Katniss woke up to Peeta's familiar snoring in the side of the bed opposite to her. She yawned and sat up. It was so boring now that winter had come and the Hunger Games were gone forever. Her burns and scrathes still itched occasionally, but less so than after the revolution and her dual Hunger Games experiences.

She ventured outside, in those new snowboots of hers that barely worked and soaked up snow and chill like actual snow would. Sitting down on a stump, shaded by the eaves of her house, she had an odd feeling that something was going to happen today. Raising her hands above her eyes, Katniss searched the surrounding landscape. Anything would have been welcome. Anything at all...

In the vicinity of Earth's moon, a small ship materialized out of absolutely nowhere. Somehow, the way the engines roared gave the impression that this particular ship was having a very, very bad day. Or it might have been that the pilot WAS actually having a very, very bad day. Smoking from the engine ports like a 20th Century businessman it lurched very unsteadily but very quickly towards the surface of Earth.

Peeta heard the roar long before Katniss came running through the door, panicked. "What's wrong, baby?," he asked tensely, flexing his muscles in a way that would have made Bill Gates be swarmed by hundreds of young female Microsoft interns.

"There's a ship crashed in the front yard!," Katniss exclaimed. Peeta put on his brave face (again, Bill Gates would have been swarmed), and barged outside into a wreck-fest. "What..." he said after a while. In the snow at the foot of a wrecked and mangled escape pod, a man sat, rubbing his head.

"Whew, now that was a ride," he exclaimed, then saw Peeta staring at him with a jujitsu stance already accomplished. His spirits sank like rats with lead weights tied to them. "Hi... there," the stranger managed after a while of figuring out that he was potentially in danger.

Peeta studied the man. His face had a sort of plainness to it, and his hair was that normal shade of blond that you get from not doing anything to it. He was tall, yes, but not extraordinarily tall. What little you could see of the fingers under his torn-up black goves implied that he worked with them frequently. The eyes, at the moment, had the baleful look of Katniss's old Basset Hound (post-HG), and about the same color too, a murky sort of ordinary gray.

"What?," the stranger said when he saw Peeta's stern look. Peeta noticed his inquiry and put away his stern face to replace it with a very bored face. "Much better," the stranger said. "Makes you look even better than you already do." He eld up his hand in the shape of a zero.

Peeta blanched. Was this a personal comment on his appearance? WAS HE ABOUT TO LOSE HIS PLACE AS PANEM'S HOTTEST OF THE YEAR? He couldn't tell, he was that angry.

"What's your name, newbie?," he barked angrily.

"The name's Damon. And yours must be PIPA?," Damon asked.

"No, it's Peeta, with two Es," Peeta replied.

"No, PIPA doesn't have any Es in it," Damon said innocently. Now Peeta was starting to get really furious.

The Panem Almanac (similar but not the same as the Mushroom Kingdom Tour Guide) has this to say on Peeta Mellark. It, unlike most records and magazines, has all the facts and none of the fluff. For example, it says that when Peeta Mellark attended his wedding to Katniss Everdeen, the waiter brought him shrimp with a lemon on top. Peeta immediately told him to get the hell out and proceded to have him shot in a dark alley somewhere around the time of night when his wedding party would be.

Damon was thrust into the closet and locked in firmly. He struggled to find his pocket light but only found a suitably sized spider, a ball of lint and a check for 1,000,000 Altarian Dollars from the president of the galaxy, now running for re-election. He searched his other pockets but only fished out similar items. Damon started to get bored after searching through all his pockets three times and proceeded to count the number of fur coats in the hanger above his head. At about thirty he gave up and slumped moodily in a corner. The hours passed by in silence. Once or twice Peeta snored but that was about it. Damon felt himself start to nod off too. He gave in and allowed himself to sleep.

In the middle of the night a sleek silver space cruiser appeared in the backyard in a shower of confetti bombs and stray firecrackers and subsequently rescued Damon and destroyed most of Panem's infrastructure before zooming off into unreality with a small plurb.

THE END!