thecapitol | I'll win the next.

Entry tags:

I'll win the next.

Who| Mindy, anyone from district nine who aren't in the arena for the room thread, training room is a totally open post
What| Processing and coping, pretty much.
Where| Training room, her suite
When| Several days after her first death
Warnings/Notes| It's Mindy, so...talk to death, talk of gore maybe, and of course lots of swearing.

Three days it took for her to wake up. Four more for her to get out of bed and stop hating everything about this place. Process, swallow the feeling of drowning, the hatred like bile settling in her stomach. Dad was gone, normal life, home, world, gone. All that was left was her in a new place, existing because of her skills. No explanation, no hope, no way to leave it. facts were facts. So she had to adjust.

Mindy had to do her best to take it in, all of it: in her world, dead was dead, and last she checked getting your leg sliced off and then your throat slit was not something that you came back from, Lo and behold, what she'd been told was real: she was alive, back where she started before they threw her into the arena, and her leg never felt better. The temporary relief in this was discarded immediately, realizing everything else that was said about this place had to be true too. They were hamsters on a wheel, having no other option but to work at the bidding of the capitol.

If what had been said was true, eyes were everywhere, even now.

So Mindy did what she told herself she would do anyway: contemplate the other reality of her current situation. She LOST. She lost to some uppity bitch who couldn't even face her properly, had to go and work the situation to her advantage. Even taking out her eye was no real sense of accomplishment for her. She was still in the arena, and she wasn't.

Mindy got to her feet. She didn't need to be told there was a training room: she knew it was here. No one would just have them run the arena without a place to prep, and right now, Mindy needed to hit things. She rummaged through her room until she found a scrunchie, putting her hair in a ponytail and donning some loose flowing shorts and a sports bra and was off, asking until she was lead to the place she was looking for.

Weapons. Punching bags. Those stupid things you climbed on. Yup, this was just what she was looking for. She walked over to get some grip gloves and was already clambering up a wall, stopping every now and then to practice her kicks, ignoring everyone around her for now.

Those bastards wanted a show? She would not disappoint. If she was going to make them remember her, it was time to get back to the place, that place that once had dad in it. Killer instinct.

---

Mindy came back from several hours training and took a shower before settling onto her bed, flicking through coverage of the games. Time to gather some information.

She wondered when the people from her district would pop in.

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Sandy arrived in the training room a few hours after she woke up.

The first hour she'd spent eating in the shower.

The second hour sleeping in a comfortable bed.

And the third hour she'd spent painting.

So now, in her training gear she arrived stretching out her arms and trying desperately not to think about why she hadn't been able to find Pruna yet, or how it had felt to be eaten alive...again.

Of all the familiar people she expected to see, Sandy was actually high on the list. She had just expected her to last a little longer.

She looked spooked though, which made Mindy curious.

"Hey. How'd you bite it?"

"Giant eel ate me." It seemed so casual to say, it was unsettling that Sandy didn't feel weird letting those words out of her mouth and not be joking.

"Have you seen Pruna? I think she died with me..."

"A giant eel..." Mindy snickered, then stopped. "Sorry, sorry, you just blurted it out like that and it sounded fucking hilarious."

She shook her head. "Now that I remember her, pretty sure that girl doesn't like me."

"She doesn't like most people." Sandy explained with a smile. "I'm lucky that way."

And boy did she feel that way.

"I dunno what's taking them so long to bring her back...I hope..."

She couldn't finish the sentence but fear was creeping into her chest that maybe Pruna wasn't coming back at all.

"Yeah well, didn't exactly put my best foot forward," she said with a shrug. "What can you do?"

At this, weird as it is, she put a hand to the girl's back.

"Hey, relax. If she died, she'll see you soon, if not she's more bad ass than I give her credit for."

Sandy took the pat and took a deep breath letting it out slowly.

"Yeah...unless they didn't bring her back."

More then a few tributes had vanished like that since Sandy arrived.

Mindy looked a little concerned. Even if she and Pruna got off on the wrong foot, obviously she mattered to Sandy.

"Relax," she said. "She'll turn up, ok? Don't get ahead of yourself with worry. You'll just make yourself sick."

She had a point.

And worse still, Pruna would be irritated with her if she knew.

"Yeah, you're right. I just gotta push past it." She tried to cast away the sickness in her stomach just like Pruna had taught her.

She still hadn't mastered it.

"Look, while you're doing that, you can keep me company here, all right? I can get all the gossip about these people from you anyway. Why don' you start by telling me what you know about some of these mentors?"

Oh, well that wasn't Sandy's strongest area of study but she'd give it a shot.

"Well, you're what...District nine?" She tried to think but the only Mentor that came to mind was...

"Eva." she said with a weight to her voice. "Her son was a rebel. He tried to stop the games and I guess he got caught. She didn't talk about it much. But she tried to find him by helping this girl who wanted to kill the President. Then before the girl went through with it she ratted her out and...well they caught her."

Her voice trembled and she swallowed hard trying to force herself through this unhappy memory.

"They injected her with this stuff. It looked horrible. She was screaming...they put it on all the TVs. And only when she couldn't scream anymore they shot her."

She knew she had already given Mindy the basics of that event but she hadn't told her about Eva's involvement.

"Eva said if the games ended, if the Capitol fell we'd all just be killed because we didn't have a point anymore. And she said that mentors are the only ones who really see us tributes as people." The tone of Sandy's voice said she wasn't too sure.

After all she had seen all of that...but Eva had also sent her items in the arena and a message that urged her not to give up.

"I saw her in the arena...she was pretty ruthless." Pruna would like that.

Ok, now this? This was helpful information. Her first impression of Eva was that she was as bloodthirsty as Azula, just keeping it reigned in until she saw the best way to turn the knife. As it turned out, she was doing what Mindy might have done: looking at everything objectively in order to find the best fit of what happened next.

"What wound up happening to his son?"

Sandy shook her head.

"Just rumors. None of them good. Basically think of the worst possible ending? That's what people say happened. Whatever comes to your mind make it worse. She thought there was a chance he could still be alive when she agreed to help that girl. Now? Who knows what she thinks."

Sandy barely knew what she thought anymore.

"Man," she said, shaking her head, "you sure do know how to paint a rosy picture. But maybe I have to go and watch her myself. She might be still alive in this thing for all I know, and I can check her out at least. If I'm gonna survive this shit, better I do it with all the advantages I have."

Or die trying, anyway.

"What do you know about the other mentors? Like your own?"

Ah, now she was wondering how much she should reveal. After all what if Mindy was just going to use this against her?

Well...you had to give trust to get trust.

"I've got Katniss and Peeta. They're the last two tributes from this world. They fell in love, and when it came down to just the two of them in the games the people who run things decided to let them both win. The first and last time the games ever had two winners."

What was it Katniss had told her? "Some people said that it was undermining the capitol." Though Sandy still hadn't been able to put the pieces together as to why having two people in love in the arena was such a taboo.

The last thing Mindy cared about was using that info to hurt Sandy...but that didn't mean she wasn't gong to try and use it sometime in the long run.

"I met Katniss. Fell in love, huh? The guy she's with has gotta be some kinda bad ass: Katniss looks lie she gives zero fucks about taking out someone. She's not as deranged as me I bet, but still looks pretty tough. I can guess why the capital probably didn't like the win though: gives the people watching too much hope. It's one thing to have people in ove, but its another that they both survive the games, I bet."

Sandy looked thoughtful and considered Mindy's thought.

"Ok, I can kind see that. But if that's the case why switch to how they do the games now? There are romances all over these games as messed up as that is. And most of us get brought back so...in a way we survive."

The logic of this government boggled her not yet Jr. High school mind.

"Because now it doesn't mean as much. It's not just that we don't die for good, but that we also aren't the last ones in it either. Think about it: with all the different people in this arena and all their different skills, how likely do you think it is that a couple would make it through the whole thing? The game goes back to just what it is: enjoyment, and romances are just something to talk about. They don't have any meaning other than gossip."

She shrugged. "And gossip always makes good TV, right?"

Sandy nodded. It all made sense when Mindy laid it out for her like that and yet...

"I dunno...even if a couple doesn't make it through to the end together there's still the love thing. And even if a couple did make it through they've got ways of making you fight. Stuff to mess with your head. So wouldn't they just do that?"

"The love thing is what gets people interested. But they learned from the last time, I bet. That's why there's probably so many of us now: they don't want another Peeta and Katniss. Chances are, they won't get one again either."

She shrugged. "So really, it comes down to finding another way to get people into you, if that's your bag, to make things interesting."

Well if that was the situation she was back to where she started, generally hopeless. And the look on her face said as much.

"Honestly, I'm just happy they stopped glaring and spitting at me." She sighed.

"The only way I'm gonna win this thing is luck and speed."

Mindy raised an eyebrow.

"Wait, who was glaring and spitting at you?"

"The citizens." She held up her arm and tapped just below her wrist.

"For awhile, those of us that were um...outspoken? Yeah outspoken against the games. They made us wear these cuffs to let the city know who we were. So they treated us like dirt till the cuffs were off. And to get the cuff off I had to practically die...again."

Mindy sighed, shaking her head. "You actually started out talking against the games? Why would you do that?"

She absolutely HATED the games and everything they stood for, but saying something like that in a strange world she'd never been to in an arena where they controlled everything? That was just suicide.

"Because it's wrong...obviously." Sandy stated exasperated. "Because everything about the games is wrong. I mean sure if we were willing volunteers maybe it would be better. And if they kept kids from seeing this stuff even better. But as it is now? I couldn't stand it. I still can't...I'm just not ready to get threatened again for feeling how I do."

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