[CG] laughing gas :: players

Instinctively I look to my wrist, but I've never owned a wristwatch. Today is no different. Handy things the privileged get, not orphans turned suicide fighters turned -- I don't even know what I am anymore. Runaway? Stowaway?

Dead?

No, that'd be too easy. The relief I felt on Night One away from Strauss House was like nothing I've ever felt, light as air. Liza had the smarts to run, so I followed suit - just in another direction. Now I'm settling into something in-between carelessness and fear - this place is unfamiliar and I'm waking up in a haze, but at least the past week wasn't a dream. Part of me thinks I'm a prisoner again, but at least I'm here on my own terms. If I'm going to die, I'll have done it my way.

Sort of. Well. As close to my way as I'm ever going to get.

"If I had a watch, they took it from me" I say to the girl on my left, wringing out my arm and starting off with a lie.

I know damn well I didn't come here with a watch, but the less these people know about me the better. Made the mistake of trying to make friends in the last hellhole they took me to, Meredith buried in a graveyard far away from those in the backyard of Strauss House.

She still haunts me. I can feel her in the back of my eyes as I blink away chemically-induced sleep, slipping further away with each passing moment I'm awake.

There's a fogginess in her brain that she can't seem to blink off. Theo's used to the early wake up times- this is something different, something lingering. She tries to ignore it as she talks to the other player, looking her over twice. 

"They...?" Maybe she remembers something Theo doesn't. This girl looks so young, clocking her with the baby face and the big hair making her look even smaller. She checks the other girl's wrists before her own, taking a second to pat her pockets before looking back. Nothing. Empty handed of course, but she would have been more surprised otherwise. 

004. 

District? Her eyes flicker from the other girl's badge to her own - 007. At least it's a lucky number, right? Theo sticks her hands in her pockets as she checks the numbers around her; 002, 009, 013. 

006 sits not too far from her, a blonde boy upright in a bed closer to where she started. Theo waves to 4 without much but a wave - whatever happens, it's best she doesn't check after the young kids. Hell, if that ain't what got her outside of this place; "hey!" She offers a handshake to the boy, "I think you one up'd me." 

Theo motions to her lucky number, thoughts racing quicker than her manners. "Are you from 9 too?" 

The alarm clock sounds different today. Less blaring, more orchestral.

"Five more minutes…"

God, what was in that drink?

Waking up somewhere weird isn't too weird anymore. It's just a consequence of growing up. Or something like that. There's a bright light behind her eyelids and the air smells like strawberries. Ilana groans and stretches and hears her shoulder pop in about three different places, then she blinks across the mattress with all the enthusiasm of a particularly grumpy housecat.

She's never been a morning person.

"You snore." Says the kid beside her.

"Funny," She mutters back into the pillow, "That's exactly what your mom said last night."

She rolls onto her back to stare at the ceiling and the criss-cross of the beams, following them down and around to the television screen and then over to all the other people slowly waking up. There's a heaviness that sticks to her muscles, but she sits up and swings her legs over the side of the bed. There's still enough confidence in her to fuel a football team, there's a reason why she signed up for this, cocky in all the right places - she's always been a go with the flow type person.

"Alright, who's number one?" She calls out, pointing to the little 002 on the front of her suit, because, really? Her? Second? C'mon. "I wanna know who beat me out."

Margaret looked from her cot at the others like she was sizing up a pool of new opponents. A motley of ages, old and young, and she saw a few she was confident she could take. No. 010 though … her fist tautened in time with her jaw.

She’d come to with an aching but that was nothing new. What surprised her however, was how she awoke with no sense of how long she’d been asleep and no idea where she was. She remembered the invitation, a cloud of gas, taste of strawberries, but everything after that was an inky nothingness. The next thing she remembered was waking up here, bones aching, in a large hall. She’d half-expected something worse as she always had; it’d become her survival instinct. But where she thought she’d see a gladiator’s garb or some other twisted attire, her uniform felt pristine on her body, complete with a number at the front and back: 012.

Nothing conspicuous like a 001 and nothing lucky like a 007. A simple twelve, unassuming and plain. Good, she thought. She won her fights in the ring by branding herself the farthest thing from a threat, and Margaret needed that pretense more than ever. She was no longer an invincible girl, but a woman breaking apart at her seams. Even here, as she leaned against her cot, she could feel it: the dull yet gnawing ache in her bones.

She forced herself to breathe.

It'll be fine. She would only have to make sure everyone else broke before she did.

Eugene Hades Riot woke with ease, stretching thoughtfully as he shakes off the effects of the mystique gas they had drugged him with. He felt like he had slept like a fucking log, and had the intention of asking the first official he saw what type of miracle drug that was and how could get some of that shit for himself and those sleepless nights back home. But for now, he had to figure out exactly what sort of situation he had gotten himself into, after all, he had only just left incarceration in district nine for accidentally burning down his childhood high school.

He hadn't meant for the fire to get so out of control, but flames left into the sky and his fat ass wasn't going to be able to do anything about it, so he had run. The fault to an otherwise brilliant plan was that his falcon vision had skipped over the very obvious security surveillance that had ID'ed him and sent his ass to some sort of prison camp in District 9.

So when some dude in a suit had approached him back home, in 4, and promised him a good time, some THICK cash and fame he had leaped at the chance. Did he ask for details? No. Even when they put that shiny contract before him, not one word was read except for the line that read 'participant signature here:' where he doodled his signature and a star next to it.

Rolling to his side, he pushes himself from the cot he had been placed him, adjusting his tracksuit as he slips from his bed, eyeing the people around him. "Yo," he bellows, into the crowd, running a hand through his hair, "that gas was some sweet shit, she knocked me out like the dead. But now I really gotta take a piss, can anyone point in in the direction of the dunny?"

Bright lights and violin music, black uniforms and a sea of beds. Ah, so I wasn't dreaming. Sorin had wondered if he fantasized the whole scenario. A recruit approaching him in the street, offering a once in a life time opportunity to reverse the sins of his father. Sorin had swallowed the ominous feeling in the pit of his stomach and agreed. If it was a scam, he knew he risked being killed or sold off somewhere, but his fate in Three was no paradise in comparison.

Blood warnings painted on his door. They're coming. They demanded money he did not have, and if he did not deliver he would pay in blood instead.

Sorin had cursed into his pillow over and over again at how unfair it all was. All he could feel was hatred toward a father who pampered him. Now he was stranded in a game with rickety beds and horrible jumpsuits. He was a man of taste, yet he could no longer afford to complain about anything that was given to him.

He slid off of his bed and shook the grogginess away. His jumpsuit had a number - 003 - stitched on a label. It was upsetting that their living quarters were so shabby. Sorin had hoped that the Capitol would be more lavish, especially since he was now at their mercy.

There was a complaint to his left. A blonde girl with the number 009 on her uniform. "You'd think rich people could afford to give us a little more attractive gear, no?"

Sorin scoffed lightly. "They can afford it. They're choosing not to."

Because we're victims, aren't we?

Fear carries power in this world.

Staring down the barrel of a gun, sweat dripping down his brow, and the feeling of falling along his skin. A temptation to stay in the blissful sleep of a memory of what he's done. The deal he's made with a devil just to find the missing pieces he's been looking for all along. Desperation makes people weak. Greed becomes a catalyst for the weak. It's why he ended up going to the place, destined to find the pieces of his life that seemed to be missing. A stranger playing a game of death and greed before giving him a single card with a number. A laugh echoing from his lips as the empty sound of a gun fires, shattering the dream as his falling sensation lifts him forward, sitting straight up in a bedframe.

Catching his breath, his eyes search the room around him. A gym's auditorium where beds are stacked up together, lining the walls. Other people of different ages waking up and moving into groups, huddled together like weaklings trying to not seem imposing. The swinging feeling of his feet from the bed as he leans over, lets himself fall to the ground, steadying himself with a confident smile. Finally, he can see the outfit he's fitted into. A black jumpsuit that doesn't quite feel unusual, but he doesn't mind it as he lets out a yawn. The number glistening through to his eyes, until they finally catch up to where he's found himself.

013.

Unlucky 13. Destroyed by radiation and bombs from years ago. Befitting of him to get the number connected to betrayal. Isn't that what his father felt after all of these years, locked in a dangerous situation with the son he was supposed to love? Leonardo loved every second of making his father weak, burning the humanity inside of him until there was nothing left but ruin. Thirteen would be the only warning anyone got. The sound of someone calling for the first game in ten minutes meant there wouldn't be much more time. Other participants with numbers seem to be figuring things out and looking for their own comfort, but he didn't feel like playing prey when there was already too many of them here.

"...But now I really gotta take a piss, can anyone point in in the direction of the dunny?"

017. A snicker comes from his throat as he takes in the larger man who definitely seemed like the type to want to be in control. Defiant in a way, but Leo could only smirk as he decided to speak up. After all, there wasn't much else for him to do. Ten minutes was too long of a wait. Boredom would be the true test of stamina instead of these silly games.

"Go piss in a corner, that'll surely get someone's attention. Or shove one of those pathetic kids out and piss there."

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