#mtostart

[cain-gunn]

Cain couldn't sleep. Two's team was always one of the first in, which usually meant a good night's sleep, but not tonight. It seemed Cain never slept well anymore. He'd tried. He'd laid in bed for hours, watching the numbers on the clock tick up and up, until eventually he'd thrown the blankets off his body and climbed out of bed. He walked— a sweatshirt thrown over his pajamas and slippers on his feet to stay warm. Leaving Two's floor, Cain went wandering. It was an aimless kind of wandering just meant to kill time, reset his unsettled mind, but Cain found himself searching. Every place he went he noted how it had been changed by the Vox. He was zoned in on it all, like a game of spot the difference— what had been added or destroyed, moved or replaced in this building he'd grown up in.

"Hey," he greeted softly as he passed by. Mostly, he didn't want to scare anyone, considering it was easily the middle of the night by now. "Can't sleep or just getting in?"

[juno-dearborn]

"What's a girl gotta do to get out of here for a little bit? They're tryn'a kill me, the least they could do was let me out for some fresh air before they do it. I hear even the cows in Ten get fresh air," Farina whined to nobody in particular, pacing the floors of the lobby impatiently. It seemed that after the last Games, security had tightened, and the Peacekeepers wouldn't let her past the doors. She wasn't going to run away, all she wanted was to walk around a little, maybe get a drink, go dancing. Was that so much to ask? She wasn't surprised, of course. Perhaps that's part of why she was so damn irritated. She wasn't used to not being able to walk outside and have the wide expanse of the outdoors and everything beyond it available to her. It unsettled her.

[lee-hatchett]

The past few weeks had felt like a blur. A haze. A gray wash - the first layer of paint an artist puts on a canvas before deciding what to paint. It was the worst kind of fugue state. Ritualistic to the point of disassociation. Stage. Video. Bowl. Name. Train.

The Tower, which he thought once would be a relic of a bygone era, had pulled Lee back into its prisonous grasp. Sure, it was in a bit of disrepair, and there was a weird offshoot where they had converted a first-floor Sponsor lounge into a living quarters for the Capitolites, but it was eerily still the same. Lee could have sworn the swirl of the steam rising from his tea was identical, even if that was a scientific impossibility.

But here he was, again, with an over-brewed cup of tea that he even paid too much for, looking at the not-so-shiny marble floors of the Tower. He was shocked into stillness as waves of memory flooded back. It was all happening again - when it wasn't supposed to.

No - no. No. It was too much. Lee's breath caught in the pit of his stomach and suddenly left his lungs empty. His eyesight blurred for a moment, and phantoms of the past overlapped in the lobby ahead. Linden. Alder. Donnegal. Dozens of others who he never saw again. No. No.

Before his brain could clear the chilling sight, his legs had kicked into gear to backpedal out of the Tower and into the blinding light of the Capitol streets. He only managed to take two steps into the mercifully bright sun before blindly colliding with someone.

"Shit, sorry," he muttered, clawing at his eyes with his free hand. His other one stung from where some of his tea cascaded over the lip of the cup to bite into the cold air. "Just had to... I dunno. Get outta there."

[slate-skylar]

Slate had his knife; he always had his knife. In most scenarios, it was warranted -- he was visiting the front for T0MMYKN0CK3R business, or he was facing off against Peacekeepers, or he was in the fucking Arena itself -- but this scenario, well, it wasn't quite necessary. He was just in the lobby of the Tower, twirling it between his fingers. He was perfectly sober, perfectly present, and yet, something in him had seemed to snap in the past few weeks, so that he had a pleasant smile on his face as he greeted a passerby. "Happy Hunger Games to you," he said with a sarcastic warmth.

[greer-morgan]

The Tower was a shell of itself. Once unbearably bright and ostentatious, teeming with Capitolites trying to catch a glimpse of tributes and Games staff, it seemed now to want to buckle under the weight of what it was supposed to be. It wasn’t that Greer wanted it back— the gawking and excess— but this restoration was eerie. It made the Tower feel so much more like a place she wasn’t meant to be anymore— a place reserved only for ghosts of a past life.

The city, the building, it all surrounded her with a renewed sense of suffocation. Even the tight fit of her formal Reaping day clothing added to her discomfort, but Greer couldn’t bring herself to go up to the tenth floor to change. She didn’t want to be with her tributes. She didn’t want to go into the bedroom she never thought she’d have to sleep in again. So, she stood in the lobby, hands pressing into her lower back to offset the aching after a long day of travel and ceremony.

"Ain't the same as I remember it," Greer muttered, hearing approaching footsteps. They hadn't been gone long enough to justify the feeling— no longer than their usually scheduled absence, really— but it was impossible to shake. "Somehow it actually got fuckin' worse."

[gemmarosewater]

Gemma made it a point to position herself in the lobby for the arrival of the rest of the tributes. Since the trip from One was one of the shortest, she'd gotten here before the others, and had grabbed herself a coffee and a front-row seat to the other tributes' arrivals. She sat on one of the lounges that were scattered throughout the lobby and watched as the latest group filtered in. "Mm, I'm quaking in my boots," she said sarcastically.

[alder-reid]

Alder stared at the note in his hands. He was back at the Tower, more for lack of anywhere else to go until the train for Seven left in the morning. He didn't want to impose on any friends in the Capitol, and, unfortunately, the doctors had insisted on checking up on him daily anyway after everything he'd been through. Alder found it excessive, but several people he cared about had insisted he continue to get medical care, and Trouble was happiest staying somewhere familiar, so he coped.

"They want me to take a role in the government in Seven," he stated, sensing someone approaching him on the roof, assuming it was a friend. What the fuck was he supposed to do with that-- he didn't know anything about government. The only real skills he had were snapping twigs from branches in a lumber yard and narrowly escaping death in the Hunger Games. He could barely make a grilled cheese.

[denverneumann]

It was with not just a little bit of trepidation that Denver took her first steps into the Tower since she'd been escorted out. It hadn't even been that long ago. Snow, what had it been, a week? Two? Time seemed to be in a state of flux, or else a kind of liminal stasis. In a world without Games there were no bookends to the seasons, no touchstones upon which to ground one's sense of reality. And what a painful reality it had been. But Denver had been promised it would be okay this time. She was going to be okay. She had walked in through the front door, and no one had arrested her yet. Besides, even if someone didn't believe she was here on business, she was still just a low-level loyalist. A rich girl without a rich name to back her up. She'd be safe.

Her kiosk was gone. Denver wondered idly as she passed where it had once stood if there had been any satisfaction in tearing it down. Her manager was dead, she was certain. As best as she'd been able to gather, all of the upper management for the Hunger Games Museum were dead.

She walked in nearly a straight line until she reached the back of the Tower, a window in one of the old lounges. No arrest. She was okay. She sighed at that, a mix of relief and sheer uncertainty, and took a seat. She pulled out her notebook and a pen, lucky finds from the BEEF gift shop, and started taking notes of the world around her. So wrapped up in her observations was she, so bent on mastering the art of recording history as it was actually happening, that she'd missed someone coming up to her until she felt the presence right by her side. She jolted up, startled.

"Hi," she said, resisting the urge to insist she was allowed to be there. "Sorry, I didn't realize anyone was there. You must have quiet feet or something." She gave a laugh and a smile, but gripped her pen tighter.

[everettcannon]

He'd been up early, working the sponsor lounge, playing nice and saying all the right things about Mars, and he was exhausted as he finally stepped back out into the lobby, ready for a breather. "If you want to talk about the Games, I'm not your guy. Let's discuss something totally different," he said as someone neared him.

[leightonmorgan]

Leighton had left her room early that morning and headed downstairs to the lobby. She hadn't drank much the night before, always wanting to keep her wits about her, so the hangover was minimal. Plus, she wanted to be part of the bustling day, the Tower coming awake and alive. The day was bright and sunny here in the Capitol, though all of the screens displayed the dismal weather in the Arena. "Well," she said as she entered the coffee shop off the lobby, "the price of umbrellas just went up by, like, a lot I'm guessing."

[cade-bentley]

"This is boring," Cade declared to nobody in particular, flopping down onto one of the couches in the mentor's lounge. Not that he belonged there in any capacity, but it seemed that with the power outage, rules didn't really hold much stay. Who was going to stop him, the Peacekeepers? The mentors?

He set down a gritty looking candle he'd stolen from the bar on a table, squinting at it. "I feel like-- like I'm some old, dead ghost from the Dark Days carrying this around."

[marsfairhart]

it had been a long day of training. the young man spent most of his time between the throwing knives and the swords, making sure to spend a good amount of time at each. though, he even spent a little time making sure he knows exactly how to start a fire most efficiently. all that fighting would do him no good if he didn't know how to care for himself out there by staying warm and cooking his food.

he's on his way out of the training room, tired and sweaty, when he runs into another. mars is in such a hurry to get out of there and get back to his room to shower that he nearly sends the other person toppling over. "shit!" he exclaims. "that's my bad.. you alright?" he asks, putting his hands out to try and help steady them.

[moxiepitlock]

"What are they doing?" Moxie balked watching the Berries with the gun. What if they got hurt? Or, worse, if Slate – who she would easily consider a dear friend, little brother, or as Pandora put it, 'Uncle 'Ate' – got caught in whatever crossfire there was to be had. "Oh my god, what are they doing? They're going to shoot themselves, do they even know how to handle that thing!" Moxie asked, a hand pressed across her face, worry icing through her veins, "Guns? There weren't even guns in the training room!"

[holland-westbrook]

The wedding was very nice. The aesthetic seemed to match the brides well, and it was all a good escape from the reality of what was going on. She couldn't help but watch Nettle and Bramble across the roof, having fun and laughing, and think of her own final night before her Arena. Escaping, being kidnapped, killing. Coming back drenched in blood. It was a much different image, and jealousy made her a bit cold tonight. "I think my favorite thing about this event is watching the sponsors decide which of these children is least worthy of death."

[slate-skylar]

Slate held Kya on his hip as he strode away from the security screening, moving as quickly as he could, his heartrate elevated, the tendrils of panic grabbing at him. He made eye contact with the nearest person and, taking refuge in them, said, "With this many Peacekeepers at the Tower I'm surprised they have any to dispatch to the war front." A neutral statement, really.

[notverybrighton]

Sable finished her stretches and the warm-up throws with her knife - the basics she learned in school that she knew still surpassed the skills of any of the outer districts. She wasn't as skilled as her sister but she could beat anyone without training, and that was what she was prepared to prove today. And if anyone saw her and thought she was pulling her punches, she could say that she was - she could be saving her strength for the real deal, the private training, and then the Arena. She locked eyes with someone near the sparring mat.

"Step right up," she said, fake confidence rolling off of her with a practiced ease now that she'd had some time to get used to her role as Brighton. "Let's see who comes out on top."