thecapitol | The Bullet's First Tour

Who| Gary Epps and you!
What| Gary's first professional concert tour is live! And also eating into precious homework time.
Where| Various locations around the Capitol and the Training Center.
When| 5/11 through 5/22, evenings
Warnings/Notes| Can't think of any, will update as needed!

Gary rarely expects good things to happen to him. This isn't some kind of attempt to emphasize the things that do end up happening, or a denial of fate or other such decisions about the nature of life; Gary simply doesn't have the foresight to look ahead that far and would rather accept events as they occur. The message from his sponsor about recording an album, for example. Gary never would have assumed that his concert for the attempted Rebellion heist would have become as popular as it has, certainly not enough for it to get its own section in Celebrus. Anyone else would have connected the dots when they got the call mere hours after the magazine's release. Gary's swollen ego keeps him from thinking about it too much.

It's taken some weeks to record his first album, but it's definitely worth it by Gary's estimation. They were going to start touring as soon as the radios got hold of it; the Youth Programme conspired against them. Well, conspired against Gary--his sponsor knew all about it and, annoyingly, supported the cause. He was more than willing to shuffle dates around for the benefit of Gary's continued education. Concerts Friday through Sunday nights, vocal training and recording after school the rest of the week, that would work. Gary assured his sponsor that this schedule would give him plenty of time to get his work done. Unfortunately, his sponsor believed him.

A - The Tour - Around the Capitol

Gary was at first disappointed that his tour couldn't extend to the other Districts, but there's no shortage of venues in the Capitol for him to take advantage of, and in a way this makes setting up concerts all the more exciting. Some nights they pop into random bars and take over karaoke stages. Some nights they set up stages in the park, or open plazas. It's all very spontaneous and fun, much like the first concert after the Signless's sermon had been, though each session is much shorter than the original. There are no tickets to give out--only copies of Gary's album and various other paraphernalia sold at a couple stands around the stage. The theme is 'young love,' inspired by his classic single from the first concert, and includes various other hits and one-off melodies. There's no guarantee which ones Gary will be singing at any single venue. Most of the time even Gary doesn't know until he's just about to hop on-stage. He prefers it that way.

The concerts are loud, flashy and quick--suddenly there's a stage and lights and the thrumming of speakers, a crowd gathers and screams, then it's all over and the ensemble disappears. But it's not all totally unprovoked or unpredictable; Gary and his sponsor show up first to scope out an area, then he sits back and watches his stage crew blitz through preparing the venue. This, along with the few minutes he gets to towel the sweat out of his hair and get something to drink after each performance, is basically the only time Gary's allowed to interact one-on-one with the crowd, and he relishes in it. He'll mingle loudly, take requests and sign autographs and pose for pictures, and of course, give a hearty wink at anyone that stares at him for too long. Gary is in his element, here, and will go well into the early-morning hours to live in it for as long as his sponsor will let him.

B - Everything Else - Training Center

Doing homework, on the other hand, is not Gary's element.

He's perfectly happy to let the assignments pile up during the first week. Surely there will be some time when he's not exhausted after coming back to the Training Center, and he can just sit down and crank all of these out, no problem...but twelve grades of primary school have not taught Gary that he and procrastination just really don't work well together. Inevitably deadlines begin to creep up on him, and then there's a lot of huffing and puffing about actually getting out all his books and paper and pencils and study material, finding somewhere that isn't surrounded by television or games or magazines that he would much rather be paying attention to right now, and then the final scramble to a quiet corner in the building as the panic sets in and drives Gary to action.

For a full thirty minutes, he manages to focus on reading, maybe write down a couple lines of work. Forty-five minutes in he realizes that he has no idea what he's doing. An hour in, all that touring kicks in and Gary is face-down on the table, dead asleep.

This clearly isn't going well for him. Gary realizes this by about mid-second week and decides that perhaps he ought to get some help. Bleary-eyed and nursing on a cup of fancy coffee (three others surround him, long since emptied), he flags down anyone who catches his eye with a lazy wave.

"Hey! Uh." Gary pauses to take another long sip. "You know anything about math and stuff?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Gary, on the other hand, has no such reservations about Haruto. He's eager to flag down his Districtmate as soon as he appears, regardless of whether or not he had prior reasons for being down here (in retrospect, Gary figures that he must have been on a course for the kitchen, but obviously it wasn't important enough to keep him en-route), or if he's shown any signs of being good at math. Mostly it's a way for Gary to keep track of him. The Peacekeepers have him locked up in the Training Center, after all; Gary may be stubbornly optimistic, but part of him worries that, if he turns away for too long, he'll see Haruto walked out onto the steps. That would be most unfortunate.

Instead of that, they're going to talk about precalculus. "Graphs," Gary answers, practically a groan as he swats the paper in front of him. "Who the hell decided math needed pictures? It's not fuckin' art class, you know?"

Graphs are certainly a distraction from the day to day anxieties of post-brainwashing life here in the Tribute Tower. He flips through a few pages, frowning at what he sees on them, before drawing his hand back. "Mathematicians? They probably decided that." He is not all that much in disagreement with you, Gary. "You need to turn the graphs into numbers, or the numbers into graphs...?" Not that he can really help with either, but it seems like a good question to ask.

Gary huffs and rolls his eyes. Mathematicians. What do they know, anyways? At least Haruto seems to be in agreement with him--which isn't so helpful for actually getting the homework done, but it does let Gary cope a little better.

"I think I need to turn the graphs into more graphs," he says, scratching his head. The drawings are mostly of vectors, either tangent to other lines or aligned one after the other. Pictorial vector addition seems to be the lesson for today. "Like, I could do it if they just gave me the numbers," Gary explains with desperate gestures at his failed work, "but this is impossible."

Edited 2015-06-07 14:16 (UTC)

"More graphs?" Haruto looks aghast, and then looks back at the pages that he had just flipped through. Wow, no, this is way outside of the realms of his recollection. "Uh... what if you figured out the numbers from the graphs you do have?" He is grasping at straws. He is feeling around for anything that might help. In a metaphorical sense, at least. "I don't know. I don't remember any of this." His memories of those last years of school are mostly soccer and friends and sleepless nights and nodding off in class. Not all bad, but also not helpful right now.

"But then I have to do weird shit with triangles! Or--man, I dunno," Gary sighs, sinking into his chair with a huff. He's not looking for help from Haruto anymore; what Gary needs now is a bleeding heart to commiserate with. "It's all a waste of time anyways. When am I ever gonna need this? It's bullshit! Total bullshit."

Commiseration, Haruto can do. He lets himself slump in his seat, nodding along slowly and sympathetically. "I didn't think that it could get any worse. That they'd find a way to screw with us beyond what they're already doing. But..." And he slaps a hand idly on the tabletop. "Math homework. Are they trying to break you guys?"

It's flippant but it's just complaining. Hardly seditious enough to get him hauled off, surely.

Probably not serious enough for Peacekeeper intervention, and yet Gary finds himself flinching and nervously laughing to dispel any possible outside alarm anyways. It hasn't taken too long for that reflex to settle in. Gary would be appalled at himself if he even realized he was doing it.

"Don't jinx it," he chuckles weakly out of the corner of his mouth. "Now just because we said it, next Arena we'll get muttations that chase you until you perfectly recite your multiplication tables or some shit. I'll put money on it."

Haruto lifts an eyebrow at Gary's reaction. That's... a little more startled than he'd expected. Is this stuff finally getting to the guy? He's feeling guilty now, but he's not sure if it's for the slap on the desk or the joke about breaking people. He draws his hand back, and sits a little straighter.

"Math-mutts? Eh, well, you'll have an advantage over everyone else, what with all this math homework... you really hoping to win the next one?" He may be asking it casually, but it's a serious question. Haruto is giving him a serious look. There's no smile. He really wants to know.

"Yeah, maybe..." Gary rolls his eyes and shrugs, leaning back into his chair with one arm slung lazily over the backboard. That's a sign that whatever worry he had before has been just as quickly forgotten as it was realized...until the second question registers. No, that was only an answer to the first. Gary's eyes widen with confused interest.

"--Hmm?" He sits up slightly. "Oh yeah! Man, why wouldn't I? That's, like--that's the goal, right? Don't you always go in to win?"

In Gary's case in particular: No he does not. Not that he realizes. But he doesn't have the self-awareness to realize that he craves the competition more than the reward--and even so, the consequences of losing are starting to outweigh the adrenaline high.

"I do." And Haruto's serious expression is already gone, replaced with a smile and a shrug of his own. "I'm just considering something different to be a 'win'." It is an idea that he has not spent much time talking about, if just because he's worried it's going to bring out Wesker, who will then get all creepy in his direction. But he's pretty sure the guy is somewhere off-site today, so here's the chance.

"I don't like going in there, but I don't mind it. If it were down to you and me, last ones left?" He pauses for emphasis. "I'd let you win it." And then before it gets too serious, he leans forward, grinning. "I want to see what kind of crazy party they'd throw for you. It'd be way better than mine."

Gary's head tilts slightly to the side and his smile quirks in the same direction. A different sort of 'win,' eh? What an interesting thought. It reminds him rather suddenly of the conversation he had with Linden, soon after the whole rebellion business that had Haruto confined to the Center in the first place--they talked about this sort of thing, a different goal than winning an Arena, a different way out. And the idea had struck him as unpleasant, then, to abandon his friends for the sake of the Capitol, but...to hear Haruto suggest that this perhaps isn't the end-all for him, either, is a definite reassurance. Maybe they won't be angry after all. Maybe this is something worth looking into.

This idle train of thought has Gary distracted, long enough that what Haruto tells him after hits him late and knocks him abruptly off the tracks. He blinks back to attention. "--Party? Oh, yeah," Gary chuckles easily and stares at the ceiling. "It'll be a real party. Not one of these weird costume socials they've set up for everyone else, you know? I'll make sure of it, don't worry."

Things seemed to be veering dangerously close to an emotional moment, but between the both of them, it has been successfully dodged. "Real party? How's that going to work? I mean, me, if I won, everyone'd be wearing masks and belts and rings... for yours, everyone's just going to have to dress up really loud, right?" He reaches out to give Gary a playful tap on the arm, then pushes up to his feet from there.

"...gonna get something from the kitchen. Want me to grab you something?"

The Bullet's First Tour

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I think we can wrap this up!

Sounds good!