thecapitol | Slumber Party

Slumber Party

Who| All adult Tributes
What| Slumber party fun times!
Where| The common room
When| during the Chilren's arena
Warnings/Notes| For those who earn tickets, please see this thread to post who they send them too.

The Tributes are told to arrive back at the Tower by 4 o'Clock. Anyone not there by 5 will in fact find themselves nudged home by their friendly, neighborhood peace keepers.

Everyone finds a set of P.J.s on their bed, and although there isn't any particular theme to them, none of them fall under normal, and all lean towards the children's side of things. Footsie P.J's, knee length plaids in bright pink, polyester frilly princess night gowns. And although the night isn't saturated in it, pink and purple are solidly the color code of the night.

Once everyone had been dressed, even if it is by force, they are all hearded down to the common room, which has been decked out. Pillows are everywhere, and large chunks of the floor have been changed into giant beds. The whole room is geared just slightly larger, to give the tributes the subtle but inescapable feeling that they are smaller. Gauzy curtains separate areas of the room by activity, but most furniture has been removed, sans a few scant pieces left for party purposes. Each Tribute is passed over a bag, blues for the boys and pinks for the girls. Within are a selections of goodies-face masques, a small personalized blanket with their face printed on it, and a check list of the activities. For every activity completed you get 5 tickets to send to any kid in the arena, and for completing them all you get a 20 point bonus.

On one huge wall, the Children's arena is broadcast across the whole wall. No matter where you may be in the room, you can see this wall, and the majority of the pillows are gathered around to watch it. An avox near the side of the wall will take any earned tickets and get them to the Tribute of choice in the arena, who will receive it with their next ticketed activity. Directly across from it is a huge table, dripping with every variety of junk food. Pizza's are piled high, and whenever the pile runs low a "delivery" avox will bring more. Chips, soda, cookies, and even more hand made variety of junk food like buckeyes and pigs in a blanket are spread across the table. And there is always an avox near by to "spike" your pop.

Pillow Fight: A padded arena for two is set up, with pillow armor and stuffed weapons.

Make Overs: A small salon is set up, full of ridiculous supplies like wigs, tattoo stencils, and rainbow make up. Nothing is neutral here. There are no stylists however, just lots of their toys for the Tributes to play with.

Fashion Show: After your make over you can walk over to the dressing room, full of things that are all over sized. Shoes, dressed, boas, all made sized up as if the Tributes were children themselves. You must walk the fashion run way to get points.

Video Games: A whole gaming area is set up. However the only game is a fighting game programmed with all the Children Tributes as characters.

Cup Cake Decorating: Just about everything is here to decorate, including decadent things such as live flowers and real gems. Everyone is told they must submit a cupcake for judging, the winner gets 20 extra tickets.

Spin the Bottle: Much like the traditional game, except the bottle is full. Take a swig of whatever is in the bottle before you drink, and it makes you feel much better about having to play spin the bottle after just one shot.

Seven Minutes in Heaven: Two participants are chosen at random throughout the party and hurried into a large closet for 7 minutes "alone," which anyone outside the closet can see on the monitors on the wall behind the closet. Which your character may or may not have seen before being rushed in.

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~~It matters because it means she isn't illegally getting shitfaced, obviously!~~

"I'm not beating myself up." She flops her cheek onto her fist, resting there, closing her eyes. "I'm going to let the hangover do that for me."

Soon enough that feels uncomfortable, and there she is laying her head on Brock's thigh. It's completely unsexual, like the way a dog would put their muzzle on their owner's knee.

"What's your life story, Brock? You got a nice voice. I'm just going to close my eyes and listen to you."

Brock is an expert in beating himself up about stuff, okay, he knows what she is doing! Don't try to convince him otherwise, lady.

But oh okay, that's... a thing. That's happening. Innocent or not, that is an awkward situation to find oneself in, a girl's head on your leg, and Brock freezes a bit. "Uh," he says, very eloquently, and glances from side to side. Is anyone else seeing this shit... he's not doing anything... nobody judge him...

"I really don't want you to puke in my lap, so try not to pass out. I work for the government. Of the United States," he adds, feeling the need to clarify. You never know.

She settles in, entirely unaware of his discomfort.

"I won't puke." She mumbles something else, but she isn't even quite sure what she's saying, and it certainly isn't anything intelligible. "The government used to hire me sometimes, when I was a mercenary. They'd hire us to take the fall and then they'd clean up the mess and take credit. Paid good."

Brock remains unconvinced, but doesn't say so. It's not like he's planning on keeping this get-up, though, so... whatever.

He also squints a little. When I was a mercenary? She's 22. It's not unheard of for people to take on mercenary work that young, and again his thoughts drift to Molotov, much to his further discomfort, but it's still unusual. As a general rule, Brock does not particularly like mercenaries, finding their morals and loyalties too nebulous to trust, but she's speaking in the past tense.

And besides, he reasons, most people probably adopt mercenary behavior in this world, anyway. It's how you survive. Not that he's not planning on fighting it for as long as he can.

"Well," he says evenly, "money isn't everything. Where are you from?"

Her eyes are closed, so she can't see the way his narrow at the word 'mercenary'. Whatever he's thinking of her, she's already combed through in her own head a hundred times over since coming to Panem. She doesn't know if she can say she left that life behind when she was taken here and then just chose never to return to her role as a 'professional superhero'.

His words ooze over her in slow motion, impeded by all the alcohol in her system, made syrupy and elastic by the mushy buzz of her senses. She keeps talking and keeps listening. It's better than sinking into the dark.

"Georgia. Georgia by way of Hollywood. You?"

He keeps thinking about John Bonham choking on his own booze vomit, so he is just going to keep her talking for as long as he can. As long as she's talking, she's awake. And not choking on booze vomit.

"I knew a girl from Georgia once," he answers absently. Brock knows girls from everywhere though, so it's not a very impressive feat.

"Colorado. I grew up in Nebraska, though."

Bonham probably did more shots that night than Venus has had in her whole life. C'est tragique.

"Colorado's beautiful. I went to Aspen once on a trip, tried to learn to ski. I was awful at it." Brock. She turns that name over in her head, over and over until the imagined letters just look like blocks and angles. It's a good name, thick and sturdy. "What do you do for the government? Seems a waste to have you as postman or something, though I guess you wouldn't have to be afraid of people not locking up their dogs."

"Yeah, Aspen's a little different from where I'm at," he says, though technically he should say it's different from where he was. But it's kind of hard to explain that your current residence is a massive airship that just kind of flies around the country, so... he skips that part.

He would also like to skip this particular line of questioning, but maybe she's drunk enough where he can get away with caginess. "Nothing super exciting. I quit for about a year and a half to do other stuff, so I just got back in. But you said you used to be a mercenary -- what now?"

She can take a hint, drunk as she is. "It's okay. If you don't want to talk about it you don't got to talk about it. Just be careful about keeping secrets here, the Capitol has some way of getting cameras back in our home timelines."

And she'll let it lie there. Her cat outfit is warm and soft. "Now I'm just a Tribute, killing people in the name of District Five, because- I don't know. Because better me than the kids they used to send."

He's heard that. He doesn't exactly believe it, because a) it makes no sense, and b) if they could, wouldn't they have better things to do with the technology? Interdimensional time travel for the express purpose of harassing the people they've kidnapped -- it's stupid. (Brock theorizes it's more along the lines of recording their memories of events, which at least makes sense.) Still, she's letting it go, so he does, too.

"They're still sending kids," Brock says in the most gentle tones he can muster; he doesn't really want her to buy into the propaganda that they're somehow indispensable just because they're not from here. "It's easier for them to dehumanize us this way, but don't you believe it for a second."

Putting the faith in anything the Capitol does making sense. Tsk tsk.

"They are." Forty-six of them. More than the old Hunger Games ever had; Venus' flimsy rationales creak and crumble under the weight of forty-six children. She sighs deep, more an inverted gasp than a melancholy musing, and she screws her eyes up for a second as she tries to make a place in her mind for this kind of enormity.

"I try to tell myself that at least the kids don't have to do all the killing this way, but they still find ways around it. Ways to make them suffer the most."

"Yeah," he says in a way that suggests he is not fully convinced, glancing over to the side. "I dunno. I think everybody suffers."

The Capitol pulls this shit with the kids so that people like Venus -- actual decent people who aren't drawn into the self-serving, mercenary notions of this whole place; Los Angeles on steroids -- suffer, too. Brock is pissed that they're making kids do this shit, but he's more pissed that they're using kids as leverage in that way. He's used to evil still having actual scruples.

Then again, there's nothing quite as evil as corruption. Brock rolls his eyes up, thinking. "I wonder if they'd go for an adults-only Arena. Give the kids a break."

She picks herself up off his lap, holding her hand to her forehead as if trying to keep the thought she's had in there from falling out. "We could propose it. We could- it'd spare the kids for a few weeks, right?"

She blinks in the lights that seem to bright and blurry and looks at Brock. "If I propose it, will you, um, will you back me up?"

Brock had actually already been considering proposing it by himself -- as in, something more traditionally gladiatorial, just Brock versus a whole bunch of dudes and tigers and whatever. Both because he was that confident in his ability to murder and because he was pretty sure it's just gimmicky enough for the Capitol to go for it. But he'd need to up his marketability first, which he... admittedly isn't great at, so...

This might be a better idea.

"Yeah," he says, holding up his hands a little so he can support her if she needs it. She's pretty drunk. "If you think they'll come down on you for it, I can take point."

Because, like, her brand and stuff? He's not sure how keen the Capitol would be on her ideas. On the other hand, maybe it's a way for her to get back in their good graces.

"They probably won't listen to me." She takes Brock's support, swaying into his hands and resting there. "I've kind of had a fall from grace lately. But you haven't had a chance to make, um, to make an enemy of them yet, right? You're brand new. Fresh. Sparkly."

She does a little fireworks gesture with her hand.

"We could even propose it's just the elevens and twelves, maybe. All-Stars League Bloodbath. I used to have a ten, you know, then they bumped me up after my sixth Arena."

Yeah. Sparkly. He eyes the gesture she's making but doesn't comment. She is just super drunk, huh.

"That... might not be a bad idea," he says, and he is a little surprised because she is so drunk. Why didn't he ever get great ideas when he was totally plastered? Some people have all the luck.

"But -- wait, they can change your number?"

For some reason it never occurred to him.

"I know, right? I'm a celebrity. I know how these people think." She taps her temple and tugs at the corner of her sleeve, as if she's trying to pull it down her wrist because she's cold.

She nods, then winces because it makes the whole world move around like water in a snowglobe. It makes her stomach roll. "They really occasionally re-evaluate, yeah. Sometimes you build up a lot of, you know. Skills. I learned how to make a fire out of sticks and shit like that."

"Fire out of sticks, huh," he says absently. He's figured out that, after death in an Arena, people get reset back to how they were when they were pulled here, so any physical changes probably wouldn't make a difference. Flexibility or muscle mass or anything. Sudden weight gain? But he never really considered intellectual changes.

Which is probably very telling about Brock Samson's priorities.

"I guess it can go the other way too. Knock you down some if they don't think you're pulling your weight. So to speak."

Not that he really cares about his ranking, but... no, who is he kidding, he cares a lot. If there is one thing Brock is good at, it's being ridiculously deadly, and it would be insulting if he lost bragging rights... even in the eyes of a totalitarian 1984 knock-off...

"Yeah. Got callouses on my hands learning it, too. Gave me new respect for cavemen. We had a caveman here, you know. And a zombie..." She dissolves into mumbling a bit, then realizes she's starting crying. She wipes her cheeks and looks at her hand like she can't quite believe that water got there.

"Sorry, I guess I'm an emotional drunk." I've got a lot of dead friends. Including the caveman. She squeezes her small hand over Brock's massive one helping her stay sitting. "You probably wanted to have a halfway decent time tonight."

Ha ha oh boy, now she's crying... which is super awkward... and Brock makes a little bit of a face like maybe he would like to chew off his own hand to escape. Emotions that aren't on the anger spectrum make him deeply uncomfortable, but, you know, she's drunk. He will give her a pass for that, and tries to keep his OH GOD WHY facial spasms in check.

He is still deeply uncomfortable, though. "Uh... no, it's..."

Fine, is what he means, it's fine, but he just sort of trails off, because. Emotions. Awkward. It's terrible.

"I don't think it's really possible to have a decent time in this situation, so... don't worry about it."

"I'm still sorry. Sorry." Something about alcohol makes her say that a lot. Maybe it's because 'alcohol' and 'apologize' have a lot of letters in common or something. That makes sense to her. Totally She dries her eyes and sighs.

Nothing is getting solved tonight, and even getting white girl-wasted isn't enough to drown out how fucked up this whole party for kiddie death matches is.

"I'm just going to invade your pillow fort and sleep and get out of your way. Thanks." She pats his hand, then crawls on hands and knees to the softest pile. "You've been a pal."

Even if even she can see the paralyzing 'oh god tears' expression on his face.

Yeah, no, that's cool. It's not like he was totally gonna use the pillow fort for himself or anything. Nah.

Brock just mutters something useless and noncommittal like 'yeah, no problem,' mostly because it wasn't a problem, he was just talking, but also because he can't really bring himself to kick a miserable drunk girl out of his stupid cushion fort.

Instead, he just sits outside and chews on some candy cigarettes.

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Slumber Party

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