thecircus | Test Drive Meme

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test drive meme

Test Drive Meme

Welcome new Tributes!

The Capitol has gathered a good crop of you at once, and to help morale, and to ease you into Capitol society they are throwing a banquet, just for those who work with the Games. Stylists, Escorts, mentors, a few of the Capitol elite, and of course, you all, the Tributes.

Instead of waking up in the normal way, new Tributes awake in lush beds, in a very posh ski lodge. Elegant but simple clothes are laid out for them, in a warm grey, and a note to come down as soon as they are ready. And if they linger too long, a peacekeeper appears to escort them down.

Those from the Capitol, are brought in on chartered party buses, one for each District, which are about as posh as a bus can get. It's a roughly 45 minute drive, well out of the Capitol's city limits.

Although the party is "mellow" by Capitol standards, it is still pretty damn extravagant. Alcohol flows freely, and banquet tables are kept fully stocked by silent avoxes. The whole ski lodge has been cleared out, and guest can hit up an ice skating rink, or pick out a swim suit and jumped into the huge, natural hot springs tubs.

As the night drags on, however, all does not go as planned. Half way through the night, there is a tremendous roar, and the hotel is plunged into pitch blackness. There is chaos for roughly 10 minutes, till low power emergency lights flicker on. However the generators don't have the power to keep the heater going.

A first aid station is set up, and the avoxes start pulling in blankets to the main lobby, lighting a fire in the fireplace and doing what they can to keep everyone warm. It is quickly communicated that there was an avalanche, and although the hotel remains in good shape, the power and the road to the Capitol has been cut out.

It's going to be a long night.

OOC INFORMATION

Welcome to the test drive meme for

thegames!

We are both a jamjar and a Hunger Games AU character game. You can choose to either have your character ported in from their world or AU them into Panem. Detailed knowledge of the Hunger Games is not required. We accept just about any character and character type that we can work into the world, including AUs, OCs, and up to 3 multiples (however, each versions of a character must be significantly different from the others.)

All the information you need can be found in this post, which can always be found at the top of the mod account. And if you don't find something you need, the FAQ is here, so drop us a line!

Welcome, and may the odds be ever in your favor!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

The blackout provides something, finally, of interest. The hours before that had revealed little to Sherlock, and in an attempt to mitigate his frustration he had retreated further and further into boredom. He had no desire to speak to a dozen other people who were in exactly the same situation as he was; he really doubted they’d be interesting or useful. A decision made after only cursory observation, but he decided to trust it all the same.

So when the blackout hits, he’s ready for action. He weaves himself around the panicked bodies in the banquet hall, ending up in the halls. Sherlock hugs the walls, trying to get a better sense of the place. Unfortunately, he’s rather caught up in what he’s doing, and at some point is bound to stop paying attention to any motion coming towards him.

“Honestly. Doesn’t anyone listen to where they’re going?”

Joan's first thought when the lights go out is to find Sherlock and John. They're in the darkness, and there's no power, which probably means that the cameras that watch them everywhere 24/7 are most likely useless. It might be an opportunity, and Joan doesn't want to let it go.

She hasn't seen the detective and his Watson in the main areas, though, so she makes her way into the halls to try to find their rooms. She's aware that there's someone in the hall ahead - she can hear them move, hear them breathe.

Then she hears him speak. And stops dead. Stops breathing.

No.

"...Sherlock?"

He's decidedly less surprised by her presence that she is by his. (Of course, he has no reason to be otherwise.) So he straightens up, takes a step back, and starts off speaking very fast. "Watson--it's about time. I was sure we'd already been over the virtues of punctuality."

...yeah, it's him. She rolls her eyes in the dark.

"Punctuality," she repeats. "Clearly you have no idea where you are or what's going on. And considering I've been here for seven months, you're the one who's been less than punctual."

Well, yes. He does have no idea what's going on, but she doesn't have to call him out on it. That's just adding salt to the wound, really. The seven months part of her statement is more startling, and Sherlock finds himself wishing the lights would come back on. Voices don't age, not the same way faces and expressions do-- not as noticeably, not as quickly. He wants verification, really wants answers, and most of all doesn't want to believe what she's said is true.

So he goes for the simplest answer. "It's a panopticon. Quite obviously, actually."

She's taken aback by that for a moment. He's not wrong, if you consider the Capitol to be the watchtower in the middle of a panopticon. Certainly it would have the same effect, constant surveillance wearing down on the observed.

"Basically." She frowns, something occurring to her. He hasn't been acting like she's been gone. "Wait...have I been missing?"

He thinks he should be offended by that, really. If she had been missing for seven months--if she had been missing at all--does she honestly think he wouldn't have found her? And it wouldn't have taken him the better part of a year to do so. He does think, briefly, that one's perception of time can be thoroughly manipulated (even if Irene was fake, the fabrication was based on what could have been true). He'd like to think that Watson's too competent for that kind of manipulation, but he can't rule anything out at this point. Not when so little of this adds up.

"You might've gone out for groceries," he says, flippantly. "I hadn't bothered to check for an hour or so."

That's interesting. She files the information away, since there are more important things to discuss now than the finer points of who the Capitol kidnaps and when and why. She goes back a step.

"Okay, panopticon with electronic surveillance. Is there anything else you've been able to figure out?"

"They've been using more energy that is necessarily efficient." That much is obvious, considering how many people were in the lodge and the sorts of amenities being provided to them. "But I doubt the blackout was due to a simple power surge. Any system that can so neatly control the environment would have been designed to overcompensate for the amount of power it required."

Of course, now that the system is offline it's quickly becoming bitingly cold. One would think they could have provided coats along with everything else.

"Beyond that the company has been vastly unhelpful." Which means he hasn't even scratched the surface of the larger issues.

"This place was built on hedonistic excess," she says. "Hence the power. I'm not sure what caused the blackout, but you're right, it would have had to have been something more than just an overload."

He says the company has been unhelpful, which makes Joan suspect he hasn't actually been talking to anyone. She's not overly surprised, considering the fact that all this must be overloading his investigative drive.

"You've been brought here for a televised fight to the death. We all have."

Edited 2014-01-15 19:45 (UTC)

Well, that's a sobering thought. He makes a thoughtful noise, nothing more than a hum.

"And you're still here, these months later. See, being able to defend yourself is of the highest importance."

Even he can't keep up the cavalier attitude, however.

"Watching dozens freeze to death wouldn't make for particularly engaging entertainment."

"The fight isn't now. This is just a party. They throw a lot of parties."

She takes a breath before continuing.

"Every couple months they put us all in a closed arena and the last person standing wins. I've done it twice. And I died both times."

"I was under the impression that one could only die once, Watson."

She's supposed to make sense. That's the only way this works. She can correct him, and be right when he isn't, but it has to be based on something understandable.

She wishes all this made sense, more than he could know.

"Not here, apparently. When you die in the Arena? They bring you back to life."

It's the kind of thing that does affect him, somewhere deep down where most people can't see. Death, that is. He can't imagine her dying, can't imagine what he'd do if she was dead. It's beyond unthinkable, and distracts him for a moment from the impossibility of what she's just said.

"Know that I prefer you alive, Watson. And I'd like you to say that way."

"I would hope so." It's a gentle tease. She knows he doesn't want anything to happen to her. He'd thrown tennis balls at her to make that point once, not to mention how he reacted after finding out Moriarty had "kidnapped" her briefly.

"I'm alive. I don't even have scars."

She reaches out in the dark toward where she thinks his arm would be.

He's not quite sure what to say to that. Undoubtedly something about scars not always being visible, or even physical. His impression of this world is slowly building itself into something coherent--they've broken time, science, and mortality itself, but at least now that he knows that he can begin to understand.

He doesn't move away from Watson's touch, grateful on some level to have additional evidence of her physical presence. Talking to a darkened hallway and her voice is not most people's definition of reassuring.

"I don't suppose your medical expertise have given you any insights into how our illustrious captors have accomplished any of this."

He doesn't pull away when she touches him, and she leaves her hand on his arm. She meant to reassure him, but it's reassuring for her, too, knowing he's here. Actually here. The Capitol has used his image and his voice on more than one occasion to torture her in the Arenas, so knowing this isn't just another voice, another trick, is important.

"No," she admits. "It's far beyond what I even know is possible. The last arena..."

The last arena she had been torn apart by vicious velociraptors, but she swallows that. It's a whole 'nother can of worms, the things they're able to create here, and she doesn't want to upset him further with details of what happened.

"There was no way I can conceive of that I could have come back, much less without any sort of scarring. But I did."

Scarring. It's the second time she's mentioned it, and his mind presents him with a list of possible implications, unbidden. He supposes it doesn't actually matter how it happened; if the information becomes relevant she'll tell him. But as it stands it's a bit of a Schrodinger situation-- as though every possibility had actually occurred, because he doesn't know the one that did.

"Could be an elaborate ruse. Some type of incredibly advanced virtual reality," he says, stressing the last two words with a bit of distaste. "Of course, it would seem real until you escaped it. But the multiple lives concept would be a bit cliched, in that case."

"It could be entirely in our heads somehow," she agrees. "But there's no way to prove or disprove that, so it's not very helpful. And even if we knew how they were doing it, how they were putting us back together and bringing us back to life, I'm not sure it would help us."

"There's only one thing for it," he decides after a moment. "We have to find a flaw in the cage, or the program, or whatever this ends up being."

She nods slowly in the dark. Sherlock...John's Sherlock...hasn't been looking at it in that way, as far as she knows. Not while she's been here at least.

"There must be one."

"Of course there is," he says immediately. It wouldn't have been his suggestion otherwise. In his experience, even the smartest of sociopaths slips up at least once. It's statistically impossible for it to be otherwise.

"The only thing for it is to find said weakness, and then exploit it."

"There's a rebellion," she says. "The Capitol has been ruthless in stomping out opposition, which of course just made it grow stronger. I have some friends who are involved. Maybe they can help."

It's not very charitable, but his first thought is that the rebellion might provide a decent cover while he tries to get something significant done. He doesn't voice this opinion, however, just nods thoughtfully before he realizes that they're still standing in the dark.

"If their power was absolute, they'd have no need. So that may be one thing in our favor, already."

Sherlock Holmes | Elementary | Hallways

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