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

[primeverdeen]

She swallowed hard. She wanted to believe him, wanted to believe that Katniss wasn't going to be alone, that someone was going to help her... but... "They won't let two people win," she whispered, "not again."

She knew alliances in the arena, she grew up watching the games like any other kid in Panem. And this...he... he wasn't Rue, either he would fail to protect Katniss or one of them would wind up stabbed in the back. Figuratively, if not literally.

Tears ran down her face, as she tried to focus on the only thing she could without screaming mindlessly.

"If I'm not... if... where are we? Why are we here? My mother needs me!" she cried out, now finally looking around desperately and.... nothing she saw made sense....

"Are we...." she whispered, gasping for breath a bit, "is this the capitol?" Katniss and Peeta had remarked on how strange everything was there... Her eyes landed on some of the people, how strange everyone was there...

[fishermansweater]

No.

No, they won't. But if all goes according to plan, if Plutarch and Haymitch, Finnick and Johanna, and Beetee and Wiress all manage to do their jobs, they won't have to. The Capitol won't be letting anyone win, because the tributes, as many of them who are in on the plot as possible, will be rescued.

Above all, the aim in all of this is to save Prim's sister. The rebellion needs Katniss, far more than it needs Finnick. If it comes down to that final awful moment when allies turn on each other?

It'll be Katniss who walks away from it, not Finnick.

But Prim can't know any of that.

He's saved from having to calculate a lie to assure her, though, because she's distracted from the topic of what Finnick may or may not have done to her sister by the news that she's not in District 12.

"I don't know," he tells her, quietly, eyeing the goat at her side, which seems remarkably unperturbed by all of this. Maybe goats aren't all that smart; he doesn't have much experience with them.

"It doesn't look like the Capitol, and I ... have spent a lot of time there." He manages to keep the bitterness out of voice, at least. "And these people don't look like Capitol people."

But he doesn't trust the Capitol to not be playing one of their tricks, and that much shows in his eyes, though he can't say it out loud. Not if the Capitol may be listening.

[primeverdeen]

"Then where are we?" She wanted to ask why he was there instead of in with her sister, but since she wasn't sure that she believed him about an alliance, it was better not to ask, right? "How did we get here?" she asked in a broken whisper. And how freaked out was her mother right now? She let go of the goat to hold buttercup tight to her chest with both arms.

[fishermansweater]

There are stories. Things that people have told him since he'd found himself here, and he trusts them as much as he trusts the glamor of the victors. The Capitol can lie, manipulate, and scheme, can fill the world with images and stories and sounds that are no truer than Finnick's smiles to the media.

He doesn't trust what he's been told any more than he does the Capitol, because as far as he knows, they could be one and the same. The Capitol's snares are difficult for anyone to escape, near-impossible for a victor.

Finnick hasn't stopped assessing the situation since he arrived, his attention flicking around the room, into the corners, wherever there might be a threat. Nobody's offered him one yet.

What he has to do here is clear: not just because Prim is just a kid and needs protecting, but because of Katniss. He has to look after Primrose Everdeen.

"They say we're in space, that some sort of being brought us here. For the sake of entertainment."

There's no mistaking the bitterness in the last word, because he, above anyone but the other victors, knows exactly what that implies.

He's belonged to the entertainment of the Capitol for far too long already.

[primeverdeen]

She shook her head, unable to formulate a more eloquent response. That... made no sense. In so many ways. She couldn't even fathom it. She just stared at him, confused and afraid and wishing things made sense again... no... wishing Katniss and she were home and safe again. Then it would not matter if it made sense, because at least her sister would be home and safe. She sniffled, trying not to break down crying. Again.

Trying and failing.

[fishermansweater]

"Prim," he says, taking a couple more steps forward before he crouches down in front of her, "it's okay. I'll look out for you."

For once, looking out for a kid he's not about to send into the arena? I'll be a nice change.

He doesn't know if what he's been told is true, if this is a scheme of the Capitol or something far bigger, as if that were even possible, but he does know this much: he's got to look out for her. Political calculations aside, Katniss and winning her over to the rebellion aside, she's just a kid, and she needs help, and there have been so many kids over the past ten years he couldn't help.

If she looks at him and into those piercingly green eyes, she'll see nothing bt sincerity there.

[primeverdeen]

She did look, and she swallowed hard.

"But...Katniss..." either he was telling the truth about wanting to help her, in which case he should be WITH her to protect her, and if he was lying, then she shouldn't trust him.

"My mom..." she added, realizing that she needed looking after even more than she did herself. Her sister, her mom, they needed the help. Prim... Prim had to be like Katniss now, to take care of the people she loved. But... she couldn't do that, so far away from them. She sniffled loudly.

[fishermansweater]

Nobody in all of Panem save Annie and Mags and a precious few of the conspiring victors he'd consider friends has any compelling reason to trust him. Trustworthiness falls aside, along with fidelity, honesty, integrity, when he slips into the mask he wears for the Capitol. Nobody should trust a victor who leverages his popularity and prettiness for fame, for the gifts and the pleasures and the luxuries the Capitol offer.

"I know," he says.

Mags. Katniss. Johanna. Annie. Annie.

He has to get back to them, back to the arena, though he doesn't want to go back there.

"I don't know how we'll get there, but if I can, I'll get you back to your mother, and I'll look out for your sister as long as I can."

A tribute's word in an alliance is worth very little, but it's all he has for Primrose, who is still on the edge of tears.

[primeverdeen]

"If we're here, away from that, wherever we are, couldn't we just bring them here, instead of going back to them there?" she asked in a small broken voice.

[fishermansweater]

Not if they want to save Panem.

Not if they want to end the Hunger Games, and take down Snow like he so richly deserves. Not if they want to make a difference.

Of course, he can't tell Prim that. Can't let her know that half the victors in that arena are going to have protecting Katniss Everdeen as their top priority, above and beyond themselves. There's never been a Hunger Games like it.

"If we can work out how," he says.

[primeverdeen]

She sniffed once more, then showed some of the spine that we see in her as the stories go on. "Then... we need to find out how we got here, and how to bring everyone who matters here."

[fishermansweater]

Annie. Mags.

Finnick's list of people to save if they could save them would be short. If he could take the people who matter to him, the little family of victors from District Four, out from under Snow's oppression, then there'd be nothing for him to fear in Panem.

Finnick Odair, though, is not a man to run from a fight when he can help, and the concept of abandoning the revolution, of withdrawing and hiding, unsettles him.

They have a chance. It may not be a good one, but it is a chance.

He doesn't want to run from that, but to save Annie and Mags? That he does want, so he considers Prim's words, then nods.

"What were you doing when you were brought here?" he asks. "Watching the broadcast?"

[primeverdeen]

She sniffled and nodded. "Katniss...you.... it just started then...." She swallowed hard, thought then looked at him, thinking of something.

Then she spoke again, softly, but more like the girl who she became in 13 than the girl whose name was called a scant year before. "If... If there could be a trade... if you could go back to protect Katniss, and... And Snow came here instead...." she said softly, "Then she could stop being scared, right? If he was no longer there, and you were back, and protecting her? If...if he was here... the games would stop?"

A child like naivete, given that she knows not about Coin and 13, and yet...

[fishermansweater]

Katniss Everdeen may never stop being scared.

Finnick hasn't. Though he'd never expected to wind up back in the arena until the night the card was read for the Quarter Quell, he still wakes up in nightmares, of his Games, of Annie's, of the ones he's mentored District Four's youths to their deaths in.

Would that be better without the continued pressure from Snow? He can't tell. He can't imagine what his life would be like if he hadn't been dragged into the trap that fame and beauty set for victors.

He's not naive enough to think it will just take changing the President, though: it's a regime that needs changing, not just its head. If anyone knows that, it's Finnick: Finnick, who knows the full depths of Snow's depravity but also knows the dark secrets of the rest of the Capitol's political elite.

"I don't know," he says, a little more gently than he's been speaking. "But it'd be a good start."

[primeverdeen]

"I...I could keep him distracted..." she whispered, "so he wouldn't figure out how to get back, how to trade himself... so that Katniss could be safe. I...I could protect her this time...."

[fishermansweater]

"You don't want to mess with him."

There's a darkness in Finnick's expression for a moment, because he knows what Snow is, knows better than almost anyone, surely, the true depths of the horror of the story, because he's collected so many pieces from so many places.

Finnick has a much simpler solution, but it's probably one that wouldn't occur to Prim, not if she's anything like the sweet little girl that all of Panem learned to adore last year.

It's the solution that would be obvious to a victor: kill Snow, and there's no way for him to get himself back to Panem.

[primeverdeen]

"I don't," she agreed softly, her fingers curling into Buttercup's fur. She lowered her face closer to the cat. "But I don't want him...messing...with Katniss any more. Maybe... Maybe it's my turn to be the one who saves her," she whispered, the words almost lost against the cat.