District Thirteen [Friday-Saturday, Fandom Time]
With the arrival of the Fandom crew, the importance of getting to the Capitol became clear to Katniss. And it was no longer enough to lie in a bed and allow her stitches to heal. Not after seeing that Peeta had made the flowers for Finnick and Annie's cake. Not after what had happened to Peeta in the first place.
If they were storming the Capitol, Katniss was coming with them.
And so twenty-four needle jabs into her ribcage, and a painful, burning sleepless night later, Katniss was out at training before anyone else was.
Deep in heart of Thirteen was a place that all the soldiers just called the Block, but Katniss' tattoo for the day told her it was SSC, short for Simulated Street Combat. It was a Capitol street, tricked with bombs, gas explosions, and gunfire.
Here was where she -- and her friends -- would figure out if they were prepared for the Capitol.
Anakin Anakin looked distinctly unexcited about the gas mask as he glanced at the equipment laid out for them before they ran the course. He hadn't worn a mask of any kind since he'd stopped being Vader and had really preferred it that way.
Firekeeper Some people might be spending the time before they were supposed to run through the exercise stretching or otherwise warming up.
...Those people were not wolves. The way Firekeeper and Blind Seer saw it, in actual combat there would be no time for such things, so why bother now?
And so it was with a mixture of tension and curiosity that they stood, waiting to see what they would be asked to do.
Karla Karla was stretching, doing her level best to ignore what everyone else back home would say (shout scream bluster fuss) if they knew she was attempting to do this.
Raven would scold and worry about her. Lucivar would laugh and fling her over his shoulder to lock her in her room until she came to her senses. Jaenelle would remind her that she would probably be a better help with the medics. Saetan would lecture her about her responsibilities to her people. Julian would turn bright red and sputter. Morton would just go pale and say "No," with no more elaboration.
...She wasn't doing well at this 'ignoring' plan, was she?
Warren
Warren's stretching mostly involved his legs, since he predicted that running today's course was going to involve a lot of running. Still, whenever he could find the space, there was the occasional careful stretching of his wings, too. Simulations and training? They just seemed like more of what he'd been asking for back in Kaeleer. But with more fake gunfire.
Gabrielle Stretching and warmups weren't for Gabrielle -- not really, anyway. Not when she was in earnest, even if she joked around about it sometimes.
Having been given the option to join her friends in storming the Capitol, and given the cause in which they'd be doing it, she hadn't thought twice about volunteering to join the group. There was just -- as she looked over the equipment they'd been given -- one problem.
"Excuse me," she called over to the nearest soldier, frowning at the firearm laid out with the protective vest and gas mask. "Just a quick question -- do I have to use this?"
Boggs The soldier looked puzzled at the question, but Boggs, who was supervising, called over, "Yes, Soldier. You have to use that. You don't get a bow like the Mockingjay."
Gabrielle of Poteidaia Gabrielle frowned, partly at being called a soldier, because this whole idea was sitting less comfortably with her the more she heard that, but mostly at how he made it sound like she didn't have a choice.
"This is a killing weapon," she answered, and no, she hadn't actually touched it yet. "I can't use this."
Wesley
Wesley ran through three times. The first time, he stumbled, as he was wont to do, and ended up triggering the release of the gas. He scrambled for his gas mask, but the strap had gotten tangled in his pocket, and... well. The whole thing ended in him feigning a very uncoordinated and very dramatic death.
The second time, he was determined to do better, and not to be distracted by silly things like knots in his gas mask strap. (He checked it twice to verify that it was, in fact, untangled before running the course.) However, that didn't sto him from being his typical uncoordinated self, and he managed to set off not one but two land mines in a single fall. Once again, he had to pretend to die, although this death was distinctly less flashy given that he was already on the ground.
Finally, he ran it one last time. Although he looked ridiculous, leaping around to avoid stepping on anything suspicious, he managed to get the job done. Finally. He hoped privately that none of those three attempts had been too heavily monitored, because, well. He did rather want to be permitted to go into battle, and that hadn't exactly been an exemplary model just now.
Firekeeper The Simulated Street Combat course reminded Firekeeper of Angua's tracking class back in Fandom. She was definitely grateful for the experience, as this was utterly unlike the woods she'd grown up in or any of the cities she'd been to in her own world.
The first time she and Blind Seer went through, a stupid mistake caused her to miss spotting a landmine, setting off an explosion that "killed" them.
You should have seen that, Blind Seer criticized as they got ready to begin again.
If you knew it was there, you should have said, Firekeeper retorted, narrowing her eyes in annoyance at him.
Their second run through went much more smoothly, with no foolish mistakes that would cost lives in the real world.
Anakin Anakin was trying to set a new record--if they measured this sort of thing--for competence on the course.
He'd kept the gas mask on and his breath rung loudly in his ears in a way he hadn't experienced in years. It unconsciously affected the tempo of his walk and the no-nonsense look in his eyes. He'd left the gun and the protective vest behind: Jedi reflexes and decades of walking down streets as genuinely dangerous as this was hypothetically dangerous would serve him just as well.
Lightsabers didn't deflect bullets as well as they did blaster fire but a ripped-off car door served as an effective shield until he'd located and neutralized the snipers (using the land mines and a bit of Force assistance--he thought it was a rather poetic touch). He avoided the gas--though he was willing to sketch out where they were located on the street at the end of his exercise--and never showed any surprise or fear on his face. His heart rate never really increased.
His job right now was to help Katniss to the very best of his ability, and to do that meant being with her, wherever she got sent. So if the people running the show wanted a perfect soldier, he'd give them a perfect soldier.
Jaina
Jaina was really in her element with this sort of thing, which was probably a little sad when you thought about it. She trained for this sort of thing all the time, and somewhere during the Vong war when she'd been obsessed with making sure she was as perfect as she could be in a battle situation, she'd come to like drills. This was a good chance for her to make sure she hadn't gotten rusty since her last war. You know, a year ago.
Maneuvering through the course wasn't that difficult for her at all. She was beginning to realize how often she relied on her danger sense, too, because when there was no real danger, she wasn't going to sense a thing that way. So when someone shot at her or she realized a mine was nearby, she had to do so without her usual warning. Which she thought was good; it'd keep her on her toes.
She didn't get fake shot or fake blown up, nor did she fake die from gas. And at the end of her turn, Jaina was asking the person in charge if she could go again.
Karla Avoiding the mines was easy for Karla. She simply walked on air less than an inch off the ground, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible about her Craft. Normally she would be willing to share her skills with Katniss's allies to be as useful as possible. But she trusted Coin and Petrarch not at all and had no intention of letting them know just what she could do.
The only thing she had to be wary of were the bullets. Her regular shield was too obvious a use of Craft; they'd know something was up if the bullets went flying towards her but didn't hit. And her Black Widow senses weren't anywhere near as precise as the Jedi danger sense; even in situations with real danger, they couldn't be relied upon to serve as a warning.
She got shot once, almost at the very end of the course and had to restart. The second run-through, however, she finished up perfectly.
Oh yeah. She was so getting on the team.
Warren
Above average strength and stamina, a healing factor, decent reflexes (partly in thanks to Lucivar pummelling the crap out of him on a regular basis in Kaeleer lately), and the ability to just up and take to the air in order to avoid things like landmines meant that for the most part, this test was a breeze.
Heck, Warren almost felt sorry for anyone who couldn't just fly their way through a run like this.
He was almost getting cocky by the time a sniper's bullet tagged him in the back, forcing him to do the run over again after a less than graceful crash-landing. Apparently shot was shot, healing factor or none. His second run through, he was a little more wary, and managed to make it without getting himself killed.
Ghanima
Running the course was possibly the simplest thing Ghanima had been asked to do since arriving at Thirteen. Like Anakin, she left behind the protective vest, as she'd be better able to move without it weighing her down.
The rest passed in the blur of her enhanced reflexes, and Ghani found it soothing, in a way. After being unable to help in any substantial way last week, incapacitating the snipers and letting her limited prescience guide her through the obstacle course was a welcome release of adrenaline.
If she managed to do it without using her sidearm, well, Ghanima didn't feel she had needed it.
Wesley
Wesley... was not proud of his attempts. Not even the successful one. He was just going to hope no one had watched.
Good lord, he really was going to have to practice just walking from now on, wasn't he?
Katniss
"I want you on my team when we go in," Katniss said quietly, wandering over with a slight smile. "That last run-through was one of the most practical ones I've seen."
Wesley
...Like he'd let her not be on his team.
"Well, thank you," he said, returning the little half-smile. "It's nice to know that if all else fails, I may well have a career in the ballet."
With, you know, all the leaping and such.
Katniss
"Mmm. The lightness of your step could use some work," she said easily -- almost teasing. It was easy to do, because it helped her forget why they were doing this. "Not that it'll matter to the bombs, but there's a reason we never seem to bring much back from our hunts."
Wesley
"Oh, low blow," he groaned as if wounded, but he couldn't stop grinning. This was a welcome respite from the seriousness, and once he started teasing with her, it was hard to stop. "Well. I think my performance just now would've given Rue Victoria a run for her money."
Katniss
"Perhaps," Katniss said, nodding in agreement. "I won't be satisfied until you stop scaring off all the rabbits, though. Let's not even talk about the deer."
Wesley
"You know, I think I've been misinformed about deer," Wesley decided, nodding mock-seriously. "The phrase 'deer in the headlights' implies that they actually linger for longer than an instant before scampering away."
Oh, Wes, they did. But after fifteen minutes of someone bumbling through the preserve (alongside a very quiet someone else who was skulking), they tended to get the message.
Ghanima
Really, the students were doing quite well for being thrust into this situation. Ghanima would have preferred it if they had stayed at the school, truth be told, but she knew how very unlikely it was that they would have consented to that.
So she was here, waiting as they came out, in case any of them needed to talk afterward.,
Before soldiers could be considered fit for battle, they had to undergo an exam -- and the most difficult part of it was an actual simulated combat situation. It was impossible to tell what sort of situation you'd be thrown into -- every simulation was different, and they played upon each person's weaknesses.
Each person had to go through it alone, though there were simulated squadron members and teammates throughout. But the trials themselves were alone, and would determine who could go through and who couldn't.
Katniss Everdeen
It was an ambush.
Katniss hadn't thought that she'd be able to keep her head in something like this, where there was so much happening at once, all around. But as soon as she was in the Block, a certain amount of training kicked in. Peacekeepers appeared almost instantly and she had to make her way to a rendezvous point to meet up with her scattered squad. She slowly navigated the street, taking out Peacekeepers as she went. Two on the rooftop to her left, another in the doorway up ahead. It was challenging, but not as hard as she had been expecting. There was a nagging feeling that if it was too simple, she must have been missing the point.
She was within a couple of buildings from her goal when things began to heat up. A half dozen Peacekeepers came charging around the corner. They would inevitably have outgunned her, but Katniss noticed something. A drum of gasoline lying carelessly in the gutter. This was it. Her test. To perceive that blowing up the drum would be the only way to achieve her mission. Just as she stepped out to do it, her squadron leader, who had been
fairly useless up to this point, quietly ordered her to hit the ground. Every instinct she had screamed for her to ignore the voice, to pull the trigger, to blow the Peacekeepers sky-high. And suddenly, she realized what the military would think her biggest weakness was. From her first moment in the Games, when she ran for that orange backpack, to the firefight in Eight, to her impulsive race across the square in Two. She could not take orders.
Katniss smacked into the ground so hard and fast, she expected to be picking gravel out of her chin for a week. Someone else blew the gas tank. The Peacekeepers died. She made her rendezvous point.
When she exited, she received a stamp labeled 451 and was told to report to Command.
Firekeeper and Blind Seer
Firekeeper had been deeply suspicious of this test almost from before it began, when no one raised any objections to her bringing her bow along. During the training session she'd been told to focus on using firearms- and now here she was being told she would not be required to equip herself with one. It reeked of deception.
That Blind Seer would not be with her unsettled her also, but this at least made sense. Everyone else was required to go alone, so of course she should as well. She didn't know if he would be required to run a course of his own, since it was hard to tell if anyone in Thirteen really believed he was anything more than a strange pet.
But that didn't matter right now. What mattered was the battle zone laid out before her in the Block, and the simulated 'teammates' alongside her. She ran through the simulation, firing off arrow after arrow at approaching Peacekeepers until...
There were no more arrows.
No more arrows, and a half-dozen of the armor-clad enemies approaching from the distance. She'd studied the Peacekeeper armor, knew there were spots where her Fang could pierce and find soft flesh beneath with little trouble. But there were many of them and only one of her. Getting close enough to do so would be difficult, and even if she did, she knew she'd only manage to take out one, perhaps two, of the enemy before they killed her.
There was, however, a gun laying discarded only a few strides from where she stood. She knew then what she had to do, as distasteful as she found this particular weapon.
Once the enemy force was depleted, she made her way to the exit. Someone asked for her to hold out her hand, and moments later it was stamped with a set of symbols- she thought perhaps they were numbers, but couldn't be sure. Blind Seer was there also, falling in to step beside her as she was told to report to Command.
Jaina Solo
Jaina supposed she had an advantage here. She knew what her biggest weakness was, and knew how the military would see it thanks to a few meetings over it with her military in the last twelve years. All she had to do was keep her focus, and keep that mechanical cool that came easier in a cockpit.
In almost every battle Jaina had ever been in, things had started out fine enough, and then came the moment when everything went to hell. For this situation, everything went fine for maybe all of thirty seconds. That was when it began to sound- and feel- like there were bombs going off nearby, and getting closer. When someone started shooting from the rooftops, the two teammates closest to Jaina went down almost immediately.
More fire started coming from up ahead, and the squadron leader ordered them all to take cover. The problem was that the Peacekeepers seemed to be trying to divide them by aiming their shots down the middle of the street. Most of Jaina's unit headed right, where there were plenty of things to take cover behind or use as shields, but Jaina wasn't one to leave the rest of her team behind, and it'd be too hard to get everyone over there under heavy fire. She couldn't even tell where all the shots were coming from, and she could hear another explosion from somewhere. She ordered the others to head left and take cover between two buildings across the street from the others, and despite her not leading the mission, they did as she said anyway.
On the way there, she saw one of her teammates trip and fall over some debris, and without even thinking about it, Jaina quickly helped him up and started bringing him over to where everyone else was. A moment later he fell again, though, and she realized it was because he'd been hit with another shot. Glad this was just a simulation and she didn't have to feel bad about it, she let him go and ran back towards the others.
Just before she got there, shots started raining down from the roofs of the buildings they were hiding between, taking out the teammates she'd sent there for safety.
She realized what they were trying to do. They weren't aiming for her. They were trying to hit her with everything all at once, stress her out, take out her team on an order that she'd given. They wanted to see if she'd snap. And truth be told, in a live situation, if this sort of thing had been going on for a while, she might. Even now she had to quickly dismiss a flash of anger at the fact that this did not seem fair to her, but she did it. Having to leave her fallen comrades behind, she realized that now that it was just her, the smartest thing would be for her to get back to the surviving members of her tea. Luckily for her, crossing a street while people shooting at her from all sides was something she wasn't exactly unfamiliar with.
Once she got back to the others, it was a matter of taking out the Peacekeepers that they could and making it to the rendezvous point. It took longer than Jaina would have liked, but not once did she lose her cool. And by the end of it, she had a shiny new handstamp to show for it.
Luke Castellan
If Luke was completely honest with himself, he would admit that his biggest weakness in battle would be following orders closely, no matter how horrible they were. It was how he ended up getting that scar on his face, it was how he ended up stealing from the gods and it was how he was going to end up being a meatsuit for a Titan. Luke didn't really think the military would want to discourage that sort of loyalty, no matter how self-destructive it was to him personally. He had no clue what else he could possibly be tested on.
It started off with Luke's team having to go into a firefight with Peacekeepers in a residential area of the city. They had been ordered to keep moving towards a certain point and to ignore any fighting in other areas since other teams would be there to take care of it. That was fine with Luke; he could absolutely follow those orders. Placing trust in your allies to get things done was important, he understood that.
The battle wasn't easy but it wasn't exceedingly difficult either. Luke ended up keeping Backbiter sheathed most of the time and using the guns he had been provided. He still wasn't as comfortable with guns as he was with swords but with the Peacekeepers using long ranged weapons it was the only option he had. Everything had been going fine until he heard a distress call coming over from the radio. It was Katniss's voice. Her team was cornered a few streets down and couldn't escape.
Immediately Luke felt panic grip him and he started hound his fellow soldiers for directions to the area Katniss had yelled over the radio. His superior was yelling at him to calm down and to let someone else to take care of it but Luke was ignoring him. He had to help Katniss, he had to. Everything else could wait.
He had almost run off to find Katniss himself before he remembered where he really was and the point of the exercise. They thought he'd drop everything and disregard orders if someone he cared about was in danger. He had done it before when he didn't kill Percy when Kronos had ordered him to. Luke didn't personally find that to be a bad thing but he could see how Coin and company would find that to be a weakness.
In the end he ignored every instinct that told him to go help his friend and finished out the mission as ordered. He got a numbered stamp on his hand for his trouble.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Wesley wasn’t certain what his greatest weakness in battle was, but he knew it was something. His clumsiness, maybe, or his unfortunate habit of getting distracted whilst attempting to snark at the enemy. Careful and quiet, he reminded himself as he stepped into the simulation. No tripping, no lunging, no feeble attempts at witty discourse. Just get it done.
The terrain wasn’t rough, so he concluded fairly quickly (as he shot easily and efficiently at the Peacekeepers approaching him) that the clumsiness wasn’t what was being tested. And as for getting distracted, well, the importance of this trial was too apparent to him for that to even be a possibility. So what was it?
And then he rounded a corner, and he saw a grotesque sight spread across the concrete ground. A Peacekeeper, but… young. Younger than himself, already badly wounded but still alive. More of them were firing, but was just out of range as he stared at the - boy? Girl? He couldn’t be sure; the wounds made it difficult to tell. Until the person, whoever it was, whimpered in the voice of a child and stirred as though preparing to put weight on his or her feet and stand.
In that moment, he knew his weakness. It wasn’t anything so petty as a simple lack of coordination or his ability to be distracted. It was the nature of his training. For all that he was willing to shoot to kill, to slice with a sword, he had never been taught to be ruthless. Never been taught to shoot a wounded child, even if he wore the uniform of the enemy.
Who knew? The Council had been humane after all. At least by comparison.
He swallowed bile, aimed, and shot for the head, then forced himself to watch until satisfied that the soldier was dead. Then, feeling ill, he jogged the rest of the way to the exit, shooting at the Peacekeeper soldiers that cropped up in his path along the way. He wasn’t surprised when his hand was stamped on the way out, but the nausea lingered for a long time.
There was something wrong about these people.
Anakin Skywalker
Anakin had a general idea of what kind of weakness they'd be poking him on, and when his team members sounded like the students he'd brought from Fandom, his suspicions were confirmed.
Well, two areas: he learned immediately that he wasn't in charge. That was a nameless, fortunately unrecognizable face, and that didn't bother Anakin overly much as long as the orders continued to make some kind of logic.
And then they didn't. The squadron commander was ordering Jaina out on a clearly suicidal--even for a Jedi--recon mission for no obvious gain. In any other moment, Anakin would have been raising loud, potentially violent protest, but the Jaina in the scenario wasn't, which brought Anakin back to remembering this was a test and that their testers didn't know everything about his people.
He kept his place in the line, providing covering fire as well as he was able, and watched as the simulated version of his granddaughter die pointlessly.
When the scenario was over, his hand was stamped for Command and he had an iciness in his eyes that wouldn't leave them until he was gone from District Thirteen. He understood the reasoning behind the test. He wouldn't forgive them for it.
Karla
About halfway through her run, Karla was feeling pretty good about her chances about getting on Katniss's team. This test was focusing on infiltration and recon. She couldn't use her sight shield to keep her invisible, but the aural shield was subtle enough that she had no qualms about using it to keep herself completely inaudible. Let them think she was trained for such.
This was easy!
It stayed easy until the squad got to their rendezvous point. They had to continue on towards an enemy depot disguised as a warehouse. Only a few doors down was a daycare.
It was on fire.
No, ignore it! This is a sim, a practice! I have my mission, I can't fail! This is just a test of my resolve.
A window shattered from the heat, exploding shards of glass outwards. With it came screams of real terror. Karla broke cover and ran to the building. "Soldier!" her earbud barked. "You have your orders! Ignore the civilians!"
Karla responded by tearing her earpiece out and leaving it behind her.
Warren Worthington
After the way the month had been going so far, Warren had been fairly positive going into his test that there was nothing they could throw at him that was much worse than what he'd already been through. And, to some degree, he was right. But they weren't looking to traumatize him, they were testing to make certain that he could keep his head on his shoulders when it mattered most. The two weren't quite the same thing.
So he did fine under fire, but when his mission led him indoors, into a building that had barely looked structurally sound enough to be standing as it was, he started to get a little anxious.
And when the explosions rocked the building from the outside, leading the whole thing to collapse around him, he didn't stay calm, didn't even think to start looking for a way to get out. He just panicked, a scream catching in his throat, clawing and flapping and throwing himself desperately at the wreckage that boxed him in until the test ended.
Ghanima Atreides
There was no question as to Ghanima's ability on the battlefield, as the earlier 'training' courses had proven.
Getting her to go against all her instinct to use a projectile weapon, however, had not been going well. She had demonstrated dozens of times on the training courses that she was far more proficient with her crysknife than a firearm, but it did not seem to matter.
She was leading a team that was almost to the objective when one of her soldiers - barely a child - went down, shot badly in the leg. Ghanima had dispatched his attacker and offered him her arm to get back up, when the commander of the second team pressed a gun into her hand and said, simply, "No potential captives."
It had not even been a choice.
Before he finished speaking, she had used the Way to move behind him, their sacred gun against his temple. "Bang," she said, softly, letting the words hang in the air for a moment before stepping back and throwing the firearm at his feet.
Ghanima did not look back as she took the earpiece off and walked straight out, ignoring the rest of the exercise and leaving her would-be teammates behind her.
If her protectiveness of the children under her care - or command - was considered a weakness, so be it. But she was Aryeh of House Atreides, and a lioness did not abandon her young.
Karla
Karla sat back and tried to look closer to defiant than dejected. The screams had been recorded. Obviously. She'd known that. They'd gotten her with the most blatant trap since Hilda's coven. Ugh. Nor had she been allowed to retry the exam like she had the course. Apparently disobeying orders was a lot worse than getting shot or stepping on a landmine.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"I'm sorry," Wesley said, sliding into a seat beside Karla with his stamped hands in his lap. "What -- ah. What was it for you? The test, that is."
Karla
"Recon," Karla said. "But I was supposed to ignore a burning building. A daycare. With people in it. I should have known that was the test. Everything else had been too easy."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Wesley shook his head in disgust. "I -- mine had children as well," he said softly. But he had made it through, and did that make him a worse person or a better one? "If it's any consolation, there are probably a great many people you can help here," he said finally.
Karla
"I know," Karla said with a sigh. "But, honestly--and this sounds selfish--I didn't come here to help them. I came for her."
Karla really didn't like Thirteen. It was far too stifling. And felt wrong somehow; an undercurrent of not-right lurking just below the surface.
"Everyone back home will appreciate me staying behind, I guess. That's...something."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"I know," Wesley sympathized. The truth was that he had been willing to do anything to pass that test, even if it had meant letting a day care burn. So he couldn't quite empathize here, with his mind insisting that to assist Katniss in this fight was worth any sacrifice. But he tried.
"I can watch her for you," he finally offered. "I'm hardly a replacement -- " He cracked a smile there. "But I -- I'll look out for her. I promise."
Karla
In all honesty, if it had been Warren on the line, Karla probably would have sprinted past the daycare and been done with it. Or just laughed and asked how Thirteen proposed to stop her.
"I believe you," she said, reaching out to pat his arm. "Between you and Luke and Anakin, there are enough people I trust to keep Katniss safe and secure. I'll keep the home fires burning to guide you lot back. Sound fair?"
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Absolutely," Wesley agreed. There. She didn't seem quite so upset anymore, though it could just be his own hopes there. "And -- perhaps you could keep an eye on Prim for her? I'm sure Katniss would truly appreciate it."
Karla
Karla nodded. "I will," she promised. "I'm sure Katniss will appreciate someone staying behind to keep an eye on her."
Maybe if she told herself that enough time, she'd even believe it. They were staying in Thirteen. What was the worst that could happen?
Well...Peeta was still here and crazy. He could try to harm Prim to get revenge on Katniss. And Coin might move to take Prim and their mother after the fighting started to neutralize the threat the mockingjay could become. And there was always the possibility that the Capitol could come back with more than just bombs.
"I will," she said with a little more conviction.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Thank you," Wesley said sincerely. He had guessed that maybe Karla just needed to feel integral, and taking care of Prim would make her integral.
"I suppose the Everdeens should be perfectly safe with the two of us looking after them," he joked. "Not to mention Anakin and the others, of course."
Karla
"Oh, them," Karla said, waving her hand. "I guess they might come in handy. For, you know, back up and carrying the heavy things."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Oh, of course," Wesley said, laughing a bit. "Opening the door by means of psychic abilities without actually seeing the person on the other side..."
Yeah, Anakin, that never failed to freak Wes out.
Karla
Just wait till Karla did that, too, Wes!
"Pity Thirteen took his cloak away," she added. "Because if you need a dramatic cloak-swirl, he's pretty much your go-to guy."
She laughed at that and then shot Wesley a grateful look.
"Thanks."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
It was true. Angel could swirl his coat around with the best of them, but Anakin's cloak pretty much took the cake.
"Of course," he said, waving off the gratitude. He'd owed her, anyway, and they were friends. "Of course, Prim could always turn out to be immensely difficult, in which case your gratitude might be misplaced," he teased.
...Obviously. It was such an Everdeen gene, and all.
Karla
"If she is, I'll just tell you that you owe me future baby-sitting services," Karla said, giving him a smile.
And thinking of her gigantic brood from the last time the island decided to be cute. "I'd call that about square."
Even an Everdeen at her most willful couldn't compare to seven children, all of whom had inherited some measure of Karla's genes.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Seven children? The horror! Wesley's own two children from that weekend had been more than enough of a handful.
"That sounds fair," he decided. "So we're agreed, then."
He thought he'd handled that rather well.
Karla
Karla was already planning to unfairly malign Prim to get that free baby-sitting commitment.
"Agreed," she said, hoping no one would tell Wesley about her gaggle of children until after it was too late to renegotiate terms.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Wesley smiled at that. Then he glanced down at his stamped hand, gesturing idly to the door that led to Command. "Well, I should really..." He trailed off.
"Best of luck," he offered finally.
Karla
Karla nodded, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the stamp. "You should. They expect promptness from the rank and file, Soldier Wyndam-Pryce."
That was a mouthful. They'd probably shorten it in the field.
She offered him a salute then shooed him down the corridor. "Good luck to you, too. Stay safe. That's an order."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Likewise," he offered in return. He even gave her a little salute, despite feeling a little silly about it. "I'll see you when we return!" he called before disappearing into the room.
Someone was dangerously optimistic over here.
Warren Worthington
"Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid."
The fact that Warren had placed himself squarely in the middle of the biggest room readily available, sitting on the floor so that the roof seemed a little higher without giving a crap about who might trip over him, probably said a little about how his test had gone.
If the under-the-breath snarling at himself didn't do a good enough job of it, anyhow.
[preplayed with the usual suspects, but most importantly, coded by the magnificent wesleynotponcy and sith_happened, without whom I would probably be bald. Or at least have large patches where my hair is missing, from ripping it out.]
If they were storming the Capitol, Katniss was coming with them.
And so twenty-four needle jabs into her ribcage, and a painful, burning sleepless night later, Katniss was out at training before anyone else was.
Deep in heart of Thirteen was a place that all the soldiers just called the Block, but Katniss' tattoo for the day told her it was SSC, short for Simulated Street Combat. It was a Capitol street, tricked with bombs, gas explosions, and gunfire.
Here was where she -- and her friends -- would figure out if they were prepared for the Capitol.
Anakin Anakin looked distinctly unexcited about the gas mask as he glanced at the equipment laid out for them before they ran the course. He hadn't worn a mask of any kind since he'd stopped being Vader and had really preferred it that way.
Firekeeper Some people might be spending the time before they were supposed to run through the exercise stretching or otherwise warming up.
...Those people were not wolves. The way Firekeeper and Blind Seer saw it, in actual combat there would be no time for such things, so why bother now?
And so it was with a mixture of tension and curiosity that they stood, waiting to see what they would be asked to do.
Karla Karla was stretching, doing her level best to ignore what everyone else back home would say (shout scream bluster fuss) if they knew she was attempting to do this.
Raven would scold and worry about her. Lucivar would laugh and fling her over his shoulder to lock her in her room until she came to her senses. Jaenelle would remind her that she would probably be a better help with the medics. Saetan would lecture her about her responsibilities to her people. Julian would turn bright red and sputter. Morton would just go pale and say "No," with no more elaboration.
...She wasn't doing well at this 'ignoring' plan, was she?
Warren
Warren's stretching mostly involved his legs, since he predicted that running today's course was going to involve a lot of running. Still, whenever he could find the space, there was the occasional careful stretching of his wings, too. Simulations and training? They just seemed like more of what he'd been asking for back in Kaeleer. But with more fake gunfire.
Gabrielle Stretching and warmups weren't for Gabrielle -- not really, anyway. Not when she was in earnest, even if she joked around about it sometimes.
Having been given the option to join her friends in storming the Capitol, and given the cause in which they'd be doing it, she hadn't thought twice about volunteering to join the group. There was just -- as she looked over the equipment they'd been given -- one problem.
"Excuse me," she called over to the nearest soldier, frowning at the firearm laid out with the protective vest and gas mask. "Just a quick question -- do I have to use this?"
Boggs The soldier looked puzzled at the question, but Boggs, who was supervising, called over, "Yes, Soldier. You have to use that. You don't get a bow like the Mockingjay."
Gabrielle of Poteidaia Gabrielle frowned, partly at being called a soldier, because this whole idea was sitting less comfortably with her the more she heard that, but mostly at how he made it sound like she didn't have a choice.
"This is a killing weapon," she answered, and no, she hadn't actually touched it yet. "I can't use this."
Wesley
Wesley ran through three times. The first time, he stumbled, as he was wont to do, and ended up triggering the release of the gas. He scrambled for his gas mask, but the strap had gotten tangled in his pocket, and... well. The whole thing ended in him feigning a very uncoordinated and very dramatic death.
The second time, he was determined to do better, and not to be distracted by silly things like knots in his gas mask strap. (He checked it twice to verify that it was, in fact, untangled before running the course.) However, that didn't sto him from being his typical uncoordinated self, and he managed to set off not one but two land mines in a single fall. Once again, he had to pretend to die, although this death was distinctly less flashy given that he was already on the ground.
Finally, he ran it one last time. Although he looked ridiculous, leaping around to avoid stepping on anything suspicious, he managed to get the job done. Finally. He hoped privately that none of those three attempts had been too heavily monitored, because, well. He did rather want to be permitted to go into battle, and that hadn't exactly been an exemplary model just now.
Firekeeper The Simulated Street Combat course reminded Firekeeper of Angua's tracking class back in Fandom. She was definitely grateful for the experience, as this was utterly unlike the woods she'd grown up in or any of the cities she'd been to in her own world.
The first time she and Blind Seer went through, a stupid mistake caused her to miss spotting a landmine, setting off an explosion that "killed" them.
You should have seen that, Blind Seer criticized as they got ready to begin again.
If you knew it was there, you should have said, Firekeeper retorted, narrowing her eyes in annoyance at him.
Their second run through went much more smoothly, with no foolish mistakes that would cost lives in the real world.
Anakin Anakin was trying to set a new record--if they measured this sort of thing--for competence on the course.
He'd kept the gas mask on and his breath rung loudly in his ears in a way he hadn't experienced in years. It unconsciously affected the tempo of his walk and the no-nonsense look in his eyes. He'd left the gun and the protective vest behind: Jedi reflexes and decades of walking down streets as genuinely dangerous as this was hypothetically dangerous would serve him just as well.
Lightsabers didn't deflect bullets as well as they did blaster fire but a ripped-off car door served as an effective shield until he'd located and neutralized the snipers (using the land mines and a bit of Force assistance--he thought it was a rather poetic touch). He avoided the gas--though he was willing to sketch out where they were located on the street at the end of his exercise--and never showed any surprise or fear on his face. His heart rate never really increased.
His job right now was to help Katniss to the very best of his ability, and to do that meant being with her, wherever she got sent. So if the people running the show wanted a perfect soldier, he'd give them a perfect soldier.
Jaina
Jaina was really in her element with this sort of thing, which was probably a little sad when you thought about it. She trained for this sort of thing all the time, and somewhere during the Vong war when she'd been obsessed with making sure she was as perfect as she could be in a battle situation, she'd come to like drills. This was a good chance for her to make sure she hadn't gotten rusty since her last war. You know, a year ago.
Maneuvering through the course wasn't that difficult for her at all. She was beginning to realize how often she relied on her danger sense, too, because when there was no real danger, she wasn't going to sense a thing that way. So when someone shot at her or she realized a mine was nearby, she had to do so without her usual warning. Which she thought was good; it'd keep her on her toes.
She didn't get fake shot or fake blown up, nor did she fake die from gas. And at the end of her turn, Jaina was asking the person in charge if she could go again.
Karla Avoiding the mines was easy for Karla. She simply walked on air less than an inch off the ground, trying to be as inconspicuous as possible about her Craft. Normally she would be willing to share her skills with Katniss's allies to be as useful as possible. But she trusted Coin and Petrarch not at all and had no intention of letting them know just what she could do.
The only thing she had to be wary of were the bullets. Her regular shield was too obvious a use of Craft; they'd know something was up if the bullets went flying towards her but didn't hit. And her Black Widow senses weren't anywhere near as precise as the Jedi danger sense; even in situations with real danger, they couldn't be relied upon to serve as a warning.
She got shot once, almost at the very end of the course and had to restart. The second run-through, however, she finished up perfectly.
Oh yeah. She was so getting on the team.
Warren
Above average strength and stamina, a healing factor, decent reflexes (partly in thanks to Lucivar pummelling the crap out of him on a regular basis in Kaeleer lately), and the ability to just up and take to the air in order to avoid things like landmines meant that for the most part, this test was a breeze.
Heck, Warren almost felt sorry for anyone who couldn't just fly their way through a run like this.
He was almost getting cocky by the time a sniper's bullet tagged him in the back, forcing him to do the run over again after a less than graceful crash-landing. Apparently shot was shot, healing factor or none. His second run through, he was a little more wary, and managed to make it without getting himself killed.
Ghanima
Running the course was possibly the simplest thing Ghanima had been asked to do since arriving at Thirteen. Like Anakin, she left behind the protective vest, as she'd be better able to move without it weighing her down.
The rest passed in the blur of her enhanced reflexes, and Ghani found it soothing, in a way. After being unable to help in any substantial way last week, incapacitating the snipers and letting her limited prescience guide her through the obstacle course was a welcome release of adrenaline.
If she managed to do it without using her sidearm, well, Ghanima didn't feel she had needed it.
Wesley
Wesley... was not proud of his attempts. Not even the successful one. He was just going to hope no one had watched.
Good lord, he really was going to have to practice just walking from now on, wasn't he?
Katniss
"I want you on my team when we go in," Katniss said quietly, wandering over with a slight smile. "That last run-through was one of the most practical ones I've seen."
Wesley
...Like he'd let her not be on his team.
"Well, thank you," he said, returning the little half-smile. "It's nice to know that if all else fails, I may well have a career in the ballet."
With, you know, all the leaping and such.
Katniss
"Mmm. The lightness of your step could use some work," she said easily -- almost teasing. It was easy to do, because it helped her forget why they were doing this. "Not that it'll matter to the bombs, but there's a reason we never seem to bring much back from our hunts."
Wesley
"Oh, low blow," he groaned as if wounded, but he couldn't stop grinning. This was a welcome respite from the seriousness, and once he started teasing with her, it was hard to stop. "Well. I think my performance just now would've given Rue Victoria a run for her money."
Katniss
"Perhaps," Katniss said, nodding in agreement. "I won't be satisfied until you stop scaring off all the rabbits, though. Let's not even talk about the deer."
Wesley
"You know, I think I've been misinformed about deer," Wesley decided, nodding mock-seriously. "The phrase 'deer in the headlights' implies that they actually linger for longer than an instant before scampering away."
Oh, Wes, they did. But after fifteen minutes of someone bumbling through the preserve (alongside a very quiet someone else who was skulking), they tended to get the message.
Ghanima
Really, the students were doing quite well for being thrust into this situation. Ghanima would have preferred it if they had stayed at the school, truth be told, but she knew how very unlikely it was that they would have consented to that.
So she was here, waiting as they came out, in case any of them needed to talk afterward.,
Before soldiers could be considered fit for battle, they had to undergo an exam -- and the most difficult part of it was an actual simulated combat situation. It was impossible to tell what sort of situation you'd be thrown into -- every simulation was different, and they played upon each person's weaknesses.
Each person had to go through it alone, though there were simulated squadron members and teammates throughout. But the trials themselves were alone, and would determine who could go through and who couldn't.
Katniss Everdeen
It was an ambush.
Katniss hadn't thought that she'd be able to keep her head in something like this, where there was so much happening at once, all around. But as soon as she was in the Block, a certain amount of training kicked in. Peacekeepers appeared almost instantly and she had to make her way to a rendezvous point to meet up with her scattered squad. She slowly navigated the street, taking out Peacekeepers as she went. Two on the rooftop to her left, another in the doorway up ahead. It was challenging, but not as hard as she had been expecting. There was a nagging feeling that if it was too simple, she must have been missing the point.
She was within a couple of buildings from her goal when things began to heat up. A half dozen Peacekeepers came charging around the corner. They would inevitably have outgunned her, but Katniss noticed something. A drum of gasoline lying carelessly in the gutter. This was it. Her test. To perceive that blowing up the drum would be the only way to achieve her mission. Just as she stepped out to do it, her squadron leader, who had been
fairly useless up to this point, quietly ordered her to hit the ground. Every instinct she had screamed for her to ignore the voice, to pull the trigger, to blow the Peacekeepers sky-high. And suddenly, she realized what the military would think her biggest weakness was. From her first moment in the Games, when she ran for that orange backpack, to the firefight in Eight, to her impulsive race across the square in Two. She could not take orders.
Katniss smacked into the ground so hard and fast, she expected to be picking gravel out of her chin for a week. Someone else blew the gas tank. The Peacekeepers died. She made her rendezvous point.
When she exited, she received a stamp labeled 451 and was told to report to Command.
Firekeeper and Blind Seer
Firekeeper had been deeply suspicious of this test almost from before it began, when no one raised any objections to her bringing her bow along. During the training session she'd been told to focus on using firearms- and now here she was being told she would not be required to equip herself with one. It reeked of deception.
That Blind Seer would not be with her unsettled her also, but this at least made sense. Everyone else was required to go alone, so of course she should as well. She didn't know if he would be required to run a course of his own, since it was hard to tell if anyone in Thirteen really believed he was anything more than a strange pet.
But that didn't matter right now. What mattered was the battle zone laid out before her in the Block, and the simulated 'teammates' alongside her. She ran through the simulation, firing off arrow after arrow at approaching Peacekeepers until...
There were no more arrows.
No more arrows, and a half-dozen of the armor-clad enemies approaching from the distance. She'd studied the Peacekeeper armor, knew there were spots where her Fang could pierce and find soft flesh beneath with little trouble. But there were many of them and only one of her. Getting close enough to do so would be difficult, and even if she did, she knew she'd only manage to take out one, perhaps two, of the enemy before they killed her.
There was, however, a gun laying discarded only a few strides from where she stood. She knew then what she had to do, as distasteful as she found this particular weapon.
Once the enemy force was depleted, she made her way to the exit. Someone asked for her to hold out her hand, and moments later it was stamped with a set of symbols- she thought perhaps they were numbers, but couldn't be sure. Blind Seer was there also, falling in to step beside her as she was told to report to Command.
Jaina Solo
Jaina supposed she had an advantage here. She knew what her biggest weakness was, and knew how the military would see it thanks to a few meetings over it with her military in the last twelve years. All she had to do was keep her focus, and keep that mechanical cool that came easier in a cockpit.
In almost every battle Jaina had ever been in, things had started out fine enough, and then came the moment when everything went to hell. For this situation, everything went fine for maybe all of thirty seconds. That was when it began to sound- and feel- like there were bombs going off nearby, and getting closer. When someone started shooting from the rooftops, the two teammates closest to Jaina went down almost immediately.
More fire started coming from up ahead, and the squadron leader ordered them all to take cover. The problem was that the Peacekeepers seemed to be trying to divide them by aiming their shots down the middle of the street. Most of Jaina's unit headed right, where there were plenty of things to take cover behind or use as shields, but Jaina wasn't one to leave the rest of her team behind, and it'd be too hard to get everyone over there under heavy fire. She couldn't even tell where all the shots were coming from, and she could hear another explosion from somewhere. She ordered the others to head left and take cover between two buildings across the street from the others, and despite her not leading the mission, they did as she said anyway.
On the way there, she saw one of her teammates trip and fall over some debris, and without even thinking about it, Jaina quickly helped him up and started bringing him over to where everyone else was. A moment later he fell again, though, and she realized it was because he'd been hit with another shot. Glad this was just a simulation and she didn't have to feel bad about it, she let him go and ran back towards the others.
Just before she got there, shots started raining down from the roofs of the buildings they were hiding between, taking out the teammates she'd sent there for safety.
She realized what they were trying to do. They weren't aiming for her. They were trying to hit her with everything all at once, stress her out, take out her team on an order that she'd given. They wanted to see if she'd snap. And truth be told, in a live situation, if this sort of thing had been going on for a while, she might. Even now she had to quickly dismiss a flash of anger at the fact that this did not seem fair to her, but she did it. Having to leave her fallen comrades behind, she realized that now that it was just her, the smartest thing would be for her to get back to the surviving members of her tea. Luckily for her, crossing a street while people shooting at her from all sides was something she wasn't exactly unfamiliar with.
Once she got back to the others, it was a matter of taking out the Peacekeepers that they could and making it to the rendezvous point. It took longer than Jaina would have liked, but not once did she lose her cool. And by the end of it, she had a shiny new handstamp to show for it.
Luke Castellan
If Luke was completely honest with himself, he would admit that his biggest weakness in battle would be following orders closely, no matter how horrible they were. It was how he ended up getting that scar on his face, it was how he ended up stealing from the gods and it was how he was going to end up being a meatsuit for a Titan. Luke didn't really think the military would want to discourage that sort of loyalty, no matter how self-destructive it was to him personally. He had no clue what else he could possibly be tested on.
It started off with Luke's team having to go into a firefight with Peacekeepers in a residential area of the city. They had been ordered to keep moving towards a certain point and to ignore any fighting in other areas since other teams would be there to take care of it. That was fine with Luke; he could absolutely follow those orders. Placing trust in your allies to get things done was important, he understood that.
The battle wasn't easy but it wasn't exceedingly difficult either. Luke ended up keeping Backbiter sheathed most of the time and using the guns he had been provided. He still wasn't as comfortable with guns as he was with swords but with the Peacekeepers using long ranged weapons it was the only option he had. Everything had been going fine until he heard a distress call coming over from the radio. It was Katniss's voice. Her team was cornered a few streets down and couldn't escape.
Immediately Luke felt panic grip him and he started hound his fellow soldiers for directions to the area Katniss had yelled over the radio. His superior was yelling at him to calm down and to let someone else to take care of it but Luke was ignoring him. He had to help Katniss, he had to. Everything else could wait.
He had almost run off to find Katniss himself before he remembered where he really was and the point of the exercise. They thought he'd drop everything and disregard orders if someone he cared about was in danger. He had done it before when he didn't kill Percy when Kronos had ordered him to. Luke didn't personally find that to be a bad thing but he could see how Coin and company would find that to be a weakness.
In the end he ignored every instinct that told him to go help his friend and finished out the mission as ordered. He got a numbered stamp on his hand for his trouble.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Wesley wasn’t certain what his greatest weakness in battle was, but he knew it was something. His clumsiness, maybe, or his unfortunate habit of getting distracted whilst attempting to snark at the enemy. Careful and quiet, he reminded himself as he stepped into the simulation. No tripping, no lunging, no feeble attempts at witty discourse. Just get it done.
The terrain wasn’t rough, so he concluded fairly quickly (as he shot easily and efficiently at the Peacekeepers approaching him) that the clumsiness wasn’t what was being tested. And as for getting distracted, well, the importance of this trial was too apparent to him for that to even be a possibility. So what was it?
And then he rounded a corner, and he saw a grotesque sight spread across the concrete ground. A Peacekeeper, but… young. Younger than himself, already badly wounded but still alive. More of them were firing, but was just out of range as he stared at the - boy? Girl? He couldn’t be sure; the wounds made it difficult to tell. Until the person, whoever it was, whimpered in the voice of a child and stirred as though preparing to put weight on his or her feet and stand.
In that moment, he knew his weakness. It wasn’t anything so petty as a simple lack of coordination or his ability to be distracted. It was the nature of his training. For all that he was willing to shoot to kill, to slice with a sword, he had never been taught to be ruthless. Never been taught to shoot a wounded child, even if he wore the uniform of the enemy.
Who knew? The Council had been humane after all. At least by comparison.
He swallowed bile, aimed, and shot for the head, then forced himself to watch until satisfied that the soldier was dead. Then, feeling ill, he jogged the rest of the way to the exit, shooting at the Peacekeeper soldiers that cropped up in his path along the way. He wasn’t surprised when his hand was stamped on the way out, but the nausea lingered for a long time.
There was something wrong about these people.
Anakin Skywalker
Anakin had a general idea of what kind of weakness they'd be poking him on, and when his team members sounded like the students he'd brought from Fandom, his suspicions were confirmed.
Well, two areas: he learned immediately that he wasn't in charge. That was a nameless, fortunately unrecognizable face, and that didn't bother Anakin overly much as long as the orders continued to make some kind of logic.
And then they didn't. The squadron commander was ordering Jaina out on a clearly suicidal--even for a Jedi--recon mission for no obvious gain. In any other moment, Anakin would have been raising loud, potentially violent protest, but the Jaina in the scenario wasn't, which brought Anakin back to remembering this was a test and that their testers didn't know everything about his people.
He kept his place in the line, providing covering fire as well as he was able, and watched as the simulated version of his granddaughter die pointlessly.
When the scenario was over, his hand was stamped for Command and he had an iciness in his eyes that wouldn't leave them until he was gone from District Thirteen. He understood the reasoning behind the test. He wouldn't forgive them for it.
Karla
About halfway through her run, Karla was feeling pretty good about her chances about getting on Katniss's team. This test was focusing on infiltration and recon. She couldn't use her sight shield to keep her invisible, but the aural shield was subtle enough that she had no qualms about using it to keep herself completely inaudible. Let them think she was trained for such.
This was easy!
It stayed easy until the squad got to their rendezvous point. They had to continue on towards an enemy depot disguised as a warehouse. Only a few doors down was a daycare.
It was on fire.
No, ignore it! This is a sim, a practice! I have my mission, I can't fail! This is just a test of my resolve.
A window shattered from the heat, exploding shards of glass outwards. With it came screams of real terror. Karla broke cover and ran to the building. "Soldier!" her earbud barked. "You have your orders! Ignore the civilians!"
Karla responded by tearing her earpiece out and leaving it behind her.
Warren Worthington
After the way the month had been going so far, Warren had been fairly positive going into his test that there was nothing they could throw at him that was much worse than what he'd already been through. And, to some degree, he was right. But they weren't looking to traumatize him, they were testing to make certain that he could keep his head on his shoulders when it mattered most. The two weren't quite the same thing.
So he did fine under fire, but when his mission led him indoors, into a building that had barely looked structurally sound enough to be standing as it was, he started to get a little anxious.
And when the explosions rocked the building from the outside, leading the whole thing to collapse around him, he didn't stay calm, didn't even think to start looking for a way to get out. He just panicked, a scream catching in his throat, clawing and flapping and throwing himself desperately at the wreckage that boxed him in until the test ended.
Ghanima Atreides
There was no question as to Ghanima's ability on the battlefield, as the earlier 'training' courses had proven.
Getting her to go against all her instinct to use a projectile weapon, however, had not been going well. She had demonstrated dozens of times on the training courses that she was far more proficient with her crysknife than a firearm, but it did not seem to matter.
She was leading a team that was almost to the objective when one of her soldiers - barely a child - went down, shot badly in the leg. Ghanima had dispatched his attacker and offered him her arm to get back up, when the commander of the second team pressed a gun into her hand and said, simply, "No potential captives."
It had not even been a choice.
Before he finished speaking, she had used the Way to move behind him, their sacred gun against his temple. "Bang," she said, softly, letting the words hang in the air for a moment before stepping back and throwing the firearm at his feet.
Ghanima did not look back as she took the earpiece off and walked straight out, ignoring the rest of the exercise and leaving her would-be teammates behind her.
If her protectiveness of the children under her care - or command - was considered a weakness, so be it. But she was Aryeh of House Atreides, and a lioness did not abandon her young.
Karla
Karla sat back and tried to look closer to defiant than dejected. The screams had been recorded. Obviously. She'd known that. They'd gotten her with the most blatant trap since Hilda's coven. Ugh. Nor had she been allowed to retry the exam like she had the course. Apparently disobeying orders was a lot worse than getting shot or stepping on a landmine.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"I'm sorry," Wesley said, sliding into a seat beside Karla with his stamped hands in his lap. "What -- ah. What was it for you? The test, that is."
Karla
"Recon," Karla said. "But I was supposed to ignore a burning building. A daycare. With people in it. I should have known that was the test. Everything else had been too easy."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Wesley shook his head in disgust. "I -- mine had children as well," he said softly. But he had made it through, and did that make him a worse person or a better one? "If it's any consolation, there are probably a great many people you can help here," he said finally.
Karla
"I know," Karla said with a sigh. "But, honestly--and this sounds selfish--I didn't come here to help them. I came for her."
Karla really didn't like Thirteen. It was far too stifling. And felt wrong somehow; an undercurrent of not-right lurking just below the surface.
"Everyone back home will appreciate me staying behind, I guess. That's...something."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"I know," Wesley sympathized. The truth was that he had been willing to do anything to pass that test, even if it had meant letting a day care burn. So he couldn't quite empathize here, with his mind insisting that to assist Katniss in this fight was worth any sacrifice. But he tried.
"I can watch her for you," he finally offered. "I'm hardly a replacement -- " He cracked a smile there. "But I -- I'll look out for her. I promise."
Karla
In all honesty, if it had been Warren on the line, Karla probably would have sprinted past the daycare and been done with it. Or just laughed and asked how Thirteen proposed to stop her.
"I believe you," she said, reaching out to pat his arm. "Between you and Luke and Anakin, there are enough people I trust to keep Katniss safe and secure. I'll keep the home fires burning to guide you lot back. Sound fair?"
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Absolutely," Wesley agreed. There. She didn't seem quite so upset anymore, though it could just be his own hopes there. "And -- perhaps you could keep an eye on Prim for her? I'm sure Katniss would truly appreciate it."
Karla
Karla nodded. "I will," she promised. "I'm sure Katniss will appreciate someone staying behind to keep an eye on her."
Maybe if she told herself that enough time, she'd even believe it. They were staying in Thirteen. What was the worst that could happen?
Well...Peeta was still here and crazy. He could try to harm Prim to get revenge on Katniss. And Coin might move to take Prim and their mother after the fighting started to neutralize the threat the mockingjay could become. And there was always the possibility that the Capitol could come back with more than just bombs.
"I will," she said with a little more conviction.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Thank you," Wesley said sincerely. He had guessed that maybe Karla just needed to feel integral, and taking care of Prim would make her integral.
"I suppose the Everdeens should be perfectly safe with the two of us looking after them," he joked. "Not to mention Anakin and the others, of course."
Karla
"Oh, them," Karla said, waving her hand. "I guess they might come in handy. For, you know, back up and carrying the heavy things."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Oh, of course," Wesley said, laughing a bit. "Opening the door by means of psychic abilities without actually seeing the person on the other side..."
Yeah, Anakin, that never failed to freak Wes out.
Karla
Just wait till Karla did that, too, Wes!
"Pity Thirteen took his cloak away," she added. "Because if you need a dramatic cloak-swirl, he's pretty much your go-to guy."
She laughed at that and then shot Wesley a grateful look.
"Thanks."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
It was true. Angel could swirl his coat around with the best of them, but Anakin's cloak pretty much took the cake.
"Of course," he said, waving off the gratitude. He'd owed her, anyway, and they were friends. "Of course, Prim could always turn out to be immensely difficult, in which case your gratitude might be misplaced," he teased.
...Obviously. It was such an Everdeen gene, and all.
Karla
"If she is, I'll just tell you that you owe me future baby-sitting services," Karla said, giving him a smile.
And thinking of her gigantic brood from the last time the island decided to be cute. "I'd call that about square."
Even an Everdeen at her most willful couldn't compare to seven children, all of whom had inherited some measure of Karla's genes.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Seven children? The horror! Wesley's own two children from that weekend had been more than enough of a handful.
"That sounds fair," he decided. "So we're agreed, then."
He thought he'd handled that rather well.
Karla
Karla was already planning to unfairly malign Prim to get that free baby-sitting commitment.
"Agreed," she said, hoping no one would tell Wesley about her gaggle of children until after it was too late to renegotiate terms.
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
Wesley smiled at that. Then he glanced down at his stamped hand, gesturing idly to the door that led to Command. "Well, I should really..." He trailed off.
"Best of luck," he offered finally.
Karla
Karla nodded, trying not to wrinkle her nose at the stamp. "You should. They expect promptness from the rank and file, Soldier Wyndam-Pryce."
That was a mouthful. They'd probably shorten it in the field.
She offered him a salute then shooed him down the corridor. "Good luck to you, too. Stay safe. That's an order."
Wesley Wyndam-Pryce
"Likewise," he offered in return. He even gave her a little salute, despite feeling a little silly about it. "I'll see you when we return!" he called before disappearing into the room.
Someone was dangerously optimistic over here.
Warren Worthington
"Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid."
The fact that Warren had placed himself squarely in the middle of the biggest room readily available, sitting on the floor so that the roof seemed a little higher without giving a crap about who might trip over him, probably said a little about how his test had gone.
If the under-the-breath snarling at himself didn't do a good enough job of it, anyhow.
[preplayed with the usual suspects, but most importantly, coded by the magnificent wesleynotponcy and sith_happened, without whom I would probably be bald. Or at least have large patches where my hair is missing, from ripping it out.]