the stronger you climb

[71st_victor]

WHO: Johanna Mason
WHERE: The Woods
WHEN: Midnight-ish, January 16th
OPEN TO: OTA
WARNINGS: Violence, Auroras, Aggressive Lumberjacking
STATUS: Open

---

There's one convenient thing Johanna's figuring out about the whole 'night's as bright as day' thing. For someone who doesn't really sleep so well, it gives her the opportunity to get out there and do some of her work when everyone else is sleeping, which means that she doesn't have to run into crowds of people and do the whole smile and act civilized thing. Sure, yes, she's trying to be nice for Finnick's sake, but honestly, people kind of suck after a while. This is the kind of peaceful silence that she does well with.

The sparks are starting to get a little annoying, especially seeing as she can barely touch her axe at times without shocking herself after, but the auroras? Well, Johanna doesn't exactly get wowed by natural beauty or anything, but even she has to admit they're pretty incredible.

At night, when they're lighting up the sky like day, they're amazing. She'd scrambled to the top of one of the trees to perch up there and eat some jerky she'd stashed in the boughs, readying herself for another night of private hunting and wood chopping. While the wood, she's happy to share, the food is treated, prepared, and shared between herself, Finnick, and Annie. She might be willing to go along with the whole 'play nice' theme they've got going on, but she's going to make sure she stays alive before anyone else.

With the last of her food done, she descends quickly, boots slamming onto the ground as she absently twirls both her axes as she walks along, not caring what she looks like, aiming to find a little something to carve up and start drying out before she gets back to chopping up the logs. Might as well make the best of a sunny night, after all, and what better way than getting to use the sharp ends of her axes?

Comments

[71st_victor]

That hadn't stopped Johanna and her fellow revolutionaries, so she just raises an unimpressed brow at the man. "So?" she demands bluntly. "It just means you plan better," she scoffs, feeling like if it's important enough, then you take the fight to the people who want you to live as something less. "Trust me, I know all about being outnumbered. There's ways around that."

[frankensteinian]

"Perhaps in your experience. Not in mine." Maybe if Charles would do more than teach his students history and literature. Maybe if he would accept that humans are a threat, and do something to take action against that threat, they could defeat those who would come for them. But if he's going to sit around his house and do nothing, then mutantkind is doomed to extinction.

[71st_victor]

"You can do that," Johanna says, without much sympathy as she gestures to him and his skills. "Where I come from, you might be good with a weapon, but they have bombs and guards and leverage. We're still rising up," she insists, with the stubborn heart of the revolutionary that she'd become to protect her own future and to refuse to let Snow put her down.

"You should be a force to be reckoned with. You should be free," she says, and it's not clear so much anymore who she's talking about.

[frankensteinian]

"We should." That's always been his philosophy. He's just encountered some resistance in making it happen. "Unfortunately not everyone agrees on how to get that freedom, and as long as we fight amongst ourselves, we'll never be able to fight for freedom effectively."

[71st_victor]

Johanna can't help rolling her eyes as she uncaps the liquor and takes a long swig back. "You don't tell me twice how that goes," she assures Erik, seeing as she's had to deal with that for months leading up to the rebellion. "Everything has to have a time and place," she echoes other people. "Still, at least we were still doing something." Even if she had to work with someone she could barely stand, at least it was all for the right reasons.

[frankensteinian]

"What makes you think I wasn't?" She doesn't need to convince him of the need to fight against oppressors. It's certain others he knows who don't think it's necessary. That the issue can be solved in other ways. It hasn't worked in the past. It won't in the future either.

[71st_victor]

She raises a brow, because most people don't look at an us versus them situation that's unbalanced and still push ahead, but sometimes idiots like her and her other allies managed. It sounds like Erik's in the same boat. "Good," is what she says with a firm nod of her head. "It just takes the right pressure in the right places, but eventually it all comes crashing down."

If there's one thing Johanna plans to see in her lifetime, it's the Capitol, on its knees.

[frankensteinian]

"We can do things they cannot. They might have methods of nullifying one or two of us at a time, but they can't stop all of us." There are echoes of what he'd said ten years ago on the lawn of the White House, but even as he says it now, he knows that they have to stop fighting among themselves if they have any chance of preserving their future. Which means that they also need to accept that in order to have that future, they'll have to fight for it.

[71st_victor]

"So why haven't you taken over? Why aren't you winning?" Johanna asks, both stubborn in the face of what sounds like sure victory, but also because she wants to know for herself, because they're the outranked until they can get the districts aligned and together. Even then, she knows what happens when the Capitol doesn't want you to rebel.

You get wiped off the map, just like Thirteen.

[frankensteinian]

"Not all of us think we need to fight." It's not that Charles doesn't think that humans might cause a problem; he's idealistic, but not that much. Charles just thinks that the problem can be solved by diplomacy, and that's not how Erik has experienced it happening.

"If we have disagreements among ourselves, then we don't know how to resolve anything else either."

[71st_victor]

"Don't worry, there'll come a point that forces it, there always is," she says with a glint in her eye of that stubborn determination that had forced herself into things. "It just takes enough pressure and eventually something will happen to unite everyone," she promises. "Then, you just need a figurehead, someone that everyone wants to follow."

[frankensteinian]

"I have a feeling that no one will agree on who that should be, either." Unless Charles refuses to fight, and then the situation will be resolved more easily. "Though if what they really want is to fight for us, they'll figure it out."

[71st_victor]

"It should be who the people want to follow, even if you personally can't stand them," is her comment, sighing as she thinks about the fact that as much as she doesn't exactly love Katniss, she'll agree that the people want to follow her. "It's someone who inspires hope and the will to fight, all at once."