The Crowning Of Clara Murphy

[etcircenses]

Who| Everyone.
What| The Crowning of Clara Murphy
Where| A refurbished former-medical building within Capitol. 
When| Starting from late afternoon, going into the evening and late night.
Warnings/Notes| Don't forget, peacekeepers are on high alert and will notice any rebellious activity or odd behaviour. 

The theme of the ceremony is corruption and dystopia, with a distinct nod to futuristic aspects and, of course, robots. The room is stark, clean, and foreboding, all done in metallics, crisp whites, and the occasional bit of robotics set up as art. It speaks as an unholy cross between a medical office, a military base, and an extremely well kept prison.

The ceremony is both a chance for Capitolites to have fun and be grateful for the grand and glorious Panem which in no way exemplifies any attributes of dystopia, while also working as a not so subtle reminder to the troublemakers out there of what can happen when things get out of line. Which they surely won't, with all the peacekeepers around.

Tributes are dressed in all manner of thing incorporating chains, rope, caution tape, muzzles, bars and cages, prison stripes, and uniform orange-- all things reminiscent of imprisonment and restriction. Some tributes may be made to look scuffed up, like cartoon-ish depictions of hardened thugs. There are a few references to robotics, and that of evil and corrupt military men and police officers, but all tributes will be marked by some manner of cuff or chain that clearly denotes them as “criminals”.

They’ll also be given a “prison number” that is actually indicative of their district association and an arbitrary letter next to it, for example, someone from district six will have 06 and the first letter of their name. It will be temporarily tattooed somewhere visible on their skin. It can be washed off but it will take more scrubbing than would be done in a single day, let alone a crowning.

The only exceptions to these rules, are those who have been brought to the winner’s table; all those who can be deemed as cyborgs, scientists, and of course, the victor herself. Her throne sits at the head of the table, a robotic contraption that appears almost as though it might encase her. For a crown, Clara has been given one that seems to bear resemblance to a white picket fence, which, when made into a crown, looks far sharper than the idyllic home setting it’s meant to represent.

Avoxes are all dressed as members of the corrupt Detroit military police. The uniforms are naturally given a more sinister edge. None of them are comfortable. All of them are serving “Detriotto” staple foods.

Around the crowning, flat hologram projections of hockey games can be seen. They show the games of a team called “The Rouge Wings” and alternate that with the less spectacular showings of what appears to be a young boy’s hockey team. Commercials fill the times between promoting the work of Capitol’s peacekeepers, showing appreciation for them on an individual level, encouraging obedience in citizens with pleasant clips of peacekeepers speaking to children, and suggesting recruitment in the truly good and noble of Panem. Capitolites may nod along to these as they giggle at the sight of decorative signs, that are most certainly from Clara’s lesser world, about obeying, consuming, and so on, to a less than favourable government. A few posters feature Clara Murphy’s face in four colour palettes, all humorous jabs at dystopia proclaiming; “MOTHER MURPHY IS WATCHING YOU”.

But hockey games are not the only things that can be seen on the projection screens; if tributes take the time to look, they may see their own face projected above in profile and facing forward views like that of mug shots. Though, how the capitol has managed to get these pictures may be entirely a mystery. Besides these mugshots, criminal records are displayed, listing crimes from “lied to their parents” to petty theft to murder. Whether these records are true or not may be up for much debate.

In the mean time, there are plenty of things for party go-ers to do, such as take part in the David For A Day egg and spoon race, in which tributes will all have a chance to dress up (with wigs and matching clothing of all sizes!) as the mysterious David, compete against others, and should they win, be dubbed David For A Day, winning themselves a banner they can wear and a spot at the victor table.

There is also an obstacle course available dubbed the "Clarence Boddicker Memorial Prison Funhouse" designed to look, you guessed it, like a prison. Fun for all ages and demeanours!

For those looking for retreat, there’s a small section cut away from it all, designed to be a pleasant backyard patio setting opened to a starry night sky and small surrounding garden, in stark contrast to the rest of the place. There’s a small area for dancing in, that can really only accommodate one couple at a time, but is nevertheless perfect for a romantic scene. Only two songs play over speakers here, one perfectly fitting, the other a little more jarring. It’s also here that party go-ers can get their picture taken with a life sized ED-209. Many more much smaller ED-209’s can be seen around and within the crowning party. As well as the occasional roomba, which fans of the last arena will surely get a chuckle out of.

As the crowning nears it’s end, those at the victor’s table will be given paintball guns filled up with red paint. They will be ordered to bring the criminals to justice! The criminals being all the other tributes. Those hit with paint will be made to wait within the Memorial Prison Funhouse until all the criminals are apprehended and forced to do their time! No one will be allowed to go back to the tribute tower until all the criminals are caught.

Comments

natasha | open

[atoner]

Well, as far as provocative outfits go, Natasha's almost surprised that this is what they gave her. To be honest, she's worn a lot worse on missions, albeit never with heavy shackles around her wrists like oversized bracelets. Her stylists made her up a lot more flashily than she'd normally choose, but as always, Nat goes with the flow.

Mostly, she's observing. The Capitol and how they work. The number of peacekeepers out in force. From what she knows of the blackout, it really riled them up.

But her attention is quickly grabbed by the sight of her own face up there on the walls. It's the picture off the SHIELD databases, she recognizes it. And then a wall of scrolling text:

ASSASSINATION
MURDER
ESPIONAGE
BETRAYING STATE SECRETS
ILLEGAL HACKING
ARSON
CHILD MURDER
TORTURE
ASSAULT
DEFECTION

...which is funny, because the last "crime" listed is something Natasha considers the best thing she's ever done.

It's a display she watches with a quizzical look and a raised eyebrow.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

Considering the pants and choker they'd had him wear, Sam's actually okay with them not putting him in a shirt and opting to just drape a few more chains over him. The pants are hard enough to move in.

He'd been mingling a little, but when he spots a very familiar red head in an... interesting outfit, he heads over immediately.

Sam seriously doubts he's sneaking up on her, but for a moment, he just looks at what she's watching. "You should see what they put on mine."

[atoner]

He's not sneaking up on her, but she keeps looking at the list for a moment, trying to figure out if they're done or not. It seems like they are. But when she finally turns around, she has to give him a once-over with one raised eyebrow. They went heavier on the chains with him, as opposed to the simple one they put on her neck. Aesthetic wise, it wasn't like Natasha was expecting tact from these people.

"You got a dark past you're hiding from everyone, Wilson?" Natasha's tone is joking, but she's pretty sure he probably does. It happens with people in a business like theirs - which includes the military, especially members of an elite and experimental government squadron. Pararescues or not.

[sizeofyourbaggage]

His smile turns into something more like a smirk when she gives him a once over - he can't help it, it's a natural reaction. So is returning the look over; that's absolutely the story he's sticking to.

"Not anymore, as far as the Capitol's concerned. I'd lodge a complaint about crappy fact checking and unreliable sources, but I can't seem to find the suggestions box." His own tone is equally joking, but, well. Yeah, he does. He hasn't met a lot of people who don't, though.

[atoner]

Natasha has mental lists of people in her mind. People she can trust, all to varying degrees. People with skills that might come in useful. Among others. At this point, Sam's placed himself firmly on both lists - and the first one is a selective one indeed. She figures that after everything that happened with the Insight helicarriers, putting his life on the line, he deserves it.

As far as people she'd like to be stuck with in an authoritarian city, well. Sam and Steve are good candidates. "They seem like the type to shoot people who complain," which is true, but she's shrugging casually like it's nothing. "You could always try denying that it's true."

[arrogantalloy]

Tony comes up to her in his own the outfit, the coat also had a large iron ring over where his reactor used to live with chains between the ring and cuffs on his wrists while taking a drink and looking up at her own list or misdemeaners.

"All that and you never Jaywalked?"

He glances over at her with an amused eyebrow raised, under his left eye was his tattoo of 012T flexing a little against his amused look.

[atoner]

She's pretty uncomfortable, but Natasha's a pro at hiding it. She acts like this whole thing doesn't faze her in the least - she tells herself that this was the reality she was going to have to get used to back in Washington, too. Every single one of her dirty deeds, in full technicolour detail. Worse than this.

This, she can handle. With a little bit of glibness and a requisite grace.

"Who knows, maybe they didn't have room on my rap sheet."

[arrogantalloy]

With a chuckle Tony shakes his head.

"If the stock market trends back home can scroll through the prices, this place can scroll a rap sheet."

He swirls his drink and glances at it.

"So, this place is. Special. Huh?" He gestures to the whole crowning. "Makes my parties look boring don't you think?"

[atoner]

"If we're going for something as petty as jaywalking, they're gonna be scrolling for a while," is all Natasha says, taking a dainty sip of her own drink. A beer from the bottle that she opened herself. It makes her feel a little better about possible drugging, not that it's really any kind of protection from a government that owns everything.

That's a bummer, isn't it?

"I'd take one of your parties over this in a heartbeat," which is probably indicative of how much she hates this one. Considering the last Stark party she went to, he'd hit on her all night and the whole thing had ended in explosions.

Re: natasha | open

[justoutrunyou]

Sandy approaches Natasha cautiously. She is still no the Natasha that she knew before, the same one that helped her commit her first murder, but maybe she could still learn from this one.

"What does defection mean?" she asks watching the list scroll along. Her own outfit is a sparkling, shimmering jumpsuit that looks like the night sky. On the back it reads "Negative Zone Detention Facility."

[atoner]

Oh.

It's a question that makes her pause a little bit. Not particularly because she thinks children ought to be shielded from such details - especially not children in this city. She just needs a good way to explain things without revealing too much.

"It's when you switch sides. I left one country for another."

[justoutrunyou]

"Oh." It took Sandy a minute to work that one out in her head. After all she could easily imagine why someone would want to leave their country if it was as much fun as Panem or her version of New York.

"But I thought if you left one country for another then the crimes couldn't follow you." She pressed expressing her lack of understanding on how the legal system works outside of her own city.

"Why did you leave?"

[soldieronwards]

The afternoon is turning to evening by the time he approaches her. It's not really much of an approach; it's more like he sort of just melts out of the crowd to appear at her side.

Bucky is decidedly free from the prison theme of the rest of the tributes, as one of those at the victor's table, and somewhere at the bottom of the mess that's currently his head, he might be glad for it--prison outfits bring up too many memories of one of the worst parts of his life. Maybe the worst, he might have thought, if not for recent events.

(No. He can't think like that. Every time he tries to think like that, something snaps in his head and reminds him: The Capitol is good to you and you are loyal to them. And if another part of him is screaming at that, it's distant and submerged.)

Instead, he's dressed almost all in a black catsuit (a mockery, perhaps, of the one Natasha herself usually wears?), save for the silver spirals radiating out from his left arm. Still, that arm makes him pretty recognizable.

And the woman at whose side he appears now is recognizable to him. He knew she was here; he's been doing his research, to better serve the Capitol. But actually seeing her is like having a toothache, and he feels the need to prod the sore tooth.

"You look bored. I don't blame you. It's a hell of a sham of a party."

[atoner]

She knows about him, too. Steve filled her in - versions of them that bear their names, but aren't the same. If she wasn't sure that he was here, maybe it could have been chalked up to memory augmentation. But he's here, and so is the other Soldier - and so, presumably, was the other version of herself. Natasha's interested in learning more about her. She thinks it might have been interesting to meet her, in an acutely strange way.

But then, maybe they would have killed each other. Who knows.

Natasha gives him a careful, but subtle once-over when he approaches her. This version had brown eyes, for one. Different hair. But what catches her eye is the fact that he looks...older, somehow. More world-weary.

She gives him a measured look and a casual shrug, as if the screen behind her isn't blasting an incredible rap sheet of her life. "If you've been to one party, you've been to them all," she says, glancing at his outfit with the slightest quirk of her lips. "I'm also guessing you already know who I am."

[dying]

The outfits that they give them have stopped bothering Thane. The outfit itself was an orange jumpsuit, cuffed at the bottom. The top of it was neatly rolled down, leaving him without a top. They didn't bother giving him shoes, either. He had a necklace made of chain link on - just slightly longer than necessary to fit around his neck.

He doesn't much enjoy the socializing in events like this, but it was just another part of the routine. And right now, he needed the routine. He couldn't make any mistakes - not even the smallest of errors. The brand the Capitol had put on his face was a reminder to every other tribute to behave as well. It labeled him a traitor to the Capitol, and everything about it told the story of how they didn't care who was guilty - they could do what they want.

The last time he had seen Natasha was in the previous arena, but something about her seemed different (maybe it is because the last time they were near each other, they had fought). Was it something about the way she stood? Certainly. There was a good chance that this was not the same one that he had known.

His memory was never wrong, though. "This is quite typical of the Capitol," he says, noting the quizzical look.

[atoner]

The only contact Natasha's ever had with aliens is that time a whole group of them decided they wanted to help a tantrum-throwing demigod destroy all of New York. The memories weren't exactly fond. Other than that, most of Natasha's experience has been relatively mundane. The regular old routine of spywork - assassinations, reconnaissance. Corrupt politicians and mafia heads and secret organizations. These are all things that Natasha knows.

Monsters and magic and aliens? She feels a little over her head. The Capitol? Alternate universes? She'll take a good old assassination any day.

But it's probably to her credit that she doesn't even blink when Thane appears in front of her. She gives him a measured gaze and takes a delicate sip from the glass she's holding. "And how accurate would you say they typically are?" not that any of these charges are untrue.

Dictatorships have been known to screw up on the information front from time to time, though.

[dying]

Her question confirmed his suspicions that she was different than the one he had ever so briefly met. That was quite alright. They would have no history to her, so they could start from scratch. That worked for him. Plus her crimes fascinated him at the core. She wasn't too different from himself.

"The Capitol knows intimate details of your life. They are very rarely wrong." Except of course in their methods of controlling their citizenry. They were very wrong about that. "Not that they care about the details of your life, of course, but they do know."

His tone is rather unconcerned. While they may know the intimate details of his life, he has never announced or shared them on camera. He preferred to remain quiet and not confirm whatever they knew.

Re: natasha | open

[atippleoftransparency]

"Huh," Lyle says, sidling up to the redhead as he peers up at her mug shot on the wall. Unlike most of the other Tributes, he's not wearing chains or a prison uniform or a fake brand, but instead a futuristic-looking jumpsuit and a lab coat with what is clearly meant to be 'suspicious' staining on the sleeves. "Your list of crimes and mine are practically Winathian."

He doesn't expect it to make sense to her, Winath probably doesn't even exist in her reality, but every other description he can think of sounds awkward even in his head.

"Nice to see we've got more sneaky people around."

[atoner]

Sneaky people. Alright, that earns him half a smile. Which is actually kind of a feat, given what's happening in front of her. Because the list keeps going, on and on and on and she's not sure if it's ever going to end. "This right here isn't exactly what I'd call sneaky," she replies, nodding her head to the screen. But despite everything, she doesn't really look all that shaken about it.

This was going to happen eventually. Nothing lasts forever. Secrets are no exception.

[knifewithnoname]

Pruna was watching her quietly, when she had had seen the screen with the name Natasha she had approached cautiously, but it wasn't the same one. Wasn't the Natasha she had killed. Someone else called Natasha, and someone with a very impressive list of achievements if they were all true and not made up by the Capitol.

Pruna's included murder, betrayal, torture, assassination, thieving, being a brat. She rolled her eyes at that one.

"You do be having an impressive list." She told Natasha, when she got close enough.

[atoner]

A professional always knows when she's in the presence of another professional. It's something about the way people like them move. The way they carry themselves. The appearances of things are deceiving - youth doesn't disarm Natasha at all. She was younger than this girl when the KGB took her in.

Children are useful tools for people with bad intentions. She knows this firsthand.

"Impressive is one word for it, I guess," and some of it is. Impressive because she's the best and she's still alive. That alone is a calling card, because you don't get to live this long in this business without being the best. "You look pretty young for a rap sheet like yours."

[knifewithnoname]

Pruna shrugged, "I do be being old enough." She figured if she could do it she must be old enough, some of those 'crimes' had been taught to her many many years ago. She thought of her sister, she popped into her head more often than she should, she hadn't ever become twelve and yet her list would be practically as long as Pruna's and it was the sum of everything ever in her life, you could die any time, it seemed stupid to waste half your life because you were small.

She grinned, "I do be betting when I do be being old like you my list will be being much longer than yours."

[risewithit]

It's not that Skye has a little scorecard in her head or anything, of familiar faces and checkmarks next to them. Shook hands with the god of thunder? Check, biceps are actually as impressive in reality as they look on tv. Met Captain America? His jaw line could, in fact, probably cut glass.

She'd met the other Romanoff, sure, had her identity as the Black Widow all but confirmed, but this is entirely different. This is the living legend she's heard nothing but whispered stories of since she walked onto the Bus. It's a little bit intimidating approaching her in a way talking to any of the other Avengers hadn't been, because superheroes are one thing. But Natasha freaking Romanoff is SHIELD, and SHIELD is Skye's life now.

"Hey, sweet, wanna compare hacker notes?" Her own list of crimes conveniently scrolls across the screen as she speaks.

[atoner]

Natasha's a bit of a legend inside of SHIELD, which means that most people know of her. She, on the other hand, doesn't really have a huge awareness of other agents unless they catch her attention somehow. There are just so many people who work inside the organization. She's... "work friends" with Maria and Sharon, and there are a few other agents - May, for one, who she knows on a first-name basis.

Skye's too new of a recruit, though. And Nat's been spending a lot of time lately trying not to die. But the rap sheet gives her pause. "I left them all in my other jacket back home," she replies, as glances at the list as it appears. Enough to take everything in, but she looks away before it gets awkward.

"You wanna catch me up on what cosplay is?"

[risewithit]

"Uhhhhhhhhh." There are things you expect of certain people, and there are things you don't expect but they bowl you over anyway. Like, Bucky Barnes not knowing a 21st century pop culture staple? That makes sense, the guy spent like seventy years in a refrigerator. But having to explain it to the freaking Black Widow?

Surreal. And more than a little embarrassing.

"So you know how after the Battle of New York there was a mob of people outside Stark Tower dressed as the Avengers?"

Whatever. Go hard or go home, Skye. She's probably going to find out anyway.