#mb135

Slate was sober -- he didn't count nicotine as a drug, surely not after everything he'd been doing -- and was, therefore, feeling sick and annoyed with everything around him. Ash and Finch were both alive, which meant that he had no excuse to not be here, to not be theoretically schmoozing with sponsors, though he was not doing that. He was instead standing by one of the heated lamps in the tent, eating something he was told was called funnel cake, and generally looking grumpy and off-putting. When someone approached, he said, "You want some of this artisan-hand-crafted-low-protein-low-fiber-high-sugar shit? That's what the Capitolite who gave it to me said. It's good though."

"Oh, thank Snow," Cress beamed, the odd latex and rubber of her outfit squeaking as she shimmied closer to Cain, hands lifting, encircling him, clasping something at the base of his neck. When she withdrew, her fingers toyed with a locket that centered below his throat. An 'M' was engraved onto the front, and she'd spent time discoloring the metal, letting it appear just the right amount of tarnished. "A gift from Mack," she asserted, though the 'M' certainly stood for Meadowforge and had been taken from her own collection -- but they were playing a careful PR game, and with the media blast that had been leaked, they needed to take things a step further.

"Couldn't help but notice you and Mahlon all matchy-matchy this evening. You two back together?" Cade took a sip of his drink, eyeing Greer over the rim with interest. He was off-duty tonight (thank God), so he felt he could be a little more brazen in needling for topics of gossip that interested him. "Not to say it's not cute. It is. Even sweeter than whatever the fuck this is." He held up his pink-blue-rainbow monstrosity that he was enjoying far more than he'd admit to.

"You doing okay?" He hadn't spoken to Nano in a while, but he'd... heard things. Word got around, especially somewhere like the Tower. There was no such thing as private business. "If you ever want an excuse to disappear from this sort of thing for a little while, I'm definitely your guy. I hate this stuff." And, he remembered when he'd felt his most fragile, large crowds tended to make everything he felt a hundred times louder.

"You know, I've never done this before, but I feel very confident in my skills," Holland said, letting her hair down as she approached the ring toss. "And I've just spent my entire day trying to reprogram a crocodile, so what do you say? Let's make it a competition."

Hestia nearly gagged on her drink, holding it out at an arm's length. She didn't usually like the cocktails at these things, of course-- too sweet, too artificial-- but she was feeling more adventurous than usual. Maybe partly because she knew being in a good mood tended to curry better favor among sponsors, and partly because both Finch and Ash were alive. Not just alive, doing decently, in fact. They were handling the challenges thrown to them about as well as she could hope any tribute from Twelve might, and neither seemed to have completely given up.

Sheen had a tribute left in the games, he should have been going to the ball on full alert. He should have prepared to work with sponsors to secure more support for Jade. Perhaps, though, the ether would help him relax, it would boost his confidence and make it easier for him to socialize with Sponsors, thereby getting her more money. Or Sheen was just being selfish, and he just wanted to run away from his feelings of feeling like an absolute failure. Regardless of his intentions, and what was going to happen, here he was at the Mentor Ball, high on the ether he'd bought from Mahlon.

"This is higher stakes than either of my Bloodbaths," Everett said, joking, as he balanced a drink in one hand and threw another dart at a balloon, successfully popping it and revealing behind it the words 'YOU LOSE.' The majority of the balloons were 'losers,' but a handful were 'winners,' which meant you'd get a prize -- he'd just gotten unlucky. "Here, you try." He held the dart out to the person watching.