dead end drive [seven]
Jun 10, 2021 10:02:20 GMT -5
Post by gamemaker 💀 hades lochlan on Jun 10, 2021 10:02:20 GMT -5
MACKENZIE PRYCE "I'll handle the introductions."It was a formality, an attempt at being polite. Of course he was going to handle introductions: he had pretty much every year since he won. But with Violet around, things were more complicated than ever, and at least now Jacinta had a valid excuse, he supposed. Even if- or perhaps especially because- one of this year's tributes was yet again tied to Jaci. And she was still reeling from the near miss of last games. He kissed his daughter on the forehead while she played with a wooden toy, kissed Jaci on the cheek. "Be back soon." It wouldn't ever be easier. He wished he'd had the forethought to smoke ahead of time, but alas, it looked like he was stuck with coffee until they touched down in the Capitol. He made a mental note to go and find Nico as soon as they unpacked, tossing in a dollop or two of bourbon and pretending to not notice how tired he looked in his reflection of the cupboard's glass door. Fuck, he thought, I'm getting old. Not in the traditional sense; late-twenties was hardly a feat or an accomplishment. All it was ever proof of was that a person had avoided the Games, but Mackenzie hadn't avoided the Games. He'd survived them. Which meant when he said he was getting old, meant that he'd aged mentally to the point of exhaustion. And for what? He hadn't been a successful mentor a single time, his daughter cried every time he held her, his girlfriend was a barely-tangible ghost at the best of times and he could only imagine that was going to be worse in the days to come, his sister hadn't spoken to him since she'd moved out, his mom's cough was getting worse- there wasn't much that was going right for Mackenzie those days. And yet. And fucking yet, he still cared. And he still felt like it was his ridiculously overbearing responsibility to try and save these kids, because they didn't ask for it anymore than he had. Both of them were about as good as a mentor from Seven could hope for, meaning they both looked like they could be impressive by way of brute strength, but they both had a quiet vacancy between their eyes that most from Seven had. They weren't a particularly studious bunch, unless they went to Abadeer or Eden, and even then it was a craps shoot. Kyler had been a student at Abadeer and that boy couldn't figure his way out of a wet paper sack. He took a seat across from them, a long and exaggerated pause as he struggled to order his scattered thoughts. They were afraid. They should have been. Of the games, of each other, and of Mackenzie himself. He remembered a part of him hating Jacinta at this point, because she held so much power over his survival. One mistake, one cross remark, and he was dead. One clever observation, or good marketing opportunity, and he was sponsored something like antivenom that would save his life. It was terrifying, and he had trust issues. It was hard not to in a world like this one. "I'll be honest right out of the gate: there is no secret to survival. There's no trick. It's mostly luck and being marketable, with a bit of real-time strategy on your part in the arena, and a bit of relief from the sponsors I gather for you both." He had a headache. "We are treated like Careers by proxy, but we aren't careers. Which means we don't have the training of an actual career, but we also lose the sympathy vote of being an underdog. The first step is making you both memorable, which is going to make you feel ridiculous and angry and less human, but it is necessary if you want to live." He looked them over, and decided that they easily could have stamped themselves into the minds of the Capitolites. Aspen was pretty, and looked confident and capable, and the close proximity to past victors or tributes was always a slight boost in sponsorship availability, at the very least. The boy, Reece, had a homegrown charm, unpolished and rugged in a way that would surely make the tweens of the world go insane for him. He was the type of boy people wanted to hear stories from, but Mackenzie couldn't tell yet if the boy knew that or not. He already had potential strategies for both of them, but he decided to wait until he was one-on-one with them before he went any further. One of them could have potentially killed the other, after all. Stranger things had happened. A legacy and a bad boy. He could work with that- he'd been forced to work with a lot less. "And it might be worthless to you, but you both have my word that I'll do everything in my power to get one of you back home. Okay?" At some capacity, he knew that was never enough. One person out of the two of them would never be enough- those weren't chances any sane person would willingly take. But it was the best he could have ever hoped to offer to them, and he hoped they understood it. Or, at the very least, that they didn't hold it against him. |
