thecapitol | [open!]

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Who: Julie Grigio and OPEN
What; Getting used to being around myriads of people and generally reacting to a normal life in general. What is normalcy???
Where: The training center, wandering around, WHEREVER U WANT HER.
When; Post-Arena
Warnings/Notes: idk cursing I guess

Julie was thinking how weird it was -- only in retrospect, of course -- that the first time she'd been back in a, moving city after, oh, ten years, she'd needed to take it in alone. It was overwhelming, all of it: people moving without watching their backs, dressed in flashy, overwrought clothes that they hadn't scavenged from shredded corpse two towns back. There were wigs and bright gleaming gems and restaurants that sold food without rot and maggots and, Christ, she could get anything she fucking wanted if only she could figure out what that was.

She still wasn't sure. All of that wishing for what not only she'd lost, but humanity itself -- maybe it was just something simple. Fireworks and making out with Perry under a full moon, veins warm with beer. Then they could go see some stupid action movie where things exploded but not into sparks of color, and there was always a sweeping soundtrack, music that wasn't guarded jealously because it was so hard to find.

Going out and taking it all in was too much. She'd heard about it: culture shock. Had to figure this was something like it. So after that fiasco (where her heart had pounded and she'd felt a little sick from the lights and the natural heat of too many humans in too small a space), she stayed inside. Quieter there. And training, no matter how fucked it seemed, was normal. Keep up the accuracy, always be on your toes. No rest. Don't stop looking behind you.

God, if she could thank dad for all his shitty new-world colloquialisms that stuck in her head.

She was getting more adventurous. Wow, small goddamn victories. Still, she kept thinking... it wouldn't be too far off, getting thrown back in there. Getting to try her hand again at surviving or killing.

She could use the vacation. Besides, she wasn't up for admitting she might've been a little too fascinated with the center's elevator. What? Like she'd ever seen one of those working before. Not that she could remember. There was definitely a childish glee in watching the buttons light up, riding the box from one bumpy floor to another.]

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Julie Grigio wasn't the only one enjoying the elevators today.

She did beat R to it though.

For R, today was an Elevator Day - he couldn't explain it, it just felt like he wanted to go ride the elevators for a few hours instead of sitting in a dark corner getting his lurk on. (Trust him, R didn't need any more practice lurking. That was like zombie basics right there).

R waited patiently for the elevator, looking at nothing in particular and lost in thought because that was what corpses did in their downtime, between the busy schedule of killing people and then shuffling once the party was over. And more shuffling. Too much shuffling? Too bad, there was always more shuffling tomorrow. R was glad they had an elevator here to shake things up. He drifted back to the present, reality sharpening a little at the edges as the elevator arrived at his floor. It dinged open. The Dead fog he lived in suddenly scattered as R looked up and locked eyes with Julie. It was like getting hit in the face with floodlights, R's useless guts flip-flopping.

Luckily R had this. He didn't gape, he was suave because he was working hard expanding his five-syllables or less vocabulary and so smooth today you could skate on him.

"H..hi. Julie. Going...down?"

Silky smooth.

Smooth was Julie pressing every button just to see it light up, flaring with little pops of electricity, her grin wry at the way the bell rang every time the doors opened. There was even some kind of music raining down from the ceiling, some kind of crappy, wordless jazz that she actually dug kind of hard. Nothing beat speakers. Or what she could remember of them.

The doors slid open again, and instead of some puffed up tribute or a more literal puffed up Capitol citizen, it was just a floppy-haired zombie looking, as always, like he didn't quite remember where he was.

"R! Hey!"

Her face lit up anyway, immediately taking a cold hand and pulling him inside. Nevermind the, uh, extremely weird hours after that party where she'd kept wondering what the hell was up with -- well, besides the world, what was up with her. Seriously, she needed her Nora. Someone to physically knock some sense into this. Thing.

Thing was a safe word for now.

"We're going wherever you want, tiger. I'm pretty impressed you even know how to operate one of these."

And there went R's second wind the moment Julie leaned out the door, grabbed his hand, and suddenly he was in the elevator. He didn't even remember tripping on the way in.

Somehow she had this habit of stealing his words out from under him.

Weirdly enough, he didn't mind. Hard to mind when you were floating around on Cloud Nine, R shifting to stare at Julie like the second he met her and the rest after that was history. He wasn't sure why she pinged him in a way all the other Living hadn't up till then. He knew it wasn't just Perry. Perry was seconds after love(?) at first sight. R wasn't sure if he was relieved or not about that. Julie was pretty good about seeing him for him - at the same time, R couldn't stop thinking about Perry, wondering how much bleed-through there was and wondering if Julie was wondering, too.

R looked stupidly grateful when she started her running commentary. He loved that about Julie, that she actually had commentary and an opinion that wasn't just about the best weapon to take out in the field.

"We had...one...back home," R said. "Sometimes...worked. Pro at...buttons."

His smile was shaky behind the muzzle, the zombie wanting to point out that if he could work a record player, he could work an elevator. Stairs, now. Stairs were tricky. Julie might lose him at long, winding stairs. R glanced down at their fingers, Julie's pink ones laced together with his gray ones, her Living warmth seeping in because she couldn't help it. If he let his vision blur, he could pretend they were one and the same, just a boy and a girl going for a joy-ride on the elevator.

"Let's...go...outside," R seemed happy to stand there staring at Julie, the way she ditched that sparkly red gown and dressed down today (bet her stylists were disappointed), and oblivious to the little credit card sticking out his pocket. It might've been a too-subtle reminder by his Escort to actually use it because it looked bad for his reputation if he didn't support the Capitol with his indulgences.

"No shit?" Okay, her surprise was pretty palpable. In her defense, she hadn't really seen zombies work any kind of machine. Though, yeah, record player -- fair point. How could she forget that, zombie or not, R was a purist?

Well. Car, too. But she wanted to say driving that car wasn't so much a workable skill as... something R could manage a few minutes without slamming into anything.

Man. Wonder if the Capitol was up for giving tributes cars?

She gave him an easy smile, only letting her eyes settle on the muzzle for a second. Way easier to look at his eyes. Sure, they were all Dead-grey, but she still liked them. Despite the color, they looked alive. "Outside, huh?" She could already see his Escort primping him up just for that. "Are they trying to shift your image into something a little more extroverted?"

Yeah. R, the talkative zombie. That'd be the goddamn day.

Julie didn't wait for an answer for the (mostly) rhetorical question. She spied the card and, in typical Julie fashion, didn't think much about plucking it right from his pocket, turning it over. "Seriously, R, you're packing plastic? You heading out for a shopping trip?"

'Cause she was totally inviting herself on board for that. She bet he'd come back with a bag full of Sinatra CDs and not a damn thing to play them on.

The sad thing was she had R totally pegged. Don’t ask how long it took him remember how to use records. Compared to him stumbling around then barely able to get even a single word out, R was the next coming of Einstein these days.

“Escort says…image matters,” R was about to whip out a shrug when he remembered Julie getting on his case about it. She was already reaching into his pocket as R swallowed and began groaning again. “Guess…so? You can…have it. It’s on…me.”

The doors opened to the lobby, the floors as spotless as if the Tower was brand new all over again. One of the Avoxes quietly faded into the background, so good at lurking even R almost missed him standing there in the corner. R started out of the elevator, Julie’s hand in his. Where did you go shopping here? Did he even remember how to shop? R suspected he didn’t. “Shopping” trips for him usually involved lurching along with the other zombies, grabbing something if he liked how it looked, sounded, or touched. No money required. Easier that way.

Julie would have to be the leader. R was down with following and trusting her to know what she was doing.

He’d say this was more her world than his, but thinking back, he’d seen the way she ogled the yacht, the way the other Living here simply didn’t care about stuff like Carbtein and if those clothes were a grab-hazard. How her eyes went big and wide and she'd take it all in. Maybe they were in the same boat after all.

Image matters. Right, right. She's gotten the same speech, but she has being alive on her side. Julie flips the thing, back and forth, then lowers it to raise her eyebrow in turn.

"Your treat?" There's at least two seconds where she wonders what the limit on this is. Does it even have one? It hasn't escaped her very obvious notice that the Capitol is all about treating the tributes like something to be honored. Or at least like the kind of people that'll cooperate if they spoil the hell out of them. What can she say? It works. She's not so blind she doesn't notice.

The doors opened, and there's that moment like the first step of walking into Disney once she pulls them out of the tower -- too much to see, no idea where to go or where the hell anything was. She wandered, sure, but not far. Maps were required here. Or, like, guesswork. Yeah, go with that.

"So, any ideas? You hungry yet?" Totally rude question, by the way, but it was something to keep in mind here. She didn't know if they, uh... fed him. And as far as she knew, she hadn't seen R munching since home. Actually, not even really then. Since Perry.

Shit. Okay, not now. She reached up and tugged on the muzzle, gentle. "You think they're gonna freak if I try to get it off?"

The little tug pulled R a little closer to Julie’s level.

R thought about that near miss with Eponine, how his Escort (politely) wigged out. “Pro…bably. They’re…very strict.”

With good reason, R wanted to add. It wasn’t like he had an urge to go chomping on Julie the moment that muzzle came off. She smelled insanely good – all Living did – but even he noticed that around her, it seemed like the hunger had no choice but to shut up and take a backseat for a change. It wasn’t always the case with the others. Sometimes it resurfaced, made him daydream and that was when R was glad about the muzzle being plastered to his face. Besides, he rather talk shop than talk about who he fantasized about being good eats, R’s corpse straining to flush again.

“Let’s…shop,” R said, thinking he was pretty slick for changing the subject away from the undead cannibalism thing.

He took the initiative, his cold hand squeezing Julie’s as he pulled his muzzle away from her and began shuffling down the path, R staring dully at the sun as they stumbled out onto a perfectly nice, beautiful Capitol morning. Now where to? At first he was ready to lump all the directions to Julie…until she made it plain and clear she was as much in the dark as he was. Awesome. Two lost patrols.

Standing there next to some tree that had been cropped to within an inch of its life, R tilted his head and sniffed noisily. When in doubt, sniff your way out? Okay, that probably only counted when he was hungry but…yeah. He didn’t have any better plans than put one foot in front of the other and see where that took him.

About as slick as a dead guy got, sure. Julie wasn't satisfied with the answer, and it shows in how her teeth rake her lip. She might've tried it anyway if she wasn't worried about what they'd do to R, not herself.

Too bad. She shrugs it off, looking unbothered. It's not gonna be the first time humans treat a zombie like an animal. In some way, they've got the right idea. No accidental deaths, no more Dead. It might be why it's worked -- why they can claim there's no zombies around here. Just the one, apparently.

"Sure." And then their grand journey continued a few more shuffling steps, and R stopped to. Sniff the air.

Okay. Seeing the animal thing here.

"You really gotta cram the bloodhound act, R. It's weird." And weird for them was pretty damn weird. What, was he gonna smell them up some pad thai? Only way that'd be helpful. (She'd still never found any on that yacht.) "What about, like, clothes?" She pulled away far enough to inspect him. Sure, the Capitol was all about glitzy, and the muzzle was certainly an eye-catcher, but she could admit she missed the old-school hoodie look. Minus all the blood and zombie goo covering the front. "We'll get something to match the muzzle. Make you look stately. People might take you seriously."

She might add that her plans never came with satisfaction guaranteed.

Weird? R hadn’t even thought about it; sniffing around was second nature to a corpse, right up there with rotting and shuffling. Okay, so no sniffing. Weird’s bad. Last one of today. Cramming it….now.

“Worth…a shot,” R says. If they could find some more relaxed clothes, that’d be awesome. R’s had it up to here with stiff collars and creases so sharp they were borderline lethal. He got his Escort thought it was all the rage (plus they kinda-sorta fixed his awful posture) but he did miss his old clothes. Did Julie? “You’re…the boss….today.”

Go ahead, he wanted to moan, do your worst. R trusted Julie’s judgment. It had to be better than his Escort’s, anyway, and it’d be her personal touch. He could live with that. R smiled behind the muzzle and after a moment, began unsteadily leading them down the street. Compared to the streets back home, these are clean, body-free of both the dead-dead and walking kind. If they bump into people, it was because they were getting stooped and cooed over for holding hands, R staring lost at these and trying to plot a way around. Eventually he got the rare lightbulb ding moment going off in his head to make their fans do something for them for a change.

“Know …way to…stores? We…want to…shop.”

There. R solved the problem of where to go. Sometimes he had a plan.

Cool. Decided. Had to say, she liked being with R because he was kind of literal with the going with the flow. Wherever the crowd went, he followed. She dug it. She'd had to fight Perry every damn step of the way --

Not when she was looking at him. That stung. A little. A lot. (Why couldn't she get him out of her head? Pear was gone. R was here. R was here with part of Perry in him --)

So. Clothes. And she got to be the boss. Pretty sure she could could the number of times she'd been the boss on a hand with no fingers. Her hand tightened in his, though the smile on her face was easy, shoving her waves of hair behind her shoulder as they moved. She was pretty okay with having no idea where to go, really. Pretty sure anyone would jump at the chance to give a tribute directions.

Felt that way, at least. If anyone had said Julie would have fans, she would've... well, she wouldn't have laughed because it was a pretty shit joke, but obviously belief would've been non-existence. It was still pretty non-existent. Even when people came up to them, she couldn't do much but turn red and stammer with annoyance.

R got them going. How about that. Julie picked a couple of older ladies, hair gone crazy with pinks and neon greens like some sick twist of cotton candy, their chattering excited as they pointed out store after store. Clothes. Yay. Julie didn't really give a fuck about giving them more than a hasty thanks before all but dragging R behind her, inside.

The inside wasn't what she'd call... uh. Un-glitzy. Or normal. There were freaky colors, stuff that, honestly, she didn't even know what part of the body it covered. Hats bigger than her torso.

Oh. An undershirt. It was even black. Score. "So I'm thinking the serious thing might not be happening for you."

R looked like he was going to go blind at some of the colors here, the zombie gaping at them with his mouth open like he was waiting for flies to go in. He’d probably be a lousy tourist. This was the zombie who thought a car on fire was dinner-and-a-movie levels of entertaining.

“Maybe…not so bed,” R said, dragging himself away from a hat with its own built-in laser display. The lights played across the delicate net surface, almost like they were alive. Like fish. The non-biting kind.

He eyeballed the shirt Julie actually bothered to pull off the rack instead of looking at it suspiciously, like it would blow up in her face if she handled it wrong. It looked like it had the sleeves in the right places, simple, the kind of thing he didn’t know they even made in the Capitol. All the clothes here were definitely on the safety-last list – even R could tell and he was a corpse. Plenty of things to grab onto or strangle or flat-out poke someone’s eye out with. R wasn’t too surprised to see Julie going for practical stuff instead of the fish-shirt.

“Find…something…you like?”

R wasn’t even looking at the shirt now, his eyes only for Julie. He kept telling himself he’d cut it out with the creepy staring. So far he was failing hard and not even sorry at this point, R’s gray eyes fixed on how Julie would fiddle with the shirt, feeling the material, wondering what she was thinking and happy to know there was something clicking in her head. It wasn’t at all like with another zombie. Even M took awhile to build up to something. With Julie here, he could watch how her eyebrows would scrunch, her nose would wrinkle, or something would make her smile to herself, this private one like she was by herself and not pretending they weren’t getting sniped by cameras.

Not so bad, sure, if she was planning on joining the circus or something. Julie honestly wished she could shake herself out of that mindset, just for a second -- looking at these things, she can only think that one's too glitzy. Catches attention. That one? Zombie grabs it, I'm dead.

It's weird stuff to think about when here she is, beside one of Them, even if he's wearing a muzzle over his mouth.

She looked between him and the shirt, and the stupid idea of trying to find something that might impress him -- that might catch a zombie's attention -- nearly set her reeling. She shrugged, nonchalant, sliding the shirt back where it was. Actually, on second thought, she thought it might just be a bra.

"I'm still looking," she said. They move to another rack and something does catch her attention. It's a dress, strapless, with a fluff of black feathers at the top. The dress, though, is an orange, red, and black mix, the pattern exactly like the wings of some kind of butterfly. There are layers and folds and, god knows why, this one does catch her eye. It's like that princess dress, but not burnt all to shit. The last time she wore a real dress was when Perry met her father. Their little dinner party.

She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes at it, then lifted it up anyway. Julie held it against herself, looking to R for a reaction. Any reaction, she figured, was a welcome one. "What do you think? It screams so not me."

R followed her to the other rack, squeezing his way past a pair of corsets so narrow no living human could possibly wear them. Maybe a Boney might have better luck. He could say he’d never seen a Boney with a corset before. Or....much in the way of clothes at all, actually. For all he knew they tore them off like they peeled off their skin; another pesky reminder they used to be someone.

R peered at the dress, focusing first on Julie's pink face, then on the splashes of orange against black. Compared to some of the stuff they passed on the way in, it looked like it was in the wrong store: it actually looked like a dress at all. He tried to picture Julie wearing it. Swap out the red number she had on before – R could feel his shriveled brain clenching, like it didn’t want to flex its muscles – and yeah, there it was. His imagination stuttered until it came back with something. Julie in the butterfly dress.

R felt his heart trying to pretend it was anything but a dead lump in his chest. Was he impinging it fluttered?

“…It…looks pretty,” R decided to come clean if his personal opinion was going to be rattling out today. Maybe it wasn’t Julie’s usual style, but he liked it. In fact, he liked it a lot. “You would…work...it.”

Uh oh, here it came: R decided to try something new and daring even if he snapped off a few fingers in the attempt. The zombie’s gray hand wobbled up. He thought he remembered what this looked like – in fact, he was sure he must’ve seen it before on one of those trampled magazines, the ones he pawed through trying to read and ended up just staying for the pictures. Now he was going for broke, wanting to impress on Julie just how much he liked the dress she picked out even if no, it wasn’t her because she knew better than to wear something that would hold her down while zombies chewed off her legs. His fingers folded one by one, almost tortured, R ignoring the fact that a few of them were giving warning creaks.

Eventually he cranked it out:

Julie’s dress earned R’s very first thumbs up, shaky and barely holding it together. (It totally still counted).

“You should…get it, Ju…lie,” R groaned. “Really.”

Edited (typos pt2) 2013-06-18 22:52 (UTC)

There's not much like being looked over by a zombie. Or. R, at least. It's a little too intense for her to face head on, but she tried anyway. She blinked at him, raising an eyebrow as the reaction takes some time to heat to a boil.

It was worth it. First she gets pretty, which, look, she's not the desperate kind and that was good enough for her. Julie's also spent enough time around R to know he wasn't done yet. So she waits, quiet, watching it all happen in slow-time. The raise of his arm, the clenching of his fingers. And then that single thumb raising up with that goofy smile.

It definitely counted.

Despite herself she laughed, though it wasn't at him. It was a soft huff of disbelief, watching him as her teeth grazed her lip. Sometimes it was hard -- okay, outside of the dead glow of his eyes and the mottled grey of his skin and, hell, the muzzle -- to remember he wasn't actually alive. Sometimes he seemed so entirely human that she kind of forgot. Just for a second.

You are something else, she thought. What she said was, "If you're on board with it, I'm sold." There was a note of pleased confidence in her voice because, despite what she'd figured, R's opinion mattered. And she might've been looking to impress a little.

"What about you?" Her eyes were appraising as they swept over him. "I kinda miss the hoodie look. We gotta find you something."

Thankfully Julie was great and let him finish his awkward, clumsy baby steps here and even acted like she thought his opinion was cool. Like this was a joint decision. R might need a few more seconds to get rid of his thumbs up, privately worried he could snap off some fingers on the way down. He thought he might not even mind if he did, that little glow buzzing through his body as he stared at Julie.

The shy smile behind his muzzle grew a little wider, softening despite his rigor mortis muscles. With Julie here, sometimes he felt like he wasn’t rotting, like maybe he could go with a good tan and fresh clothes and that the muzzle was only there for looks.

“You…liked it?” R’s rattling voice was surprised, then pleased, because the clothes a zombie died in were one of the few solid clues about who they were. It was one of the few personal things left. He’d sometimes felt self-conscious about his: a ratty hoodie compared to M’s nice suit, holes that probably were there even before the apocalypse. Now Julie was saying she liked the “look” (he had a look?) and that made R miss his hoodie even more now. “I…agree. Find...more…like it?”

“You would look both adorable if you tried matching colors,” said the voice behind R’s shoulder. “Trust me.”

By now they’d attracted attention – they might not be the most popular Tributes out there, but a girl and her zombie was still a sale and this sales associate was a hardcore romantic who'd love a chance to make her mark on one of the Arena couples. She shipped it all: Katniss/Peeta, Julie/R, Howard/Eponine, Maximus/Wyatt – you name it, she gushed and giggled about it to all her friends. Now she eased her way around R’s shoulder, this little short girl about Julie’s age who had shaved half her head and replaced it with shimmering tattoo scales, today in District 12’s reds and blacks. Her nametag glittered with ABELIA across it. R hadn’t even heard Abelia pop up until now, the zombie giving a slow start in surprise.

Well. Yeah. It was, you know, a normal set of clothes. Not really combined for efficiency in combat. Or lightweight for running. Made him look younger, she guessed, though her and Nora combined couldn't figure out what age R had been when he died. Guess it didn't really matter after an apocalypse this damn long --

"What?" Christ, she nearly lost her heart there. It wasn't just the zombie who was surprised, though Julie's reaction was a little faster -- a jump in her heart, a hand raised to her hair to nervously pull at it.

She didn't want to think about the fact that with R, sometimes, she kind of. Forgot the rest of the world. Or. Fuck. Julie's eyes jumped to the nametag, back up to the girl's head. What was with the fucked-up fashion around here? It was like... hell, she didn't know. Even what she remembered of, you know, normal life, no one dressed like the people here.

"Yeah, uh..." She glanced at the zombie, tucking the dress tighter around her arm. "There's no way I'm gonna do that. We're not even in the same district." Bad enough that they had people, like, thinking they were together or something. The hell was she supposed to do with that?

“Oh, but that’s the best part! Star-crossed lovers, across not just the Games but Districts,” Abelia threw in a sigh. “You don’t even let death stop you. If that’s not the meaning of love, I don’t know what is!”

R was torn between finding it comforting someone out there isn’t too weirded out at that thing(?) between Julie and him and something else. Annoyance? R thinks he’s annoyed after all, because they were doing this together, just Julie and him, and now there’s someone else he needs to groan up words for. If you ask him, he’d rather save the few words he can groan out at a time for Julie. Glancing at Julie, his head lolling almost lazily, he could see her body language had changed: she had the dress stuck almost defensively under her arm, like she wanted to turtle up and stand her ground at the same time like she could do both. Pure Julie.

“Looking for…” R wracked his brain for what he wanted to say. “Hoodie.”

He can see the girl starting to come up with colors and accessory suggestions and sneaking another glance at Julie, he thought this could get more complicated than it has to. R hurried to think of something simple. He cheated, going off Julie’s colors: not the dress she picked out, but her.

“Yellow…or blue…?” R slid that in right there, thinking he was doing decently for being put on the spot here. He even remembered to be polite. “Puh…please.”

His eyes drifted from Abelia to Julie, checking to see what she thought of his new color choices.

Venus, by contrast, is perfectly at home in the Capitol. She's used to the fawning fans, the prying eyes, the people trying to sneak ideas of what the next Arena is going to be at her (her answer is that she has absolutely no idea, but she isn't about to say that out loud, so she usually just smiles, bats her eyelashes and says something to the effect of 'if you don't tune in, you'll get spoiled by your friends'). In fact, she's even slightly put out that she has to share the spotlight with about ninety other people, some of whom don't seem even remotely grateful for the shot at celebrity.

"What, would you rather end up living in the ass-end side of upper New York for the rest of your life?" she asks them, and adds "not New York city, I'm talking about Cow Land."

Usually they have some retort to that, but she doesn't bother listening to it.

She's happily taking the elevator at the moment, though. Her big sunglasses push her hair out of her face, and she takes occasional sips from a straw that leads to a rather large fruit smoothie. Tastebuds are the darnedest things, really. She loves the new body, and it shows in the way she constantly touches her face and neck, as if she were an affectionate cat trying to mark her own hand.

She got goosebumps the other day, actual hair-standing-up goosebumps, and she found it a greater revelation than when she realized Valentine's Day was a scam.

"Hey," she says as she gets in the elevator, rubbing her lips absentmindedly with her fingertips. "Going up or going down? I didn't check on the way in."

Speaking of flashy, overwrought clothes -- okay, they weren't that bad, but those sunglasses were screaming something from two decades ago. Julie doesn't really try to hide her look-over, but mostly she's honing in on that drink. Honest to god smoothie. Where the hell.

Oh. Cool, actually a hello. She was getting into that elevator culture that no one liked talking in these little boxes. She found it pretty hilarious.

"Whichever," Julie says, a careless shrug following. It probably makes her intent obvious when half of the buttons are lit up. "I'm just enjoying the ride."

"Seriously?" Venus snorts a little, not maliciously, then takes a long, guzzly sip out of her smoothie. The liquid rattles as it comes up the straw. She winces from the sudden brainfreeze, not expecting that; she's getting used to the idea of that sort of pain.

"You know, that's the one thing they don't really have around here." Venus' smile is all bright at the girl. She figures Julie could probably make for a strong competitor, with a pretty face and a good body like that, but god, if her idea of a good time is riding the elevator around she's going to have to broaden her horizons before they put her in front of the cameras. "Roller coasters. I guess they think it'd mess up their hair."

Look, a girl's gotta appreciate electricity when she's got it. Especially when she's got it and not depending on it sticking through so she can survive another day. Besides, god, this place has smoothies, and they're not ground up Carbtein mixed with water; a vomit-inducing drink at best.

There's the smell of fresh, squashed fruit (without the sour hint of rot), and sugar. Loads of it.

And all that combined with living, breathing, human. The more Julie thinks about it, the more it keeps knocking her off her feet. A conversation that isn't surviving or food or what can brain a zombie and last long enough to brain a second one.

"I'd kill for a good ride on one of those." God, would she ever. Theme park. Goddamn. The whole Disney thing is still making her reel. "Ignoring the irony. Non-literally, I mean."

But Venus laughs, and it's a genuine laugh that can only be birthed from someone who really doesn't care how dark their situation is. Maybe more sensitive people than her and blondie here would try to scrub all the death-related idioms out of their vocabulary, would try to pretend everything's a hunky dory world where the violence is all in a sanitized environment, but Venus doesn't have time for that kind of thinking. She knows what she is, she knows what she's here to do, and it's a relief that she doesn't feel judged for it.

"Well, we might have to kill literally," she says, as if restating the joke for an audience too slow to get it. You never know, with reality TV. Some of those people who obsessively watch Big Brother are a little slow on the uptake.

She holds out a hand, smile working all the way up into the muscles around her eyes. "I'm Venus. You're not on my floor, are you? I'm in Five, but people in the lounge are jerks. I basically got called a skank for wearing shorts."

It's weird how the sound of human laughter brings a smile to her face. It feels so easy here. Like life's normal except for the hyped-up death games. Guess every world has its problems. She learned that the hard way, way before the zombies ever came.

"So I've heard." She's kind of hoping for no, but Julie's already ready to do it. She doesn't want to, but if lance-guy comes around again, all bets are off. But she's not gonna... go out and do it. She might as well be one of the Dead if she was gonna be a murderer.

Julie takes the hand, gives it a rough shake. "Julie. Nah, I'm at the top. Twelve?" It's kind of terrifying, looking out the windows and being so high. She's used to the ground. Strong gravity. Ground's safe. Dead can't trap you as easy if you're down there. "I would've thought with the bogus clothes around here, no one would bat an eye."

Getting used to being afraid of heights is something Venus is still struggling with. She's taken a few hard tumbles in the Training Center that she normally would have teleported right out of, but now she's sporting some bruises on her knees instead. Thankfully, her Stylist is more than happy to work with someone who knows what to ask for, and she's got cover-up several decades better than anything she knew back home (the fact that she doesn't have to match it to cherry-red skin also helps).

"Apparently he's from the 1850's or something." Venus shrugs like it's no big thing that people come from all different times. She's from a universe with magic, aliens, mutants and teenagers who get bitten by radioactive spiders. A little time travel doesn't fuss her at all. "I'm surprised he was able to look at my ankles without going blind. Nice to meet you, Julie. Are you doing the whole District Alliance thing?"

Because Venus is still trying to figure out whether or not that'll be a worthwhile ploy with the audience.

"The what?" The words are out of her mouth before she's even started to process just what Venus had said. The 18 -- okay. Joke. (Look, things are weird even for her. She's almost second-guessing everything on instinct now.)

Still, she laughs. At least she's not dealing with that kind of crap. It also might be because hanging out in the District lounge is comparatively lame to what she could be doing. Which, really, amounted to... riding elevators.

She had to enjoy electricity while it lasted. Julie knew where humanity was gonna end up again. (She hoped it didn't.)

"District Alliance?" She turns an eyebrow up, realizing she must sound idiotic, parroting everything. Is that, like, District solidarity? Because she could probably do better. Nothing personal, twelve.

"Yeah, like, the Victorian era or whatever. I'm surprised that they can apparently reach all over time but most of us are from the 2000's. It's like they get bored with time travel culture clash."

Not that Venus blames them. It must be a little bit of a pain in the ass to get all the people from backwards civilizations up to speed with electricity and televisions and all that. Some of the footage of the old Games had people who couldn't comprehend that they were being watched, and Venus noticed that they didn't put on much a show. You need your audience to at least be slightly aware, or they start picking their wedgies and drooling in their sleep on camera.

"Yeah, you know, not killing your roommates? I think it's kind of dumb, honestly. Holding hard feelings about this place, you know. It's just a job." She brushes hair behind her ear and takes another long slurp of smoothie. "The show must go on."

Oh. Well. Huh. Not a joke.

Considering she's from a place full of zombies -- a world of them -- and suddenly there's an entire damn country without them... okay, so time travel is still way the hell out there, but what else is she supposed to do? Not believing it isn't gonna do her any favors.

"Oh, right. I get it." Somehow she'd been thinking the districts came together, allied themselves, but that seemed kind of backwards to her. Wouldn't really end up with as many deaths if they did that, would they? "I dunno, personally. I mean, I'm not trying to... you know, kill anyone. It's just about staying alive."

"Uhhhhh." Venus stops and takes a long sip of her smoothie. "No offense, but those are kind of um, what's the word. Antithetical."

It's not a word she'd typically use, and just to make sure she didn't get it wrong, she goes on to clarify, "pretty much your strategy for not dying involves killing everyone else. There isn't much else strategy to it. You aren't trying to make friends, you're trying to make fans."

It's so simple it's almost painful to Venus. This is the way reality television works. No one goes in looking for lasting relationships; the Bachelorette never really is satisfied with her chosen beau. You go in looking for a fanbase and a spinoff.

Antithetical? No way she's gonna even ask, so Julie doesn't even ask. She knows the gist -- that what she's thinking is stupid as hell. Even Julie knows it's stupid. R's a damn zombie and he's done a better job at playing this game than she has.

She still hasn't asked who he ate. Probably going to keep it that way.

"I don't want fans," she says with a shrug (even if she realizes that she already has some. Why the hell.) Oh. Great. She's becoming a shrugger, too. Whatever. She's a killer, sure, but not a murderer. She doesn't look for victims. Julie survives, that's it. Survival's what matters. "I won't take it personally if you find me and try to slit my throat, I guess."

"Oh, good. Some of the people here seem like they'd be super grudgey about that sort of thing," Venus says without a hint of irony as if there was no sarcasm at all in what Julie's said. As far as Venus is concerned, it's a fair bet, isn't it?

The elevator goes to the fifth floor. Venus steps out the door and winks at Julie as she goes. "Good luck in the Arena, girlfriend."

Suze, while not overwhelmed but the buzzing life outside the training center, wasn't terribly fond of venturing out among the people who considered fighting to the death on par with Survivor or American Idol in entertainment value. She didn't have anything nice to say to them that they'd like to hear, so she just avoided them. 'If you don't have anything nice to say' and all...

She wandered into the training room, looking to experiment with some different weapons. She hadn't yet found a fighting tactic that she was really comfortable with yet and was hoping inspiration might strike today. She gave Julie a stiff smile when she saw her there. Suze just wasn't sure about how to interact casually with the other tributes yet. At least, not without her usual brand of sarcasm. She didn't think the other girl really deserved that, so awkward greeting it was.

"Hey."

The training room, to Julie, was as familiar as it was new. She'd been in groups of survivors, scrounging, trying to figure out what best would protect them. This was... okay, not much like it at all, but it was close as anything. Only difference was this was more kids than she'd ever seen in one place, and a few things she'd never seen.

At any rate, she found the weapons more interesting. Funny part was she'd never found anything in the Arena to actually use. The yacht party had helped her the most because she saw that Cornucopia she'd heard about, figuring that was where all the good stuff was.

Also where most of the first Tributes got killed off.

Julie was all about trying anything, so she'd picked up something called a quarterstaff -- which, to her, was just a giant, well-carved stick -- just to test it. Suffice to say, she wasn't good with it, but it was kinda fun to whirl around. She put it back just in time for the greeting, surprising her out of her head.

Always weird to be greeted. Not to have someone jump out of the shadows to steal her gun or smell her hair like an animal.

"Uh... hi. How's it going?" Maybe she wanted a sparring partner? Oh, that'd be a first. And also kinda cool. "You come here often?"

She blanched after freezing on that for a second. Wow. How to sound like an asshole in four words or less. She hit the nail right on the head for that one.

Suze almost laughed. She hadn't really laughed, or even smiled since she had gotten there, but Julie's words almost did the trick. It sounded like a pick-up line that would have been terrible enough in a normal situation, but hearing it here - in a training room of all things- was downright hysterical.

Instead, she settled for a smirk. "Oh, you know. Only when I'm trying not to die first in a truly twisted reality TV competition." As usual, Suze fell back on her sharp tone and sarcastic words. It was more comfortable than being honest. "How about you?"

Hey, an almost-laugh wasn't too bad. God knows she wasn't exactly a comedian, and with people like R (who she wasn't sure could even laugh) and stick-up-the-ass Perry, her time to shine in the comedy department hadn't come around often.

"I hear you on that one." Though, honestly, Julie herself hadn't been in here as much as she probably would have. Figure out weapons that, you know, weren't guns. Maybe later. It was probably unhealthy, the amount of detachment she held for the Games. How bad was dying when you knew you were gonna come back?

Guess it wasn't a guarantee.

"I figured I should learn how not to die first. This next one's gonna be my first full Arena."

"Full?"

Suze looked a little curious at that. She hadn't really considered it before, but she probably wasn't the only one who had been dropped in mid-arena. Howard had said that it had happened before, after all. God, that had really sucked. She didn't know for sure, but she really hoped training and knowing what was coming would help her survive better in the next arena.

"You were in the last one, then? Dropped in the middle with little to no help?"

She wondered if dropped was supposed to be literal. Really hoped not. Nah. More like... woke up from coma, shoved into a tube. She wasn't close to claustrophobic, but that damn tube had made her come close. Nothing could give the more accurate feeling of being totally, completely trapped.

"Yeah. I was lucky." She shrugged. Probably shouldn't be sharing secrets here, nice enough girl or not. And she wasn't mentioning R to, oh, anyone. Some people were out for his blood. She wasn't gonna give them a way to find him.

Fucking lance guy.

"Did that happen to you? 'Cause it was seriously fucking unfair."

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