her timing

District 7
When she first woke up, she thought she'd been captured by someone, but as people came in and threw some clothes on her, shoved things into her hands and explained what was going on, she quickly found out she had been captured, just not in the way she first thought.

They took her guns, she had no idea if Django2.0 was around anywhere and worst of all, they took her jacket--Jo's jacket. She was feeling pretty vulnerable right now. Which just made her angry. She was a hero dammit, she had smugglers to thwart and murders to stop and a city to put back together, she didn't have time for some dumb killing game these guys thought sounded fun. And that was another thing! How fucked up was this place to have something like that? It felt like the way Tokyo and New York were now, only cleaner.

"This is bullshit!"

Whoever might have been around the commons of district 7 might have been startled by the sudden loud yell that came from the woman who'd previously been pacing quietly. Especially since, as soon as she'd yelled it, she was back to steaming quietly as she stood with her arms tightly cross.

Ground floor, against a wall in the middle of the area
She hadn't really calmed in the last few hours of being in this stupid place, but she had relocated and begun treating it more like a stakeout job. Sort of. She wasn't exactly hiding, sitting in plain view of everyone who came in and out of the tribute tower, nor was she acting very conspicuous.

She'd set up a blanket on the floor and grabbed a pillow off the couches to lean against while she glared at every single person who walked by. She was simply watching to learn who was who and what was what! She was just doing it with a very heated and aggressive glare.

The last thing of note on her little set-up, was the constant travel of at least two avoxes between her little blanket-base and the kitchens. Every time they approached the blanket, they delivered a new plate of food (predominantly sweets, but there were other things as well) and every time they left the blanket-base, it was with an empty plate in hand. As Meg was watching every person she set eyes on, she was busying her hands with shoving extraordinary amounts of food into her face, an impressive sight if only for how she never seemed to get full.

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In a way Leah can understand why this city seems to be so obsessed with food. After all, since killings seem to be the currency here. She is still trying to find a way here, trying to determine what would be a good strategy to go with.

Hiding inside a blanket fort giving out glares does not seem a good strategy, yet it has her interest piqued.

"If looks could kill..." she utters before she crouches down in front of the great fortress of blanket and the very angry girl hiding inside of it. "...you could win these Games at least a thousand times."

Meg started a tiny bit at the woman stopping in front of her. She wasn't expecting anyone would come talk to her. For one second, she thought she'd just been called ugly and she puffed up like an irritated bird, but her brain caught up quickly enough and her pride simmered down, leaving her to have to cover by leaning back like she was relaxing and lightly folding her arms under her chest.

"If they didn't take my guns, I'd win their stupid game anyway." An extremely over-dramatic sigh tore through the air as her fingers pulled at her face as though trying to wipe the glare from it.

"Uuuuuuugh! At this rate, they'll get me by making me get a bunch of nasty wrinkles!" Her voice had a slight whine to it unfitting for a woman her age, though she didn't seem to care.

A moment later, she was back to arms and legs crossed as she surveyed her company. "So'd they take you too or do you live here?"

"Think you have enough food?"

Albert's seen quite a few strange things in the common room and this hardly ranks over Shepherd's gigantic blanket fort after the last major arena, but the girl sitting there stuffing her face with an angry gaze out from her picnic spot strikes his interest for some reason.

Maybe it's because he's fairly certain she's going to make herself sick with that volume of food.

Rather than fitting in here, Dennett has come to find that every day is more and more unsettling. Avoxes, in particular. He feels a kind of uncomfortable horror about them, something that his years dealing with trauma patients had never stirred up in him.

They were what got his attention, first, tracking lines like ants back and forth. Who could...? And who needs that much dessert? Surely not just. one. person?

So, yes, nerdy doctor staring at the woman on the pillows, because he's just sort of waiting for her explode into diabetes or something.

Meg was enjoying her constant stream of desserts. Plate after plate of delicious things and no one there to tell her she'll get fat if she doesn't stop. Who cared? She'd just work it off eventually anyway.

What she didn't like was the old guy staring at her. She sat up a bit more and told the avox who came up with a new plate to deliver what was left and then leave it.

It was time to get serious.

"Alright, buddy, what's your problem? You make a habit of staring at pretty girls? Good to know creepers still exist in a place like this!"

Edited 2014-08-14 04:17 (UTC)

"Hey, you can never have enough food, buddy, mark my words. For all you know, this place'll go up in flames tomorrow and then there'll be nothing to eat! You never know when your next meal won't be there, so you outta be ready."

She crossed her arms under her chest and leaned back as one brow rose to accommodate the eyeing she was giving him. This guy was handsome, even if he had no right to question a gal's eating habits.

Oh well, he seemed tame enough. Like one of those lame professor types.

"Besides, who said it was all for me? I'm not against sharing you know." As long as she wasn't sharing with assholes.

"Is that an invitation?" He's somewhat amused, though it's a surprisingly practical reason even if its application makes no sense. Stuffing yourself is far less useful than keeping the food for later to prepare for eventualities.

Still, he doesn't expect this girl is the type to apply logic that isn't her own special brand (like a former redhead he knows) so he decides to sit and learn more about her instead to see if he's right. "Albert Heinrich. Pleased to meet you, Miss."

She was about to make some snide remark in response, but then he sat and proved he wasn't as stupid as she was about to accuse him of. In fact, he seemed somewhat intelligent and knew how to talk to a lady. That softened her expression a little.

"Meg Mitarai, nice to meet ya too, Albert. Go ahead, grab whatever you want, just leave the donuts, got it?"

She grabbed a donut in each hand and shoved half of one into her face before speaking up again. "So, you one of the lucky stuck too? It's a bunch of bull, huh?"

He's not worried about her getting fat, as much as having all of her arteries NOPE all at once on her. In the middle of an Arena, that could be...very bad.

He jumps, flustered, at the way she calls him out. "I'm not a...a creeper." What even is that? Creepy, obviously. "I don't, erm, creep. I was just....how can you eat all that?" Because, honestly, his blood sugar is spiking just looking at it all.

He follows direction and partakes of something aside from a donut, preferably something savory; he's not big on sweets. "It's not really a lottery I was looking to win, yes."

Munching thoughtfully, he looks at his companion, but his attention is drawn by an Avox silently delivering a plate then removing an empty one. He's reminded of Cecil and sobers a little, wondering if this girl knows what she's doing or if it's a jumping in without examining sort of thing. He'd best get her talking about herself to find out. "You haven't been here long, but you've already gotten a handle on how things work, it seems."

"Easy! It goes from my hand to my face and I eat it. You should try it some time, it's not as hard as it looks." She smirked at him and pointedly took a large bite out of one of her cupcakes.

"Besides! A girl's gotta keep up her energy, what kind of fuel am I gonna get from a bunch of rabbit food and carrot sticks like all those other stick-figure girls eat?" It was an honest question, she never understood all those 'diets' or whatever junk people always seemed fascinated with. The closest she'd ever come was Kyohei's cooking and that stuff always tasted good, so it wasn't the same.

Meg sat up a bit and planted her hands on her hips, haughtiness falling on her like a mantle. "You got that right, I've already got this place figured out! You see, screwed up places are always the same underneath all the pretty junk and this one's no different."

The truth was that she'd stumbled across the avoxes tendency to serve and she'd decided to take advantage of it in light of nothing else making sense. But this guy didn't need to know that, no one needed to know that. She intended to act like she had both feet firmly planted in this situation.

"I do have one question, though, who's the head honcho around here? Does he show his face or is he one of those 'behind the curtain bull' types?"

Edited 2014-08-21 00:35 (UTC)

By take he takes it that she knows very little about their situation other than what's in the welcome packet, so to speak, though she's picked up on the bits of it that are fundamentally wrong.

He'll try and help where he can, at least to keep her from getting into unwitting catastrophic trouble by shooting her mouth off.

"President Snow. He appears on television and at official functions. I've never seen him speak to the tributes directly, but he's visible at least."

"I am aware of the process, young lady." Does he have to stare sternly down his nose through his glasses at you? He will! "It's about polyunsaturated fats and cholesterol and your triglyceride count--" give him a moment, he may need to faint just thinking about what your bloodwork says.

"Then again, I suppose, I mean, it's not going to kill you here. They have other ways of doing that." Okay...maybe that sounded a little creepy.

"Sounds like a first class asshole. He's probably some spineless coward."

She punctuated her words by taking a huge bite out of a danish. She looks thoughtful a moment and she's barely finished chewing when she starts speaking again. A demonstration of her manners.

"He's probably not even a real president, you know? Like a dictator who just says he's a president."

A beat, then she threw the danish down and it was like a fire sprouted up around her.

"Oooh people like that make me so mad! If I had my guns I'd show him just what I think of this crap!"

"Wow, who do you think you are, my fake father? You're a doctor aren't you?" It was said somewhat accusingly because wow you're not helping your creepiness.

"Listen, doc, I'm gonna eat till I drop so either shove it and join me or shove it and don't stand there worrying about my figure. Which is none of your business, you know!" Childishly, she crossed her arms (and nearly pouted at him.) That lasted all of five seconds before her arms unfolded and one hand reached for a cookie.

"What's your name, anyway, doc?"

Edited 2014-08-25 21:14 (UTC)

He'd never had children and if this is an example of what children are like....maybe that was a good thing. "Yes, I am a doctor. And old enough to be your father."

Harrumph. Never mind that he's reaching critical mass of creepy.

"I wasn't thinking about your figure." Though there was an awful lot of it visible, and rest assured, if he was your father, he'd be telling you to cover yourself up. "Dennett. Dennett Norton. From Detroit." In case that rings some bells.

"Calm down, calm down. You'll end up like them if you keep talking like that." He motions to one of the poor Avox.

It's true what she'd said, about Snow being a dictator, but just because its true doesn't mean she should scream it from the rooftops.

"All of us are in the same boat. Do you think I would be here if I was allowed my weaponry? None of us would be, hence why we don't have it." He tries to explain it patiently, and his tone does remain soft, but the words are chastising, as if trying to calm an unruly child.

And really, it's an apt description right now.

Meg looks at the Avoxes curiously, as thought noticing them for the first time.

"Become like them, what do you mean? Aren't they just workers or robots or something?"

She wouldn't be caught dead wearing what they were wearing and the way they were so silent...it was eerie so she tried not to think about it.

"They're people," he tries not to sound scolding, barely succeeding. "People who've displeased the Capitol."

Whatever Avoxes were left to wait on Meg scurry about their business more quickly as Albert starts bringing attention to them. Soon, the two are temporarily left on their own.

"They have no tongues and are conditioned to follow orders. Any sense of their own individuality is stripped." At least, that's what they attempt to do. It doesn't always take.

"Oooh, hey! My nick of the woods!" Sort of. New York and Detroit were on the same continent and since she'd been living in Japan for nearly six years, it counted.

She stuck her hand out, suddenly much more agreeable than before.

"Name's Meg, nice to meet you, Doc. And don't worry, I never even met my dad, so I can't exactly compare you to him." Because that's so much better.

It's like a switch has been flipped on her personality, where she'd been abrasive and accusatory before, now she was bright and looking at him expectantly like he was supposed to continuing telling her about himself.

The change is startling, and he gives an owlish blink at the sudden reduction in hostility, offering a nervous smile in return. "You're from Detroit?"

There's a part of his fussy little brain that takes her comment about her father and says, 'that explains a great deal'. But he figures he doesn't want to get slapped--or worse--so he wisely keeps that observation to himself.

"You're an orphan?" Well, that's kind of sad, really. And he feels those eyes on him, expectant. If only he had something awesome to say. "I...I make cybernetic limbs." ...yay?

Like a switch flipping, she instantly looks horrified and watches after where the Avoxes had gone.

"What!? That's horrible! Why would anyone just let that happen, that's just too screwed up!"

She moved to sit on her knees as though the extra height would make her point more audible.

"Are people just braindead here!? Why haven't they stopped this, it's just one guy with too much power!"

"Think about what you're saying for a moment." He pulls her back down to sitting, gently but firmly, trying to make sure she's really listening. It's something he'd used to do with Jet that only worked some of the time, but it's his knee-jerk reaction regardless.

He lowers his voice to barely above a whisper, words coming out in an urgent hiss between his teeth. "One guy with all of the power. That's exactly why it hasn't been stopped. Watch how loud you are about it unless your ambition is to be an Avox too."

She shook her head. "No, New York, but it's close enough." It wasn't really but that wasn't the point.

The point was that he was kind of funny looking, old, nice enough and not nearly as annoying as she'd first decided. That's what changing her mind was for!

She only nods at the question about being an orphan because, really, it's not that big of a deal, just a fact about her that was shared. Besides, cybernetic limbs sounded interesting.

It vaguely reminded her of RAPT and Bylon, but she doubted he was that kind of person.

"So, like, robot parts? Or like robot parts that go on people?"

He nods. All big American cities did have some similarities, and one of them is, as far as Dennett's concerned, none of them had horrible freakish battle royales among kidnapped people. He'll take it!

"Both, really, but my specialty is cybernetic interfaces--the parts that go on people." He sounds proud, and he is. Because of his work, amputees could run, walk, dance, play guitars, do almost everything they did before. "And you?" That's only manners. Surely she did other things than gorge on saturated fats.

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