thecapitol | (no subject)

Who| De, Lottie, Elias, Effie and open!
What| Choose your own adventure! Each character is cruising around the city.
Where| Around the Capitol. Check each character for details.
When| Over the course of the week.
Warnings/Notes| Just lemme know who, and if relevant where and when in the subject.

She already hated this city.

It was everything De loathed about being in a big city, rolled up and amped up. If she thought preppy hipsters were bad...well, she'd take an army of Hipsters over these soul less assholes. Everywhere she turned, there were primped, phony looking people. She wasn't even sure most of them counted as human anymore. And there was no escape.

She sought out what she could find. The roof. Bars. The hot springs. The arcade. Places that on some levels felt normal for her. She knew she should be sucking up hard to sponsors, but she just couldn't bring herself to grovel to the people doing this too her. It wasn't happening.

The one things she did do was watch the videos. Study her competition. If she was going to win this, it wasn't going to be because some rich dick bought her out of it.

---

Lottie was sucking up. She wanted out. Momoko has lit a fire under her fluffy butt, and she was sucking up to every sponsor she could find.

She knew she was good at it, too. The entertaining part. She just also knew they all realized what a hopeless bet she was. Still, after Momoko's win, maybe...maybe they'd take a chance on her.

It was exhausting though, going from party, to performances, to things that bordered too close to dates for Lottie's comfort. And in between, she took in the sights on her own, or tempted out a friend. Indulgent spa days, shopping trips, museums. Busy, busy, busy. Busy enough she fell asleep quickly, deeply, and hopefully, with minimal night mares.

Of course, keeping herself always running till exhaustion, sometimes that exhaustion struck at terrible times. Like in the common room. Or District 8's dining room. Or a bench in the training center. She would take it where she could get it these days.

---

This was getting ridiculous.

Every day, new information for the Escorts to deal with. Longer hours. Effie hadn't seen her own bed in what felt like months.

The Training Center, of course, had exemplary lodging. But she wanted her own bed in her own room in her own house. And a day off. Oh, when was her last day off? Of course now she was helping Cinna with this history fashion show, and that was more work...but in a way it was nice to have a break. To be doing something else.

Work took up her days. Work and getting sponsors, sweet talking the rich of the city took up her nights. It use to be her favorite part of this job, entertaining and rubbing elbows with the elite...now it was just another few hours of work, work, work.

She took her free moments where she could get them, setting work to the side and just enjoying a quiet moment.

---

Elias was using his mentor position to watch and study everyone around him. No one question a mentor sizing up the competition.

Of course he wasn't really sizing them up for competition. He took those notes as well, too. He wanted his Tributes to win. But he was also looking for other things in the Training room, the Commons, pouring over the tapes.

It was nice that he could obsess over this completely legitimately. Nights he left his work behind, roaming the city. Often to court sponsors, but just as often to tend his own mind, letting the things he'd seen shift through and find their places. Finding quite places to wander.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh, I ain't even lookin'. Not really my kinda thing, you know." If anyone spotted Riddick trying to woo somebody, that meant he'd either been brainwashed, or was playing a joke on someone. "'Sides, I don't really care that much 'bout winnin'." Better he stay in there than somebody who couldn't take care of themselves or who really didn't want to. At least he was suited.

The idea of not trying to win...of just accepting it, made Lottie...well, it sorta made her want to cry. What she wouldn't give to not have that anxiety again, the panic of heading back in, of dying again.

"You are made of tougher stuff then men."

Not that that wasn't apparent.

Riddick gave a chuckle. "Like I toldja, I'm pretty much cut out for this shit." He patted her shoulder. "Better to have me in there than people like you." He, too, would have liked to see her not forced to go through all that. It took a lot to get him to like a grown-up who wasn't badass like him, but she'd managed it.

"How did you end up so..."

She searched for a word to express what she was looking for without being, well, insulting. Lottie had some knowledge of the underside of home, you didn't live in a city like New Orleans without knowing it had darker edges.

"...tough."

Well, her inner thesaurus had failed there.

Tough worked. Riddick chuckled at her expression. "You sure you wanna know? Might not like me as much, if you did."

After all: murderer, escaped convinct, general all-around not-nice-guy. She seemed like the sort who would disapprove. If she really wanted to know, though, this was the place to tell her. There were too many people here, and too much noise, for them to be adequately overheard. It wasn't as safe as Speakeasy, but it was better than most other places.

She hesitated.

Did she want to know? Looking up, she studied his face...he wanted to take the place of people who were weak. But that...implied he had done bad things.

"Good people can do bad things. I'd like to know."

After considering her, right back, for a moment, as if judging whether she was actually thinking he could be a good person... Riddick finally shrugged. Her decision, not his, and if she decided she didn't like hanging out with a convict, he'd live.

So he let her have it: "I'm an escaped convict from a prison planet. Been in most of the slams in my corner of the universe, and got out of 'em again. Killed more than a few people, before I got in, during, and again after. Spent a good chunk of my life in the penal system, actually."

"Well...why?"

She continued to study him. To her knowledge, she had never spent a large amount of time with a criminal. Crimes in the arena not with standing.

Riddick didn't scare her. But she was very curious. Sadly so.

He hitched a shoulder, unconcerned, though privately a little bit pleased she hadn't recoiled. Maybe she was made of tougher stuff than he'd anticipated. Or else maybe slightly less innocent stuff.

"Seemed like the thing t'do, at the time. And once you're in a slam, you can't not kill people. It's like the arenas. Only usually worse, since the guards kinda wanna kill you, too." And if he was vague on the original crime, well, he was usually vague on the original crime.

"Well, was it the right thing to do?"

Lottie generally had better manners than to push at something clearly private, but...well, if she was to be Riddick's friend, this was a little more important than just changing the subject.

"Probably not." She wasn't going to let it go, huh? "We disagreed. We fought. I killed the guy." That was the very bare bones of it, anyway. The reasons really weren't important, by now, and weren't about to change anyone's mind about the situation. Let alone his.

Riddick pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead, reflective eyes focused down on her and expression bland. "I ain't a nice guy, Lottie. Try not to hurt people who don't deserve it, sure, but I won't go outa my way unless there's a damn good reason for me to do so. Sometimes the odds just don't work out."

She chewed this over, trying to decided how she would feel about it.

At home...but she wasn't at home. At home she would never have even met someone like Riddick.

Could she really judge someone for killing, after what they had all been through? She felt her stomach drop...she had killed someone, now, too. Even if that person was bad.

"Maybe people don't all fit into good person and bad person."