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

"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."

"See, that's what I'm trying to tell you. I was BRED with revenge on my lips before I could walk. What some people do in the Arena I do with a mask and a cape, only the death is for real, and I stalked it every day. Me and my mentor both did: it just got to him first."

She scratched her neck. "But that's what makes us different. And look. Even if you suck at it, you have a girlfriend perfectly willing to show you how to fight. That's not too shabby for a noob if you think about it."

Sandy shook her head, Mindy didn't get it. Maybe she didn't know what she was even trying to get across. Either way it was a lost cause to argue with her. Like so many others around here Sandy found she had no way to get her point across.

"I do what I can for her, but she's the strong one. I'm just...lucky she agreed."

Pruna was by far the luckiest thing that had happened to Sandy since arriving here.

"You gotta get help somewhere. Look, even I offered to help, so its not as bad as you make it out to be. Imagine if we were all assholes, not helping each other and only caring about winning the stupid competition. Might be a lot worse."

She flexed her fingers. "Anyway, even if you can't do what we can, turn that into an asset. Haven't you ever heard of Batman?"

"Batman?"

She shook her head no.

"Is he a vampire?" Because she'd heard of vampires. Or maybe he was a baseball player...

"Nah, he's a hero on my world. Written about anyway. He doesn't have powers, just gadgets, but mostly he uses his brain to get out of tough situations. It's why people really like him."

"Like the Punisher?" He was the first "Regular guy" hero that sprang to mind. Her father used to tell stories of him too.

"My daddy said he wasn't a real hero. Like an anti-hero or something. He did good things but in a horrible way."

"The Punisher is more like how I am," Mindy explained. "Batman doesn't try to kill people. Beat them up maybe, but not kill."

She grimaced. "I guess you could call Punisher an anti-hero. I always thought he reflected the real world. Sometimes for greater good, good people do horrible things."

Sandy just looked puzzled.

"What do you mean the "Real world"? Like the other heroes are trying for something that just can't exist?"

She wasn't sure she liked that idea even if it made sense.

Mindy shook her head.

"I mean the real world where criminals get away with things all the time and no one stops them, where there ARE no actual superheroes, so you have to become one yourself. In THAT world, you're risking your life day after day, constantly hiding behind a mask and being a vigilante, which cops don't like."

That still drew a very blank stare from Sandy.

"In my world there's always been Superheroes. They all just went away when the government hunted them down. And now there's not that much crime because the police is so strong and the people barely have any freedom."

To her that was the "real world."

"Dystopia." Mindy grunted. That was a future she could imagine, all right. How much different was it from here, aside from the people being paraded around to fight and kill each other?

"Sounds sorta like a movie I saw. But I didn't mean to call your world fake. It's just...worlds like that are in books I read. In the word I live in there are cops and criminals, but criminals always can find a way to work outside the law, even pay them off."

Sandy knew that word. She didn't like that word...but it fit.

"I think back home, I'm probably a criminal. I break curfew and deface public property. That's enough to get me shot if I'm not fast enough."

Thankfully she'd always been fast enough and smart enough to move with a group so they would always get taken down first.

"Yeah, I wouldn't be going after you," she said, snickering. "You're what's considered 'small fry' stuff. I'm talking about, you know, drug dealers, wanted killers, yes men to the big bad that makes people under him go splat when he sees fit. You sound like the person that I would be allied with, not against."

Funny thing was, she was technically doing what had come naturally in her world.

"Dunno how much good I'd be against those kinds of threats." Sandy lamented. Then again she had just taken down a raptor in the last arena...

"The last hero left in our city was Spider-man. But he's old now. Just a broken old man." She sighed recalling one of the last moments she'd had back home before waking up in this fresh new hell.

"That just takes practice, skill and being quick. Luck helps too, in a pinch. Then again, the more we're in this arena, the more you'll probably get better at this stuff."

Mindy really REALLY was going to have to get used to people talking about meeting superheroes like it was an everyday thing. "He's a guy in a comic in my world...though last I checked, I think he died and Doc Oc was in his body or something stupid like that."

"That'd be a really crappy comic. Some broken old man fighting crime and getting killed by a doctor?" Clearly Sandy was not completely up to date on the Spider-man mythos. Just the stuff her father had told her.

Also brushing over the fact that her world might be someone else's comic book. Such ideas were just too big for her to wrap her head around right away.

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Not sure how I lost this thread. Sorry about that.

Re: Not sure how I lost this thread. Sorry about that.

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