Test Drive #7 - Ten Forward and Captain's Yacht

[ten_fwd_mods]

Option 01. Ten Forward: The first thing you see is a bar. A large, lively bar filled with many different faces and many different smells, sights and sounds. This is Ten Forward, the Enterprise's off-duty lounge; feel free to get acquainted with your fellow travelers and try to find somebody who's in charge: this is your new home now, after all...





Option 02. The Captain's Yacht: Oooh, you sneaky stowaway! You've found yourself in a very exclusive part of the ship: Captain Picard's personal craft, used for short jaunts when a shuttle just won't do. (One must retain some decorum, after all.) It may not be as large as the Enterprise itself, but there are sure to be some surprises aboard once people start snooping.


[OOC: The Captain's Yacht is located at the very base of the Enterprise's saucer portion, so if you put someone in there you can also play them trying to get back to somewhere they know!]

Comments

[fishermansweater]

"You're the only other tribute I've seen. And so far, nobody's trying to kill us. "

Which is Finnick's way of saying without saying it that he doesn't think so. He's lived through more Games than Peeta; though everyone in Panem sees the Games every year, Finnick has watched them intimately, constantly, as mentor and as victor, watched the children he'd trained go into the arena, watched them fight and, most of them, die.

Watched what happened to the ones who didn't die.

This can't be the arena, not unless they've changed the rules beyond recognition.

"Do you think we're all still holding hands in solidarity?"

That's accompanied by a dry smile, a little more bitterness in his words than is entirely wise, but he knows the game. Some of those tributes, the ones who aren't involved in the conspiracy, are going to turn on the others, even if they're all friends.

[bakesafe]

Peeta pockets the knife as best he can, keeping it in the opening of his boot where it can be easily accessed again if necessary. Peeta's not much of a fighter, never has been, but he's strong and he's tenacious and he's had fear and paranoia beaten into him through training and his first go at the Games.

He's a hell of an opponent for anyone less experienced.

"I never thought we were," he tells Finnick, glancing in his direction, head tipped towards him. His voice is toneless, almost matter-of-fact. And it absolutely does not apply to him. "Not when it means surviving. Saving our own skins from a brutal death."

[fishermansweater]

This is the boy Finnick's promised to protect. For the sake of the rebellion, they need Katniss Everdeen. For the sake of Katniss Everdeen, they need Peeta Mellark, or so Haymitch says, even though it's clear to Finnick that Katniss and Peeta were just playing the Games the way they could to survive. For the rebellion's sake, he'd promised to die, if he had to. To protect Katniss and Peeta, even if it meant that Annie would have to watch him die on live television.

Finnick's smile is dry, almost unpleasant, his eyes steady as he meets Peeta's quick sidelong glance.

"Well, I guess that makes you less of a fool than some."

There had, in truth, been some solidarity in that gesture. Between some of the tributes from some of the districts, the conspirators who all share the same goal: Katniss and Peeta, Wiress and Beetee, even if it means their own lives.

Beyond that, though, there was the anger, that their lives should be thrown back into that arena again, like they meant nothing. After all they'd been through at the Capitol's demand.

Still, Finnick would rather not have to be watching his back around Peeta, so he's grateful for Haymitch's bracelet, even though it had been meant to try to sway Katniss.

At least Peeta's put the knife away, for all the good a blunt weapon would be.

"If this were the arena, there wouldn't be other people here. Just we lucky victors."

[bakesafe]

"Maybe. I think it might just mean we're all a lot more screwed up than is right," Peeta says, with the sort of honesty that could scathe a weaker soul.

He does cast another glance across the space that he and Finnick are in, with its distinct lack of greenery replaced with sterile furniture that resembles ... a restaurant, maybe. Tables and chairs in a try-hard futuristic style scatter the floor in what he assumes is supposed to be loungey. Honestly, they remind him of the Capitol, and that gets his haunches back up.

That is, until Finnick calms him down some with his last sentence.

Because he's right.

There are a lot of other people here.

Except he wouldn't put it past the Capitol and the Gamemakers to make things just that much more cruel, much more entertaining for the Quarter Quell by changing things up through populating the arena with people instead of rabid animals or something.

He won't say anything about that for now. Because the thought of killing more than other victors is too much for his soul to bear.