Since jumping's out of the question...

[whosalicewhite]

Who| Parker and ANYONE AND EVERYONE (Who lives in the training centre)
What| Up on the rooftop, Parker's paused
Where| Rooftop
When| Night before the lockdown
Warnings/Notes| Will add if needed.

Parker's standing on the ledge: well, as close to the ledge as she can due to that stupid force field. Likely, as others did before her, she's considering a way down. No, Parker isn't suicidal, but more scaling off / jumping off / flying off buildings is something of a specialty for her.

She's in deep concentration. It doesn't mean she won't know when someone's coming up on her, but still, doing the mental calculations as to what would be needed if she could get around the force field, is important business.

Comments

[retrieverchef]

Eliot walks up behind her and can't help a fond smile when he sees where she's standing and what she's looking at. Not that there's any chance of that here. But it's so like her. "We'll find somewhere else for ya to go rapellin', Parker," he says quietly before he gets too close.

[whosalicewhite]

"Better here. Don't like the rules that I can't." After the very disquieting encounter with the other Spencer, Parker knows this one is most definitely Eliot.

"Don't like your brother." Go ahead, ask why.

She's still looking over the edge.

[retrieverchef]

"That's from before, I think," he says. "And most people jump off buildings to die, not for fun."

He raises his eyebrows. "What did Linds do?"

[whosalicewhite]

"That's stupid." Really, why wouldn't someone want to jump off the building?

Now, she turns from the edge to look at Eliot. "Thought he was you. He's not you."

That, in Parker-speak, is a compliment.

[retrieverchef]

He doesn't say anything more about jumping off the Training Center. He can't help a short laugh at her complaint about his brother, though. "We're twins," he explains. "We've been passing off as each other since we were kids.

[peacekeeperavox]

No telling who, watching the cameras somewhere in the bowels of the building, but someone has sent up an Avox for her. He approached, quiet in the dark in his slippered feet, a tray with a mug of hot chocolate balanced on one hand.

[whosalicewhite]

Now if there's something like the Pied Piper to Parker, it's Chocolate. Forget pipe-playing, piping hot hot chocolate is far more important.

As immediately as she moves towards the Avox, towards the hot chocolate, and looks at the tray.

Then she leans over and looks under the tray.

Finally, she's going to stare at the Avox, as if she expects some sort of answer. As she often communicates wordlessly, she expects other people to do as well.

Okay, she's going to take another long sniff of the hot chocolate.

[peacekeeperavox]

He held it out to her, with a simple surface smile.

[whosalicewhite]

Parker doesn't trust simple surface smiles. Not that she actually knows it's on the surface. Faces and expressions don't always mean the same thing to her as to everyone else.

Thus, she picks up the hot chocolate and takes a sniff of it. Nothing chemical, that she can tell, so risks a sip.

The noise she makes is almost orgasmic.

She hates everything here, expect Eliot, and the chocolate.

[peacekeeperavox]

His smile warmed a little, more genuine. It was always so good to see his service appreciated. In a smooth motion, he tucked the tray under his arm and gave her another shallow bow.

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

The roof both scares and relaxes Howard. On the one hand, it's an exposed area, with only one way down. If someone with a grudge against him were to come up and see him here, he wouldn't be able to easily escape them. With his small size he'd be easily overpowered, and with nowhere to run and nowhere to jump...

On the other hand, it's the only open air where he doesn't feel as if the Capitol citizens are watching him. As such, after a day of hiding in closets, in his bedroom, in the bathroom, in alleys, in dark nooks and crannies, he needs to breathe. So he pokes his head out the door and looks around, sees that there's only blonde hair and a girl's silhouette, and decides it's probably safe.

"You mind?" He sits on the ledge a few feet from her. If she's busy or going to try her luck with the force field, he'd rather watch from a distance.

[whosalicewhite]

"No." It's said with the confidence of someone who, if they did mind, the other person had better have run out, immediately.

"If you want to base jump, they banned it."

Why else would someone come up here?

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Yeah, they only want to see us as bloody spatters on TV. Up close carnage is a little too smelly." He wrinkles his nose and kicks his feet out over the edge. The toes of his sneakers make a little smoke and zapping sound as they connect with the forcefield.

[whosalicewhite]

"Terminal velocity is 122 miles per hour. Could stop that with as much as a homemade wing suit at this height."

The point being, "Not enough splat."

[iselldrugstothecommunity]

"Yeah, but 'die anyway' velocity is a lot lower than that. I think. Otherwise people wouldn't goosh blood when a car runs them over at forty miles an hour."

He shrugs. He doesn't seem bothered by this conversation.

[lassoftruthiness]

Diana had come up to the roof once again for the unobstructed view of the sky and found the roof already occupied. She felt a pang of concern at seeing the woman on the ledge, especially when she remembered abruptly that she couldn't fly if anything happened, but at second glance the woman seems less determined or upset and more. Well, determined, mostly.

Diana went towards here, careful to be heard so as not to startle the other woman, then, after a long thoughtful moment watching, she put out a hand over the ledge. Ah. Force field.

"They want to keep us safe," she said, her voice dry.

[whosalicewhite]

"So I can kill you later," Sorry, it's a natural assumption, on Parker's part. For the record, she doesn't sound particularly vicious. She doesn't need to be.

"Silly. Can't be entertained." Parker pokes the force field as if, if she poked it long enough, it would break.

[lassoftruthiness]

Diana looked over at this remark, her eyebrow cocked. "You're planning on killing me specifically?" she asked, curious rather than threatened. "Or just in a general, you'll kill the people in your way situation?" She watched Parker poke the force field, then looked around the roof, as though they would have left the generator for it out in the open. "What was that about entertainment?" she added absently.

[whosalicewhite]

"Nope. Unless you try to kill me, but we'll be in an arena sometime." She's accepted that reality rather well, since Parker woke up after dying.

"Some people jump off buildings to die," which Parker thinks is a waste of a good jump. "I wouldn't die, but I'd still jump. Not entertaining."

[lassoftruthiness]

"I wasn't planning on it," Diana assured her, eying the ledge thoughtfully before climbing up beside Parker. Knowing that she's absolutely safe because of the force field isn't quite the same as knowing that she can simply fly away if she should fall, but it's something.

"The people here think death is very entertaining. Do you often jump off of buildings?"

[nightlightheart]

The nice thing about the District 12 suite is that it's probably the easiest one to 'get away' from. The roof is just right there.

And yeah. He needs to get away quite often.

He has to be in the same general vicinity as Effie Trinket at least 20 minutes of his day. And that, to him, is not a nice thing about the District 12 suite.

"It's an oscillating frequency," Tony says matter-of-factly.

Maybe she's a jumper. Maybe she's just one of those adrenaline junkies who like standing on ledges. Doesn't matter. She won't get far. Not with the force-field on. "Sequence and cycles per second are determined algorithmically. The control panels, as near as I have been able to determine, is in the sub-levels. Five. Six, maybe."

[whosalicewhite]

Parker is definitely one of those adrenaline junkies, and for all she can be silly, or difficult to understand, when presented with such clear information --

"Anyone worked out the algorithm yet? Tested? What of its projection points? That can't be on the lower levels. Got to be in the wall."

[nightlightheart]

"No tests yet. Still unidentified security measures. Not worth the risk. Projections are beneath the field from here. Might be able to get to them from the 11th floor. Haven't tried," he shrugs. Hasn't really liked anyone from District 11 enough to try.

"You new here?"

He hasn't seen her. Or if he has, she didn't look like this. Inside the arena, everyone looks a bit different. And he really only looks at the faces in the sky long enough to be sure he doesn't know them. If he has seen her before, he never noticed until now.

[whosalicewhite]

"I'm on 9. Could go up." Districts mean nothing to her. Parker's never had a hometown to speak of, and feels no loyalty toward any particularly place.

No, wherever her people are, she's fine. Eliot's here but not on her floor. She should visit. What's the worst that can happen?

"New enough." She means, new enough she hasn't found a way to escape. There's never been a prison that can hold her. She's not going to give up that perfect record.

[nightlightheart]

"Could. So long as no one sees you. That's the biggest problem. They'll cut your tongue out if they thing you're up to no good. Well... that is of course if you go up there personally. I'm thinking of a different approach. Just need to find the right parts first." He's rambling more to himself than really to her at this point. It goes without saying, he'd be miserable without his tongue. How else could he ramble at strangers?

"Sorry for your loss then," he jokes. What she's lost, Tony has no idea. But she's lost something. Of that, he has no doubt. Whether it's was her last time in the arenas, or the the home she's left behind,