thecapitol | [open]

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Who| Tiffany Doggett AND YOU
What| A smalltown jailbird arrives in the Capitol and immediately decides that it's the best place ever
Where| Various places; scenarios under cuts
When| Some vague nebulous time after the latest plot; can take place over a few days if needed
Warnings/Notes| If you haven't already, please take a look at her permissions post before tagging her so I know what you are and aren't comfortable with! Other than that, nothing (yet - it's always yet with her)

A: District 1 suite, Part I

If you're going to be unceremoniously pulled from your prison block with no warning and not much explanation, there are definitely worse places you could be landed. This place is insane - everything in it is more lavish and luxurious than anything she's seen in pictures or on TV, let alone in real life. It's at least a couple hours before she even considers leaving her suite - she's too busy trying everything out. She tests out her big, soft bed (which she can't resist bouncing on like a child for a minute or two), she takes a shower followed by a long, hot bath, she raids the fridge, she checks out the view from the deck. If something is available to be examined, turned on, or tried out, she does it.

Honestly, she had kind of glossed over the whole "battle to the death" thing. Forced death matches simply aren't a part of reality as she knows it, and until the idea is shoved in her face a little more, it's just not something she's going to think about at all. As far as she's concerned, this place is heaven. The Capitol has already begun to win her allegiance.

B: The streets of the Capitol

Tiffany finally leaves the Training Center, after being reassured (more than once) that this is her home now and she'll be able to come back whenever she wants. There's nowhere in particular that she's looking to go, but that's fine with her - she'll wander. She's bound to come across something or someone interesting eventually.

C: The Districts shopping center

Handed a credit card and set loose in a city, it's unsurprising that Tiffany finds her way to a mall. Not really one for thinking ahead that much, she immediately starts buying things - clothes mostly, but also earrings, bracelets, and makeup. It's only after an hour or two that she starts wondering if she's going to hit a credit limit, or be dealing with bills later. She looks around for people with similar-looking cards; when she finds someone, she stops them and holds up her own.

"Hey. How much is on this thing?"

D: Various clubs and bars (The Speakeasy, .infinity, Anomaly, The Cave, or Tesserae)

After gussying herself up at the shopping center, Tiffany eventually discovers the Capitol nightlife, and the rest is history. She bounces from place to place, skipping the sit-down restaurants but hitting all the clubs and bars, sometimes more than once. Affiliation means nothing to her at this point; any rebellion-minded talk at places like The Speakeasy mostly just goes over her head. She's shed her prison clothes and dressed herself to the nines (though she still looks pretty tame in comparison to most Capitol fashion), accessorizing with jewelry, shimmery makeup, and lightly-styled hair (nothing too fancy, but infinitely better than the untreated, unbrushed 'do she often sported in prison). She's a little underdressed for the fancier places and a little overdressed for the dive bars, but she doesn't seem to care. She'll have the time of her life - dancing, drinking, and occasionally chatting up men. She's not used to looking good, or feeling good about her appearance. The fact that she does now puts her in an amazing mood.

E: District 1 suite, Part II

Somewhere along the line, someone had slipped her some tapes of past Games - either out of a genuine desire to help, or because they'd pegged her as someone who'd be easily spooked and wanted to psych her out. She should familiarize herself with these, they'd said, because she'd be going into the arena herself soon enough. So later, tired out from her night on the town, she remembers the tapes and pulls them out, flopping down on the common room couch to watch.

And it's... terrifying. She watches intently, leaning forward, eyes wide. It's like a horror movie she can't look away from. She's killed before, and she's threatened, and she's gotten into her fair share of fights - but this is a whole new ball game. Can she really do this? Is she really going to be expected to do this? She doesn't want to die, but looking at the fighting skills of some of these people... there's no way, she thinks, that she would stand a chance.

She'll have to ask someone about it later; someone in charge. They've been helpful so far. Surely they'll continue to be.

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So much for ignoring here.

"They're troll teeth." His hands fling down, and all sarcasm is gone from his face to make room for the frustration. "I'm a troll. An actual alien from another planet, in another solar system, another galaxy, another universe from whatever backwater hole in the ground you crawled out of, and my pointy little teeth are better in every way than blunt, human chunks of enamel."

He cranes his head up. "What fucking floor are we on? I want to get off this ride already, and we should have stopped for whatever you picked."

"I'm going all the way up. Heard there's a roof you can walk on."

She tosses him an incredulous look. "You really think I'm gonna believe you're an alien?" She's gullible, but she also has her limits. Today, she's found one of them.

The roof. The fucking roof. Not a fling this time, his hands fall limp at his sides - for a moment.

"Budge over, nookwipe. There is no way I'm going up to the roof if you're going to be on it." He moves to limp around her, if she'll let him, with the goal of mashing the 6.

"Good fucking luck if you want to pretend I'm human. There's six of us assholes around and one won this game two arenas ago."

She flips him off, but does shift to the side, letting him by.

"Yeah? Who won? Was it you?" She's still not at all clear on what the deal with these Games are, but she doesn't have to to understand that winning them is an impressive thing.

"No, it wasn't me, and I'm going to die early next time. Happy?" he says, turning back to glare once he's hit the button.

Still, it's a question he can answer, and he sighs before explaining. "It was my ancestor. Guy who looks like me, slightly taller, hair on his chin." His fingers brush his own bare one. "Now he's stuck with a mentor gig for District 12."

It's kind of weird to her that he's talking about dying so casually - but whatever, she figures; it's none of her business. (Though let's face it, she'll probably bring it up later.)

"That what happens with the winners? They help other people win?"

Saints be praised, she can actually listen. Not that Karkat cares about saints. He settles against the wall, arms folding over his chest. They'll get to the roof before the elevator heads down again, so he's not going anywhere.

"Every one of them. They get tasked with handing out advice and help with sponsor gifts for their District's tributes, and the job sticks even after someone else wins. District 12 won again last arena, so that's an extra for them."

"And tributes are us? Yeah, I still don't..." She still doesn't get what that means. Sponsor gifts certainly sound promising, though.

He sighs out. She really is new.

"Did anyone explain this stuff to you? Anyone? You would think they would have given you the rundown before they let you out in the tower, considering we only have the whole damn Capitol to perform for." He shakes his head. "Yes, we're tributes. Sponsor gifts are things sent to you during the arena that might help: weapons, food, better clothes, survival supplies."

"They said I was here to compete. Said it was an honor." And she had completely zeroed in on that, glossing over the messy details of to the death and only one survivor.

"So what, I get a gun? A knife?"

Another sigh, lower and rougher. Of course they would paint it was an honor, and after current things he doesn't dare argue. It doesn't stop him from tipping his head down and bringing a hand up to rub his temples.

"It's a fight to the death, and literally every tribute but one of us will die each time through, be it to other tributes or hazards within the arena: monsters or wild animals, traps, dangers inherent to the current terrain, general fuckery from the Gamemakers across the weeks, or simply failing to survive for lack of food or water. You don't really get a choice in what you get," he explains, then looks up again.

"Knives are common, but there's different things. There's also supplies at the start of the arena in this central area called the Cornucopia. Everyone gets put on these pedestals and once the time counts down, you can either go for that and try to grab what you can or leave. I got a knife and a taser among other stuff in one arena, some crackers and bug repellant and a parka in the last - but they were in this case and a backpack respectively, so I didn't know what they were until later. But," he says, looking to her face to make sure she's listening, "the Cornucopia is also pretty dangerous. I got the shit kicked out of me in the first one and would have died of basically drowning on my own blood if someone with healing powers and a first aid kit hadn't happened along."

Edited 2015-04-27 00:03 (UTC)

"So you won, that time." She says it as a statement, not a question. He's saying he's been in the arena - but they're unavoidable death matches, and he's alive. As far as she's concerned, there's only one logical conclusion to make there.

Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she's wondering if she should be panicking. This kid is telling her in no uncertain terms that she's going to be sent into a gladiator match - one that, it sounds like, she has very little chance of surviving. She should be terrified, crying, begging for release. But all she can manage is a kind of detached, disbelieving calm. There's no way this can really be happening.

"What? No," he says, eyebrows bunching in. "I said my ancestor did, not m--oh."

He should have realized. Of course she would think that, but he's so used to death being weird here and before that it didn't occur to worry about.

"No. I've been through two regular arenas and one mini-arena and died each time." His tone is calm, accepting; this has become reality for him. "But you come back after. They heal things up, wounds and scratches and illness and whatever, and it's like it never happened. It's disorienting as hell and death still hurts like a motherfucker, but you don't see me with scars in my neck, do you?"

He tips his head up to show better, where his skin is smooth, still stubbornly grey, and free of so much as a bruise.

The elevator stops, dings, and opens its doors, but Tiffany doesn't move. She's still taking this in. "So... you don't really die. You almost die? Or are you talking about, like... you know, when people die on the operating table and their heart stops beating, but doctors bring 'em back at the last second. Is it like that?"

Karkat looks up, then back to her, and frowns at himself. This is a conversation unfinished, and probably not half over if he's guessing things right.

"Come on, we're getting out. Find a spot with two chairs and I'll explain, because no, it's not like dying on the operating table." He shoos her off, and if she'll go he'll limp on after at a slower rate.

Tiffany doesn't argue the way she would have ten minutes ago. She's confused and overwhelmed, so she just defers, and does what he says, finding two chairs and sinking down into one. She'll notice the view later and be appropriately awed, but right now, she just looks at the ground, frowning.

Karkat makes his way over, glad she didn't argue. If not for the way she's been listening he wouldn't have bothered to explain anything, new tribute or not, but since she is he'll cut her slack for the earlier attitude. He sinks down into the second chair with a hiss, and after settling in a way that doesn't bug his hurt leg too much, he turns his mind back to the topic.

"I'll explain it like this. When I first showed up, it was at the beginning of this thing called a mini-arena. They stuffed me in the outfit, gave me barely any explanation, and shot me up into the arena in time for the countdown. They're different from the normal kind: they're shorter and have a theme, and the one I went through had no Cornucopia. Instead there was this big obstacle course we went through, and on this part with a mix of rope ladders and bridges, after dodging falling slime and failing to fall into the acid beneath us, I finally got killed by an animatronic bear ripping me apart. When I came back, all my limbs were back where they were supposed to be."

He speaks with the kind of deliberate, steady tone of someone who's had time to accept all what happened. It's been months for him, and it was quick enough that it didn't even prepare him for the main deal.

"The next time was a regular arena, space-themed, and I made it up until the end when the station collapsed on everyone still alive but for someone who had managed to find this special safe room. I was crushed to death, but I came back with everything in its place with no sign it ever got crushed.

"After that, there was this party called a Crowning to celebrate the victor. My stylist made me get tattoos for it, and directly after the party we got sent to the next arena and I had them the whole time. Eventually, a friend and I died fighting a giant cat with fangs these long." He holds his hands up to show the size. It's a smilodon he's describing, he but doesn't know the word.

"After that, I went back to my own world, got stabbed through the chest twice, fell into some lava below me, died, and came back here again. No burns, no marks on my neck, no tattoos, no nothing.

"You die every time," he intones, "and then they bring you back to do it again."

She bites back a wince when he talks about being ripped apart (and a couple more times when the later deaths are described, too) and resists the urge to clap her hands over her ears so she doesn't have to hear any more. Tiffany is a violent, combative person, but this sounds like violence above and beyond what even she's used to. When he's done, she only has one question.

"How?"

He looks at her. He's not mad for the shortness of her answer, not the least, and really can't blame her for asking that instead of anything else. It's a lot to take in, but he would rather impress on her just how brutal this place is than give her false impression that they're here for anything less.

"I don't know," he says after a moment. "How do you think they bring in people from several disparate, incompatible universes? Earth is gone where I'm from; there's only eight--" He pauses. "It was eight, now I don't know--humans left alive in reality, but there's more here than I can count. They take away powers, they make it so we literally can't speak or write anything but English, and they put us through the arenas so we can entertain the citizenry. I don't know how they make us live again, because it doesn't work like where I come from, and I have no extra lives left there either."

Edited 2015-04-27 00:51 (UTC)

She's trying very, very hard not to look freaked out, or upset. She doesn't want to look weak in front of this guy, or anyone. Unfortunately, she's never been very good at hiding her emotions.

"The citizenry - they the ones who think we're celebrities? They like watching us?" Because that still sounds like a really great deal to her.

"Yeah," he says, and he leans back in the chair. "That's what this whole industry is built around. Stylists to make us look 'good'," he says with fingerquotes. "Escorts to bring us around to parties and public appearances. Mentors to guide us. I've had to sign so much shit I can't remember it all, and I don't know how many Capitolites I've seen going around in false horns, especially after that space arena. It's a pain in the ass, if you ask me."

She looks more disbelieving of that than she has of anything else so far. "You got people loving you - people wanting to be you - and you think that's a bad thing?" Inconceivable.

He didn't look happy before, but his frown turns sharper when she asks that. "I got people swooning over my personal traumas, is what I got," he snaps. "I had to watch my friends die and I get asked how it felt in the moment when I was holding my friend's severed arm, or what it was like to mercy kill someone else. So excuse me if I'm not exactly jumping up to praise my fanbase."

"I would rather have one than not have one. Even though they are kinda stressful sometimes." It's said with the air of someone who has fanbase experience.

He wouldn't know, and with so many people here with their own friends he doesn't care. She gets an eyeroll for her trouble.

"Well good for you. If you want to go out and die and kill, then they'll swoon at your feet and squeal for the chance to say hi. It's what we're here for," he says, with the air of someone who wishes he wasn't but can't do a damn thing about it.

"You got any other questions or is that it?"

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tucky - 2015-04-27 01:34 (UTC) - Expand

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crabmunicator - 2015-04-27 01:37 (UTC) - Expand

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