Cannel Cohle is a hillbilly philosopher. (gloomanddoom) wrote in colosseum, @ 2014-02-16 10:37:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! 56th games, - capitol, tribute: 56th zap volta, victor: 23rd dimitri watts |
WHO: Dimitri Watts [D5] & Zap Volta [D5]
WHAT: Dominoes & district tokens
WHEN: BACKDATED to pre-Arena
WHERE: The Capitol
STATUS: Completed Log
Ampere claimed to have forgotten to include in his suitcase the ‘party’ he announced came along with him this Hunger Games but she didn’t forget his dominoes. If it wasn’t for his strong desire to see Ampere have someone who may pack her dominoes for her someday when she didn’t even give enough of a shit to pack the basics, Dimitri would’ve enacted years tribute avoidance techniques and found his way to the Capitol’s most entertaining parties under the guise of sponsor hunting. Instead, he was standing in front of Zap, giving the box of dominoes a good shake. The prospect of Ampere being victorless for longer than he was shook him enough that he wanted to make a sincere effort. It helped, too, that Zap was a kid he sincerely liked. He had him at ‘woohoo’. “Zap, my man,” he said with a cheerful grin, “Up to waste some time?” Zap looked up from the magazine he was leafing through when Dimitri approached and smiled widely. He wasn’t sure at first what to make of the dominoes, but the fact that his mentor - and someone he’d looked up to for as long as he could remember - was talking to him was enough to get him excited. “Pa! Of course. I’ve got all the time in the world,” he joked, shutting the magazine and setting it aside. Dimitri had his full attention; Zap was more than a little bit starstruck, and he awaited further word like an eager puppy wagging its tail. His grin stretched wider at his tribute's gallows humor and he pointed a finger at him sternly, "Hey, that's what we're hoping for." Zap's enthusiasm didn't go unnoticed and served to feed the flames of his own. Dimitri was a guy who thrived on attention at forty-six the same way he thrived on it at thirteen. He took a seat across from him and removed the top from the box, pushing it until it was between the two of them on the table. He held his hands up, "Some people like to plan this out and make it real complicated, I don't." Dimitri waved a hand in Zap's direction, "Do what you want, go nuts, I'm probably just gonna make a circle." It was just something to do with his hands while he talked to the kid. While Zap had yet to express any of the uncomfortable sadness his tributes usually did (that stuff worked just like Dimitri repellant), he didn't think the kid was sociopathic enough not to actually feel it down there somewhere. There was always a chance he'd need a reason not to look at the kid's face anymore - there always was when it came to these poor shits. Dimitri took a handful of dominoes from the box and lumped them on the table closer to him and loudly cracked the knuckles of one hand against the palm of his other with a wince. Here we go. Zap’s enthusiasm fed Dimitri’s enthusiasm, which in turn just fed Zap’s all the more. It was far easier to just go with the flow of that optimism - cracking jokes, being the kid that didn’t bring people down - than to confront the reality of his situation. As Jaishree had pointed out, appearing to feel sorry for himself would only make people wish he was dead that much sooner, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. Besides, he wanted to make Dimitri and everyone else proud, so there was no point in complaining now. No-one liked a whiner. Dominoes were a valuable distraction. It was nice to have something to do with your hands while you talked. He grabbed a handful of dominoes for himself and began to stand them up in a straight line parallel to the edge of the table. He did so absentmindedly and without looking at what his own hands were doing - his eyes were focused almost entirely on his mentor’s creation. “Did you play dominoes before your Games?” Zap asked him conversationally, as though watching the older man’s strategy here would give him some insight into how he could follow in his winning footsteps. He settled his elbow on the table and idly supported the weight of his chin with his thumb, his free hand speedily arranging the dominoes in the beginnings of a sloppy circle. Zap's question caught him offguard and his hand slowed but he gave a chuckle to buy himself a little time to recover from his tribute's unintentionally personal question. "Yeah, yeah," he confirmed, lifting his chin from his thumb and scratching behind his ear as he carefully placed the next domino, "I did. Wendy got 'em for Rhonda 'cause she asked, first day we got here. Played every night after we - well, okay, after I - stuffed myself sick three times over at dinner." Dimitri didn't talk about Rhonda much but he didn't altogether refuse to, either. At this point, any spot that used to be excruciating more closely resembled a barely-there throb and only when whacked with a stick. He took a moment to glance up at Zap and his straight line of dominoes with a smirk, "She thought it was relaxing." His own circle of dominoes was sloppy, haphazard, but he didn't care. He said he'd make a circle, not a perfect one, and the important thing was that they'd take each other down. Like he took Rhonda down but cleaner. Sometimes he found that focusing on standing the dominoes one by one distracted him from the onset of a migraine but, right now, this wasn't a therapeutic effort. "What'd you do back home when you weren't monkeying around on the lines?" he asked, turning the conversation onto the personal life of a tribute for the first time in more years than even he knew. Zap hadn’t intended to ask a probing question, and he didn’t realise the significance of what he’d asked, or Dimitri’s answer. Instead, he tried to remember the last time he’d played a game with his siblings, and this, in turn, spurred thoughts about what you could learn about the inner workings of a person’s mind based on their domino habits. His sister Joule, he recalled with just the tiniest twinge of homesickness, was a horrible cheat. He could only imagine that had she been here in his place, she likely would have been purposely bumping the table as he set up his pieces and spreading gossip about the other tributes in order to make them hate each other. He noted that Dimitri’s arrangement was far less predictable than his own, and perhaps that was part of what made his mentor such an intriguing example to follow. Zap began to alter his own domino design, diverging from the straight line he’d started out with by doubling back and continuing the creation up and over the lid of the game’s box. His eyes searched the vicinity for more items to add as he worked. “It is kinda relaxing,” Zap admitted. He was surprised when Dimitri asked him a question about his life back home, and for a moment, he wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to it. He racked his brain for an appropriate punchline, but finding nothing, was eventually forced to use honesty instead. “I used to build, I don’t know what you’d call them… inventions, I guess. It sounds stupid, I know, but that’s what my brothers and sister and I do. Did. We’re kind of weird.” Zap shrugged, then added, just in case it made him sound a bit more normal, “I used to have a cat.” He neglected to elaborate on the ‘used to’ part, and instead turned the question back on his mentor. “What about you? What do you do when you’re not like, being famous and awesome and stuff?” Zap asked, genuinely curious. An inventor. He heard it. And maybe, if it came by itself, he would’ve perked more obviously. Unfortunately, he also heard that Zap had brothers and sisters. A horde of Zaps. One cat. Every tribute came with a family, he knew, but it always helped to ignore that. Learning more about Zap was his way of forcing himself into a mental commitment he didn’t usually accept. Dimitri Watts was guilt resistant, not immune. Phew, a question about himself! That was a topic Dimitri generally liked. He grinned toothily, “That never actually stops, you know, that’s something you call a default state. But I get your meaning - think you probably know I rob Capitolites. Er, train their dogs,” he winked exaggeratedly. Dimitri began a second circle around the first decidedly lumpy one, “I try to get back here for all the totally legitimate dog things I can think of because the parties here are just better than they are back home.” At that, he raised his eyes again to look at Zap and noticed the way he was working objects into his domino layout - something Dim was always too lazy to do - and shrugged with mock cluelessness, “Crazy, right?” But he brought himself back to task, trying to make himself remember Amy and how easy it was to push the tributes’ little faces out of his head once they were in the arena and away from him. He needed to make sure he remembered Zap. Something about a cat he said, right? “You had a cat? Never had a cat,” he continued on his second roughly circular domino formation, “Tell me about Whiskers.” Zap’s mentor’s grinning and talking about dogs was far more preferable to his own thinking about what he’d left behind back home. Zap was grateful for the change in subject and listened eagerly as he added a pen and a spoon into the pathway of his creation. “That’s not crazy at all. I love dogs. Do you have your own dog, or do you just live vicariously through Capitolites?” he asked. When the conversation turned back on himself, he bit his lip, debating lying at first since he didn’t want to be seen as unnecessarily gloomy. He focused intently on his domino formation, not making eye contact as he replied, “Yeah, I had a cat. Her name was Spark. Unfortunately, she got herself caught on a downed powerline. Got herself cooked.” He said it with practiced nonchalance, and after a beat, cracked a grin again and added, “I thought she was faking it, but she wasn’t kitten.” He shrugged apologetically, well aware of how groan-worthy his own jokes were. Still, they were better than talking about his feelings or asking existential questions or whatever it was that other people did when they felt like torturing themselves. “Maybe I’ll get a new pet when I get back,” he added, trying to end that unfortunate monologue on a hopeful note. That was...an unfortunate story. But Zap's groan-worthy joke instead earned him another grin from his mentor because Dimitri, as always, was all too happy to move on from the tough subjects. "Hell of a fitting name in the end. Maybe you oughtta go for something like Fuzzy Longandhappylife for your next pet," Dim positioned a few dominoes between his two misshapen circles, adding in a voice just a little too purposefully casually to be perceived that way, "When you get back." He cleared his throat, conscious of his 'casual' overkill, and rushed on to answer Zap's previous question, "I don't have a dog. Lots of work, big commitment...dogs are great but I consider it a service that I get to show those poor Capitol dogs what it's like to be treated like a real dog before they go back to their fashion purses and velvet pillows or whatever the hell." Ensuring that his circles were closed and the dominoes would (as far as he could tell) do as they were supposed to, he abruptly pushed his chair out from under the table with a loud squeal. "Alright! My favorite part," he hovered over top of his formation, wiggling his fingers with anticipation, and then flicked one, watching with interest as the rest followed suit. And then it was over - when it was over, after they all fell, that was his actual favorite part. Dimitri raised his eyes to Zap, "Are you ready?" He could have been talking about Zap's domino formation and if he wasn't looking at Dim's uncharacteristically serious face, maybe Zap would think he was. Dim knew the honest answer - of course he wasn’t ready, who could be? - and he was just interested to see whether the honest answer would be the one he’d give him. “Fuzzy Longandhappylonglife is gonna be a real dog. You’ll have to show me everything you know,” Zap said, in an equally purposefully casual tone. He paused, taking a moment to position one final domino in the concave of the spoon, before adding, “when I get back.” He stood and put himself into position at the end of his creation, readying himself for the moment of truth. He caught Dimitri’s serious face, but he returned the look with a smile - one only slightly tinged with seriousness. “I’m ready as I’ll ever be,” he said honestly. Zap flicked the starting end of his domino line, and watched as they toppled, culminating in a finale that involved a domino landing on a spoon teeter totter, catapulting the final domino into the air. Zap snatched it in mid-fall with a triumphant look and then held it out to his mentor. “Whaddaya know? It’s a lucky one,” he said with a grin. Instinctively, Dimitri took the domino when it was held out to him. He was always a gimme-gimme type. That was impressive. Grinning toothily, he tossed the domino up once and then again as if to replay the finale for himself. The lucky one, he said it was, and Dimitri immediately decided he'd carry it for just that reason but then he turned his eyes to his tribute, ready as he'd ever be, and felt a surge of affection he hadn't been expecting. This kid - Zap - maybe he was smart and crazy enough that he had a real chance but, in the end, he knew odds and luck were all that really mattered. "Here," he flipped the domino off of his thumb like a coin, sending it sailing in the air roughly in Zap's direction. A little high, a little to the right - well, it was close enough, "You need it more than I do." The words didn't sound as difficult to say as they had been. Luck wasn't something the suspicious mentor would give to an anonymous tribute when he could have it for himself instead but the kid wasn't an anonymous tribute. He was Zap Volta, whacked out of his fucking mind and maybe the Victor of the 56th Hunger Games Dimitri’s his way blown out of proportion theory held any water at all. "You might not be completely fucked," he said in a way he hoped sounded reassuring, "We'll see." |