sith_happened | Anakin's office [from noon onwards]

Anakin had spent the morning over at the Trooper Station ~~interrogating~~ interrogating his new staff: since he'd worked with various clones before (and was uniquely aware of their more...esoteric programming), he'd spent time with each one individually, asking about their duties at the Trooper Station, their thoughts about Fandom, and what happened if he said "Implement Order 66."

Turned out, nothing, but it was worth checking.

He went over to his office at the school around lunchtime, flipped on the link to Katniss's world (a habit he'd gotten into since she'd left), and was getting ready to write down his impressions about yesterday's class when he realized that he wasn't listening to the usual noises from Panem.

He was tuned into the Reaping. District 9, it looked like. Cursing under his breath, Anakin reached into a desk drawer and began leaving ~~handwavey~~ messages for the list of people Katniss had left for him to talk to.

From his spot behind his desk, he reached out through the Force to close the door. Today's office hours were by invitation only.

[OOC: For those who are watching the Reaping, and NFB.]

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Alex had been at her office when she'd received the message. She'd call it a late lunch break, then. She knocked on the door impatiently, but tried to look outwardly composed.

She was one of the adults, here. She should act like it.

Anakin reached out to check in the Force to see who it was, then answered, "Come in, Alex."

Alex took a second to frown at that -- maybe he had called her first, or maybe she had really distinctive perfume -- before dismissing it. Maybe he had psychic powers. In this island, who knew. It wasn't all that important, at the moment.

A quick glance around told her he was the only other person in the room, at least for now, which meant she could stop worrying about her face so much once she shut the door. She was going to be strong, in front of the kids, but.

"This is such bullshit," she said softly.

Firekeeper had been waiting for this, for some sort of word from Katniss's home. That it had finally happened brought a feeling of... well, it couldn't be called relief. Not when she knew what was at stake here. It was more like, she realized, as she and Blind Seer waited for Professor Skywalker to open the door, she finally had a target for her concerns. This business of being anxious over possibilities was not at all wolflike.

Anakin nodded, looking disgusted. "This is just the beginning," he said, "though horrifying in its own right. The contestants are being chosen from previous winners. Some of them have children of their own by now."

He gestured to the television. "I've seen some depraved things in my life," he admitted, "but this is cracking the top ten."

Anakin closed his eyes to discover who was at the door. "Come in, Blind Seer," he called. "And Blysse."

"The whole process is sickening," Alex said. "Turning kids into live gladiators for the entertainment of an entire populace. At least reality television is just ... banal and insipid. No one there is starving, desperate, and trying to stab someone with a homemade shiv."

She put her hands on the back of a chair, but felt too jumpy to actually sit.

"They survived one nightmare, and they're being tossed in to round two," she said. "I know every single reason that we're supposed to sit back and let this happen, and it feels so ... entirely and completely wrong, to every fiber of my being."

Luke had been in Alexandria hanging out at that temple he probably shouldn't be hanging out at when he got the message. Luckily his powers gave him the chance to get back to the dorms without a ton of walking, which meant he didn't give himself a lot of time to get broody over things.

Which was for the best 'cause really the last thing the world needed was a Anakin/Luke brood-off.

He knocked on the door to the office and tried to force himself to keep a calm, collected attitude about everything.

"Come in, Luke," Anakin called.

"What happen?" Firekeeper asked as she opened the door and slipped inside, Blind Seer at her heels. Even on a good day, she wasn't much for the typical niceties of conversation. Best to just get the information right away and figure out what to do with it.

Anakin nodded. "I'm not one for sitting around either, but the entire system is rotten. Going in and taking the head off of the President would be cathartic but ultimately useless."

Well that was a neat trick. It didn't exactly make Luke want to go into the room but he did anyway since he was dying of curiosity when it came to how Katniss was doing.

"Got your message," he said, shutting the door behind him. "What's happening?"

"The Reaping," Anakin replied just as directly. "They are picking out Katniss's opponents."

"The Reaping," Anakin replied, pointing to the screen. "Other districts had more than three people to choose from."

Anakin hated everything about the Games, and it kind of showed in his voice.

It was her lunch break, anyway, so Gabrielle told herself it was all right to slip away from the library for a while; this was a justifiable reason, in her mind.

She took a deep breath and knocked on the door, torn between trying to be optimistic and just resigning herself to bad news.

Anakin checked through the Force, then called out, "Come in, Gabrielle."

Gabrielle let herself in, shutting the door behind her again. "News about Katniss," she guessed. "The Reaping?"

She still hated how innocuous that made it sound, when it was anything but the kind of harvest festival she remembered growing up in Poteidaia.

"Right, the announcer on the Games I watched said Twelve didn't win too often," Luke said, walking a bit closer to the screen. "Though I get the feeling if there had been more than one girl to choose from Katniss's name would have miraculously been picked anyway."

Wesley would have been one of the first to arrive, but ~~LJ mobile decided not to work~~ slipping out of ~~NPC~~ class had been difficult. Regardless, he arrived, worried and harried, not too long after receiving Anakin's message. He knocked rapidly on the door, trying to remember that this was just the reaping and already set in stone, and nothing bad would happen. Probably.

"She said there would be repercussions," Alex agreed. "So I'd be ... making myself feel better, and making things a hundred times worse for her. I can't believe doing nothing is the less selfish option."

She rubbed the back of her neck, idly, trying to work out the tense knot that was starting.

"So what can we do?" she asked. "She mentioned packages. And support, for ... the kids here."

Anakin nodded. "I'm in contact with her handler--he'll be on the screen when they get back to District 12 because he's also a Games survivor. We can send gifts to her when the Games begin, but the longer she's in the arena the more prohibitively expensive it'll become."

He ran his hands through his hair. "And I've watched her Game," he said. "It's an extremely brutal event. There's no cutting away from the deaths, and the President is personally gunning for her to die. Frankly I will be shocked if she lasts past the first day, and we need to be ready to deal with a lot of grief."

Anakin snorted humorlessly. "Me too," he said. "I'm almost surprised the other districts have to send people."

"The Reaping," he confirmed. "We're in District 11 now."

"Come in, Wesley," Anakin called back.

Wesley did, and instantly felt very nervous and, bizarrely, out of place among all the others who were here to watch the reaping as well. "Is it -- has it started?" he asked anxiously.

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Anakin's office [from noon onwards]

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