thearena | Lightning Strikes Twice

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Lightning Strikes Twice

There were no sign ups involved this time, this was an off-worlder idea which means the off-worlders clearly have every desire to see this through; you signed up with your consent. The mission is to be held in the evening, so the morning is spent preparing, stocking up the hovercraft with medical supplies, arming everyone, donning the now familiar all black attire. When the alert is sent out, it's simply to gather in the hanger and begin loading.

As promised, there's no sign of a 13-issued leader involved, it's on the mission team and it's assigned tactical head to lead themselves; all Webb gives the group is a chipper smile and 'Good Luck.'

The sun is just beginning it's descent when the hovercraft leaves the hanger. The flight isn't nearly as long as the one to District 3, but it's long enough that the sun has dipped below the horizon when the hovercraft stops. Stopping doesn't mean landing, however. The team's resident off-worlder pilot comes on over the speaker with given instructions: time to strap up and get ready to do a little sky-diving.

The plan is simple really. Should the hackers do their job, the storms will do as they're told and strike the dome below the hovercraft all at the same time, breaking the barrier and making a hole big enough for the strike team to carry out the rescue. Hackers strapped in and strike team ready to zipline down, the hovercraft's door opens to the windy outside, allowing a wonderful view of the bright flash and deafening crash a minute later as the weather codes carry out their destruction.

Time to move.

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"Not really. I prefer the term strategist. Or vigilante justice. Kinda hard to be a traitor to the entity that kidnapped me in the first place."

Not that anyone in the Capitol--or sympathizing with them--has ever seen it that way. The fact that all the off-worlders have been strong armed into a world that isn't theirs seems to be conveniently overlooked in their minds. But that's not a technicality that she plans on arguing. She doesn't figure she'll get any further with this child than she has with anyone else.

Instead, she crouches down, balancing on the balls of her feet and resting her arms on her knees. It's an easy position to get up from quickly, if this kid decides that she wants to cause a commotion.

"For someone who just got scooped out of a death match that they were bound to lose, you don't sound very happy. Want to talk about it?"

She's too far away for Ae to kick at; she could try, but it wouldn't end well. She went for watching closely instead, every muscle tense in case she needed to attack or defend on the fly.

Instead, it's the fire in her tone she lashes out with. "What do you know? I wasn't going to to lose! I wanted it more than any of them, it mattered!" And here was this traitor spitting on it like it was nothing. What a surprise.

"I know a lot more than you, it seems." For one, she knows that Aemila isn't the only one in there who wanted to win. But that isn't what this child wants or needs to hear. That would only rile them up more. Instead, Terezi decides to focus on a different point.

"You have to realize that they weren't going to let you win. Contrary to popular belief, the twenty-four of you were not Tributes. You were sacrifices. A point to be made--and that point was directed at your restless families back home. They might have replaced the reaped tributes with off-worlders, but they could go back to reaping children anytime they wanted." At least, that was the message as Terezi saw it. There was little doubt in her mind that this stunt was a last ditch effort to drive fear back into the districts by spearheading it with despair. Reminding the districts of the axe hanging over them and their children.

"You might have made it to the end. I don't doubt your chance of winning. But they would have struck you down somehow, even if it took turning every trap in the arena against you."

Edited 2015-10-24 03:32 (UTC)

Her mind fought and violently rejected every word that didn't fit with what she knew. But that didn't mean their meaning bounced off so easily, it sat on the surface of her skin and slowly seeped in like a gnawing cold she couldn't shake.

No, the Capitol wouldn't do something like that. Or would they?
The Capitol protects us, it doesn't need to strike fear in the districts, the districts are happy. Or were they? How many of those other children looked happy?

How much of this entire thing had gone according to plan?

She clenched her fists tight, knuckles turning white with the strain of holding tight to her slippery conviction. "You're wrong, I chose this, no one forced me into it." Like that explained why there were reapings in the first place. Her anger spiked.

"Just go away!"

If she expect Terezi to go away just because she's told to, this poor child has another thing coming. Terezi stays where she is, even settles down a little more solidly on the floor. She shoves her hands into the pockets of her flight jacket.

"Can I ask a different sort of question? Why would you choose to enter yourself into a death game? Wouldn't it have been safer to stay home and find work there? Wouldn't your parents have been happier to keep you safe? They must have spent effort and care to raise you. Is that what it was all for?" She gestures back in the direction of the arena left behind them.

She wasn't going away and Aemila's arms shrieked with the desire to lash out at her and get her to go away. She didn't. But that meant she was forced to listen to Terezi and think about what she was saying.

"I was born into it. It's an honor." Her tone held a sharp edge, one she hoped would cut even if a small, distant part of herself already knew it wouldn't. "My father is a great peacekeeper and I was going to be a great peacekeeper too. But then the reaping happened and...he was so proud." The proudest he'd ever been of her. And that fact was almost enough to override the memory of her mother and Jaye, but only almost.

"But maybe your kind don't have people who matter to you, so you're not gonna understand anyway."

Ah. Well. That would explain some things. For a moment, Terezi considers that she might not be the best person to talk to Aemila about this. Having defected from the Peacekeepers as she did, she's sure now that there's some bad feelings in this mix.

But then again, maybe she's exactly the right person to talk about this.

"You have an alarmingly Capitol way of thinking about that," Terezi remarks with a frown on her lips. She regards Aemila as if she were a particularly difficult puzzle to figure out, except for the sympathy that makes its way in there as well. "I'm not that different from you. I had someone that I cared about very much. My ancestor was a Legislacerator--sort of like your Peacekeepers. Growing up, I studied everything that I could about her career. I wanted nothing more than to be exactly like her."

"In that process, I learned a lot of things about justice and peace. To be honest, I learned more than those books intended to teach me. I learned how easy it was to fall into corruption. I learned how unforgiving powerful people could be. I learned that winning a war did not mean that you were right or just. I learned that pledging to uphold the law did not mean that you were a good person." Much as she had hated to admit it. The was the hardest to come to terms with, realizing that the law itself could be fallible and full of holes.

"The peacekeepers here... As a whole, they are not good people. Individually, perhaps. I am not going to pass judgment on their integrity as people, but the organization itself is a rotten mess. Even the name is laughable. Peacekeepers? Whose peace are they keeping? Because it isn't Panem's. They're turned against the Districts, the Offworlders, the Capitol itself... Fearkeepers might be a better name for them. The only people who aren't terrified of them are Snow and his cabinet--and there's something deeply wrong about that."

"The Capitol has only ever protected District Two." There was no hesitation in that, it was simply a statement solidified into fact through her belief.

But the rest of it wasn't so solid. Terezi's story told her she probably at least had an idea. From the way she talked, it was clear this person she looked up to wasn't constantly in her life, constantly there with judgement and mounting expectations she had to fulfill day-by-day. But she'd assigned herself high expectations and that was no different than what Aemila herself had done.

And although her first instinct was to rail against the words and argue, some things said she already knew as true, even if she hadn't let herself think about them. How often had she heard her father's superiors cracking down on him no differently than he cracked down on her? In some cases, what she'd overheard in the quiet of the night while he talked to other officials was so strict and cruel it had given her pause. Power and cruelty.

Her father and brothers were good men, she'd defend them till her dying breath, but she knew there had been men and women in the peacekeepers who had given Aemila a bad feeling, some of them so unsettling she'd excused herself from being near them as soon as possible. Not everyone was a good person, but that was simply true of all people, peacekeepers or not.

"The Peacekeepers uphold the President's law. He's only trying to prevent more war and bloodshed. If some people have turned to fear to keep the peace, then it's because kindness failed." Her voice was hard while she spewed rehtoric, but she couldn't look at Terezi either. There were more doubts in her than there'd been in months and while she desperately wanted to believe it was because she was tired and stressed, the part of her that sounded suspiciously like Jaye told her those doubts weren't as new as she'd like them to be.

In fact, they'd probably been planted the moment she'd seen Jaye's face at the reaping.

"If resorting to fear is the only way to keep the peace, then there is something wrong with the peace in the first place." Peace shouldn't be something that requires fear. That sounded too much like Alternian tactics, which she already knew was a disaster. It was bad enough that it was so heavily ingrained back on their world... Humans didn't need to copy that part of their legacy.

"It is one thing to punish those who would threaten your safety. Believe me, I understand. Every crime deserves to be punished. But it is an entirely different matter to punish people who are only trying to live their lives. Snow has done a terrific job of misdirecting the blame, but when you get right down to it... He is the one causing war and bloodshed by hurting innocent people. You are only noticing it now because the Districts have reached their limit. They can't endure this mistreatment anymore, and they are starting to fight back."

Her throat burned and her mind raced, trying to find something to say, but there wasn't anything. She didn't know how to argue against that, she had nothing else to stand on. It scared her.

She bit the inside of her lip and tried to keep her eyes up, but they drifted away from the troll's face. She didn't want to listen to this anymore, she wanted to sleep and eat a real meal and just go home. But she was a peacekeeper's daughter, she couldn't show childish weakness like that.

"My father and brothers are respectable peacekeepers. They're going to keep fighting for what they believe in. You can't turn me against them."

The Capitol, maybe. Perhaps even her district she could turn her back on, but never her family.

"We weren't planning to." That much she can be honest about. These children won't end up as soldiers if they don't want to be. They won't be forced into a war that they don't want to fight. There might be necessary cameras and filming for other things, but Terezi at least has no intention of putting a weapon in their hands and pointing them at their families, not even if that includes a bunch of Peacekeepers.

"All we were trying to do was get you out of there." Her tone is gentler and sincere. Sharing the truth doesn't need to be forceful to get it's own point across. It does that on it's own. "We wanted to save lives, not recruit soldiers. And I promise, if at all possible, we will return you to your family as soon as it's safe for both you and them."

She can here the honesty there but she just wants to cover her ears like some child. This isn't what she wants to hear, she doesn't want these words to wiggle into her brain and screw with her conviction. No, it wouldn't she was too strong for that, she just needed to block it out. Clear her mind.

"So never." Is the moody reply she gives back and curls into herself. By the time this war was over, no matter who won, her family would likely be dead. Maybe Jaye would be too. Maybe that was better.

That response earns a frown from Terezi. The lack of faith is a little disheartening, but she expected as much. There's a lot of ways this could go wrong. If the rebellion lost, she could be killed along with them. If the rebellion won, her family might end up dead along with other Capitol soldiers. There was a very thin line where safety existed for Aemila and her family to be reunited. But Terezi felt they could find that line and walk it, if they were careful.

When the girl curls into herself, Terezi gives it a moment before trying to rest her hand on Aemila's shoulder. She doesn't know if she'll still pull away of not, but the attempt is made, and she'll continue to speak whether her hand is allowed to remain there or not.

"I know you don't believe me, and that's okay. I don't expect you to. But I'm going to keep doing the best I can for you and for everyone else in the Districts. And that means removing Snow from power with as little life lost as possible--on both sides. There will come a time when it's safe for you to go home. Try to trust us on that."

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Lightning Strikes Twice

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