thecapitol | I'm Down Shouting Names at the Flickering Screen [Open]

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I'm Down Shouting Names at the Flickering Screen [Open]

WHO| Howard and anyone!
WHAT| Howard decides to get serious about the Games.
WHERE| Tribute Lounge
WHEN| Post-Arena
WARNINGS| Swearing.

There's been enough hiding. There's been enough moping. Howard knows that this feeling of motivation is fleeting, and that just means he has to cling to his productivity for as long as he can before it slips back into despair. Before he thinks about how he's going to die again. Before he wonders where Eponine is. Before he thinks about how she left him like his parents did. Before he cries.

So instead of feeling that, he's going to feel something else. He's going to feel entertained. And possibly, he'll learn something along the way; it's about time he forces himself to study. About time he moves past the squeamish feelings of seeing people he knows bleed and scream on the screen and actually starts taking notes on who to ally with and who to stab in the back, or, potentially, in the front.

He sits in a Tribute lounge with snacks, feet propped up on a glass coffee table, starving body covered in comfy clothes his stylists won't let him wear outside, a fluffy blue bathrobe and canvas cargo pants. His hand periodically moves from its path between bowl of snacks and his mouth to grab a cup of melted butter.

He doesn't care how tacky or unhealthy is it. He covers that bowl of popcorn in butter and plops down on the couch, munching away at it as he watches Wesker and Maximus attack each other.

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"Hey, old habits die hard. Let it go." He still hasn't really apologized and doesn't plan to. As far as he's concerned, she's being a dick by continuing to harp on it. He can't help that he still carries the wounds of his homeworld.

"How are fairy tales not boring? Spoilers, happily ever after. The end."

"I can see when I'm beaten," Cindy raised her hands in mock surrender, looking at the screen for a moment. Just in time to see some of the action. Did they really show this thing twenty-four/seven? That's something she might have a problem getting used to.

"Those endings suck. They never tell you what happened after the happily ever after. Or that no one ever gets a happily ever after. I don't tell stories where people get happily ever afters."

Howard purses his lips and furrows his brow slightly, before flopping back on the armrest of the couch.

"Okay, fine, my curiosity is picketed. Tell me a fairy-tale."

"Great!" Cindy grinned, beaming at him as she scooted back to the arm rest on her side, one leg up on the couch. She didn't get to tell too many stories. What she did was top secret, classified, after all, she couldn't go around telling stories of what she did day to day.

But no one knew her, here. And she could pass everything off as a fairy tale. She wasn't going to spill any big secrets. "Once upon a time, a fairy tale princess got her wish granted by a fairy godmother. But the fairy godmother didn't realize that when she granted wishes for people to live happily ever after, with whatever prince or king, or whatever they wanted, that her wishes always backfired. Everyone only got what the fairy godmother wished for them, not their actual wish."

Cindy grinned. "So, imagine all those poor people who got stuck with awful things happening to them, because they made the mistake of wishing for it. But years passed, and no one complained to her, but she wasn't around to complain to anyway. Now, that princess changed. Became someone who traveled the world, once she ditched the guy that came with that wish that fucked things up. She started working for this big, bad guy, you know, spying for him and things like that. It's all fun, and then she hears about regular people getting magic weapons." Cindy paused.

"Magic weapons would be awesome, right? I mean, you barely have to do anything. You just say a magic word and go."

Howard pays strangely rapt attention. Storytelling became something of an art in the FAYZ, without internet or videogames or music to pass the time. Many fifteen year-olds would only half pay attention, but Howard's mind doesn't wander. His eyes stay on Cinderella's face, his mind on filling in the unanswered blanks in her story.

"And obviously you can't keep control of people if they have as good of weapons as you."

Even little kids didn't pay this much attention to stories like this. Not that Cindy spent any time with little kids, so maybe she couldn't really compare the two. She did remember the rapt attention every kid had when she'd sat in the theater watching the Disney version of her story, but a moving picture was different then words you couldn't see.

"Bingo. And regular people can't handle magic. They just go crazy with it, and no one needs to deal with that. So the big, bad guy tells the spy to find out where these magic weapons are coming from. Someone has to be dealing in them, and the spy goes to find out. She travels halfway around the world in search of the dealers, but when she finds them, she's told that someone else is in charge. The dealers are working for someone, someone who has plenty of magic, enough to spread around, and who thinks that they're helping people."

Obvious enough to see who that was, right?

Howard sits back, resting his elbows behind him on the armrest of the couch, balancing the now-empty bowl of popcorn on his concave little stomach.

"Oh God. This isn't going to turn into 'Santa Claus is real and he's an weaponeer', is it?" If she weren't clearly going somewhere with this, he'd ask about the arms dealers - they're who interest him more, because he can see a bit of himself in the picture his active imagination is painting. Opportunists but not leaders. Facilitators but not creators.

"Santa Claus is definitely real, but he doesn't deal in weapons," Cindy laughed, crossing her ankles daintily. Her own bowl was in her lap, but she was too busy telling the story to actually eat any of the popcorn, now.

"So, our spy slips through a little portal between worlds. Obviously the magic world isn't going to also be the mundy world, so there has to be a way to get to both. She finds this gate, and goes through. What she finds is the scariest fucking thing she's ever seen." Maybe they weren't so different, after all. Cindy wasn't a leader, not by any means. She was the one who went in, did the dirty work, and got out. No fame or glory for her, and she didn't really want it, either. She liked what she did, though. Took pride in it.

"Everyone in this world is smiling. Not regular smiles." She smiles normally, to show him. "But big smiles, like their faces are stuck like that." She gives him the big creepy smile they had, like their faces were made of wax, and someone had forced it into this shape. She lets that go after a moment.

"Everyone. And if you don't have that smile on your face? They take you out. Shoot you right there in the middle of the street." Okay, she was taking some liberties with that one, but it was a story.

Howard, still listening closely, keeps his eyes on her as he stealthily sneaks a hand over to try and take some of her popcorn. Hypocritical, perhaps, but she reacted with such indignation to him defending his bowl with a blade that he highly doubts she'll pull the same trick on him.

"Hold up, what's 'mundy'? Is that like not-magic?" He wets his lips and thinks. "And what does this have to do with the magic weapons?"

She sees him doing that, and decides to be the bigger man about it. Maybe not man, but she pushed the popcorn just a little closer so it wasn't as far of a reach for him. She wouldn't say anything about it.

"Oh, yeah! Mundy, like a nickname for people who don't have magic. Like mundane, you know? Old nickname, it's been around for centuries back home." She tsk'd. "It'll get back, I promise. So, the little spy is now in this world full of magic, but they don't have any magic weapons with them. The person in charge of the town made sure to take them all away, even from the guards. That would make everyone equal, right? No one has magic weapons anymore. What the person in charge does, though, is give the guards regular weapons. Glocks and shit, all kinds of normal, mundane guns."

She rolled her shoulders. "If magic weapons do more damage in a world without magic, then the opposite would be true, wouldn't it? Regular weapons do more damage in a world with magic. You don't want to be going up with wands against an AK-47."

He takes one piece of popcorn at a time, savoring it as if it's the last bite of a good meal each time. His eyes even close whenever he puts one in his mouth. It's meditative, letting himself actually taste something.

"Is that because magic people don't know how to protect from non-magic weapons, or is it because regular weapons have some kind of inherit power?" he asks, not realizing he's messed up the words.

She takes a piece of popcorn and chews on it slowly as she thought about his question. it was a good question, actually, because wasn't that what the whole war was about? Note to self: stay the hell away from any talk of war.

"You know how in a good fairy tale, it's always about princes slaying dragons and things like that? And all they have are swords, and bows and arrows, knives, that kind of stuff. They never have guns. So they're not prepared to fight against them, 'cause they've never seen them," She grinned. "And don't we always fear what we don't know? If some wizard came up to you and said some words that could be a spell, you'd be a little wary, because you've never seen that before, right?"

"I'm wary if anyone comes up to me," Howard says, matter of fact. "Doubly so if they're speaking voodoo shit."

He takes a few pieces of popcorn and tucks them in his pocket for later, feasting giving way to hoarding, his awful cycle. "So it's an information advantage, though."

"Trust me, a wizard casting a spell is probably worse then any kind of voodoo out there. Just as ugly, though." Cindy noticed the hoarding, but she wasn't going to say anything.

Everyone had their thing from back home. You didn't immediately forget how to survive, just because everything was provided for you, here. "Information advantage, yeah. But in this world, since the guards are the only ones with guns, and all of their magic items have been taken from them, it's just basic force advantage. And they keep getting money from people who're buying these magic items on the other side."

She paused. "You can cut off the arms, but it won't kill it, you know? You have to go for the head."

"You ever seen someone with only one arm? They bleed out real fast." He takes another handful of popcorn to stow away and sucks on his fingertips, getting all the butter off.

"So how does this all tie together?"

"I meant more like a Hydra kind of thing, where it just regrows an arm or a leg... never mind, point is, you can cut off the dealers, but the supplier will always bring in more dealers." She leaned back with a smirk, folding her arms over her chest.

"This ties in, because when the spy gets to this village, she sneaks her way into the castle to find the one in charge. Turns out the one in charge? Was the fairy godmother, from way back when." Cindy had to make a face. "Like I said before, the godmother, she grants wishes, but most of all? She gives everyone their happy ending, but it's her idea of what a happy ending should be. So she's ruling over this land, and she wants everyone under her rule to be happy. So you've got people walking around with these huge, forced grins on their face." She grins, using her fingers to make it more grotesque and wide.

"And if you stop smiling? You'll be shot in the middle of the street."

"Like the Stanford wives," Howard says, nodding and keeping his eyes on Cinderella's face. "She didn't want a happy ending, not really, she just wanted people to look happy."

He leans back too, parking his feet in a little "v" shape on the couch, knees up and arms folded. He cracks his neck to the side.

"So what's the point of the story?"

"Yup, just like them." Those kind of things gave Cindy the creeps. Hell, anything where people walked around with stupid, happy grins creeped her out. You couldn't get her too close to a clown these days, which is one of the reasons why she never went to the circus.

Beyond everything else. She raised her arms above her head, stretching them out. "The point of the story is, do you think those people who have to act robotic with their always happy faces want to walk around like that, with no thoughts or feelings on the matter? Or do they want to be able to choose what they feel and think, and get to show those feelings on their faces?"

"I'm not totally against not having thoughts or feelings. It'd be way easier, at least, in a place like this." He shrugs, as if this is just some minor observation and not a rather morbid belief. "I'd like feelings a lot more if you were in control of them, instead of other people dictating them."

He wrinkles his nose and rolls his eyes back slightly, as if not sure that that's the word he's looking for, then shrugs again.

Cindy raised an eyebrow. "So you're not in control of your feelings back home, or is it just here that you get to pretend everything is A-OK?" Because what was this world if not another big fairy tale? One of the bad ones, sure, where the kids get eaten and the monster gets away with it, and all of the kids who listened to the story now never disobey their parents. But still a story book kind of world.

"It probably would be easier in this place not to have them, I'll give you that." It seemed to work out well for everyone who lived in the Capitol.

"I'm not in control of it everywhere. If I were totally in control of my feelings, I'd be fucking badass." He shrugs and zips one of his pockets, now fat and lumpy with stowed popcorn, closed. "But this place isn't so bad."

From the state of him, it's probably not hard to guess that he didn't come from the lap of luxury.

"At least we get brought back. That's way more than most places afford you, right? Even your magic fairytale world."

"Plenty of chances to be fucking badass here. They love badasses in this place, just kill a few people and you're a rockstar." She was about to make some kind of remark about just getting him a bag to put all that popcorn in, but for once, maybe twice in her life, she held her tongue. Like this kid really needed more remarks from her. Cindy didn't know what his life was back home, but it couldn't be good.

"Hey, in my magic fairy tale world, everyone comes back from the dead or a coma with a kiss from a Prince Charming," She rolled her eyes. "Who's a dick, by the way. Total douchebag, never trust princes."

"I don't really like the killing, you know?" Having collected his popcorn, he now sprawls his arm over the back of the couch. One foot twitches in time with a song only he can hear. "I mean, like. I'm not going to pretend I'm the nicest person in the world, but just because I'm a dick doesn't mean I get off on it."

How strange, to be just talking about it like this.

"Dude, his name's Prince Charming. If he was anything but a douchebag I'd be shocked. Just from hearing about him, I bet he's the kind of person who insures his hair."

"I get it," Cindy shook her head, giving a stretch of her legs before putting them back in the folded position. "I do. I don't get my blood pumping by killing a bunch of people who's only fault is that they were put into the same place as me, and forced to kill people, too." It was a little bit of a relief, to talk about this. Back home, she was Cindy, the shoe store owner, who was a bimbo and took trips around the world, spending her money nilly-willy.

No one besides Beast and Bigby knew her real job, and she never got to talk about it. It was actually kind of nice, despite how dark the conversation was. "I don't really get why people love to watch it, here, especially when they don't seem like they get off on it. They just... watch it." That was weird.

Cindy had to laugh, though. One of her favorite past times? Hating on her ex. "Oh, definitely, he has to. What would happen if he started to go bald? He'd need some kind of compensation for what he might say was 'a loss to all lady-kind'."

"It's all just a story to them. It's not real. When we come out here it's like...they think we're actors. Or action figures. I mean, in the grand scheme of things it's not that bad to be a toy, because at least you're not a punching bag or garbage or prey, but."

Howard shrugs. He knows not everyone shares the same somewhat nonchalant views of the Games that he does. He glances at her legs, figures there's nothing he's terribly interested in looking at there, and traces the spaces between buttons on the remote control absentmindedly.

Howard laughs so hard he pats his popcorn pocket until there's a crumple sound inside. "Wow, he sounds like a total douchebag. Total.

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50 comments!

I've never reached 50 comments before in any thread *-*

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I've never reached 50 comments before in any thread -