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

[sabra]

Ziva's mask is her brusque nature, her lack of tact that her adoring fans found charming rather than offputting. Like a wild creature that had never quite learned how to be a real person.

"That is right." She tilts her head, assessing, her wild hair tumbling over one shoulder. "Though I suspect I may have some knowledge aside from that, that we do not share. Tell me, if you would. The 75th Quarter Quell. What is it that the Capitol decided to do?"

Of course, the Quarter Quells were always something dramatic. She remembered the last one, herself--twice the tributes, and the bloodshed increased to match. She knew of the never-ending Games, where Tributes gathered from other realities fought and died in the Arena.

If there were so many other worlds, who was to say that their own didn't exist in more than one shape? Perhaps in the history that Finnick knew, Ari had won. Perhaps neither of them did.

[fishermansweater]

Finnick Odair's so very famous sea-green eyes narrow as he watches her; his posture is one of complete ease, but only a fool would mistake that for being at rest. He'd be ready for action in a moment, but the fact is, for now, concealed somewhat in his appearance, for the sake of this woman in her half-rejected Capitol clothing, and their surroundings.

Ziva is considering him as intently as he is her, her head canting curiously.

Finnick pauses before he speaks, wondering what she's thinking, if the answer he's about to give is the one she's expecting.

"They reaped from the victors in each district." The smile on his face has nothing but bitterness in it. "I was on my way back to the arena when I wound up here."

[sabra]

Now that puts a visible crack in her calm, if only for a moment. It wasn't, perhaps, what she was expecting, because she hadn't had any expectations at all. But it didn't surprise her, now that she's heard it.

She knows full well how cruel the Capitol can be, and sending people to the Arena again is not at all outside of that. Snow has no honor, after all.

She rocks back in her chair. "I am sorry," she murmurs, because there really is not much more she can say. Then she's twisting her fingers together as she speaks, explaining why she'd asked.

"It was different, for us. The Capitol found a way, somehow, to look outside the Districts for tributes. To other worlds. They took people from places like this, and put them in the Arena--over and over. Now, the Games do not end."

She looks pensive. "It is not so far fetched to think that, if worlds exist where there is no Panem, there are other variations of our own reality, would you say? Thus, why I have been a victor for 16 years, and you do not know me at all."

[fishermansweater]

There's been little emotion visible in Ziva's face until this moment, but now, it flickers across her expression ever so briefly, and he knows, then, that whatever else she may be, she's telling the truth about being a victor.

Only a victor could understand that feeling: their lives belong to the Capitol from the moment the last cannon in the arena sounds, flinging them into the neverending games that a child is too naive to understand are waiting behind the mask of glamor thrown across the victors. But the deal, like Johanna had said, was that they were free, from that moment on, from the Games.

He and Johanna know how much of a lie the victors' lives are, but not even they had expected the Capitol would renege on their immunity and turn the Quarter Quell into a massacre of the victors.

Maybe they should have. They are, after all, dangerous: not just Katniss and the secretly-shared symbols of her mockingjay pin that helped fan the unrest around Panem this year. Not just Peeta, with his charismatic way of swaying an audience. But Johanna with her anger, Beetee with his engineering ability. Finnick, with his store of some of the most valuable secrets in Panem, and all of them with their own followers, people who admire, idolize, listen to them.

"They're paying for it," he says, softly. The uproar in the Capitol after the interviews had been like nothing the Games had ever seen before. Angry victors, tearful victors, manipulative victors, victors with truths and lies all combined to play that crowd the way a victor has to play them.

A love poem that made the room think they were in love with him reminded them how tragic it would be for him to die. Each of them did it, in their own way.

It's equally hard for Finnick to remain impassive at Ziva's story as it was for her to remain so for his.

It's even more repulsive than the Games as they are in his world, the Games he's forced to contribute to when they roll around again, but Finnick is still cautious and there are still things that can't be said. Still, the sick anger is there in his eyes for her to see.

So much for a reminder to the districts of their betrayal is the bitterly sarcastic thought in his mind, but it can't be voiced, not when he's still so unsure just where he is. Of course, he's always known the Games were as much about sheer love of the violence and oppression as anything, but that's always been the Capitol's line.

"I think all of this sounds far-fetched. But it's pretty obvious this isn't an arena. A few minutes ago I was in the launch tube, now ..." His hand lifts for a moment, palm-upwards, towards the room.

Now here.

"So I guess this is either a really strange new game, or you're telling the truth."

[sabra]

Sometimes Ziva feels all her sorrow bled out of her 16 years ago. Anger would kill her. So her calm is easy to maintain, most days. She thinks of the desert, of still and sun-baked days, and tries to make herself the same. To harden her heart like sandstone.

Their stories are equally repulsive, for different reasons. Their worlds revelled in the slaughter of children, how could she be surprised?

"There are no cameras on us here. And I know something of this place, after speaking with a few of them. There were tributes from this world. None I knew personally. But Johanna was frustrated by hers. He would not fight. I believe they tired of him, I do not know what became of him after that."

She tilts her head. "I do not have time for lies. I have told you all that I know."

[fishermansweater]

There is, always has been, a certain ... camaraderie between the victors. Because they are forced to interact every year at the Games, to work together as mentors, to oppose each other as mentors, to spectate, to attend events, to be just as much a part of the whole circus as the tributes are.

If Ziva David is truly a victor from another ... another version of Panem, a concept he's still not sure he's got the hold of, though it sounds simple enough, then she's a part of that fellowship.

Not that it would last long in the Quarter Quell, for anyone except the tributes involved in the conspiracy to free Katniss.

Ziva goes to another of the things concerning Finnick: surveillance. A fear the victors all know, for they are all the toys of the Capitol and its swarm of media. Finnick studies her, a faint crease forming on his smooth brow, then he nods.

"Easier for the Gamemakers to kill me in the arena than to try a stunt like this," he says, darkly. He's under no illusions what this Quarter Quell is designed to do, so very neatly, just when Katniss Everdeen's name and symbol were becoming a rallying point for revolts around Panem.

He takes in a deep breath, letting a slow smile slip across his face, masking some of his unease, though for his own sake now, rather than for the cameras Ziva says are not here.

"All right, Ziva David of District Six, what do you know about this place?"

[sabra]

Ziva had always been a bit standoffish, but she did still feel that belonging. It was the only group that she could begin to feel safe belonging to, the only ones with any vague sort of protection. Her sister's life had no such value to the Capitol as hers, because of her victor celebrity. Her father--she hated him, now, for what he had taught them as children. Unwavering loyalty to a man and government who deserved none of it. She claims no belonging there. And so, when she's not alone, she's with the other victors.

She would have been there with them, in conspiracy.

"Not much, except that it is a better place than the one we have left." She looks over toward one of the uniformed humans, motioning with a lift of her chin, then turns her eyes only back towards Finnick. "They will explain everything, if you ask them. That man was surprised when I questioned him about surveillance. He did not know the name Panem. And he said that more people than just us have been brought here--and while we are here, we are considered guests."

She turns her head back, leans forward to rest her elbows on the table and her chin on the backs of her hands. "It seems we have been granted a respite. I do not know how long it will last."

[fishermansweater]

The concept of being a guest is not necessarily one that is a reassurance to Finnick. Certain people on the Capitol like to suggest that the victors are guests there. In general, Finnick's not fond of their hospitality.

"Let's hope they're more hospitable than the last people who made me their guest."

That had been the Capitol, bringing him and the others back to the Games, again, when they'd always lived under the promise that was never going to happen. The most they should have feared was their family being reaped, not they themselves again.

Finnick's eyes had followed Ziva's gestures, and he studies the room, the uniformed personnel, the people who, yes, seem to move with less of the air of fear that's almost always present in the Districts of Panem.

"And I'm here instead of in the arena," he muses.

It doesn't make sense. It should be a glad reprieve, but ... what victor has ever had one of those that turned out well?

"Is it paranoid of me to find that a little too good to be true?"

The smile he gives her has a too-hard edge to it.