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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

"You can feel all you want," Mindy said, "you just can't talk about it. When they're the warden, jury and executioner, no ways around it: they hold all the keys. Speaking out is kinda just asking to make it worse. Think about what COULD happen to you if they really felt like making you suffer. I bet you know better than I do."

"Yeah....yeah." She sighed already well aware of the punishments that awaited those foolish enough to speak out.

"I was new. Sue me. Even where I come from speaking out is prohibited. That doesn't mean I didn't try." The little idealist that she was.

"I may not be brave, but I'm plenty stupid."

Mindy laughed. "Don't worry, I'm plenty stupid too. Difference is, I'm stupid in a place I know. Too many variables here, not enough people you can trust. The fact they can basically leave us to die, pick up our bones and put us back together again. They can play GOD with us. This is shit you have to think about before you say what you want."

Before Mindy died for something, she wanted to make sure it mattered until her very last breath.

This was not doing much for Sandy's self confidence. It wasn't like she wasn't already aware of these things. She'd just had to learn the hard way.

"Live and learn." She muttered bitterly.

Mindy sighed. "I'm only saying it because it wont be cool if something like this happens to you again. I think you're grounded now to know what you can do and can't."

She cleared her throat. "Right now, anyway."

"Yeah...right now." Sandy shot a sideways glance towards some of the attendants of the training center.

"Just doesn't seem like there's much we can do."

"You keep your ears open and eyes to the ground," Mindy said, meeting Sandy's eyes and not looking at the attendants and all, just so suspicion isn't aroused. "Being patient sucks, but everything starts with the first few steps."

She clasped her hands. "It always starts somewhere. You just have to make sure that you know when to jump into action."

Sandy did not look encouraged by this.

"That's all anyone ever says. Pay attention, keep your eyes open. Be patient. It's kinda hard when I've been waiting months and every time something happens I still can't do anything about it."

It was frustrating and depressing. And not for the first time Sandy questioned why she even bothered when no one but the other tributes and the adults in District 12 suites seemed to care.

"You don't want to play your hand too quick, and the truth is, there's something to the waiting and patience: you learn shit. If you act without thinking, you die quickly and that doesn't help anyone. But you play the game and you watch, and you start to see where the patterns are. Let's face it: how much do we REALLY know about the Capitol or anything, really?"

Mindy cared, much more than she was capable of showing. But she also knew when you had to watch, and wait, and see what else you could learn. There was unease, and it started with them, after all.

"Not enough." Sandy confessed. Her studies about the Capitol had only garnered her so much actual information...and who knew how much of it was censored.

And all of it was monitored.

"We're not playing the game. We're pieces of it. It's easy to say wait and watch when you've only died once. But you're gonna be alot more eager to see something change when you've been eaten, had your head ripped off, had a monster burst through your rib cage and watched every heroic decent good person who ever helped you die just as horribly."

Sandy's patience was worn thin just like her hope.

"Well yeah, not enough. I haven't been here that long, and even I can see that. This is exactly what we're up against: a totalitarian state that tells everyone they're NOT that. But look at where we are! We're in the Capital, where we're going to have contact with only our captors. Eventually, we start to get warped enough to believe them after awhile."

Mindy shrugged. "We're both then. Either way you look at it, yeah, we're a part of this. But no, its not 'easy' for me to say. How many people do you know, when coming here first off, are going to be concentrating on playing cog to the machine? By most standards, I ought to be curled up in my room feeling like shit, or out drinking or taking in the words the Capitol is feeding us. Any of those lead to the same road: not really accepting what's going on. I had my leg ripped off and then my throat slit as a mercy killing. But those aren't permanent deaths. The wrong move, and they could be. What I'm saying is hard to accept, but believe me, its not fucking easy."

She had to carefully hide how annoyed she was that someone was suggesting saying for HER of all people to sit and wait came easy. That was about the last thing it felt like to her, and self restraint put her in a bad mood.

"You're sure making it look easy." She muttered finding herself flustered that someone her own age was already adapting so well.

"what the hell do I know anyway? You've only been here one arena and you're already talking like the adults around here." And that realization wasn't any harder to swallow. But if she a dollar for every person who had told her to be patient, wait, and that she was strong but in a different way?

Well she wouldn't have spent most of her childhood eating off brand ramen.

"Well it isn't," Mindy said, balling up her hands. "In fact, I was going through a change before I was brought here. If I don't adjust, I go crazy. Literally. So that's how I cope: cold logic."

She narrowed her eyes. "I had to, that's all. I'm giving you advice because I don't want someone like you to lose your life for a stupid mistake. I don't know you that well, but I figure you can see why outright rebellion wouldn't help you."

Seriously, girl needed a hobby. Wasn't a girlfriend supposed to take care of things on that end?

"You're not wrong." Sandy admitted though for a rare moment in her life not backing down either. Despite knowing Mindy was much more capable then her...something had been stirred in Sandy that was not allowing her to be more passive as she usually was.

"But that doesn't mean I have to like it. I'm trapped in a city surrounded by people who don't even seem to care that basic humanity is being denied. And all anyone can ever tell me is to be patient. And even if there was an opportunity to do anything I probably wouldn't even know what to do with it because unlike you and Pruna? I'm still just a regular kid."

Without her super powers, all the training in the world wasn't going to change that.

Mindy regarded her. Honestly, she did feel for Sandy: she was brought here like her, but yeah, she didn't have survival instincts or come from a place where she regularly had to take out people.

"You'll learn, Sandy. Doing what me and Pruna do started somewhere. Even if you don't wanna be like us, you should still be able take out someone trying to kill you. But as for being patient...yeah, of course we'll tell you to do that. With all the stuff that's happened to people who rebelled, you don't want to stumble into it. Imagine if they made you an Avox."

Sandy shuddered at the thought.

"The point is, I should be the one telling you these things. You're new here and you're already acting like a vet. It's...irritating."

Specifically she was irritated with herself for falling back onto old habits so easily.

Mindy gave Sandy a smirk.

"Sandy, its why I was picked. It's what I do, infiltrate, wait, lose myself in it. You think they'd want me for anything other than my ability to kill people without fliching? I was supposed to be trying for a normal life back home. Here I am. What else have I got to do?"

"I dunno...act like a normal sane girl who isn't so comfortable killing people twice her size?" Now Sandy knew that was being unfair but she knew her age allowed her to be unreasonable and unfair at times.

"I guess it's not about how you're acting." It was about her. Whenever something was making her feel awful it was a safe bet it was her own damn fault.

"No," Mindy said. "Because I AM small and I AM known for what I do, they'll notice. Besides, I'm sort of doing it for me too. I have to learn how to adapt and I have to get stronger."

What did she mean by 'its not about how you're acting?'

"You're gonna have to explain that last part."

She really didn't want to and the groan that escaped her was clear of that.

"I just can't get with the program. I've been here long enough you'd think I could but...so far the only thing I've killed other then myself was a raptor."

She said that and then realized how stupid it sounded.

"It wasn't like...a bad ass kill I just did something stupid that shouldn't have worked but it did. Either way I still suck at this. And now you're here and you're like...made for this stuff. You're doing what you're supposed to be doing. I'm still acting like a noob."

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