(no subject)

[witbastard]

Who | Fitz and YOU!
What | Fitz has been dragged away from his Extremely Vital Quest and dumped in a weird city. This does not please him.
Where | Around and about
When | A few days after the Crowning
Warnings/Notes | None yet; will update if needed

A: The District 11 Living Room

Fitz awakes aching and exhausted, and lies for a while in the darkness behind his eyes, feigning sleep as he pieces together what he knew. He had just come from the Elderling city, mired in the tug of the Skill, when suddenly he had awoken in a cold, bare room, foreign in its strangeness. Awareness of the severity of his situation had come in waves; no Skill river in which to reach, not a flicker of life showed to his Wit-sense, not even an awareness of the distant bond with his wolf. He had no weapons, and they had taken his clothes and his pack, and with them his elfbark and herbs. Locked up, alone and unarmed in a strange land, it's no surprise that when the Peacekeepers came for him, he hurled himself into them, trying to get past them and away. He had, he recalls with a flicker of pride, knocked the teeth loose in one’s mouth, and kicked in one’s knee with a force that would not soon heal, but in return he received a solid beating, and a blow to the head which sent him spiralling down into one of his seizures, to awake here. The bed is soft and silk-sheeted. There is blood in his mouth where he has bitten his tongue, and the area above his eye feels tight and bruised. At least one rib is bruised if not broken. But mostly, he felt wreathed in the unbelievable sore tiredness that followed a seizure. And mostly, he’s bone-tired, stiff and sore from his seizure, and cursing himself for showing that great weakness.

Without his Wit, he can’t tell if there are others in the room with him. Certainly, he’s no longer in the cell he woke up in before, but was he moved by his captor or rescued by someone else? Either way, it seems likely that as soon as his hosts know he’s awake, someone will come for him. And unarmed and disorientated, he has little chance of escaping this room if they do. Best to move fast. Cautiously, he cracks open his less-sore eye. The lights hurt his head something awful, brighter and harsher than firelight or daylight. The room is empty. He lies still a moment longer, gathering his thoughts, eyeing the room from under his lashes, then moves sharply.

He swings himself out of the low, soft bed, ignoring how the room swims around him, and, lurching slightly, makes for the door. To his surprise, it opens easily. The first door leads into an odd ceramic and silver anteroom, walled with mirrors; a dead end. The second leads into a hallway, and from there into a glass-walled room, laid out with low tables and soft chairs. He moves into the living room near-silently, warily, like a caged wolf. Distracted by a combination of concussion, Skill-headache and exhaustion making his vision blur, and lacking the familiar warning of his Wit-sense, he doesn’t notice there’s someone else sitting in there until he’s already moved out of the cover of the corridor.

B: The streets of the Capitol

Later, after having this place explained to him (however loosely) and after his test, he is surprised to find that he is free to leave the building. On the pretext of visiting the market, he has determined to find the edge of the city and plot his escape before they throw him into this deathmatch. But now he’s out in the city, he finds it almost distracts him from his plans. If the magical tower with its sourceless light and great glass walls and self-opening doors was strange, these streets are incomprehensible. He recognises not one in a thousand things that the huge glass-fronted stores display in glittering mounds, there are vehicles that make no sense, and even the people passing him, with their impossibly colourful hair and skin, and shimmering, shifting, oddly-cut clothes, are so alien as to be barely recognisable. They seem barely human. Elderlings? he wonders briefly, but puts the thought from his mind. If they are Elderlings, they seem hardly likely to come to the aid of the Six Duchies, when they are so venal and sick as to battle humans for sport. What’s important is to gather what information he can, then return to his friends and to Verity.

Admittedly, that currently mostly seems to take the form of standing, rather dumbstruck, in the street, looking very lost. This place is so confusing.

C: The Training Centre

There is one place in this odd city that seems almost familiar, and that’s the training centre in the building. The room itself is as strange as everything else, but the familiar weight of weapons in his hands is oddly comforting, especially when, bereft of his weapons, his Wit and his poisons, he feels much more vulnerable than he’d like in this strange and hostile place. And, having decided it best to present himself as a predictably aggressive soldier, he feels no qualms about being seen here. Not to mention, the more he sharpens his rusty skills, the better his chances of survival.

Hefting a suitable sword, he goes through familiar drills swiftly and neatly, one by one. The physical exertion frees his mind, takes him back to a time before everything went so wrong, running the same drills again and again out in the yards before Hod the Weaponsmaster’s sharp eye and critical tongue. By the time he pauses, panting, and notices that he isn’t alone, he feels almost cheerful despite his situation. The exercise is good, and he is feeling the benefits of relief from the constant guard he has had to keep on his Skill for the last few weeks on the Skill-road.

He throws the newcomer a wolfish smile, tossing his sword from hand to hand. “Looking for a sparring partner?”

Comments

[knittingbackwards]

"You seem lost, young man." Since learning that his money is taken from the Districts, Merlyn has made a point of not using his credit card where at all possible. He's living an increasingly ascetic life in the Center, and as such, rarely ventures out of it. But there are some necessities that simply can't be got in the confines of the tower, which is why he's currently walking down the street carrying two bulging bags of books and yarn.

He isn't in a hurry, though, and so it's not even a real decision to stop and help out someone who is so clearly out of his depth. He looks down for a moment at the fledgeling sparrow which, despite his urgings, has decided to live in his beard and is now cheeping impatiently. "Oh, do be quiet. I told you, if you will insist on nesting there, you'll just have to live with the consequences." Then, back to Fitz, with a warm, grandfatherly smile, "I take it you've just arrived?"

Although he cuts a rather queer figure, the old wizard looks no more a part of the city than Fitz does. He's persisted, against his Stylist's wishes, in wearing the same clothes day in, day out, and the rich velvet robes are getting a little the worse for wear. His beard, unsurprisingly, looks like a bird's-nest, and when he takes off his conical hat to scratch his head, he seems to be the only person in the street to be going bald entirely naturally. In fact, he seems to be the only person in the street to be old.

C

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn is still deep in the frustration and depression that has dogged her since the Arena. Her time with Firo and Arya lately has dulled the worst edges of the pain, but she's still a bundle of pent-up energy and half-hidden grief, spending a lot of time with the horses and a good seven or eight hours a day in hard training. The old callouses on her hands have blistered, healed, blistered again. Her bad arm is giving her constant pain, a dull ache that demands rest she never gives it.

She barely looks at the stranger until he speaks to her. By that time, she's picking through the sword rack, shield buckled to her arm, back to the room. Her long hair is braided back, but messily, and her loose tunic and trousers are crumpled. She doesn't answer his smile, but only nods, selecting a longsword from the rack and turning to face him.

"Better a partner than a straw man," she agrees, dropping back into a defensive stance, handling the longsword with ease. "Whenever you will, I am ready."

A

[contrarianlibrarian]

China waits until the man comes closer into view before speaking up from her seat in the common area. "Hello."

She shuts the book on her lap as she looks him over, eyes quickly assessing him as she would one of her wares.

"May I welcome you to Panem? Assuming you that are new, of course."

It's entirely possible that he isn't the new Tribute 11 is to be expecting, but she finds that unlikely. There are always visitors from other floors, but she tries to keep up to date on all the faces.

Training Center - let me know if this is okay!

[whatisay]

Jason doesn't come to the gym in the Tribute Center to train, and it shows in the way he's dressed. He's in a suit with its sleeves rolled up around his elbows, hand jammed into slacks, dress shirt tucked but mussed. He's looking for another one of his Tributes again, and since no one seems to know where they are he's tracking their location on his phone, watching the little red dot that symbolizes them somewhere on this floor. His cigarette's trapped between his teeth so it doesn't fall as his mouth moves.

He's not even paying attention to Fitz when he's addressed. His head snaps up midway through him muttering to himself about how he doesn't get paid enough to herd cats and how if he had his way he'd get a cattle prod or at least a lasso to deal with these animals, and he pauses.

"Tell me you're joking." He greets Fitz with a sneer, not removing his hand from his pocket. "Do I look like I'm some offworld barbarian who's going to start slashing around with sharpened metal?"

C

[needlebearer]

Arya looks from Fitz to the sword in his hand and back again. The sword gripped in her own hands is small and slim, suited more to fencing - the closest she'd heard Water Dancing described to here - and agile combat than swinging and hacking with brute strength.

"Have you much training?"

B - LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD

[69problems]

One of the unexpected upsides to being a mentor is the sudden upswing in time one can devote to learning the layout of the city one has publicly adopted as one's home. Signless knew the Capitol well enough before but now that he's had months uninterrupted to explore it he navigates it with the same ease as the natives around him. If he cared to think about it it might bother him to realize that, with his gray skin and strange eyes and horns, he looks just like a Capitolite who's taken body modification a little too far in pursuit of emulating their favorite offworld tribute. It might also amuse him: he started the troll craze and now he blends in well enough in the Capitol to look like a victim of it.

There are still things about him that read as distinctly un-Panem, though, and chief among those right now are his relatively simple, flowy outfit and the gently rustling paper bag he holds in one hand. It's full of crickets, because he feels the occasional treat is something he deserves. It keeps his spirits up.

It's the hand with the bag he lifts in greeting and in an attempt to catch Fitz's attention. After two years in Panem he can spot a new arrival from a mile away, and Fitz is the only one standing still instead of scuttling from storefront to storefront.

"Hello there. Am I right in thinking you're a little lost?"

C

[letthemburn]

Iskierka still isn't entirely certain what to make of the training center. In theory it's a perfectly fine thing to have and she can easily get behind the idea of having somewhere to hone ones skills in the downtime between arenas besides. The probably lies in the fact that most of things actually in the room are built more for people who happen to be humanoid in shape and Iskierka very much isn't, largely on account of being an actual dragon.

Not a very large dragon, mind - she stand about as tall at the shoulder as a reasonably sized horse - but a dragon none the less. And just in case that wasn't enough, the assortment of spines and spikes that make their way down her spine and over her back seem to be gently steaming.

"I would not mind, I suppose," she answers, wings half-spreading and then settling back onto her back in a gesture that's meant as a rough equivalent to a shrug although whether or not Fitz picks up on that is another matter entirely, given that it's only the roughest of approximations. (One of the problems of being quadrupedal and not having quite the same shoulders to most everyone else.)