Choose to Fight for a World Beyond

[scoundrelhater]

Who| Laia Martinez and you
What| There's a new arrival in the detainment center. She's not impressed.
Where| Detainment center cafeteria and training areas
When| After the D10/D11 battles
Warnings/Notes| None, will add if necessary

Cafeteria

Laia does not regret her choice of reaction upon waking up on a steel cot and being escorted somewhere by soldiers. Submitting to the guards, sizing up the location's layout and her captor's capabilities, and then taking the first chance to knock them all out and flee had gotten her a black eye and a pair of plastic wrist cuffs, true. But she had made her decision with the information available to her, and going forward, she wouldn't make the same mistake twice. This wasn't the Gurhal system, these weren't the Illuminus, and her position as president meant nothing. It was all bullshit (and she had loudly declared as much), but it was new bullshit. Different than the mess that she was now, apparently, very far away from.

It still wasn't enough information to properly operate on, though. The truth that comes from the mouths of administrators and the actual truth are worlds apart, in her experience. So she had settled herself in the cafeteria with a mug of tea and a plastic baggie full of ice, intent on flagging someone down and grilling them for on-the-ground details. But there were video screens showing the most hideous things... she has found herself drawn into a Greatest Hits recap of the Hunger Games, and can't quite manage to tear her eyes away. Laia knows death when she sees it, and she is damn sure that these scenes of carnage are not carefully-done special effects. But that would mean.... what would that mean?

Having viewed someone's particularly gruesome end, framed with dramatic music and entirely too flippant narration, she can't stay silent any longer. "Hey!" She calls out to someone at the edge of her vision, but doesn't look their way. "Hey, you, is this..." Up goes a hand, turning vaguely around, as though she might pluck the right words out of the air. "...what the hell is this?"

Training Facilities

If they've brought her here to fight, Laia intends on doing the job properly. And since it seems they're not allowing her any of her actual equipment, she's just going to have to get used to going without. Without a line shield, she'll have to be more alert and agile. Without a nano-transformer, she'll have to content herself to limited weapons and no on-the-fly healing. And something else feels off, too, but she can't quite put her finger on what...

But she puts it out of mind. She puts just about everything out of mind, in all honesty, for she's focusing her frustration and irritation and confusion on the punching bag before her. Fists fly, elbows are thrown, middle and high kicks impact noisily, and on she goes, pushing past any aching or tiredness. Those last few months behind a desk and a microphone had put her off her game, and like hell she was going to stay off her game if what these strangers had in store for her was true.

Later, she's at the weapon rack, considering what to give a try... and looking no small amount confused, too. She pulls a sword free, and is thrown off by the weight and balance of it. "...it's solid? Tch, that's primitive, isn't it?" For all that they'd managed to haul her here, just what kind of rinky-dink low-tech operation were they running?

Comments

Training Center TW: Capitol torture and Brainwashing mentions

[justoutrunyou]

Combat is one of the only things Sandy's still allowed to do.

After bing killed in the most recent skirmish for District control she'd woken up...much to her horror in this place. This horrible, awful dangerous place where she knew she was doomed.

And sure enough they did not go easy on her. What was left was the ghost of Sandy Marko. A smiling face with empty eyes, utterly unable to ignore a command or speak ill of the capitol. Her hair cropped short, some swelling still visible on her jaw. Bags under her eyes were hints of how she cried each night when she was alone.

But in the training center she could lock all of that way.

Watching Laia struggle with her blade Sandy took up a pair of clubs instead and moved out of the way again in a timid scurry. She began striking some poses, warm up stretches as it so happened. Despite being a small and clearly young girl her form was practiced and measured. She was keeping a nervous eye on the newcomer though. Somewhere under all the abuse and the brainwashing there was a tiny voice insisting on reaching out to her.

[scoundrelhater]

Old-fashioned swords were one thing to remark on, but wait... that was a kid, wasn't it? Laia did a double-take, her gaze lingering longer upon the second look at Sandy. That wasn't just a kid. That was a kid that had been through things a kid should not have been through. She knew that kind of haunted expression, and it twisted something in her gut.

Sword still in hand, she steps towards the edge of the area that Sandy has claimed for herself, and waits for the girl to finish with her next set of exercises. "Hey. Hey, kid. You have a second?" Her voice is firm but kind. She looks like the sort of girl that's going to need to be handled carefully.

[justoutrunyou]

She hesitates to lower her sticks, eyeing the woman's sword wearily. It's all practice gear so she couldn't hurt her too badly...probably. Would anyone even care? Sandy couldn't tell anymore where the line was for Capitolites. Obviously violence towards any of them was forbidden but how much violence could be between tributes when they weren't in the field?

Oh! But there had been a question hadn't there? Sandy couldn't remember the exact wording but she nodded agreeing to pause her work out. Even acknowledging that though she glanced to the peace keepers half expecting them to punish her for stopping. When they didn't move she lowered her sticks into a less defensive pose.

[scoundrelhater]

Even the little things about this girl's reactions are worth assessing and reacting to. The sword gives a threatening impression, she's pretty sure... so she kneels, sets the sword down flat on the ground, and rises back up smoothly. She's not here for trouble, kid. It's alright.

"You're pretty good with those. They teach you that here?" Let's see if she's at all inclined to talk. Maybe... maybe she's not as bad off as she looks. Maybe she's missing something. Maybe Laia won't have to go talk herself down from doing something angry and rash.

[justoutrunyou]

There is a visible relief when the sword is put down, even if Sandy is also very confused about the situation.

Still she follows suit lowering her sticks to the ground and then backing away from them two steps.

"Another tribute taught me...he's gone now." She considers giving his name but is rewarded by a sharp stinging needle to her frontal lobe which makes her eye twitch unpleasantly. Talking about rebels, especially rebels she used to care about is against the rules apparently.

"You can learn lots of stuff here if you've been here long enough...if you pay attention."

And this girl was paying close attention wasn't she? It made Sandy's skin crawl even if part of her was aware that this was exactly the sort of attention to detail she usually gave newcomers.

Cafeteria

[infinitemayonnaise]

"Huh?" Nitou was carrying off a sad, sad little Salisbury steak he's coated in as much mayonnaise as he could scrape together, but he could take a few moments to answer that sort of question. Not like he's seen this person before. "Ohhhhh," he says as he makes a face, "one of those stupid Games recap specials they like doing."

[scoundrelhater]

Laia tears her eyes away from the screen long enough to take in Nitou's face, and then Nitou's dinner. She's not sure that she approves of either of them, but neither of those are the point right now, so she'll hold off on offering any criticism. "I know it's 'Games' of some sort, they keep calling it that!" She turns back to the screen and makes a jabbing gesture towards it with her free hand, while readjusting the ice pack she's holding over her bruised and purpling eye. "Why the hell do they think this is... this is entertainment?"

[infinitemayonnaise]

To be fair, Nitou doesn't even approve of that dinner. It is an awful dinner. Not even mayonnaise has much of a chance of saving that rubbery steak. "Yeah, they do. That's how they run things here. Grab a bunch of strangers from different worlds, make 'em fight to the death, bring 'em all back, and repeat the process." He's far too used to this.

[scoundrelhater]

Laia's expression is all unimpressed scowl and building outrage, right up to the point that Nitou talks about bringing them all back. Her eyes go wide and her face twists into something deeply uncomfortably. "They what? Bring them back from the dead?!" There are some things that are just impossible. Or if not impossible, deeply unsettling and wrong. That's one of them, right there.

[infinitemayonnaise]

"Yeah." He would like to tell her about what he's seen where that is concerned, but stops himself. He doesn't know her. Gotta put a pin in taht one. "You go in there, you die, you wake up again good as new." He makes a face. "Seriously, I've died a few times. It sucks. Can't recommend it."

Cafeteria

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn turns her head, looking at the newcomer for a long moment before she answers. "It is what it looks like. I suppose you may count yourself lucky you were brought here for a real war, and not that... mummer's show." Some luck. She frowns, and, after a moment's thought, sits down opposite Laia, setting down her tray of bread and cheese. "How long have you been here?"

[scoundrelhater]

The delay in receiving the response that she's looking for gets Laia to actually turn her head and give Éowyn a proper look. Just a quick up-and-down, assessing curiously and unflinchingly. Words seem likely to say more than looks, though, because this woman seems to know things.

She gives a little huff of a laugh, hearing the show described like that. "So... a war broke out, and they decided to do something only slightly less revolting with the people they've kidnapped?" She shifts back a little to give the other woman room to sit, and turns in her seat to properly face her. "I can't say for sure, but it seems like a day and a half. They weren't nice enough to give me a clock to look at while stuffing my head full of their garbage." Her eyes narrow subtly. "How long have you been here?"

[shieldofrohan]

Éowyn shrugs, tucking her hair back behind her ears as she looks down at her meal. "Hard to say," she admits, and frowns. One day runs into another, has run into another for a long, long time. And even before being locked up in here, she struggled to tell the seasons in the climate-controlled, artificial air of the Capitol. The months they use here are different, too, which is unhelpful; even when she knows the date, she doesn't really understand it. So she has to think quite hard about Laia's question.

"About a year," she hazards, at last. "Maybe a little less. It feels like a great deal longer."

[scoundrelhater]

Laia has a sip of her tea while she waits for the woman to put together an answer, and furrows her brow with concern. There are plenty of reasons that one could have difficulty measuring time. That kind of disorientation was common in places that incarcerated people. The estimate finally given has her raising her eyebrows instead... and then wincing, because that was far more face motion than her face is currently up for.

"Damn it... that long? You have an estimate for how long they've been warring and how long they've been...." And she sets her tea down and gives a vague wave of her hand towards the monitors again.

[shieldofrohan]

"The war's been going on a few months now. As for the Games..." She sighs, rubbing her temple. "Far longer than I was here. Far longer than any of us have been here, from what I understand. The greater part of a century. They used to use this world's children." She tries to sound matter-of-fact about that, and fails. No matter how long she's here, she'll never be able to reconcile herself to that.

Uncomfortable with how upset the thought makes her, she looks away and starts to tear at her bread. It's something to do with her hands. "I think they used us for two or three years, before the war broke out. Now they sit and act shocked that their people did not go on swallowing such injustice forever."

Training Center cw: mention of forced drug abuse

[silberfuchs]

"Were you expecting something else?" Albert's mood as improved at least a little by helping to get Sam back into rebel hands safely, even if it had resulted in his death at the hands of a self-styled super villain who had a hard on for the German cyborg's misery. Black Tom is really little more than an annoyance though, considering how easily he'd been manipulated into covering Sam's 'capture.'

Still, there's little to do in prison between battles and with Jet's hours being unpredictable as he's weened from whatever psychotropic drugs the Capitol had him on, Albert finds himself with a lot of down time. Sometimes that means running around the track outdoors, and sometimes that means utilizing the training facilities, a place Albert is surprised even exists in a prison. Oh well.

The elven girl's exclamation catches his attention, as a diversion more than anything, and so he responds. He has some time, he might as well spend it on a potential new ally.

[scoundrelhater]

Albert's good-natured comment gets an uncertain side-eye in return. Who is this? Is he worth trusting? She's plainly sizing him up as she replies. "I was. There isn't a single photonic weapon here. No one uses stuff like this anymore, where I'm from. Unless you're some kind of weird history nerd, and even then..." She gives a frustrated huff, then turns to set the sword back where she got it from.

"...So who're you?" Names to go with faces are nice. And he's got an interesting face, come to think of it...

[silberfuchs]

"This world is both more advanced and entirely backwards from the civilizations it pulls from," Albert replies as if that answers her frustrations about the weapons. He gauges her reaction; surely she noticed by now that this place is a literal prison complex and they wouldn't allow advanced weapons, even if the presence of something as rudimentary as medieval cutlery is still strange.

"Heinrich. Albert Heinrich. I'm a... guest, like yourself." He leans back against the wall, reconciling himself to the fact that she looks like an Elf but is clearly from a technologically advanced world. True, it makes sense that Elves, like humans, would also continue with the march of progress on some plane, but Albert's always thought of them in the Tolkeinesque fashion, all ethereal movement and cryptic prophecies, steel and sorcery, that sort of thing. Her mention of 'photonic' weapons is like hearing a toddler recite Shakespeare; it doesn't quite work in his head, but he tries very hard to keep his expression impassive and not let any of that knowingly offensive thought show.

[scoundrelhater]

It's half an answer, as far as Laia is concerned. A kind of mushy-middle thing that isn't the exact thing that she's looking for. But it's something, and she can build on that something. "How advanced is 'more' advanced? Have they mastered space flight? Faster than light travel? A-Photons? I'd go look into this myself, but I don't think they want me to leave just yet...." As serious as it all is and as much irritation as she feels, she can't help but say it with a smirk.

There's a very brief pause as she takes in Albert's name, and as she considers her own introduction. "...Laia Martinez." Out goes her hand for a handshake, which he'll find to be very firm. "I've been a 'guest' in places worse than this."

[silberfuchs]

"They have force fields..."

Okay, so maybe what he'd said wasn't entirely accurate compared to where this person comes from. She lost him at A-Photons.

Still, he reaches out to shake her hand. If her grip his firm, his is unforgiving. Not in the sense that his grip is too hard, but simply that his hand literally has none of the give that flesh is supposed to under pressure. Whether its the gloves he has on or something else suspicious is open for debate.

"Remember saying that. You might change your mind."

Cafeteria (sorry I'm so late to the party!)

[formersurgeon]

Joan had become thin and wiry with the rebellion, but when she woke up in the Capitol she was back the way she had been when she first arrived in Panem, small and soft. She couldn't do anything about that. But she did hack off her hair the minute she got her hands on a pair of scissors in the infirmary.

She's quiet and withdrawn in the cafeteria, but the woman manages to get her attention. She looks at the woman, then up at the screens. She doesn't even notice them anymore.

"That's what entertains the people in the Capitol." She gives the woman a weary look. She hadn't realized that the Capitol was still pulling in people from other worlds, bit it makes sense. More manpower.

"How long have you been here?"

No problem!

[scoundrelhater]

"Entertains people?" Laia is absolutely taken aback at the idea. "They're entertained by people dying?" She can call it like she sees it, and that was absolutely some poor person's head coming off, in slow motion. She grimaces, then winces and adjusts the ice that she's holding over her bruised eye.

"I'm not sure. Not long. A little more than what counts as a day here, I think." She gives a proper look in Joan's direction, keen and careful. "You've been here a hell of a lot longer than me. I can see that much."

[formersurgeon]

Joan merely looks away from the screen wearily. She's seen it all. The violence doesn't even sicken her anymore. It just makes her feel tired and sad.

"That," she says, her quiet voice no less wry, "is an understatement."

She doesn't want to talk about herself, though. She's always found it easier to numb her own pain by focusing on others. She does that now, noticing Laia's bruised eye.

"What happened?"

[scoundrelhater]

Laia is about to press further to see if she can find out more, either how long this woman has been here or just how much she knows, but the question ball is in her court, now. She blinks and pauses, not immediately registering what the question is about. Oh, wait, her eye, right...

"I thought I'd try and fight my way out. Didn't work." As dumb as it was to do, she still manages a half-smile when thinking back on it. She had managed to hurt those Peacekeepers worse than they'd managed to hurt her.

[formersurgeon]

Joan knows that fighting the Peacekeepers here is futile. Still, she can't help her own half-smile of admiration at the woman's rebellion.

"No. Strength-wise, they have the advantage here." She remembers the time, what seems like forever ago, that she had fought against Peacekeepers who had come to hold her down, sedate her, and tap into her mind. She just doesn't have the energy for that kind of futile struggle anymore.

"Keep your eyes open, though. Things might change."

She can't be more specific than that, since they are almost certainly being watched and recorded.