[Open]

[conifer]

Who| Emily and YOU
What| There's a new mentor in town
Where| Various locations in the Training Centre
When| A few days after the end of Arena 12
Warnings/Notes| No warnings inherent. Prose and brackets both welcome.


a) District 7 suite - mostly for D7, but feel free to crash the pancake party otherwise

Every available surface of the common room is covered in silver platters laden with pancakes, along with various fruits, nuts, sauces and syrups to top them with. In pride of place are several large jugs of maple syrup, one of District 7's main exports, and Em might get a little offended if her tributes eschew it entirely. She'll give a reserved, polite smile to anyone who walks in, mentally sizing them up and trying to figure out if they have any chance in the Arena at all.

"Hello, there. I'm your new mentor."


b) Training Centre - open to all

She's positioned herself near the survival station - campfires, ropes, plants of all sorts - a place that's not nearly so popular as throwing around a sword or axe, but the one where she feels most qualified to give advice. She'll happily talk to any tribute that comes in to train, whether they belong to her district or not: as much as she wants to guarantee a District 7 win, she's not going to put the other tributes at a disadvantage before they've even got into the Arena. She's had enough of that duplicity for one lifetime.


c) Rooftop - closed to Jason Compson

Even out in the districts, Compson is a name that brings recognition, but only vaguely so far as Emily's own knowledge goes. She's fairly sure that he used to be the escort for District 10 - Calder's district, she thinks with the twinge of bitterness and shame that always runs through her thinking of him - and that makes her feel even more nervous about meeting with him. She tries to push it aside, to assume her usual mask, knowing that they'll be working together now, and that both of them surely have the interests of their tributes at heart.

She rises on hearing footsteps approaching the bench she's seated on in the rooftop gardens, offering a hand for him to shake, if he so chooses.

Comments

[ruffntumblenut]

Ruffnut comes shuffling out of her room lured by the smell of pancakes. She looks positively ridiculous In a one piece pajama set that looks like a dragon.

Shame it seems is not high on her list of priorities though as she makes her way to the nearest platter of pancakes and helps herself, soaking them in syrup and piling on berries. She doesn't even notice Emily till she's got a mouthful of pancakes and the woman introduces herself.

With her cheeks bulging she nods in greeting and tries to respond around the food in her mouth. "Hewwoh."

[conifer]

Emily smiles fondly, the enthusiasm over the pancakes - a rare treat, back home - reminding her of her younger brothers, as well as the lack of table manners in her greeting. "Ruffnut, right?" She'd read the files, recalling that the girl had a higher score than Emily had in her own arena, even if only slightly. Definitely potential - all of the tributes assigned to 7 seemed promising, really.

[ruffntumblenut]

She nodded and choked down her mouthful before grabbing the nearest drink and taking a swig to help the food down. She really ought to chew her food but this new person had her attention for a moment.

"Yeah, that's me. Who are you?" She tried not to sound too suspicious...but the last time someone had ambushed her first thing in the morning it had been Jason, and ever since then she’d been busting her backside harder then ever to make people like her and to keep Jason from getting too mad to help her.

[conifer]

"My name's Emily. I won the Hunger Games five years ago, and I'm hoping to help you win too." She's not too confident on the winning part yet, but she says it as easily as if she'd been coaching winners all her life. She'd had a winning tribute, as a matter of fact, but Johanna's victory had had little to do with her. She seemed determined to do the exact opposite of everything Emily had suggested.

[ruffntumblenut]

"Oh." Was her less then enlightened response as she blinked and tried to imagine the woman before her blood and battle damaged clutching a sword and towering over a pile of dead tributes. It didn't mesh as easily as she'd hoped.

"How are we gonna do that?" She pressed hoping that Emily had some kind of plan. Hiccup was usually the one with good plans where as Ruffnut and her brother came up with plans that rarely resulted in anything helpful or constructive. Having spent this much time away from Berk Ruffnut was starting to realize just how much time she and Tuffnut spent goofing off and breaking things for fun.

[conifer]

In truth, she had no idea whatsoever. She'd campaign as hard as she could to get sponsors, of course, but so far her only strategy has been to make sure the tributes train hard and don't get in too much trouble. "Well, let's see. What would you say is the best you've done in an Arena?"

[ruffntumblenut]

She brightened up at the question. "Well that one arena with the sinking ship? I was great! I fed that one guy to a swarm of rats, I pushed that one guy in the water that made him get zapped, but on the space ship I found that kid freaking out with all his power and stuff and I clonked him in the head before he could kill me."

What Ruffnut was failing to mention was all of those incidents had been almost completely accidental. In her entire career as a tribute she'd never actually killed someone on purpose. The closest she'd come was Aang but that was mostly luck that guided her shot when she'd thrown a personaorb into a vortex and the whipping winds had carried the heavy metal device into the back of Aang's head.

"I did pretty great in the beginning of the Mall arena too. Everyone either got blown up or sliced up but I got some keys, helped my friends escape, even found a safe place for us to hide before that creepy old grandpa stabbed me."

[whatisay]

Jason always walks with a sort of tension to his shoulders, not quite a hunch or a sense of purpose, but a closed-off gait that implies he doesn't give a sweet goddamn about the journey and would view any interruption as an insult. His footfall is the opposite of a Tribute's, ungainly and scuffing against the ground as if he can't even keep from being a little clumsy for twenty yards. So he approaches Emily, hands jammed into his pockets as they've nearly always been since he was a child.

"Emily Finch."

He shakes her hand, the firm but diplomatic greeting of a politician's son, and then, since his hand is free of his pockets anyway, he uses it as a chance to pull out that vapor cigarette he carries with him everywhere and load it with a cap that smells like some far-off tree only someone like Emily might even recognize. He clicks the button on the side and the little light on the end starts to glow, and within a moment he's taking a long breath and exhaling scented smoke from his nose.

"Can't say I'm unhappy to get someone else in my corner up here. Our Tributes are a handful, but I'm sure you knew that already, you're hardly stupid." And anyone with half a brain, Jason thinks, could pick up on the change between scared children and pissed-off foreigners. He knows how Emily won, respects it, probably more than she does. "Have you read all their files yet or am I going to have to fill you in?"

There's an edge to his question, as if he's not going to be happy at all if she hasn't done her homework.

[conifer]

She sits on the back of the bench, her feet on the seat, arms around her knees. The scent from his cigarette smoke makes her pause, as though he's momentarily managed to knock the wind out of her sails. She'd only been away a few days, but even something so trivial as the smell of the trees makes her crave home.

"Of course. I'm less familiar with the newer ones, of course. I'll have to see them in training before I really make my mind up on them. Shatterstar's by far our best shot, though, I'm hoping he'll get the sponsors on our side."

[whatisay]

"He's got the charisma of a wet shoe. If you can coax him into having an actual personality then we might have a shot."

Jason pauses before taking a seat, instead pacing listlessly before slumping down with knees spread wide. While her body language is closed off, his is practically overly territorial, as if he wants to make a statement by the slouch of his back (that statement being "and what?").

"They all hate me, by the way. They'll probably come running to you with horror stories about how I woke them up from their beauty sleep to actually go do things."

[conifer]

"I'll see what I can do," she promises, but inside she's a little apprehensive - she'd never had much in the way of charisma herself, and wasn't sure how to advise another to improve theirs, if the tributes would even listen to her. The stakes were different now, and being brought back to the luxury of the Capitol after death must surely make some of them care less about winning.

"If that's enough reason to hate you, they'll positively loathe me," she laughs. "My escort couldn't care less - she'd been demoted from District 2. Half the time I had to wander round figuring out where I was supposed to be by myself."

[whatisay]

"Be sure you do."

Jason makes a little sound, a grunt a bit too quiet to be meant as one of acknowledgement, more to himself than to her. Demoted from District Two, and yet here Jason is, from a family that includes a damn general, trying to feast on the scraps of a District Seven Escortship. It's near enough to make him ill.

"Unfortunately, since there's only one of me and up to nine of them, some of them have to wander around. Would that they'd wander around like little lost lambs, right, but no, they're like housecats, looking for ways to fraternize with the other Districts and get into trouble."

He rakes his fingers through his hair. "So - not like you get to make the final call on this anyway, but I figured I'd ask - do you want to spread out our efforts evenly among them or do you think we should focus on one or two and just let the others sink or swim?"

[conifer]

"If you're having trouble with them let me know, I'm sure if we both keep an eye out we'll be able to round them up." She didn't care if they hated her for it, either. She was determined to get a District Seven win no matter what, knew the difference it would make to everyone back there.

She purses her lips into a thin line, turning over his question. "A couple of good chances is better than several poor ones. Although I don't want to write any of them off altogether. I know from experience that it's not always the best or most deserving that succeed here."

A!

[nineofwands]

It was the smell that had drawn Cassian's attention. He'd gone down to the training center early, early enough it was still dark, and had only just come back up. He couldn't let some kid get the upper hand against him again, that meant honing his skills. It also meant he was pretty much starving and the sweet smell that assaulted him when he got back to his floor was just a little too enticing to ignore.

He took in the sight of the platters and fruits and finally the woman as she introduced herself. He almost rolled his eyes at that one, just what he didn't need: someone else at his heels who didn't know anything or care.

"Hey. What's all this stuff? Not the fruits or the nuts, the flat things." He'd been a poor kid and turned into a poor man and then he'd been with Delilah, trump cards didn't get a whole lot of preferential treatment and murderers didn't eat stuff that smelled like it ought to come straight from a baker's oven. Sweets were a luxury.

[conifer]

"Pancakes. You haven't lived until you've had one soaked in maple syrup." She piles another couple onto her own plate as though for emphasis, showering it with a multitude of toppings. "And far better than anything you'll get in the Arena, so enjoy them while you can."

[nineofwands]

"...maple syrup?" It sounded like some foreign food to him, but he decided it wasn't in her best interest to poison him and gave it a shot. Two pancakes slathered in the viscous goop she'd specified and he found a spot to sit and try something new.

He wasn't sure what sound it was he made when he tried his first bite, but it certainly wasn't a sound he'd made before. She was right about one thing: these pancake things were amazing, he'd never tried something so sweet before. Even the sweet breads he'd snatched off others or that Jezebel had given him because he no longer wanted it or because it had been given to him by some woman who fancied him, hadn't tasted near as good.

"Wow..." He actually didn't know what else to say. Being caught actually enjoying something wasn't what he was used to. He always drew the short straw, not the one covered in sugar. It made him pay a little more attention to her, although it didn't really earn her any trust points. Just bonus points that put her above the other assholes he'd met.

"Who'd you say you were, again?"

[conifer]

"It comes out of trees," she explains, though she's unsure whether that will make it a more or less attractive prospect. "We make it in District 7. I thought it would be nice to give you all a taste of the place you're competing for." If only to ground them in the fact that it was a real, tangible place, with real people who were depending on one of them winning.

"Your mentor," she repeats patiently. "Emily. I survived the Hunger Games five years ago, and I'm going to try to help you win now."

[nineofwands]

Cassian continued to take generous bites as she talked, although the fact she said 'survived' over 'won' stuck out in his mind. With the way she said it, it didn't sound like a game like everyone else implied. He actually kind of liked that, or at least appreciated it. He didn't think he needed to 'survive' but at least he knew death wasn't some game for people to play.

He made sure his mouth was clear before he spoke, he didn't know if she knew anything about him, but he didn't want to perpetuate the idea that he might be the actual age he appeared. That would make her less than helpful. " And how're you going to do that?" It wasn't combative, but an actual question. So far, he hadn't liked anyone's answers.

[conifer]

It was a question she wasn't sure how to answer very well. Historically, her advice had been "stay alive", and it was rare that a Tribute from Seven had made it past the first couple of days. When Johanna won, a couple of years after Emily, she'd done so by ignoring every word of advice Emily had tried to give her. Moreover, there were many more Tributes here, all of different fighting styles and level of ability, and they were going to come back after being killed in the Arena. That made training far more of a commitment, and one she knew she'd have to play by ear.

"Well, first of all what sort of help do you think you need?"

I KNEW I FORGOT SOMETHING so sorry!!

[streetsmarts]

There's a lot Nick is getting used to about this place, and so much of it is mundane stuff. Sleeping in a bed, his bed, without having to sleep in shifts? Amazing. Showers, clean clothes and food in abundance. He'd only been exposed to the perks of being here, but he can't imagine the Arena is any worse than living under the threat of the Infected.

He keeps to himself as much as possible, he isn't particularly interested in forming close bonds with people he's either killing or suspicious of. Sometimes it's unavoidable, sometime it involves pancakes. He slinks out of his room and eyes the pancake spread with vague interest. His attention quickly turns to Emily and. Well. She's good looking, so he won't rebuff her.

"Congratulations." He responds dryly, a smirk flitting across his lips. "Names Nick, I'm your new problem." He holds out a hand for a shake, more polite than he'd be with most people.

No worries!

[conifer]

She shakes his hand firmly, meeting his smirk with a smile that's polite but cool. "Not too much of a problem, I hope." Though given his relatively high score, she knows that she'd probably overlook a little trouble, so long as he complied when needed.

[streetsmarts]

"Guess that depends on the definition." Back home he was trouble, both before and after the outbreak of course. He was a no good, lying, murdering mobster and beyond that he was simply a selfish and shifty guy to be on a team with. Here, though? His minuses seemed like pluses.

His attention shifts to the food eventually and he can't not bring it up. "Is this bribery? Because let me tell you, dollface, you don't need to do much to look better than Jason."

[conifer]

"Less bribery and more of an icebreaker." She pushes her own stack of pancakes around her plate with a fork, looking a little surprised and nervous at his assessment of Jason. He'd warned them that the tributes all hated him, but she'd naively hoped that was partly exaggeration. She wouldn't be able to bear it if he turned into the same inattentive escort that she'd had in her own Games. "Any particular reason why?"

[streetsmarts]

"I'll take it, whatever you want to call it." At which point he invites himself toward the syrup, which he will pour liberally over the plate he's claimed as his own. He breaks off some of the pancake with his fork and swipes it around the plate before he moves it to his mouth. There is a very sincere moment of enjoyment in his expression, followed by a murmur of "That's fresh." He's a guy who knows good food when he tastes it, and it's been a very long time since he's had this much of it.

Eventually, he remembers that they're having a conversation and he swallows, filling his fork again as he considers how to respond. "Well I mean, he's an asshole." That really didn't take much consideration. "Maybe it takes an asshole to get the job done. I always heard you caught more flies with honey rather than scathing, passive aggressive bullshit though." A wry smile finds his face for a moment before he takes another bite of pancake.

[conifer]

She can't help but look a little smug at the way the pancakes have gone down. The Capitol had a lot of luxury food to offer, but it was all far too rich for Emily's tastes. This was something simple, something real, something literally rooted in her own home and culture, and she was proud to share it.

"He didn't seem that bad when I spoke to him yesterday." But then, she wasn't one of his Tributes. Besides, Jason had been the one to suggest a good cop/bad cop strategy when dealing with their charges, and it seemed like he'd settled into his role before she'd even arrived to complement it. "He just wants a Victor, same as all of us. And in the Arena, honey will only take you so far." They needed to be hard and ruthless, and maybe Jason was good for that. She can't help but grin across at him. "Though if you'd respond better to a lighter touch, that's part of why I was called back in."