[89th] The Reaping - District 7 | Hunger Games: The RPG

gm bourgeois decadence [aya]
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"GUNNERRRRR~"

[89th] The Reaping - District 7 Sept 24, 2021 23:08:04 GMT -5

Post by gm bourgeois decadence [aya] on Sept 24, 2021 23:08:04 GMT -5

"It is time," the Escort said as they stood over the impatient people of the District, "To once again send two of our own children to the Capitol to compete in the Hunger Games. Let us begin the Reaping!"

They did not look to see the reaction of his district before reaching into the glass ball that held the names of the female children. "First up," they announced, pulling out a slip of paper. They unfolded it and read out to the crowd, "Sasha Dupree!" They then reached into the other ball. "Whiskey Finch!"

OOC- RPing is allowed. If you wish to volunteer, let the tribute post first either accepting or stepping down from their place for volunteers, and then post. If the tribute doesn't reply by Tuesday, September 28th, a staff member will post saying that volunteering is open. Please do not post until you see this staff message. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVE.

Tributes, please do not make your acceptance or denial of your spot in character; instead, please leave an ooc note at the end of your post stating whether they accept or are stepping down for volunteers.

{characters}

certified kindergartener
stranded in "beach" "city"
leader of the crystal gems

pogue
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Is she trying to interrupt our henna session?

[89th] The Reaping - District 7 Sept 27, 2021 23:21:49 GMT -5

Post by pogue on Sept 27, 2021 23:21:49 GMT -5

There's one foot in the grave by the time he gets to the Town Square, permanent scowl written on his face and set in stone cold expression. He narrows blue eyes at the Peacekeeper that grasps his wrist a little too tight for comfort, slamming his thumb down into the ink and glancing up at him through his helmet. Whiskey wonders if it's the same Peacekeeper that had cracked the right side of his head with the butt of his gun just days prior, after an empty fist had found its way into the man's stomach and a steel tipped boot between the legs. Wiz cocks his head to the side, feels the blood swell up against the welt that sits on his skin and narrows his gaze, snake eyes staring into the darkened shadows of his helmet.

"Get moving." The man finally says, jerking his thumb towards the group of seventeen year olds that stand clustered together, shifting nervously in their own mortality. Or what? Whiskey wants to say, can feel the words gathering on the tip of his tongue before Glass slams a fist into the purple and black flower of a bruise that litters his side. He gasps, words lost to the Summer air before he throws her a glare and moves towards others his age.

It's all a lot of the same on reaping day, as he's come to discover. Grin and bear it and shift along with the crowd, hear a name called and then another and listen to the screams and sobs of people he'd never be punished with knowing. And on his seventeenth year it's just as he's expected it: loud and silent at the exact same time. He glances over towards Glass, pulls an invisible cigarette up to his lips to let her know where he'll be after the reaping and smirks, shifting his fingers until he is motioning for Glass to bring a lighter with her once this is all over.

Y'know what they say about playing with fire?

It's a whole lot of that, and it comes faster than he ever would have expected.

Finch's are better off ghosts, ever since ol' one-eye Boone took a spill during the 5th Games their family had shifted into the shadows and learned what it meant to be forgotten, stolen the heart and valor and riches of every sucker that stepped into a broken backdoor deal and reveled in absent victories. Now, as every eye shifts towards him all at once, Whiskey Finch is left looking like a ghost that has been spotted for the first time in a million years.

Diamond white, pale, mouth half open as he stands with his hand still mimicking the motion of flicking a lighter. He feels himself burning.

"You've got to be fucking me-" He mutters under poisoned breaths, only snapping to it again when men in white grasp his forearms and drag him up towards the stage. They practically throw him onto the stage like a pile of scraps to rats, and he's tripping over legs too weak to stand as he stumbles forwards onto his knees, feels wood and splinter dig into calloused palms.

That's when it hits: the reality, the wave, the fire and the smoke. And then, the anger.

He dusts off dirt and dust as he stands again, helped over to his spot by an escort that only cares about what the cameras show. Snake eyes stare out into a crowd that will be better off when he's gone, every gaze broken as they refuse to stare back at him. He wonders if this is how everyone else before him had felt, how Aspen Peake and Reece Jackson and every other sorry fucker had felt as they'd realized they were never coming home again. No one cries for him.

"Well, I think we have an incredible set of tributes for these Games, my my!"

An escort's voice booms out next to him and Wiz feels his teeth nearly shatter as he grinds them together, shifts his gaze over towards the sorry fucker in neon green and draws in a toxic breath.

"Wanna know what I think?"

Whiskey says it in half a smoker's breath, all drawn out and slow and laced with every indignity he'd ever muttered in his seventeen short years. The escort stops mid-sentence, purple lipstick smeared against lips that hang open in surprise at his words. She stammers, chews on words that are better left unsaid. Silence seeps the veins of the crowd, in between every hushed murmur and cut whisper and for a moment,

for the briefest of moments,

all Whiskey can hear is his own heartbeat, hammering in hollow chest and counting down his last moments as a ghost in Seven. Cameras zoom and lens focus, a million digital eyes rest on the soul of a dead boy as he sews together everything his Father taught him in white-knuckled fist and refracted through every empty bottle cooking in the sunlight.

"I think..."

He's all white with fury and red with malice when the words finally stopped, a string of obscenities woven so thoroughly thick that they could keep any poor man warm on even the coldest of nights. Wiz smirks, yellowed teeth shining like gold in the sunlight and cocks his head as the escort stammers for words against the microphone, shocked silence grasping the crowd and drawing out every last breath they've ever had.

"Chin up." He mutters as he stares, "Here. I'll even help you look better-" He scrapes spit and phlegm up from the back of his throat, riddled with cigarette ash and alcohol matching his namesake, feels it sit on the edge of his tongue as he pulls his head back to spit it forwards.

Play with fire, you get burned. A thousand digital eyes focus in on him as the cameras catch a Peacekeeper balancing out the welts on his head, cracking the side of Whiskey's skull with the butt of his gun.

He folds, he falls.

[Whiskey accepts]

[trib wall (PLZ DONT DO ME DIRTY AYA PLEASEEE)]

Last Edit: Sept 27, 2021 23:22:33 GMT -5 by pogue

[ retro gm ] angel lí ✨
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bloomtodeath

[89th] The Reaping - District 7 Sept 28, 2021 0:13:27 GMT -5

Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on Sept 28, 2021 0:13:27 GMT -5

f i n c h .

where did you go?
i should know, but it's cold
and i don't wanna be lonely
so show me the way home

I ain't got words of my own but I've got all of Whiskeys, even before he says them. It's why I loiter near him at all times, especially on reaping day. He should take a page out of my book and shut the fuck up. But where I've got silence, my brother's got nothing but rage.

Beep.

FINCH, WHISKEY. 17.

Too much of it. Far too much. He threatens to detonate and I diffuse. I feel the heat of his anger before I see it in the way his eyes narrow and his free hand clenches, curling my own fist up and jabbing him in the side as they take my finger and scan me in.

Beep.

FINCH, GLASS. 15.

The Keeper smirks, the same reaction every damn year. We're a fuckin' sorry bunch and he knows it, I can read his thoughts like I can Wiz's. "What kind of parents--?" and the question is already answered in our names. An alcoholic and a woman with no backbone.

My brother just glares at me and I glare back. Those blood smears on paper would tell you we're related but you wouldn't need to check. We've got the same frown, sour and bored. Thing is my communication ends there, save for a middle finger thrown up as he walks to his side of the slaughtering pen. But Wiz, he's got too much to say for his own damn good.

If he wants another lump on his head, who am I to stop him?

So I loiter, biting my nails and kicking up dirt in boots that are four sizes too big for me and still pinch my toes anyway. Found them in the back of Pa's closet, the drunk bastard passed out on the couch downstairs, amongst things I know shouldn't be housed in a place where Whiskey Finch lives. Hunting's not allowed but we do it anyway - knives, though. Not---

There's a crackling of a voice that shakes me out of the closet and back into the square, looking over at Whiskey acting the fool as usual. He wants a smoke, didn't even bring his own lighter. Fuck-head, I frown and roll my eyes but clutch the lighter buried deep in my coat pocket regardless. He don't deserve it, but every kid under nineteen in this shit hole deserves a smoke on reaping day. Even my shit-head brother.

They call a girl's name and there's Maisy Dupree with flowers in her hair crying her fuckin' eyes out. I didn't even think she liked her sister, but I guess this day brings everyone's bullshit out into the open. She always looks like she's one piece of bad news away from crying, even on her birthday, so figures she'd start weeping like a kid when her sister's name is called. I can't stand this train-wreck, lookin' back over to Wiz who's still motioning for a smoke.

I glare, Yeah yeah yeah. I get it. Roll my eyes, think about giving him the middle finger, and when they come back down my jaw falls with them.

"Whiskey Finch!"

Rigged, I think.

And then, ever so quietly --

"Shit."

It's the first thing I've said in I don't know how long. I don't remember. I can't. Because for a moment I forgot who I was, and by the time I realise who I am and what I've done and what's happening it's too late.

But nobody heard me. Not Wiz. Not anyone. It was so quiet it might as well have been a breath, but the way all the girls around me are lookin' at me like I'm some kind of freak -- I might as well have screamed.

Where I don't have words, my brother has rage, and he lets them have it.

"Whiskey."

But again, there's no sound but his rage -- and all I can do is stare our same, shared scowl and smile ever so slightly when his spit lands on the escort's face and the gun cracks something bloody on the side of his head.

Guess he really wanted the matching set after all.

table by elegant !

Last Edit: Sept 28, 2021 16:07:17 GMT -5 by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨

“and men said that the blood of the stars flowed in her veins.”

🌱 kaitlin.
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aspiring beam of light

[89th] The Reaping - District 7 Sept 28, 2021 9:26:36 GMT -5

Post by 🌱 kaitlin. on Sept 28, 2021 9:26:36 GMT -5

They call her name.

Sasha starts to cry. She doesn't notice at first.

Standing in the crowd, her name being called, she's thinking about Maisy. She's trying to remember the last place that she saw her sister, hands trembling and shaking as the figures standing next to her realize who their neighbor is and slowly start to back away—blonde her, wringing her hands over and over around the stems of daffodils she collected especially because she knows that Maisy likes to paint them, and these ones had funny little speckles on them that she thought for sure her twin would love. Tighter, she feels her nails digging into her palms, wrapped all the way around.

Violence and flowers.

If you look closely, a sliver of blood drip, drip, drips down the stem and gets caught at the base of a petal.

"Maisy?" she says out loud now, questioning. "Maisy?"

Sasha thinks about standing at a picnic for a dead girl, laughing because her sister is so toe-curlingly morbid she didn't even think twice about a tea party in a graveyard. She thinks about curling her palm around her sisters, pulling her through a meadow they're supposed to be picking wildflowers from down towards the creek just so that she could push Maisy in and pretend to be angry when she pulls Sasha right down with her. She looks around again, voice sharp. "Maisy?" and she sees someone look at her funny so she snaps at them, literally steps forward and into their space and says "Where the fuck is Maisy?" because she knows that they know.

But she can't hear anything they say back.

Keepers push through, eyes locked onto who they know is the girl reaped now, and a sea of kids parts like it's nothing. Like death is the easiest thing to push forward. And there's just—ringing, in her ears. She doesn't look around desperately, but it feels like she does, feels like she looks everywhere

Sasha can't remember the last time they didn't come to the reaping hand in hand. She doesn't even remember deciding that she wasn't going to wait for Maisy this morning.

She doesn't know when she stopped trying to remind her sister that she's there for her, no matter what, that whatever she asks of her, Sasha is going to make happen. She doesn't know when she decided that she was going to stop telling her to keep her chin up when she scrapes the fuck out of her knees and she would turn into a useless pile of broken until Sasha told her she was fine. The world has always been so hell-bent on loving Sasha, no matter what a cruel and unkind thing she did that week, and some time or another Sasha started running out of apologies to give Maisy for it.

Peacekeepers hands wrapped around her bicep, Sasha thinks her sister probably deserved better.

[ sasha accepts d7f ]

Last Edit: Oct 4, 2021 2:09:03 GMT -5 by 🌱 kaitlin.

what are men to rocks and mountains?

a haunted house.

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[89th] The Reaping - District 7 Oct 4, 2021 18:11:59 GMT -5

Post by [ retro gm ] angel lí ✨ on Oct 4, 2021 18:11:59 GMT -5

maisy dupree ;

Mom put flowers in my hair this morning.

And you might think that quaint or original, but we work in a flower shop. It's nothing special, something she used to do when my sister and I were children. I don't care for it much, thinking it silly. Something for little girls. But instead of protesting I just crumpled, letting Mom do it because it makes her happy and she needs all the light she can get on a day like today.

I can't imagine giving birth, russian roulette in this country, then being told it's twins. One pistol, two gunshots, two bullets.

"Sasha Dupree!"

It hits me right in the chest, my sternum splintering into a thousand little pieces. There's flowers in my hair and my sister isn't by my side. I can't hold her close. I haven't been able to do so much as look at her, let alone touch her, clutch her hand, pull her toward my chest like we were in the womb. My fault, my fault, Maisy so depressed and Sasha so over it. Somehow this is my fault. Somehow she knows it. Everyone does.

The petals begin to fall from my hair as we start crying -- I can't see her in the crowd, through my blurry grief-stricken world, but I know she's crying too. Somehow I just know, the way everyone knows it's my fault she's reaped. That it's my fault she's going to die.

I wonder if Sasha remembers me saying three years ago "If it's you, I'll go instead."

I don't think she does. But I remember her scoffing and telling me not to be ridiculous. She did a lot of that, looking down on me. Can't half blame her, I can barely get out of bed most days.

But I remember croaking back "I'm serious," she just sighed and walked away.

And now it's her, and I'm a fucking coward, bawling my eyes out silently as I curl in on myself and keep my head down. She's shrieking and crying and calling out for my name and I realise that perhaps she does remember, of course she does. Who could forget a promise like that in this world?

I pretend I don't, staring at the concrete and hiding the thick tears that pool down my face and avoiding the glare from Glass Finch who sits at the back of my class and throws spitballs into my hair. It's her brother next and I almost laugh but a sob blocks its escape, wanting to badly to call out and knowing I don't have near enough spine to let out anything more than a softy whispered "Here."

I'm here.

Is it too late to--?

But then the doors shut, Whiskey Finch is smacked over the head with a Keeper baton, and its over.

I'm still here, refusing to move out of place, flowers in my hair. And I'm still a spineless coward who let her sister die.