circuitry ◎ ( open! )

[amplifying]

Who| Beck and YOU!
What| Adjusting isn't easy. Still.
Where| All around the Capitol.
When| Ummm, from now until near the beginning of the Games, maybe? It's a catch-all log so I'm pretty flexible!
Warnings/Notes| TBA.

LOUNGE

Okay, so he wouldn't lie- the lounge area here isn't all that bad.

The feel is modern enough and the colors are nice (they're not the colors he's used to, but it reminds him enough of home to make him at least feel somewhat settled), and the couches are nice and soft. It even had a bar...but they didn't provide the drinks that he was used to. Some of them tasted kind of funny, and if he drank too many, he couldn't walk right, and sometimes made him a little sick afterwards. Yeah. Now he knew why Daniel talked so little about feeling 'nauseated'.

It reminds him of hanging out with Mara and Zed in the clubs. Even though the lounge could be one of Beck's favorite places to be, it's also the place that makes him the most homesick. A lot of the time when he sat here, he would find himself thinking about home, and what was going on, and whether Tron was trying to find out where he was...or even what was going on in the revolution.

He missed Argon and Tron a lot, to the point where it felt like he hurt inside.

Beck was in the lounge now, sitting in a corner a little farther away from the middle. More times than not people with the craziest of styles would come in with cameras that were flashing, and cameras that floated in the air. Some people asked for full-blown interviews, others asked for pictures for a feed. What was nice was that some people were more popular than Beck was.

They asked about his home and why he wouldn't kill anyone. He gave answers.

Simple as that.

He had the Games back home, and he managed to live through those without derezzing another Program. And maybe, he could do it here, too.


CAPITOL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Okay. So every User had a skeleton. With skeletons came muscles. Tendons connected the muscles to skeletons. Ligaments connected pieces of the skeleton to each other.

Beck was buried into a rather large medical book, with many others stacked up beside him. If the Games were going to happen again, he would have to learn more about the User body before he went out a second time. If he wanted to survive a day, then he'd have to learn about the body. It was complicated, and a lot of it was more annoying than not, but he could deal with this.

This is something he could operate.

You might find him there still reading over various bodily functions or gross things like that, or maybe pacing around and getting his bearings. He can only read big books with big words for so long, anyway.


ROOFTOPS

While the lounge was nice, it didn't give Beck the time to think.

Well, he thought about things, but not about what life was going to be like for him, or what he was here for. The lounge made him think of home and his friends, of Tron and the clubs. It made him think about the good times he's had before, and how much he utterly misses all of it.

But the rooftops make him think of now. Of the future.

The wind blows through his hair as he makes his way past the very many gardens, some more eye-catching than others. One is just filled with flowers and flowers galore, the other has a covering of branches and vines that you can actually sit under, if the sun's a bit too harsh. But Beck prefers to stand near the edges of the building. But not because he's planning on doing something he really shouldn't.

He can see everything up here. From all of the buildings, to the land beyond. It gives him a chance to stand and think. What's he going to do when the Arena happens again? What will they expect him to do? Could he even have a chance, now that he knew his body a little more than before?

...Beck didn't have any good answers for those questions. And for the time being, he was going to wait for the answers. It wasn't like he had any other choice.

But as calmly as he took this, he felt anything but it.

He worried. He worried about himself and the others that would have to compete again out there. What would Tron say about all of this? Would he be disappointed, too? What would he expect Beck to do?

As he stands by the edge, he lets his head hang, and sighs. What would Tron do?
Or, what could he do?

Comments

[amplifying]

The elevator is stuck.

Beck wouldn't mind this normally. But he does mind it when he's stuck with one of the three Users who decided he was going to be a snack in the Arena. He could remember it in a lot of detail that he really didn't want to, but he did. Seeing this guy again probably didn't help him any.

So what do you do when you were stuck in an elevator with a guy who helped to kill you not too long ago? He was absolutely positive that not even the smartest User in the world could answer this question.

His original plan was to just...stand there. Because one- what else was there to say? and two- ...he didn't really know what else to do. The silence would be absolutely awful (and maybe a little painful), and he'd have to deal with the memory of this guy's teeth sinking into his thigh all over again, but it wasn't like he could do anything else, unless he wanted to jump out of the elevator shaft or something. So let the horrible silence commence.

Beck kept his gaze straight ahead, mouth clenched shut...but the other guy broke that pretty quickly. It took him a little bit to realize what he was saying, but...sorry? This guy was apologizing?

He wanted to be angry. But even though he wanted to, Beck quickly found out that he couldn't be. Because it wasn't like this guy wanted to go and eat him alive, right? They were kind of being forced to kill each other...right?

"It's, it's okay." Beck said quickly, looking to the User out of the corner of his eye. "I mean, it's not like you wanted to, right...?"

Stupid question. But...

[shambler]

It's okay, Beck says. R can't say he agrees. Judging from the hesitation and the way they were both trying to avoid eye contact here, maybe it's a lost cause trying to pretend it's no hard feelings. This is probably the part where he should lie - swear up and down that no officer, he did not enjoy stealing Beck's trippy memories. Killing someone random like Beck is still hard to swallow, leaves R with a dirty feeling despite the fact he's rotting.

The memories, though. R can't say he didn't want to hold onto every weird, bright spark of a memory he's taken, from the others and from Beck.

So yeah. Maybe he did want to, when he was prying the poor guy's brain's out. It was the only time he felt like he could live. (And Jesus, how Beck had lived!)

R slowly realizes his silence isn't helping here. He wishes the stare he gives Beck isn't stupidly guilty, that half the time it feels like his face froze that way.

"Didn't..." R's head hangs down. "Was...too...hungry. Can't...stop. Wish...I could."

Talk about today being epically awkward. There's got to be a better way to clear the air between them. R looks at Beck, that tall lanky frame of his, and the guilt tries to claw its way up his throat again. Moaning uncomfortably, R looks away first.

[amplifying]

Beck could kind of see how this User was sorry.

It was something he noticed right off the bat when he met R- there had been something...very un-Userlike about him. The way he moved, the black goop that came out of his mouth. The way his skin looked almost dead, and how there wasn't any energy in his eyes. Beck didn't know anything about User viruses and what affected what and how, but he could tell that if R was a Program, there would be something odd about his coding. There was something that caused him to behave the way he did.

...Although, Beck couldn't say he ever heard of a virus that made people want to eat each other. He heard of viruses that destroyed coding, but not made them want to eat others!

He looked over to R the best he could, and offered what was probably more of a grimace than a smile of any kind. Beck didn't want to say that he knew, because, well, he didn't. But at the same time...

"I...had a feeling." He started. "There was always...the first time I bumped into you, there was something I noticed that stood out from other Users." Getting better, getting better... "The ones I saw in the Arena always had some kind of energy in their eyes that told you they were alive. But yours..." He didn't want to be rude or anything. But at the same time, this guy did help kill him, so. "Yours didn't. And I never knew why."

[shambler]

R grunted at that. Usually the fact he was lurching or looked obviously dead was enough of a tip off to the people out there - being told he had something missing in his eyes was new. R could make a guess what it was. That little spark you could see in people like Julie, this invisible something that seemed to flood out from the heart and through the blood-stream in a constant pulse. It was the exact same thing R saw - felt - when Beck died in the Arena, that exact moment when the spark faded and Beck left the building and all that was left was a still-warm corpse in that grey no-man's land where he hadn't revived as a zombie just yet.

"Dead. Stuck this...way. Ww...wanted...to make it...fast. New...instinct."

Oops and that wasn't what R wanted to say now that it was already bleeding out of his mouth. How was that supposed to tell Beck it wouldn't happen again?

R swallowed, remembering what it felt like to be Beck. All those flashes of colors, hues he'd never seen in the other memories and had a feeling he never would. The sound of the light-cycle. It was a weird feeling, facing someone you knew and didn't. The lights flickered again overhead, R craning his head like a moth seconds away from being burnt to a crisp.

The zombie eventually wrangled his attention away from the flickering lights and focused on Beck again. "Now...you know. Second...chance?"

[amplifying]

Beck...could actually find a small amount of comfort in that, if he tried to think about it really really hard. This guy at least had an idea of what he was doing and that it wasn't right, and that he figured it would be best to end it all as quickly as possible. Which was better than knowing what you were doing and just doing it anyway, and dragging it out as long as you wanted to because it was fun.

He had a feeling that someone else was like that in the group, but he didn't bring that up.

The lights flickered in the elevator, and a voice overhead told them to be patient as whatever malfunctioning was being worked at. Things got kind of quiet then...Which made things a little awkward. Just a little.

But when R mentioned something about a second chance, Beck found himself looking to the User, and giving him a smile and a nod. "A second chance and a few more." This guy couldn't help himself. And Beck couldn't see any reason to hold a grudge otherwise.

"My name's Beck, by the way. I don't know if you knew already, or..."

[shambler]

Patient. Normally R could rock patient. He could out-patient just about anyone with a pulse. (Other zombies, not so much. Sometimes he got the impression corpses like M viewed him as a newbie, itching to be on the move, obsessed with creepy things like music). Somehow being trapped in an elevator with one of his victims made R feel like being patient was out of his reach, his eyes still guiltily on Beck.

Oh yeah, he knew. That was one of the first things plastered on the top level of the brain, a name, a "this is who I am", the more important, personal things then deeper and deeper inside. R could definitely say he knew his name already.

"Know. Sorry. I'm....Rrr," R said, hunching his shoulders awkwardly. "Thank you for...chance. Try to be...good."

The zombie had to pause then, working out what else to say. He didn't feel he deserved that smile, uneasy as it was, because most people would be pissed about being killed and eaten like a User buffet. Program buffet? What was Beck, anyway?

[amplifying]

Beck turned to the corrupted user, and tried to offer him a bigger smile. This wasn't R's fault. It was clear to him now as it was day and night (which he still wasn't all that accustomed to); it must have taken a lot for R to tell him all of this, given both his physical condition and the oddness of what happened. It might have been the pressure from them both being stuck in an elevator, but if R hadn't wanted to mention it, he wouldn't have...right?

Being stuck in an elevator didn't mean anything. Beck knew that it took a lot of guts to summon the courage for this, and he found himself respecting R a lot for that.

"Anytime." He said, facing towards the zombie a little more this time around. "...I'm not sure how hard being good is for you, but is there any way I can help?"

When he wasn't trying to eat you, R actually sounded pretty nice. It wasn't fair for the Capitol to drag him into anything like this. But then again, it wasn't fair for any of them.

[shambler]

Beck opened up, and not just with what he said – he was opening up a lot more with his body language too, R noticing he didn’t hunch over or face the wall or try to unconsciously present himself as a smaller target like anyone in their right mind, stuck in an elevator with a zombie, would. R felt even crappier about eating him now. If he had a choice, he wouldn’t kill anyone…but if he had a choice, he’d rather chew up someone who deserved it.

The question was a good one, R not sure how to answer it. It wasn’t really something people really talked about, humans or zombies and the Boneys definitely liked things the way they were. Someone like Beck would kick their status quo to pieces. They’d probably kill him even if they weren’t maneaters, just on principle.

R struggled to think of good, solid advice aside from “put a big, solid door between you and me”.

“Re…cognize…signs? Stay away…from me in…Corn…ucopia.”

Probably the best thing he could say for now. They started him starving last Arena, probably to give the other Tributes a nice, hungry speedbump and they might do it again next one. If Beck was smart, he’d let R get to someone else instead.

[amplifying]

Beck nodded, and thought that over. He started off in the Games right after the Blood Bath...but from what he heard, it was anything but pretty (not that the name of it gave him any good ideas). He didn't know anything about how they intentionally starved R, or hurt him in any way...

"I could do that." He said, looking over to the zombie and offering him another smile. "But it wasn't exactly what I meant."

It probably wasn't a good idea to try and help R in the middle of the Games; that much he knew from the whole dinner experience. The only way he'd be able to help this User is if he was one of them himself. Which, well, he kind of couldn't be, since he wasn't corrupt like they were. But, if there was a way to help him otherwise..."I meant more around here. Outside of the Games."

[shambler]

R looked surprised at that one coming from Beck, his mouth parting.

"Um..." he wheezed to stall, trying to think. "Need help...keeping busy. Talk....ing...maybe? Human...things."

It did help they fed him some kind of flesh substitute in the Capitol. It didn't make the hunger go away - all it did was put it down to a manageable buzz in the back of his skull and in his bones, nothing like that driving force that made him jump someone like Beck and he sometimes felt irritated, unsatisfied. Talking and hanging out and aping being a person like everyone else was distracting. R could use distracting. The zombie shrugged at Beck, not sure why he'd be so keen on helping one of the Tributes who killed him.

The thing was he did know why, thanks to feeding. Beck was genuinely a good person. Maybe this was him doing what he did best, getting in over his head like everything else because he stepped up to the plate.