[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."

[conifer]

She listens intently, nodding encouragingly as Ruffnut talks. Her enthusiasm is a relief to Emily, this is something she can work with, rather than not caring about trying to win, knowing she'd just be resurrected into the opulence of the Capitol, or insisting that she didn't need a mentor. If they were all like this, she didn't understand why they all seemed to hate Jason, but then she hasn't seen him around the Tributes yet.

"From that, it sounds as though you're good at utilising your surroundings."

[ruffntumblenut]

She nods and then pauses.

"If you mean using my surroundings then yeah totally Uta-whatever that word is." She agrees delighted that apparently she's doing something right.

"Everybody else complains about this stuff but life is all about competition isn't it? This is just like...taking it to the next level."

Sure she would have preferred to have signed up rather then having been drafted but those are small details.

[conifer]

"It is about competition," she agrees, "but I'm not sure a lot of you Tributes really realise how high the stakes involved are. Winning gives my people food." She smiles encouragingly. "If you focus on beating the competition, you'll do fine." She puts her plate down on the table, shifts her weight to her other foot. "All right, now I want you to think about where you haven't done so great in the Arenas. Let's see if there's a pattern there too."

[ruffntumblenut]

Food was important Ruffnut could acknowledge. Day to day life on Berk was in large part about getting food and keeping it safe before it could be eaten. And even if Ruffnut herself was not terribly responsible she knew how hard life could be when food was scarce.

This part was harder for her to acknowledge however. Her short comings.

"Um...well...I got beat up by that guy Justin, then I got eaten by the creep with the sharp teeth and I wasn't strong enough to fight either of them off. Then I got eaten by a shark for getting too close. Then I got stabbed by an old man because I thought he was helping me. Then I got knocked into some acid. Then I got eaten by an alien..." She ran down the list of her biggest screw ups adding "Oh yeah and that one tribute ate my arm in the space place before the alien could eat me."

Well if getting eaten was a pattern...

[conifer]

Emily looks amused at the pattern there. "You might want to stay away from anything with sharp teeth." Her expression turns more serious, her brow furrowing over as she figures out some more useful advice to give. "Have you had much ranged weapon training? If you could take out your enemies while they're at a distance, I think it would help you a lot." She seemed to be pushing or clonking other tributes and was getting stabbed or eaten in turn. Emily expected most of the other tributes to be bigger and physically stronger, but this was something she could work to her advantage.

[ruffntumblenut]

Even though the joke was at her expense Ruffnut grinned that crooked grin of hers. She was used to people laughing at her and even if she didn't always like it she had developed a sense of humor somewhere along the way.

When she brought up ranged weapons the blond girl nodded and looked surprised that she hadn't considered that before. "Well yeah, everyone back home has to learn how to shoot a bow and throw a spear." It wasn't her favorite weapon because it lacked the flash of dragon explosions but if given an option she'd grab a spear.

"Haven't really found too many of those in the arena though." And again the obvious solution of making her own hadn't dawned on her.

[conifer]

"It's true that a bow is a rather expensive sponsor gift," she concedes. Although she remembered there being a couple in the Cornucopia in her own Arena - though she'd strongly advise Ruffnut to run in the opposite direction of the bloodbath that was sure to take place there, regardless. "But one thing a lot of Arena environments are sure to have is trees." She lets the hint hang in the air, wanting her to come to the conclusion of making a bow rather than suggesting it outright, so that it's not solely Emily telling her to do so.

[ruffntumblenut]

"Trees right..." Ruffnut could tell she was trying to get her to think for herself, Hiccup liked to play this game too. She visualized a tree and another tributes finally arriving at the clear and obvious solution.

"So I should knock the tree down and flatten the other tributes to take their bows and arrows!" She deduced looking like a pleased puppy awaiting her praise. Just how she was going to knock the tree down didn't really matter right?

[conifer]

Emily resists the urge to facepalm. "You could do that," she says tentatively, "but it seems like a lot of effort to go through. Besides, while you're knocking the tree down they'll probably sneak up and steal whatever other supplies you've got." Or worse.

She leans against the counter. "In my District, our main export is lumber. But as well as knocking down the trees, we learn how to craft things from the wood. How about I teach you how to make a bow from a branch?"

[ruffntumblenut]

"oh yeah!" The look of comprehension finally dawns on her face like the light of a rising sun and she grins again.

"They did say something about lumber. That's why they keep making me wear plaid things. What does plaid have to do with lumber?"

At least when the training got around to it Ruffnut would prove somewhat more capable at learning how to make a bow. It's not as though it was a complex device after all.

[conifer]

"It doesn't have too much to do with District Seven," Emily admits, "though the popular image of treefellers is big bearded men wearing plaid. Lumberjacks. You're lucky, though. My year they made me just dress as a tree."

[ruffntumblenut]

Bearded men Ruffnut could understand. Plaid still felt weird to her.

"Well at least I'm not a tree." She laughed at the mental image. "Could you even move like that or did they use like...actual wood?" Her crooked grin spread from ear to ear clearly enjoying the conversation.

[conifer]

"They didn't use wood, though I almost wish they had." She looks uncomfortable and itchy just at the memory. "The skirt was made of pine needles."

[ruffntumblenut]

Well if Ruffnut was laughing before she was on the verge of a full out chortle now.

"I have got to see that! Tell me there's pictures?" It would make her feel better about some of her own more humiliating outfits in the last few months.

Still there was no malice in the request, just a grin. It was rare for Ruffnut to get along with other girls given that she and Astrid were the only two girls in their age group back home. But this one was actually making an effort and from the smile on her face? Ruffnut appreciated that.

[conifer]

Emily pulls a folded, glossy page from a Capitol magazine from her pocket, having anticipated this sort of question. The edges are worn and the colour faded from age, and she grimaces a little as she unfolds it and holds it out for Ruffnut to see.

"It doesn't look so bad, but boy was it a pain to wear. Leaves kept dropping off all night."

[ruffntumblenut]

The laughter dies away as her eyes get wide in shock at the existence of such a picture.

"Do you just...carry this around with you wherever you go?" She wondered out loud torn between another burst of laughter and stunned respect that Emily didn't mind sharing this horribly embarrassing bit of her past. Then she pulled a face.

"You weren't like...exposed by the end of the night were you?"

[conifer]

"Oh, goodness no!" she exclaims, laughing a little, more amused than embarrassed. She didn't see the need to be shy about sharing, not when the whole of Panem had seen her dressed in it at the time anyway, and besides there were far more important things for her to be ashamed of than the dress she'd worn to the opening ceremonies, so long ago now. "It's just that I expected questions about my Games to come up, meeting you all for the first time and everything. I wasn't exposed, but I may well have been if I'd had to wear it a few hours longer. I left a trail of leaves wherever I went."

[ruffntumblenut]

That was enough to make Ruffnut laugh again and relax. So this girl was someone from this world but she wasn't as crazy as the rest. She was practical and a viking could appreciate practicality even if Ruffnut didn't always act like it.

"I guess it's easier to get weird with your clothes here since it's so warm inside. Back home you pretty much wear fur and leather all the time or freeze to death." That wasn't to say The Capitol couldn't get cold, but no where near what Ruffnut was used to especially with how easy it was to find a place to warm up.

"Do you miss your District?" She added curiously. She'd heard some of the other tributes had gotten to visit District seven but she'd never been.