welcome to the show! [7th Pre-Games Party]

The live feed from the train journeys plays to an empty room. She stopped watching twenty minutes ago, the sights of teenage dejection too depressing to stomach.

There’s something that just feels so inherently evil about it all.

But she’s not here to have a conscience. Wolfgang would beat her to a pulp if she so much as mentioned the way her pulse speeds up every time they zoom in on the wide-eyed face of the young girl from District Ten.

So instead of torturing herself further, Poppy stands in her ensuite, splashing her face with running water every thirty seconds. When she thinks back to a week earlier – already a lifetime ago – she feels lighter. She sees herself as a glitter ball suspended in the middle of the third party of the week. Just another girl struggling to hold onto her youth, naive and carefree and right where she’s supposed to be.

For now, that life seems so far away, but it’s just a freeze frame. In another week her internship will be over and she’ll be back home, freedom pumping in her veins.

And why should she be the only one?

She isn’t stupid. She knows she’s powerless to stop the out-of-control joyride she’s been made the conductor of. But the reality is that there are twenty-three children stuck in train carriages who will never know the highs and lows of the rest of their adolescence, and that doesn’t feel fair.

Well, surely she can do something about that.

She turns off the tap and walks back into her bedroom, reaches for the phone on her bedside table and punches in the only phone number saved into the address book.

~~~~~~~

They dress her in a fuschia dress and six-inch heels, and she feels as good as new. The three pills she swallowed half an hour ago have dispersed into her bloodstream, and there’s a gentle buzzing in her head that seems to drown out the sound of her tachycardia. By the time she walks through the entrance of the Colosseum, she can hardly remember what she was ever worried about.

Uniformed soldiers stand stoically around the perimeter of the sandpit, eyeing the tributes as they emerge from their holding cells warily. The vibes are at an all-time low, but if there’s one thing Poppy knows how to do, it’s revive a dying party.

If this is what she was brought in to do, then she’ll give them the best god damn send-off they’ve ever seen.

“Welcome, everyone! Thank you all for joining me tonight! I’m so honoured to be here to make your acquaintance. In an attempt to showcase the wonderful offerings of the Capitol and give you the chance to get to know each other a little better, your Gamemakers have graciously opened up the Arena early for an exclusive soiree!”

Her effervescence comes to a peak, bubbling over like a kettle that’s been left to boil for too long. The crescendo of music fills the Colosseum, challenging the tributes’ silent protests, and Poppy raises her champagne flute to the twenty-four pairs of eyes staring blankly back at her.

“Let the party begin!”

hi friends! so excited to present you all with this opportunity to thread amongst your characters, as up until now, tributes have had limited opportunities to interact with each other prior to the games starting. whilst the training centre and alliances have not yet been established in this timeline, we would like for this event to be a precursor to such future developments. feel free to use this thread as an opportunity to explore pre-games tribute interactions and the emotional fallout of them when the games commence!

IC wise, the Gamemakers have decided to throw a party for the tributes to give them one last night of freedom – one last chance to just be kids and be seen as more than prisoners. the “party” is taking place the night before the games in the lower sand bottom of the colosseum. whilst the event is mandatory for tributes IC and the only opportunity they will have for pre-games interactions outside of the trains, it is not mandatory for posting OOC. however, in line with the themes of audience-based popularity we are exploring these games, participation in this thread has the potential for IC incentives, as mentioned in the information threads here!