Our lances are but straws {aya}, candidate debate thread

i've still got some opinions that i'm willing to claim
i'm gonna carry them around like they're some wicked campaign

"Miss Lenox." A statement. No comment on the weather. Still, Ravi sees no harm in offering the girl a polite smile, a nod in greeting.

"I caught your campaign speech. You are certainly focused on the Hunger Games, aren't you." The remark is more statement than question. "This is what weighs most heavily on your mind, then, is it not?" He peers over his sunglasses, looks her dead in the eye.

"Lack of victors." Each measured syllable hits like hail on the tin roof of the shanty he called home in his childhood. He burned the damned shack down himself once upon a time in a fit of fragility.

He removes his sunglasses, stashes them in the breast pocket of his suit. There is no concealing the danger in his dark eyes, but Ravi has no reason to hide.

"I am curious to hear what you'd do better. Surely you must have followed the Games closely. What criticisms do you have of our tributes that could be made right by — what was it you called for? Stacks of money?"

Ravi La Torre knew as well as anyone — better, even, than anyone else — that the Hunger Games could not be won by sheer economic willpower. All the money in the world could not buy a crown, would prevent hubris from spiraling into stupid. Ultimately, it would have cost the La Torres less had Ravi simply taken a torch to it himself.

i'm not a doctor but i'll sell you an itch
i could apologize but then a bit more nothing exists

He quirks an eyebrow.

"I have found that throwing money at a problem always seems like the most viable solution to those who have none." Now sitting on a fortune with no heir, Mr. La Torre is perhaps the man most qualified to make that judgement call. An endless — endless — supply of money poured right into the Games, and what did it get him? A hundred grand left over to send in as it was — boast money, brag money, fuck-you money — and what was there to show for it?

A funeral pyre for District Two trash and a marine flare burned into his Little Gun's forehead.

A rabbit sensing danger — or perhaps a deer too stock-still to do so — Rubia Lennox backpedals, denouncing her speech as ridiculous. Fine. That saves Ravi a great deal of work.

He chortles, but the breathy laugh is insincere as ever. "Others may accuse a candidate who abandons her campaign promises halfway through the election of being disingenuous."

This could only be good news for Ravi. "It is now days before the election and all you have done so far is renounced your original platform. Indulge my curiosity: why do you think that anyone would vote for you?"