thecapitol | open

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Who | Skye + you!
What | Skye arrives and is upset with this entire situation, to absolutely no one's surprise.
Where | Training Center, various locations therein
When | Now
Warnings/Notes | Mild language warnings.

[ District 6 Suite ]

At first when Skye wakes up she thinks Hydra must have her, and it's only the nausea and disorientation sweeping over her that prevents her from trying to physically assault one of the peacekeepers when they come to lead her away.

(Portals are such a bitch. Thanks for nothing, stupid Nordic alien gods.)

It's once they get her to the Training Center and give her the vague welcome spiel that she realizes how wrong she was. This isn't Hydra. This is, if it's even possible, much worse.

She drags herself into the bathroom and stares at her reflection in the mirror, feeling numb and cold as she tries to process what she's been told. A battle to the death. Things were just starting to seem like they'd be able to make a go for the better, and now she's here, trapped in some foreign world for a celebrity deathmatch. Are you kidding me? Are you freaking kidding me? And then: there it is, anger, bubbling up hot and fast. She wrestles it down.

First things first: she needs more information, and she needs to see if she can find her team. Skye pushes her hair back and steps out of the bedroom to meet her suitemates.

[ The Commons ]

She's fiddled with her network device by now, and already figured out the vast breadth of digital information is locked to her--for now. The Tributes list and network had no records of her team, but that doesn't mean anything. They could be here off the record, under lock and key. She knows nothing about how these people operate.

On the other hand, she did see several other familiar names and faces, and her stomach flipped nervously when she saw them. Really? They're pitting a Level 1 agent up against the Avengers? Talk about unfair play.

So in the meantime, she's stuck to good, old-fashioned info hunting. Which is to say, she'd changed into a brightly-colored dress upstairs and is now approaching strangers downstairs with a stunning, confident smile, one hand held out to shake. "Hi! I don't think we've met yet. I'm Skye."

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Stephen has had a shower and a good, solid nap in between meeting Molotov and now. He's going to hang around the D6 rooms today, since a -- well, a few of District 6's Tributes didn't come back from the last Arena, and one of them won. Those empty rooms are going to fill up quick.

(He feels for whatever Avox had to clean out Punchy's. He also feels sadness, because he misses Punchy.)

When she walks in, he stands to greet her.

"Hello," Stephen says, then taps his chin. "...is it Belle or Skye?"

(He's wearing a lot of glitter. A lot. The vest under his dark blue jacket has silver glittery swirls, and -- yes, that's eyeliner. With glitter in it. His ears sparkle, too, but that's just the five or six diamond studs in them. Stephen is a little ridiculous.)

"Do I look like a Belle?" Skye replies, a touch irritably, because who wouldn't be irritable when they've been abducted and told they're going to take part in the newest round of Battle Royale?

She doesn't like that he knows her name before she knows his. Skye is used to being outside the system looking in. No one knows who she is unless she chooses to tell them, and she likes it that way. Now there's no way to know who knows what about her. Where did they get her name? From SHIELD documents that she was supposed to have erased from existence? Do they have access to her psych evals, Simmons's documentation of her injury and recovery, her personnel dossier, her interrogation with Koenig? The paranoia makes her skin itch.

"I mean--yes. Yeah, it's Skye. Who are you?"

He's on his way out into the Capitol when he sees her: someone altogether too cheerful and outgoing for the newcomer she must be. It's enough to make Bucky stop in place halfway across the room, leaning back against a sofa as he studies her. That attitude can't be real. It must be a mask. And he knows from masks.

After a moment, he makes a point of approaching her himself. He's not particularly conspicuous at the moment--something that took endless arguments with stylists to accomplish and left him with the compromise of gloves and a fancy leather jacket studded with metal stars rather than the plainer versions he wanted. But his face has been on the network and in the records.

He heads towards her from behind to give himself the momentary advantage of surprise. "Having fun with your new digs?"

There's something about his face she feels like she should recognize: not an old familiarity but a recent one. Something that stood out to her when she was mining the public Tribute records before she came down here. Then it clicks: she'd seen two separate men named James Barnes on the Tribute rolls, and this man is one of them. Is either of them the same James Barnes whose name she saw on the Wall of Valor? Probably not. It's a common enough name, after all. But between seeing three separate Avengers as well, the coincidence was enough to grab at her attention.

She's not good enough yet to hide that calculating look in her eye when she realizes this, but she grins, her head tilted to the side in a way that makes her hair tumble over her shoulder.

"Hey, who doesn't love a good party? If I squint it almost looks like Vegas."

On the other hand, he's good enough to glimpse that look, and he has a guess as to what it can mean: she saw his name in the records, saw his picture with it, saw the high score he has. How much else has she seen? He can't know.

Bucky just grins back at her. "It's way better than Vegas. You'll find all the party you want here--Skye, huh? Better get used to being a celebrity."

"Yeah, I'm kind of feeling that," she says, tossing a glance at the room around her. And yeah, okay, she can grudgingly admit that this much glitz and razzledazz is impressive. She lived on the streets and out of a van for a while, after all. But it's a facade. Any place that's this pretty and yet indulges in televised murder games is hiding some major ugly on the inside.

The last time she was in a place this rich, she shook hands with the man who shot her. She really hopes that's not going to become a pattern in her life.

"You sound like you're getting pretty used to it yourself."

As usual when he leaves the confines of either his own or Steve's quarters this Bucky attempts to make his way through public spaces as silently and swiftly as possible while gaining as little notice as he can. With his height and the propensity to find his wardrobe filled with black clothing and leather, as well as the generally emptiness of expression on his face he generally manages to put off anyone from approaching him -- though the recent haircut at the hands of the Widow has slightly lessened his threatening aura.

So when this woman in her bright dress approaches him with her hand out and a smile on her face he doesn't immediately reply and instead simply stares back at her, not understanding why she's chosen to approach him.

Then, after the initial surprise wears off, his eyes sweep over Skye (in a way that's more looking for hidden threats than it is checking out a pretty girl) and slowly, jerkily, nods an acknowledgement of her introduction.

It takes him a further moment still to remember he is supposed to return an introduction and speak, "Bucky." and as he does his hands remain firmly where they are, the right down by his side and the left jammed in the pocket of his dark jeans.

Edited 2014-07-31 18:15 (UTC)

Two guys sharing the same name as each other and also a dead SSR agent is a coincidence. One of those guys immediately introducing himself by the world-famous nickname for that dead SSR agent? That's a coincidence maybe in the freshest Asgardian hell.

She laughs, a little awkward and strained. "Bucky, huh. Nice to meet you, you know--" She wiggles her fingers in an expressive gesture at the general room. "--circumstances aside."

He notices the change in her, hears the difference in her voice when she laughs. It gains his focus more than her peppy introduction did. His less than enthusiastic response might be the cause but something, instinct, tells him there's more to it.

Bucky's not interested in pleasantries but he is interested in that. "What?"

Eponine just stared at that hand for a good few seconds - definitely enough to create an awkward pause.

"Miss? What do you want?" she asked. "Are you new here?" There was another pause. "Oh... 'Ponine. Eponine, Miss."
She reached for Skye's hand, shaking it gingerly.

She looked over Skye's shoulder. Eponine had been on her way to find that dratted dog of hers - whoever thought of giving Eponine a dog [coughOrccough] was a little bit soft. She never knew where that thing was, and more often than not, she forgot it. Like now.

"Have they just brought you, Miss? To fight with us?'

Tony had not expected to have a girl in a bright dress approach him. Mostly because none of the girls he regulalrly talks to wear anything resembling colours most days. So when Skye introduces herself, Tony raises his eyebrows at her.

"No, I think I would remember those colours on someone I've met. Uh, nice to meet you and your sudden greet- They just brought you here, didn't they?"

For a moment the he looks annoyed but it is quickly replaced by vague curiosity.

Edited 2014-07-31 22:53 (UTC)

Staying unnoticed and out of the way isn't how Roland had used to move through the world, before. But with one thing and another it's become a habit, and before he's quite realized it Roland's become used to moving around the corners of a crowd, to not quite meeting anyone's eyes and making his way past all the social life of the city unremarked, if not unnoticed. So when it becomes clear she's addressing him, rather than someone else nearby, Roland is surprised and almost instantly suspicious.

Suspicious, first, because he assumes she's a reporter - but no, while far more colorful and striking than his own, her outfit isn't nearly ridiculous enough for that. Her smile's confident, but not fawning, so not a Capitol citizen. The realization that she must be a tribute drives a good portion of the suspicion from his face, and gives him a reason to grip her hand with his own - his right, missing its first two fingers as it is, doesn't always get a good reaction from people but there's really no getting around that even if he'd cared to.

"We haven't. Did you need something?"

When the hand is presented to her, Chibi-Usa blinks at it. She had been wandering around aimlessly for a few hours so she wasn't really thinking that someone could talk to her.

After a second she looks up at the introduced Skye, she looked really nice and really pretty, once she realises she has to take the hand she does and offers a smile.

"Nice to meet you, I'm Usagi. But everyone calls me Chibi-Usa."

He can tell she's uneasy. That's why he doesn't flirt; instead, he extends a hand.

"Stephen Reagan," he replies, businesslike. "I'm the Escort for District 6."

He's on his way back into the tribute center with a large coffee in one hand and a bag with some comics in the other when the young woman in the brightly-colored dress approaches him like she's selling something.

Joel raises his eyebrows skeptically and makes no move to shift his stuff around to shake her hand. Because no.

"And you're introducin' yourself to perfect strangers because...?" he drawls in his usual Texas lilt.

"What?" she parrots back, brushing her hair out of her eyes. "Obviously I'm thrilled to be here, blah blah blah and all that. Chance of a lifetime. Who doesn't want to be on reality TV?"

This man is intensely disconcerting, and she's not sure if she should ask him upfront about her suspicions. No, she decides--it's too public, and until she can determine how much Big Brother knows about SHIELD, the more she should keep what she does know to herself.

If the opportunity presents itself, though... She'll keep her options open.

"You new here too?"

Oh, yeah. Definitely awkward. But Skye follows the other girl's lead, keeping her handshake gentle, her body language disarming.

"You could say that, more or less." Less of the fighting with and more of the fighting against, if what they told her is true. But there has to be a way out before things get that far. There has to be. "I'm not keeping you from something, am I?"

She hadn't realized who she was addressing until she'd turned around and done it, and now it's her turn to stare with wide eyes and a slightly slack-jawed look.

She snaps her mouth shut.

"Do I just scream newbie or something?"

Skye had grabbed the dress out of the closet on impulse, because she liked the color, because she wanted to make a statement. But now, seeing the looks it's earning her, she wonders if she shouldn't have considered something less loud. Girly is supposed to be good, dammit. Girly is supposed to make people want to help you.

When he reaches to take her hand, she notices the wound but doesn't flinch away from it. Still, it's one of the oddest handshakes she's ever had, with the feeling of two stubs pressing against the back of her hand.

"A tour would be nice, if you have the time. If not--" She shrugs. "--Just trying to get to know people, that's all."

That anger she's been tamping down rushes back up, and Skye wrestles it away again. A child. There is a child here. She'd seen the footage, sure, but she'd hoped--she doesn't know. That it was doctored, maybe.

Skye drops down so she's eye level with the little girl. "Chibi-usa. Did I say that right?"

Fashion is a very different language in this city than it is in most other places. Roland has responded to that by making his wardrobe as bland as possible - at least partly because of the looks it puts on his stylist's face - but it's also changed the way he reads fashion. What elsewhere might have read as girlish doesn't tend to show up well against the general background of extravagance and frippery, and doesn't make nearly as much impact on Roland as the idea that she's a fellow prisoner. "I've very little but time. There's not too much to show, though, 'less you like shopping. And drinking, I guess. Depending on how long you've been here, you've already seen this building."

"No." He answers her question, taking a slow step closer as he does. "You are?"

Bucky's interested now. He's certain Skye reacted to his name as much as she's attempting to distract him from the reaction with her chatter. There could be multiple explanations for it; he's aware his name and his face, the one he shares with another man, is free information among the people of this city for one. It's an uncomfortable fact for an operative who was designed to do his work in the shadows, untraceable and unknowable.

Most of the time anyway. He has a feeling his last officially Hydra sanctioned mission had been an oddity to send him out in broad daylight.

"Only more or less?" Eponine repeats with a laugh. "Nah, Miss. You'll find here that it is more. It is not just to fight, but to kill with us and be on their screens with us and go to their parties with us. All with us."

She smiles sheepishly at Skye's question. "I have lost my dog. I forgot even that I had it and I do not know where it is. It don't really matter though. Orc is so stupid and he gets me a poodle because he thinks all French women have poodles. They are stupid dogs. Not dogs for me."

Still smiling she nods.

"Mhmm!"

She stops smiling after a moment, tilting her head to the side.

"Are you a tribute too?"

Chibi-Usa really hopes she says no, she really does. Skye seems so nice and pretty it isn't at all fair.

By this point, Thor is sort of used to new arrivals, even though he'd been among them not long ago. What he isn't used to is being approached BY them rather than taking it upon himself to extend the olive branch. He's dressed pretty casually himself, and considering what most people are used to seeing him in he doesn't quite look identifiable from the get-go. Sure is the supposed god of thunder in jeans and a t-shirt that you're approaching, Skye.

A small smile crosses his lips from the friendliness alone and he takes the offered hand with a smile to give it an enthusiastic shake.

"Thor." He returns. "Are you among the new arrivals?"

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[ D6 ]

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[ commons ]

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The Commons

Commons || I so wanted this up ages ago but my tablet crashed

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Commons

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lolll this is gon be gud

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i applaud you for even being able to tag from a tablet

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the commons!!