sixthiterationlogs | 001 🔥strange things did happen here

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001 🔥strange things did happen here

WHO: Katniss Everdeen
WHERE: 6I village
WHEN: 6 May (before Peeta arrived)
OPEN TO: all
WARNINGS: TBD

Katniss has been here a few days and it's already long enough.

From the moment she climbed from the fountain, she's thought this place was an arena and nothing she's seen has given her the impression it isn't some sort of Capitol trick, though the arena might be a stretch. It's more like a District, given the lack of traps, but she's still not trusting anything. She doesn't want to fall victim to a trap, to lull herself into thinking she's safe when danger can be lurking around any corner.

She feels safer under the cover of trees than out in the open so she'd taken to them as soon as she'd pulled herself from the fountain a few nights before, still dripping as she scrambled up a likely redwood and perched there to get the best view of the surrounding area. There's a village where the fountain is and it looks for all the world like the town part of 12, like the little houses the merchants had before everything had been blown to smithereens.

There's people who come and go, yes, but she hasn't seen any peacekeepers. She journeys through the woods during the night and finds that there's no fence, so far as she can tell, but she'd managed to stumble into a few ant hills and get stung; it's this that drives her into the village. None of the plants here are plants that she knows and she doesn't know what will draw out this poison. The welts on her arms and legs are painful even if she doesn't feel sick and the sun is up and has been for a while. It's not terribly hot, which is a blessing, but the pain from the bites doesn't make it an easy trip.

By the time she actually makes it into town, she's more than ready to get her bites tended to so she can go back to the woods and hide a little longer. She'll have to move camp to make sure she's not followed but better this than to die.

[Find Katniss on the edge of the woods, near the hospital or anywhere else in the village.]

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It was a late start to Lyanna's day. The cat had kept her up during the night, scratching at the wall where there must be a mouse making a nest. Barnabas had yowled her, as though she could punch a hole in the wall for him to crawl through. She'd done her best to wrangle him and push him out of her room, but that didn't stop him from squatting in front of her door and begging to be let back in.

So because of the cat, she had missed sunrise and her usual time to get up and go into the woods for hunting. Everyone else had apparently gotten started with their day, as the paths were fairly absent of people and she could see figures out in the fields. There was only one other girl wandering about, and from the look on her face, she was miserable.

"Are you all right," Lyanna asked, slinging her bow over her shoulder as she approached the woman. She looked to be about her age, already raising a bit of excitement in her. There were so few people that were her age, it stood out. "Did you just arrive?"

Being spotted makes her uncomfortable but it's sort of the point of being here, too. The bites she's received are swelling and if this is an arena or some other Capitol trick, Katniss doesn't want to go without medical treatment. She at least needs bandages and something to stop the swelling.

"I'm fine. I was just stung by something and I need to go to get it patched up. Where should I go?"

She's not exactly versed in medicine or healing, but those bites are familiar. Traipsing around the woods guaranteed a few bites from ants and every time she went to the clinic, they applied the same sort of herbs. She could pick them out now easily. It was getting to a point where she would grab them herself before disappearing back into the woods.

"There's a clinic nearby. They have something that can take down the swelling and reduce the pain. I can show you the way." And if no one was there, which was possible, she could take care of it herself.

Katniss doesn't know if she should trust the woman but if she doesn't, there's a chance the swelling from these bites will just get worse. If it gets to a point where it starts making her ill and she's far from the village, it will make it that much harder to care for herself while she's alone.

"I'll follow," she says, keeping a careful distance between them. She just needs to be wary at all times, to know that there could be a threat coming from anywhere and anyone, and she'll be all right.

"Thanks for your help."

This sort of response from a new arrival is far from off putting. It would be too much to ask them to trust and fully believe, moments after crawling out of the fountain. Everything was still too new and the people in the village were strangers. The most Lyanna could offer was kindness and an attempt to show that she meant no harm. It was the only replacement she could give for the lack of answers.

She makes sure to leave her bow and arrows outside the clinic, going inside unarmed.

"I'm bit by those ants at least once or twice a week. It's no trouble to help. The medicine will smell a bit and it might itch, but it will take down the swelling within an hour." She couldn't see anyone else in the clinic, but that didn't mean they weren't around. It just meant Lyanna would handle this herself.

She found the jar of herbs easily and plucked out a few leaves, crushing them before add a little bit of water. This would allow her to spread it over Katniss like a salve. "Did someone tell you about this place? I'm Lyanna."

"Which district is this?" Katniss has been on a tour of all of them but the parts of districts she sees and the real heart of them are two different things. Her whirlwind Capitol-sponsored tour of Panem probably didn't show her this part - of wherever this was.

"And I'm Katniss. Katniss Everdeen." It's strange that someone might not know her but in a way it's refreshing; she's so tired of being someone's symbol, someone's enemy, someone's victor. She just wants to be herself.

That was a "no" then. "District? I don't know. We call this 'the village', but it doesn't have a name and we don't know exactly where it is." Which was the worst answer to give, beyond not knowing how they came here and who the Observers were. "Others might be able to explain better than I can. There aren't many answers though."

She smiled, wrapping Katniss' arms in light bandages, more to keep the salve clean than anything else. "I wish I could say it's nice to meet you. It's not the best circumstances. I can help you find somewhere to live, if you like? There are a number of empty homes to claim."

"The houses are just empty?" Houses this nice are never empty unless they're in a Victor's Village. The ones in 12 stood empty for years and years until she and Peeta moved into them and gave Haymitch the neighbors he never wanted. She doesn't understand how this place works at all.

"Why would someone build houses this nice and just leave them here abandoned? It makes no sense. In my world, nobody gets anything for free. There's always a cost."

"It's the same in mine too." The usual cost was blood and vengeance. How long until her son was forced to suffer that price as her husband had been? As her brothers had? She shook her head, as though banishing the thought. Whatever the cost was of this world, she wasn't sure they had fully paid it yet.

"Some think there might have others here before us and others think that these houses were built to hold us." As though they were cattle, livestock to be housed and tamed. "There is nothing about this place that makes sense."

"I tend to think it's been built for us but I am not one to trust anything I see or hear," Katniss says. She doesn't particularly trust Lyanna yet but the other woman hasn't tried to attack her so she's giving her the benefit of the doubt for the moment.

"Not a lot where I'm from makes sense either other than people are greedy. I'm not used to things being given to me."

"That's for the best," she offered. "You are more likely to survive that way." Somewhere since her arrival, she had become more cynical and suspicious. It wasn't how she used to be, but it was the only way to feel safe in the village, as though she had some means to protect herself.

"There's an unspoken rule in the village that you have to work and contribute. We trade among each other and share food that we gather, but it's a barter system." Which seemed to suit everyone fine.

"I'm used to working," Katniss says. That's something that makes sense when so much of her life since the first games has made no sense at all. She is used to hunting and trading at the Hob, used to putting in long hours scouring the woods to feed her family and Gale's. If she's going to have to hunt and gather here, it's no different than being back home in 12 even if the woods are different from her woods.

"Where are the fences? I didn't see any when I walked in this way." If this is a district, there will be fences along the border of it somewhere and she needs to know when they're electrified and when they aren't. Are there peacekeepers here? How like 12 is it?

She was clearly not a lady of noble birth, which would work out to her favor. Those who were used to a rough living would find this place a bit easier to bear. Though there were those that seemed to adapt better than she could predict. For herself, she had always loved the wild, she adored hunting and being in the forest. Work was simple if it was something she enjoyed. It would be the same for this girl.

"We don't have fences." But they had barriers in a sense. "The Observers tend to keep us in the village in other ways. Sometimes we are attacked by birds, sometimes by bugs. Or...we were before we were brought to this new village."

Katniss frowns, trying to work that out. How is it a district without fences? How is it an arena without some sort of force field barrier and people trying to kill her? It doesn't make sense. The only thing that does are animals that attack - muttations.

"There was another village before? When did you come here? How did you get here?"

Again, it wasn't something that would be easy to explain. "The first village looked the same as this one, but some of the houses were destroyed over time because of earth quakes and flooding." The village at least felt lived in, compared to this.

"One day, we were pulled through the fountain and found ourselves here. It's the same as when you were brought here. Only, our hair was longer, as if we had been asleep for some time."

Even after she'd been here -- or wherever it was that he'd been for over a year until a month or so ago -- Finnick still doesn't really know Katniss Everdeen. He hadn't spent much time with her, despite his pledge to the rebels to protect her, because there'd been little obvious to protect her from.

That doesn't mean he can't recognize her when he sees a slender figure prowling around the edges of the woods. He'd spent a lot of time studying her in preparation for the Quarter Quell before he'd found himself here, and he'd watched most of the 74th Games live on television as they'd happened, at first because he'd been mentoring and then because it was so hard not to watch even when he wanted to.

"Katniss?"

He hadn't expected to see her again any time soon, and her arrival here starts up new questions running through his head: why now? Why her? Why had she disappeared before, and why is she back?

It might not have been smart to draw attention to himself when she has the advantage of the trees to her back and he's out in the open, but.

He's carrying a trident, he can protect himself.

Edited 2018-05-13 16:13 (UTC)

Katniss knows his voice. Finnick has been one of the constants over the last few months and the two of them have been slowly putting one another back together. Finnick has his rope and Katniss has her closets but they serve the same purpose: they're putting themselves together again brick by brick.

He looks good now, though, tall and slender among the trees and carrying a trident the way he had in the Games. He could be back in the Arena, for all she knows, and Katniss scans his wrists to see if he's wearing a bracelet to demonstrate that he's with her. He isn't - just the same wristband she has.

"Finnick? Where are we?" She's still primed to run, if she has to, but she's a little less on guard when it's Finnick she's talking to.

When he'd met Katniss here before, it had been clear that she knew him, to some extent. He's learned enough from her and Peeta and especially Johanna, to realize that what she remembers from Panem might not have happened before he found himself here, however that's supposed to work.

His green eyes study her. The blue-green version of the uniforms everyone's wearing when they arrive here. Still tidy enough that she clearly hasn't been out in the woods for days, like he and Annie had when they'd found themselves in that first version of this place. Not as much wariness as he'd expect from her, but still plenty. She's a victor, and she'd been skeptical enough as a tribute.

"If anybody knows, they're not saying," he says, his head tilting a little to one side in curiosity. The question suggests that she doesn't remember being here before, like Johanna had. Katniss has been gone a lot longer, though, and some people who disappear and return months later don't remember being here. There's still so much they don't know about this place.

"Some place we've been stuck, but nobody's trying to kill each other."

And Snow doesn't seem to be directly interfering in their lives, though he, of course, can't say that.

"I don't trust anyone who isn't you, Annie or Haymitch." Katniss doesn't say Peeta. She wants to trust him, yes, but he's been warped and changed from the boy she knew into something twisted by the Capitol. That Peeta cannot be trusted. Her Peeta can.

"I just don't know how I got here. Was it a hovercraft?" Katniss has done enough travel by hovercraft to know it's quick enough and silent enough not to wake her if she'd been drugged.

Finnick's list of people he trusts is different from Katniss': he trusts Annie and Johanna, and to a limited extent Kate Kelly. Neither Katniss nor Peeta is on it. He already knows that Johanna remembers a lot more from Panem than he does, and if Katniss is going so far as to say she trusts him, she clearly does, too. Most victors don't even like him, let alone trust him. He's a Career: that makes him suspect to most of the other Districts, and he's from Four, which makes him suspect to the rest.

More surprising is the fact that she mentions Annie, who she can't ever have met, because Annie stays home, in Four, instead of going with the other victors to the Capitol. Finnick is wearing the handmade wedding ring Annie gave him, a visible, obvious token of love that he could never wear in Panem.

Before he can say anything, though, Katniss asks another question, and he shakes his head.

"I don't know. I don't remember anything about getting here. Just found myself in the fountain. Everyone here seems to have the same story. Found themself in the fountain with no idea how it happened."

"It doesn't make sense," Katniss says, turning it over and over in her mind until it's a stone worn smooth. Mulling over it doesn't seem to reveal any other answers, though, and if Finnick is here healthy, she can possibly relax for a little bit. Finnick is someone she can trust.

"Where are the fences? I assume this is some kind of district but I walked a long way and I didn't find any fences at all."

It's as if this whole place is free of the trappings of Panem and Katniss knows that's not possible.

At first it's easy to miss because there's other people that go out hunting, or foraging, or whatever, meaning there's lots of footprints and trails that lead into the woods and it all gets kind of muddled after awhile. Clint doesn't go out hunting every day, but he does go most days, usually going in different directions so as to not scare the game away from one place. But one day he notices faint, very faint, traces in the brush that don't seem to lead back to the village, and so he starts keeping his eye out, wary after the badger attack and concerned that something else is going on. Something else is always going on here, but if they have some idea of what's coming, they can prepare for it.

Fortunately, it turns out to not be anything ridiculous like the rampaging badger. Clint doesn't immediately know that the girl stumbling in the direction of the village is the one who'd left the few traces he'd spotted, but she was a possible reason for it. More importantly, she's young, new, and apparently in pain, and for the moment all of that supersedes anything else going on as he changes direction to walk towards her, taking in her appearance and mentally cataloguing everything he's noticing. "You got stung by something, huh?"

Katniss bristles a little if only because overt friendliness is something she's learned to question now instead of accept. She wishes she could go back to the easy days in 12 when they were all starving but they trusted one another and a greeting like that was out of genuine concern. She tries to hide how much pain she's truly in and gives a curt nod.

"I got stung by some ants but they're not like the ants back in my district. I'm not used to them." She imagines they're some sort of Capitol muttation and while she doesn't seem fatigued or weakened by the stings (on the contrary, she feels better than ever) they do hurt quite a bit.

"Is there somewhere I can get a bandage at least?"

The fact that the girl looks liable to turn into a porcupine if he gets too close to her makes Clint raise an eyebrow just a bit; he's seen plenty of people be uncomfortable around others - he brought in Nat, after all - but she's undoubtedly one of the worst that wasn't under arrest or something similar. Touchy kid, definitely, but also probably not something that's going to destroy the village or threaten anyone's life. At least not if she's left more or less alone, and it's a good idea to make sure she's taken care of so she's not feeling threatened.

At the mention of the ants, Clint nods. "Yeah, those things - no one's ever seen something like that before, we've run into a ...situation with those, too. The effects should start wearing off on their own pretty quickly, but their bites hurt like hell." Glancing up and off, Clint tries to recall who's in the hospital at the moment, but really any of the medical personnel would be pretty good at dealing with a sullen teenager. "The hospital's in the center of town. There's not a lot of equipment, but there'll be something there."

"A situation?" Katniss is wary about that particular phrasing. She's reasonably sure this isn't an arena, if only because people don't seem keen on killing her and there's actual shelters built. It could be a district, though, and she doesn't know which one it could be. There's no real tech so it's not 6. No factories or mines, which knock out 1, 3, 5, 8. 7, maybe? There's a lot of trees around and the houses are timbered. No Johanna, though. Then again - would Johanna ever go back to 7?

"What kind of situation are we talking about?" Ants are something she can crush underfoot at the least but she's still ready to spring into action against any threats.

The wariness in her face is at least something Clint has a lot of experience in dealing with; the comparisons with Nat are inevitable, really, as she'd exhibited a lot of that same reluctance to open up and leave herself vulnerable during her recruitment and initiation at S.H.I.E.L.D. (and even somewhat after that with most people, being fair). It means he's fully prepared and even somewhat expecting Katniss to attack him, even though he absolutely doesn't look like he's on guard; he's almost certain he can handle whatever she can throw at him, but those ant bites have an effect they still haven't completely figured out and he saw what they did to Ned.

But none of that comes across as he shrugs, way too used to hiding his actions, reactions, and agent capabilities behind a mask of Regular Guy, turning to point out towards the east. "Badger ran into one of their mounds and got bitten to hell and back a few days ago - crashed into the village and tried to attack people, broke into the inn, shedding ants all over the place. Took forever to get it down, badgers're already strong and mean when they get angry, and those ants seemed to jump amp up all of those abilities even worse. I shot it and it didn't really do much. At the end, one of the other residents got bitten himself and finally just punched it until it was knocked out." Giving her a bit of a sideways look, Clint clarifies a little. "Which means you probably can break a lot of stuff right now if you aren't careful, with how much you got bit."

It explains why she doesn't feel feverish and weak, necessarily, but Katniss doesn't want to reveal exactly how she's feeling to someone she doesn't know and cannot possibly trust yet. She scratches absently at her arm, the heat and the pain of the stings welling up beneath her nails.

"It was more painful than I would have expected," she allows. It's not much of a comment but she's trying her best to keep to herself and simply observe.

"Has anyone else been bitten?"

"They're not nice things. I haven't touched 'em and I could tell you that." At least that little incident told them an important thing about some of the animals here without a human being subjected to it, and it came with limited property damage, but it was still kind of ridiculous in hindsight. And also kind of terrifying. If the little ants could do something so severe, what could the bigger creatures do?

"Still, you should be okay if you wait it out, maybe get a bath and watch some of their sting out of you. No one else's been bitten that I know of, but someone might've been during the badger thing and I just didn't hear about it. Where are you staying?"

Katniss gestures vaguely back down the row of houses. She isn't giving a specific residence and as far as this man is concerned, she could be living in the woods. She doesn't want to show her hand right now if she can possibly help it.

"Are there any other things like that around here? Animals that aren't the way they're supposed to be?" Are there other muttations she needs to look out for and avoid, if possible?

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001 🔥strange things did happen here

Village

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Woods

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