V.

Soran Faerber, 18
Applicant #8

Six in the morning is the worst kind of time.

It's the time when everyone is just starting to wake up, if their life deems it so. There's just enough disturbance that it can be annoying, but not enough that anyone else would understand it.

And in Soran's eyes, it's far too early to be awake, period. Definitely too early to be wandering the streets all the way to the Justice Building from the Academy, when they're across the District from each other. It seems almost counter-productive, to have housing so damn far away from everything else. No one wants to walk this far.

Except for him, apparently. They didn't exactly give him a choice in the matter.

The bus driver, when he finally tracks her down, looks just as exhausted as Soran feels. She looks at the ID he hands her with a level of disinterest reserved only for someone that's been forced to deal with several grumpy teenagers at this hour. The way she takes his bag and ushers him on-board makes him grow concerned for where his bag actually ends up, but she sits back down on the steps to wait, and he doesn't think kicking her off them to go and check would help anyone's situation.

There's already one other person on the bus, sitting in the middle row. Soran reckons this guy probably fits One a lot better than he does, but he doesn't look all that offensive. It's not like he can raise the energy to be a dick this early anyway.

"Hey, man," the guy says. "Meliodas. Mel's good, though. I'll be honest, I didn't even think there'd be anyone else from One."

"Soran," he answers, and drops himself down a row back on the opposite side. "Looks like she's still waiting, so there must be at least one more."

"Jesus," Mel mutters. "One did really good this year."

"Good considering none of us were even born here?"

"Touché. How long have you been here?"

"Since I was seven."

Mel gives him a look. "You're what - seventeen? Eighteen?"

"Eighteen."

If you could ever see the cogs visibly turning in someone's eyes, Soran would be seeing it right now. Eleven years. Two extra years before the rebellion, before everything changed. Two very long, important years that no one from One would've been living in the Capitol during.

Mel frowns. He smiles.

He's sure he's about to be questioned further, as Mel would have every right to do, when someone else ascends the steps at the front of the bus. Bus is a very generous term; there's only the three rows, and a bathroom at the back. They could've just sent a car and told them all to suck it up.

The new arrival is clearly coming to that realization as well. He takes in all of his surroundings, and then stares at the two of them for so long that the bus driver actually nudges him to get out of the way. Only then does he move, and very carefully takes a seat in front of Soran, still looking like he'd rather be getting hit by the bus than be sitting on it.

A feeling Soran is wondering if he'll understand, sooner rather than later.

Mel hasn't even said anything. None of them have. The bus starts with no fanfare, no grand announcement, and the door slams shut. They begin to inch down the road at a snail's pace. Well, at least the seats are comfortable. It appears they're going to be stuck in them for quite a while.

Mel eventually extends a hand towards their third party member, but Soran busies himself with stretching out across both seats. If it's going to be hours upon hours, he may as well get some sleep before they get to the Capitol. There's definitely nothing better to do.

He's not entirely sure what happens in all his shuffling about, but it involves quite a bit of graceless flailing, and Mel eventually turning to watch him. His knees knock against the seats in front of him, and a moment later the other guy's head pops over the seat, glaring at him.

"How old are we, again?" he asks.

"Already answered that question," he fires back, uncaring for when he actually said the words. "And that was an accident, for your information, but now I'm going to do it on purpose."

"Delightful," he mutters, and turns around. Soran feels like delightful is exactly the type of word that always comes out of his mouth.

Mel, dare he say it, has an amused quirk to his lips. "Soran, this is Icarus. Icarus - Soran."

"Delightful," Soran echoes, and throws himself back into the seat once again, making sure to nudge his foot against the back of Icarus' chair before he settles for good. He closes his eyes, after that, but he's sure the heated glare from over the seat once again isn't his imagination.

It's not as comfortable as he imagined it would be. He rolls over onto his side, even though he's got something digging painfully into his ribs, and his knees are a very dangerous half an inch from the back of Icarus' chair. Mel glances between them again before he lifts his headphones back up, shaking his head in amusement.

"You having fun over there?" Mel asks him.

"The most."

"I thought you were asleep," Icarus says incredulously.

"My apologies. I didn't know my inability to fall asleep in six and a half seconds would be offensive to you."

Icarus sighs. It's so loud he's surprised the whole bus doesn't shake with it. Mel leans back too, and even though he can no longer hear that amused half-smile is still plastered on his face.

Soran doesn't know if he was speaking only for himself, or the whole bus.

They'll be having lots of fun, here.

The most.

Tarquin Vierra, 16
Applicant #4

"Are you sure you want to wear that, dear?"

"We're a block away," Dad answers. "It's not like he can change now. Besides, he looks fine."

"But I bought that nice suit," his mother insists, and swivels around in the front seat to pin him with a look. "Did you even pack it?"

Did he? Tarquin has not the faintest, vaguest clue. He pretty much just collected every item within arms-length last night and tossed it in his suitcase, once he realized that he had to go to sleep, or he wasn't going to wake up nearly early enough to feel appropriately ready for this. It had been a scatter-brained, mess of a situation that had resulted in him nearly choking on his granola bar this morning.

He doesn't think he did, though, and his mother realizes that as well. He's sure she hung it all the way in the back of his closet, a space he didn't even come close to touching.

The car rounds the last corner, and he sets eyes on the station. Amaranthine Station is the biggest transportation hub in the entire Capitol, and it shows. It's still easy to pick out the rather hefty handful of people milling around one of the biggest buses he's ever laid eye on.

He doesn't know if it's just the kids from the Capitol, or if everyone's gotten here already.

But it doesn't matter. He's here.

Tarquin pulls at the door handle, even though they're nowhere near stopped. His mother turns again, but this time her normally rational, even gaze is replaced by a death glare. He very slowly removes his hand.

"Are you really that excited to leave us?" she asks.

"Not excited to leave you," he insists. "Just... excited. I know you would've rather me stay here and start work with Dad, but—"

"I want you to do whatever makes you happy, sweetheart. I just want you to be practical as well."

"He can start work with me when he gets back," his father answers.

The issue is, practical's not a word often found in his vocabulary. He doesn't want to work with his father managing talent; he wants to be the talent. And he knows his mother has his best interests at heart, but he's also convinced that she would have torn the official announcement letter he received to bits, if they weren't going to announce it on the television anyway.

She doesn't want to see him fail. But judging by the fact that half the content's of his suitcase is probably a random piece of a theater outfit, maybe she's the one that's failed.

There's nothing but things to gain here. Knowledge to have, facts to absorb. All things that might allow him to play out history one day, if he's lucky.

No, not lucky. Good. The best.

And that's what he wants to be.

His father puts the car in park, just out of reach of the bus. "Alright, a minute before you run off. Behave. We'll be waiting right here when you get back. If you need anything, you tell one of the instructors to get a hold of you. Understand?"

"I got it, Dad—"

"And behave."

"You said that already."

His father shakes his head, and he offers a smile. "Anything else?"

"Nope, go ahead. Love you."

"You too," he quips, and then kisses them both on the cheek, already sliding out the back door, suitcase in tow. There are random things clunking around in it, mismatched shoes and hats, items of clothing he definitely won't need but has.

He turns, hardly ten feet from the car. "Don't forget to give Calix his birthday present! It's on the twenty-first! Under my bed, remember, at the back corner—"

"We can handle it!" she shouts. "Go on!"

He does, spinning around so fast on his heels that his suitcase nearly careens over before he manages to right it. He hears the car pull off as he approaches the few people lingering around the door. His heart's already going at the thought of those new people, even if he is missing one of his best friend's birthday's for it. He hopes the gift can make up for it.

He knows he sticks out, but he doesn't feel like it by the looks of these people. The few there still around at his approach. The green hair usually does it, even though he left the roots dark to appease his mother. It's the equivalent of a neon sign.

"Sorry to say, but the green hair is trademarked," the one guy says.

"Percy."

"Aw, it was a joke."

"He looks better with it than you," another girl says, and the one green-haired one, Percy, looks at her in mock disgust. Or genuine disgust. Tarquin isn't all the way sure.

She looks at him though, ignoring whatever offense Percy has taken up. "Nice outfit. The Dark Days called - I think they're looking for it."

"I'm pretty sure nobody in the Dark Days dressed that way," Percy offers up.

"Still better than the way you're dressing,"

"Says you. You're hardly wearing any clothes."

"You wouldn't either, if you looked like me," she insists, and Tarquin feels inclined to agree with her. If he dared to spend that much money on tattoos, he wouldn't be wearing clothes to hide them either. She disappears up the steps to the bus, clearly waiting for them. Percy stares after her for a moment, and then turns back to him.

"Seriously. Totally 1500's."

The girl snorts. "Well, I call sitting with Shakespeare, then. You guys can continue sitting together and doing whatever it is you were doing before."

Tarquin feels as if he should laugh, but doesn't. Percy and Miss. Tattoo and the guy who has only spoken once, to chastise Percy in the first place - they're all quite the group. He doesn't think he's going to help by adding to it, not one bit.

It still doesn't stop him from holding his hand out, feeling like a complete idiot the whole while. "Tarquin. Shakespeare's fine too. Nice to meet you."

Noelani Westmoreland, 16
Applicant #11

The bus was an odd kind of terrifying.

It was like walking into a store that had too many things on display. Not that Four had many of those going on - most of them were quaint little seaside sweet shops or bookstores, a few markets spread out along the coast. That's not what people moved to there for, anyway.

Topher didn't seem fazed by any of it, was the worst part. He went tearing through the bus without so much of a look of care towards anyone watching, and she lost him in the thick of things almost instantly. Swallowed up like he had stepped into the gaping maw of a monster.

She wasn't surprised. Like she said, it was crowded like a market.

But the bus was something else. It felt almost like she had to be the very last person to arrive, because if anyone else came up behind her to board it would be too crowded. There wasn't enough space for anymore than twenty-four of them, and even the bus driver seems inclined to agree with her.

There wasn't much Noelani could do about it, though. She smiles at everyone who glances at her, carefully plans out the path of her feet as she makes her way down the aisleway, trying to avoiding stepping on as much as she humanly can. She's sure somewhere in there at least one or two of her fellow applicants get tread on, but again. Not much she can do about it, and the volume level is so loud that her apologies are falling on deaf ears.

Someone lunges out of their chair, shouting something, and nudges her in the hip. Nudges is a generous term. She trips as someone's bag comes skidding out into the row and nearly collapses on top of the nearest person, a boy who isn't even looking her way.

A hand locks around her elbow before she can even begin her descent, and she goes spinning around, knocking into two more seats before she finally comes to a halt. Someone goes sprinting by her, fast as they can, and all she sees is a whirlwind of rainbow hair before she loses sight of them in the chaos.

"Hey, way to be a dick!" a girl calls, nearly standing up in her chair next to the window. It appears as if she's yelling at the nudging offender, who Noelani can't even pick out of the crowd.

"I don't think he meant to," she offers, hoping, anyway. It's not the girl that's holding onto her but her seatmate, a boy that looks slightly younger. His hair is by far more neon than hers, brighter, but she latches onto the green as some form of safety. A comfort blanket. He holds onto her arm until she can safely swivel behind him, depositing herself into the empty aisle seat a row back. There's a girl staring out the window next to her, headphones in, looking like she'd rather crawl six feet underground than turn around to say hello, or anything of the sort.

Well, she can't act like that forever, and Noelani knows it. Not with her around.

Her stuff in itself is organized chaos, but she clutches at her bag and her sketchbook until everyone around her finally stops moving. Finally it appears safe enough to drop the bag in-between her feet.

Everyone in the vicinity is still looking at her, though. At their newest arrival. Even the girl next to her is trying to side-eye her as discreetly as possible, brushing bright blue strands of hair over her eyes like that helps at all.

"You draw?" the first girl asks. "Come up with a new tattoo for me. You're Noelani, right?"

She blinks in surprise, when it shouldn't really come as a surprise at all. The girl is practically covered in them, after all. It's the name thing that freaks her out. She definitely doesn't know who this girl is, and has never met her before.

"Excuse pseudo-stalker Myra." The boy smiles, and again. Comfort blanket type of thing. And he's not nearly as intimidating as Myra is. "I'm Tarquin. And that's Ria, if you were wondering. It also took me nearly fifteen minutes to get that out of her, so I hope you appreciate that."

She can't help the smile - it seems stupid not to. She does appreciate it, but knows deep down that she would have spent triple the amount of time working away at Ria until she got that information, and then some. They're probably the same age. If anyone can get to Ria, it's her. She files that away for later, once things have calmed down.

She also can't help but wonder if Ria's music might not be as loud as they thought, judging by the side-eye she's now fixing Tarquin with.

He smiles. Ria looks away.

"Those are actually really good, though," he continues, pointing at some of the scribbles on the cover of her sketchbook. "Been practicing for a long time?"

"Really long time. Just for fun, though. My parents thought that I would be good at designing mutts for the Games when I was like, six. I just like it as a hobby. But I guess my mom thinks I can go somewhere serious with it."

"Sounds like my mom."

"Must be nice, having a doting caring mother and not a dead one," Myra says casually, and Noelani snaps her mouth shut. Even Ria looks up, staring at the back of Myra's chair with a mildly horrified expression.

Myra turns, though, and smirks. "That was a joke, losers."

That doesn't mean Noelani has a single clue about what to say, a million different directions running through her head. She can't settle on just one, though, a panic rapidly building up. If she doesn't quell it something stupid is going to come out. That, or she'll never say anything again.

As unlikely as that is.

Everyone else seems equally at a loss for words. Tarquin busies himself looking through his backpack, though it looks half empty, so she flips her sketchbook open. At least it's something to stare at, instead of the back of Myra's head.

It's more than she thought, actually. The angle's not the greatest, but she can at least see some of the artwork extending from Myra's shoulders down the tops of her arms, and she studies it for a second before she puts pencil to paper. Maybe Myra's not serious, maybe she never was, but Noelani doesn't have a serious bone in her body either.

It's almost like a dare. And if it's going to be a long journey, she might as well do something during it.

Sabre Hennedige, 15
Applicant #6

He likens the bus to a crowd watching a dance number.

It's easier that way. Having something to relate it to, a long-dead familiarity, makes his slow crawl down the middle aisle seem less like a mistake and more like something he meant to do. Something with purpose. It makes it feel like he's a single step away from flinging the curtain aside and taking the stage, toes curling against the worn wooden boards, a second of nervousness before he pushes it far away.

His toes are curling up now, too, but no one can see that through his shoes.

If it's not nervousness, he's not sure what it is. He lets his toes flatten out again the second he finds a seat, right up against the woefully empty back. That's odd, he knows, but not from experience. He never had to get on a bus to attend dancing lessons. School in Two is only a few block away. He knows that because he started to time the minutes it would take him to walk there - twenty-five to thirty seconds after the first janitor arrived in the morning, still putting his keys away when he would let Sabre in one of the side doors.

There's only one other person anywhere near him, and he nearly misses her. She's hunched over something. It's the little clicking sound that finally makes him turn and see her, the sound of a button repeatedly being pushed and getting stuck from how many times it's been used. The camera in her hands is nicer than most people would have access to, but he can see the damage at the corners where it's been knocked into things, the faded gray-black of the strap.

It's well-worn. Used often. Like his dancing shoes.

She turns the camera up. Not towards him, but he still feels himself about to shy away regardless. She only lowers it when she notices him sitting there and her smile could be as bright as he assumes the flash would be, had the camera gone off.

"Hey," she says. Her voice is very cheery for how isolated they are back here. "Sorry, I can get a little... absorbed. My brother says I spend way too much time looking at my camera, but what does he know, right? You can't do it too much."

The words too much send him spinning right back through the doors of Cortague's Dance Academy. Maybe to this girl there's nothing that gets quite to the point of too much, but not in his life. He remembers Imogen taking him aside three weeks before they kicked him out and telling him that he needed to take it easy. That he was over-working himself too much. He remembers only being able to focus on how healthy and strong she looked, how happy she looked to be teaching them all what she had spent so much time learning.

He remembers Nikolai trying to do too much when he lifted Victoire up and over his head, and how when he had spun her around it had been too fast. When she landed it had been too fast.

Victoire's parents had come in three days later to talk to Imogen about it, about their daughter's leg and the bone that had cracked out of it after Nikolai hadn't put her down properly. She would be lucky to walk without a limp again, they had said. Let alone dance.

Worst of all he remembers sitting in the bathroom while everyone else was down in the mess hall. The bones in the back of his shoulders had been digging harshly into the tiled wall when Evianna Tran had come running in, so fast that she didn't see him lurking there behind the door. The retching sounds that had come from one of the stalls had nearly made him throw up himself. They had nearly made him leave.

But he didn't - he was still there when she came sliding out of the stall, eyes widening when she had finally noticed him standing there.

It had been a very awkward, long moment where Sabre couldn't find any words.

Evianna had, though. "I ate too much. I felt sick."

He nodded, though. Stood there and let her wash her hands before she had returned to the mess hall, he knew, not to eat another bite.

He knew exactly how that felt.

"Hey," the girl repeats, and he blinks. The camera is right in his face, and the flashbulb goes off before he can say otherwise, before he can back away. He flinches at the proximity and squeezes his eyes shut. She pulls the camera back and looks down at the screen, nodding sagely.

"I wasn't ready for that," he protests weakly.

"Aw, it looks great though!" she insists, and turns the camera back to him. The picture of him reflected back on the screen isn't perfectly clear, no doubt from how fast he moved. His eyes are squinted awkwardly, mouth pursed. He can see where his collarbones are jutting out of his jacket, where the little silver hoops in his ears look too big for his face.

"It doesn't."

"It does," she tells him. "Your facial structure is wicked. It would look so good in some natural lightning. The bus kinda sucks for that—"

As quick as she says it she moves onto something else. He shrinks back in his chair when she stands up, shouting over the rest of the noise floating from the front of the bus. She's holding the camera up, waving it around like it's not fragile. Like it couldn't be broken.

She's tall. Taller than he would have expected, seeing her sitting down.

Tall enough to be a dancer, like him.

Not like him, he reminds himself. Not anymore.

"C'mon, group picture!" she crows. "Everyone cooperate, so help me God—"

It doesn't look like she's getting much cooperation. Sabre wouldn't have expected anything less. Getting twenty-two other teenagers to cooperate long enough to get a unified, put-together group photo won't happen unless there's some sort of authority behind it. Even getting Kidava Vaud, someone he doesn't know well at all, to cooperate, wont work. This girl doesn't have the authority.

Something he doesn't have either, really.

At least he has the autonomy to know that now.

Intro's almost done, y'all. What a blessing!

I'll see you again next weekend for the last round. For now let me know what you thought of these four and of everyone meeting for the first time!

Until next time.