Chapter 51

Jay's story

"Jesse," I shout. "Take my bike!" He leaps on just as I disengage from my vehicle to descend on the stubborn Dark Peacekeepers who still put up a fight. I slash a leg or two and clear the disagreeable brood from the streets with a blast from my new crossbow. I really like this new gun. Light, versatile and pretty handy after that good upgrade.

As I smash into a Juggernaught, I see mum colliding right into Ronan before he can strike the ground with his hammer. As he wobbles and rolls to the ground with a moan, she narrowly dodges a missile fired from a Decepticon tank and leaps into the air, firing an arrow back. She breaks her fall with another roll to avoid a fatal swipe by Ronan and fires an arrow sneakily through his legs. The flaming lightning blows up the base of a roadside statue that used to be a part of the Artist Walk, and the entire plaster artifact crashes on Ronan.

I grab a car literally and toss it right at him to add insult to the blow. Mum neatly lowers her head down for Ronan to receive the full extend of the impact. I can almost see stars dancing around is head as he collapses into an already war-battered shop, which gives way promptly with the top level fall ling on him. Now that's a takedown.

"Look out." mum hisses as she fires a quick arrow that flies so near my ear that it could have been skewered like roasted meat. But thankfully, it smashes through an enemy sniper's sights and into his eye.

"Where did you practice?" I ask. I recall a little shamefully that as a young girl, the only time I managed to see proof of her excellent archery were the squirrels with an eye missing. But that was nothing compared to this.

"Long story?" mum grins. Then she lowers slightly to fire another arrow that skewers two legs of two Dark Peacekeepers together, front to back. As they struggle to walk, the Girl on Fire nimbly climbs up a lamp post and darts from one lamp post to another, picking out the enemy who are still harassing the Peacekeepers. A Terrorcon takes up a giant truck to sent it flying at my mum, but a flaming arrow smashes through the truck window into its face as it is lifting it up. The Terrorcon looks dazed at the harmless looking lighted splinter on its face, only for its head to be disintegrated into molten mush. The metallic remnants that slump everywhere are simply disgusting.

The entire avenue is crowded with fresh enemy reinforcements of Terrorcons and Juggernaughts trying to kill my mum. I charge into the throng, slashing their limbs and forcing them to eat the spit of my crossbow. Jesse is playing the cavalry, driving right at them on my bike, cutting them down. He even drives on the walls right into the narrow alleys to clear out snipers and machine gunners who are shifting positions.

Meanwhile, the Girl on Fire is hosting an acrobatics show. She is expertly prancing and flying from one spot up high to another, be it a tall column, a Terrorcon's shoulders or even a Decepticon gunship. She literally runs on the body of a downing gunship and jumps, firing arrows like some stunt actor from above. She lads on the shoulders of a Dark Peacekeeper and twists his neck with her feet. The others open fire, but mum fights so dangerously by hoping onto one shoulder after another at such close proximity, that many die from her arrows or their comrades' bullets. And still the Dark Peacekeepers and Acolytes charge on.

I launch a wrist missile to hold them at bay, but its futile to keep them from coming, coming and coming. But my mum calmly says, "Stand back Jay. Things are going to get hot."

She draws back her bow string and an arrow forms, but it isn't hot-red like the others that were launched from her bow. It looks as if it were merely consisting of pure energy that could be drawn from the heart of a star. So white, pure, that even the sight of it brought warmth into your heart. The glow of the arrow makes my mum's clothes look white and he hair slightly blond. That was how white it is. When she released the arrow, I jumped. No literally, though.

The entire horde is burnt off and melted like candle wax by the searing explosion of this deadly arrow. The burst of energy is so bright that the still functioning lamp posts lose power and windows break. Even Jesse is pushed off my bike rather roughly, but he seems fine. The nearest Terrorcons are turned into withered carbon trees and the surviving Transformers look like burn victims who tried to swim in lava. The Decepticon gunships arrive and train their armments on her, but mum merely launches more of those awesome white arrows at them, taking them down easily like clay pigeons on a shooting range. The huge gunships are too cumbersome to turn aside to avoid them. Those gunships are blown to smithereens without needing the risk of anti-hovercraft gun crews or injured Autobots.

Without air support and with much of their artillery reduced to ashes, even the toughest Terrorcon can only turn tail and retreat, with the jubilant Peacekeepers after them. Even the Autobots are rejuvenated. "Let's roll!" Ironhide declares before pounding the enemy with more shells from his cannon. Then he stops short when he spots mum. "Katniss?" he mutters with a hint of recognition. "Hi Ironhide. You're doing a good job. Keep it up." my mum says cordially, unfazed.

"The Mockingjay's back!" These words swirl up into hope and astonishment in the streets, building up to a crescendo that overwhelms the Capitol. The Peacekeepers look on with wonder as my mum advances as a conqueror returning to a parade, as a heroine welcomed home by her supporters.

"Madam-err...I'm honoured to meet you." General Summers who looks badly beat-up for all the fighting says rather haltingly. "Call me Katniss." mum says. "There's still a lot of the enemy around. They will be crumbling, so what we can do is to hasten it. Can you help me, General?"

"I will do what I can." Summers says. "What do you have in mind?"

"They will be looking of places to hide, or rendezvous points to be airlifted by their remaining crafts. Block them off." mum says severely. "Send hovercrafts and the fastest tanks or jeeps to cut them off. They would be enough shattered to stop resisting. As for the Lieutenant, Jay and I will deal with him."

As Summers barks orders on his communications set, I ask my mum, "How are we going to defeat him?

"We have to exterminate him," she says rather bitterly. "He'll fight to the death, that's for sure. But his armour is too thick even for my arrows."

"His hammer!" I exclaim. "His own weapon can defeat him! They won't cut into him, but it can knock the living daylight out of him."

"Maybe we can-" Mum's words are cut off as the hammer itself smashes her flying like a golf ball. "Mum!" I scream and roll aside to dodge Ronan's blow. Ironhide rams into the Lieutenant and wrestles him down to the ground, but Ronan tosses him aside and blasts him with a powerful plasma gun. Jesse charges at him on my bike with the cannon blazing from behind. But none of the shells penetrate his armour. Ronan merely knocks Jesse clean off my bike as he comes, sending the ninja crashing into a tower.

If Jesse didn't have regenerating powers, he won't have the backbone to stand later on. I draw my swords and slash at him, dodging the awful hammer and attempting in vain to cut into his armour. Mum strikes too, firing flaming arrows into his face and tackling his legs. As he drops to the ground, the Girl on Fire skids in and elbows him right in the face like some professional wrestler. The tyrant meets the ground with a scream and I grab his weapon with my psi force. I attempt to flatten his face with the weapon by dropping it on his head while he is down. But Ronan rolls away for it to slam down, creating a rippling shockwave that tears the cobblestones from the walkways and triggers a horrendous Capitol trap, dating from the time of the Rebellion.

"Run!" a Peacekeeper yells and leaps into a jeep that quickly speeds off. He must be Darius, having red hair. A black liquid bursts out and floods the streets, digesting the corpses and remains of friends and foes alike. The unfortunate Ronan is engulfed by the liquid, and I think that he wouldn't survive it. But it's a pretty fast endgame for him. Well, it will be too for mum and I, if we don't get out of here. I spot my bike, lying near a telephone booth, but Jesse is nowhere. "He escaped with the others." my mum breathes. "Let's get away before this stuff gets us." I gulp as I reach for my bike.


"I think I see why Gale complains that your driving is unnerving." mum says as we speed away on my bike from the looming black mass that consumes everything in its path. I look to her, a bit worried about an incoming lecture, but she beams and says, "But I'm proud of you. You learned to drive."

"Well, mum. Pascal put in a learning chip." I admit. "I know." mum says, unfazed.

"How?" I exclaim. "I saw a lot of things when I was away. I know many things that you think that I may not know."

"Like...what dad did to me when he was angry and all that crap?" I sigh.

Mum hesitates before saying, "Yes, Jay."

I suddenly feel a wave of anger of all those injustices my own dad heaped on me. I really can't control myself, despite the fact that we're in a war zone and not in a family court. "Look," I say. "If you knew, then why didn't you do anything? He beat and scorned me, for Panem's sake. He made life at home miserable and examined all my activities like some crazy disciplinarian. He called me a rebel and blamed me for your death."

"Jay." my mum says softly, but I ramble on out of fury. "Did he need to treat me like that? I do't owe him anything. OK, it's my bloody fault that I somehow got you killed, forcing you to protect me. But I don't deserve to be treated like the enemy of state. My own father looked for things to blame me every day. I'm not surprised that I'm not in a mental institute like you almost did."

"Jay." my mother is trying to keep calm, but her voice is boiling with tension and a little anger. Impatience, maybe. But my mind is not caring whether she is pissed off at my mocking of her beloved husband. I don't care whether we are being chased by waves of black up the alleys and the roads.

"But that fact is," I continue. "you knew all of these stuff. Even though you were gone from our lives, you were there, and you knew!" My voice raises to a shout. "You admitted it yourself. To me! You said you loved me, and you didn't try to stop him from treating his own daughter like a piece of shit. Treating Bagel like a slave? You knew, but what did you do? What did you do? I don't care what bloody mission was that! You have no right to let me live a childhood in some whackjob home, with some controlling bad-tempered fellow who claims to be my father!"

"JAY!" my mother yells.

Her sharp tone shocks me, frightening some anger out of me, but it isn't to reproach me. I skid to a grinding halt to avoid from driving right into a wave of black. In my folly I hate steered us into danger. Thankfully, my mother's warning gave me a few seconds' worth of notice before we drove into death. I lose my balance and we two are thrown from my bike to the ground. My bike skids on right into the black goo, where it vanishes. Oddly, the waves advancing behind us and in front of us halt for a minute, before melting away, seeping into drains and pipes. The horror is over. The traps must have timed out.

For a minute or two, we lie sprawling on the ground, breathing heavily, trying to recover from that awful scare. My mum recovers first and gets up on her feet before I do. She pulls me up and I look at her face. She looks rather upset, but her eyes are not flaming with anger. They are watery. I realise that I had cut my own mother's heart.

New thoughts swim up in my head. How could I blame my father? He was a victim for no fault of his. Brainwashed during the Rebellion, lost his family to bombs, and then lost his dandelion, who went through thick and thin with him. How could I blame him for collapsing into moodiness, heated arguments and senility when he lost the source of his strength and joy, the thing that kept him going all those terrible years?

Instead of anger, I saw love, pity and sadness in my mother's eyes. She did feel pain for my ordeal, but even more pain for my father's state of heart. Soaking in grief and bitterness isn't exactly a healthy condition. My dad had lost so much, and here am I, bearing indifference to his needs.

"I'm sorry." I say. "I just...hate being called a-"

"You don't have to apologise," my mother says. "I'll deal with him."

Just then, a humongous brute limps into view from the bubbling leftovers of the blackish goo. It is Ronan, his armour seeping with black liquid and purplish blood. He looks absolutely grotesque, his right arm missing, his exposed skin weeping with sores and wounds that burst out through his armour. I have no idea what kind of reaction the black matter stimulated in him, but its horrendous. Perhaps we don't need to use the hammer on him any more.

Crawling on all fours, he reaches out to us with his withered mouth opening not to threaten us, but to whimper.

"Take the last shot." mum tells me without batting an eyelid. "I thought we should bring him to be tried." I say.

"He's too dangerous," mum says. "He'll break through any prison. Besides, he has been around for centuries, destroying and killing innocents on many planets before us. It will do ill to take him prisoner- as long he's a live, many lives are in danger."

I aim my crossbow at his head. Then something demonic breaks out.

A stream of hell-fire erupts from beyond, swirling round and round in circles. Startled, I shoot at the entity, only to miss miserably and the strange object slams right into the wretched withered Ronan, who is supernaturally revived. His wounds vanish almost immediately and he is plated in a lava-crusted armour. Spikes burst out from his hammer and takes on a gothic gnarled appearance. I realise that the Great Evil itself has come to possess the Lieutenant.

He roars with a voice that shakes buildings to their foundations and breaks out sweat from my skin, "You shall not overcome my power! Everything on your dismal world belongs to me! Surrender and bow down under my power!"

In response, I defiantly fire a wrist missile at him, but it bounces off the devil and clunks disappointingly to the ground. His eyes scream with hellfire and he raises his hammer. Fiery lightning explodes from his apparatus of doom and strikes us, but I activate my emergency shields and a clear energy dome forms around mum and I, intercepting much of the lightning strikes. I trigger my Jabberjay echo countermeasure to fend him off and put some distance between us, and the possessed Ronan is pushed off a few metres away, only for him to disappear into thin air.

I groan, "Don't tell me, he's going to teleport to the-"

"Slam!" A hammer lands on the dome, shattering it and we roll away just in time before we can kiss the brunt force of the Evil's attack. Mum releases something like flares from her gauntlets at our opponent, but they are actually like mini fragmentation bombs. They blow a chunk off his hide, but he teleports right behind me. But I'm ready for interception, and clash blades with his hammer. The Great Evil is forced to excuse himself to regain the surprise of momentum.

"Back to back!" mum shouts.

One moment the re-energized Ronan is there, and the next he's not. He's somersaulting towards mum with a whirling hammer, only to be repulsed by several fire arrows from her bow, and next I am forced to leap to dodge a skidding attack that almost disables my legs. But I slash his back as he goes under me to pay him back in full.

He reappears on my right and his hammer comes down again, but I duck and send the nearest vehicle into his face with my psi powers. Unfortunately, he pushes it aside as easily as a disgruntled child does with a rubber ducky in a bath tub, only for mum to sink her fist into his stomach and send him flying up to heavens be.

""I didn't know you could punch giant beasts flying." I say. "That Ronan is as heavy as three Terrorcons. What's your secret?"

The Girl on Fire merely shrugs and says, "I did some workout."

"I didn't know the afterlife had a gym." I tease rather crudely.

"When you get there," mum says mischeviously. "There will be more challenging things than a gym!"

"Wait, I have some kind of itinerary arranged for me after all these?" I complain. "Come on, I just want to enjoy having you home!"

"I kn-" A massive fireball the size of Optimus Prime's trailer slams down from above, crushing her into a flaming crater. I look up in horror to see that Ronan has somehow sprouted wings, howering over us, cackling like a crazed hyena who just found an easy prey. "Go! Take him down." my mum whispers, as I observe her severely immolated suit. However she looks none the worse for the damage she'd received.

I inhale deeply and my wings spread out. I take off into the air to engage this foul spirit.

"Puny human!" The Great Evil scoffs. "Mechanical wings, technology- these gimmicks are no match for my strength!"

"Well," I muse. "Maybe these will tickle you to death!" I launch a couple of golden blades from my wings at him. They do tickle him, bouncing off his chest plate and invoking a hearty guffaw from him. "Fool!" he grins and sends a fireball screaming at me. But I fire golden blades at him non-stop, the fatal feathers passing neatly by the tongues of fire Ronan launches and gaining coatings of scorching brimstone. They hit right on target and the Evil shrieks with pain as he is dosed with his own flames. In his panic, he launches more fireballs, and I swoop here and there, firing golden razor feathers at the tails of fire that trail behind them, to give the demon back the perils of his own ammunition. I had figured that if Ronan himself could be trashed by his own hammer, why not the Great Evil and his sulphurous spit?

When the Evil himself is occupied in extinguishing his flaming armour (thought he likes fire), I take the opportunity to strike. I swoop at him at full speed with my sharp wings ready to pierce his flesh. Ronan is alarmed and launches a countermeasure stream of flames, but I break into a roll, covering myself with the red dancers. It is as if I had transformed into a being that was created out of the glow of embers, and dwelt in the caverns of magma.

With my deadly apparitions, I dive in for the kill and my stunt is rewarded with a hellish howl and the feeling of the tearing of armour against my fire-imbued wings. I turn around and assault him badly with hail from my crossbow assault weapon. My upgraded weapon somehow damages him more than my 'recycling' of the Evil's firepower-every arrow that exits the hose of my special crossbow burns holes into Ronan's plating, invoking more screams.

"The golden bow inserted in my crossbow is different." I say to myself. "No wonder it was designed for me, for this occasion, for this battle." Somehow, its maker has forged it so well that it is compatible not only to overcome hordes of earthly pawns, but also defeat supernatural adversaries.

I disregard my charge-and-attack strategy, and encircle around the doomed monster, firing my crossbow rifle as if Panem were ending tomorrow. I successfully dodge every fiery plume that he sends at me, adding to his frustrations. He raises his hammer back in a last ditch attempt to send it hurling into my skull, but a white arrow slams into his chest and knocks him several feet down onto land. My mother has got back on her feet, launching that searing terror from her scarlet bow without hesitation. The Great Evil, still holding possession of Ronan's body charges her. But more white arrows, courtesy of mum's bow, slow him down, slicing off more chunks off his lava armour. He's becoming more vulnerable to physical attacks. He's weakening.

"Take him down. Now!" my mother's commanding voice spurs me to action. I dart down and slash the top of his head generously with my wings just as he is staggering back from another white arrow. He grabs my wings as I leave him, but I detach my wing pack off my back and flip about as long as I'm still in the air, sending my foot landing into his right cheek. The next white arrow knocks him senseless, but before he can collapse to the ground, my feet smash into his face and neck as fast as erupting machine guns at full steam, battering him back to balance and kicking the living daylights out of this chump. The idiot instinctively swings his hammer back to me and I somersault over to his back, allowing the head of the weapon to meet his face rather comically with full force.

But his torment will not stop there. I use my full strength and smash him into a crumbling wall with my elbow. Mum joins in the violence, firing fire arrows to smear his face and chest with nasty burns. Then her fist collides with his head once more at the force of Grimlock ramming into Galvatron.

If Ronan had teeth, they would be effectively shattered and pulverised.

The Great Evil is somehow stalled in Ronan's body, despite being supposedly supernatural. I guess you can't drive well in a broken-down car, no matter how proficient you are. So the two Mockingjays just totally beat the brute up, smashing and kicking him. Red-purplish goo (blood?) splatters from the hole that was once his mouth. He is rendered 'naked', his armour looking more like useless aluminium strips removed from a beef roast wrap. He begins to feel like a slab of rotten meat upon the contact of my fists, blades and boots. For once I feel unconscious to the world around me, and just beat the crap out of this foul demon.

But even our worthless opponent has created a fake illusion of a defeated self.

The reflection on my battle visor catches a figure rearing up to land a fatal strike on my back. Not again, I declare to myself, as I automatically duck swiftly and flip back to see a less battered Ronan raising his battle hammer to strike. We could have been made mincemeat in our ignorance misted by the air of combat. But yet I realised it in the nick of time. I fairly register the look of victory fading from his eyes as I bound at him with my crossbow rifle out. I push the nose of the crossbow right in his opened mouth and pull the trigger as I ram directly into him.

I blow his head off. Literally.

The fake dummy we were mistakenly trashing fades into a puff of smoke that disintegrates into nothingness.

I find myself lying on the withering corpse of some undead warrior with a leaking pinkish stump in place for a head. A devilish smoke bursts out from the stump and rises rapidly into the air, bellowing its indifference and letting out a harrowing cry of defiance. This must be the Great Evil in its spirit form, which is definitely the worse of the two evils.

"Mum!" I call out. But I need not alert her. A fire arrow quickly hisses from her bow. It strikes home, its flames roasting every particle that makes up this malevolent entity ignoring every scream that permeates. The entire clump of smoke is cremated to barren embers that are quickly blown away by the wind, signalling the total defeat of the Great Evil, for now.

The moment the Great Evil disintegrates wholly, the air suddenly seems more pleasant and easier to inhale. The darkness that contaminates the Capitol skyline is nowhere. Amidst the ruins of the once magnificent city, the birds cry with joy, the living grass dance to the melody of the rhymes of the breeze of a new day and the sun rays bath us with its glory. I take off my helmet to witness a brand new day without the threat of Athena or of the Decepticons. For the first time in a long time, I feel relieved, peaceful and free.

"It is finished." mum says. Her armour burns down from a fiery appearance into her trademark Mockingjay suit from the Rebellion. I feel my heart warm with precious memories flowing in at the sight of Panem's greatest heroine all draped in that unforgettable suit. No history lesson will ever be boring, ever again.

"That's your kill." I say.

"Your kill." mum beams. "You forced it out of Ronan's body (a corpse it is now). Not exactly your first kill, but really, I'm amazed at your quick reflex. You have developed a good deal beyond what I expected you could do. I'm proud of you, Jay."

"Thanks, mum." I smile. "You know, being a Mockingjay isn't easy."

"Well, you had the advantage of military support and a good partner to help you out." Mum points out. "Plus, you had a legacy that ensured respect even from Paylor herself."

"I can't stop thanking you, can I?" I quip rather crudely.

"Every day, I give thanks from everything good thing that I have, and count my blessings." mum says. "You should do the same too. It helped me to overcome every obstacle, no matter how tough life could be."

"What do you give thanks for?" I inquire.

"Every good thing," she says. "To name a few, I am grateful for the fact that I became the Mockingjay although at first I had no desire to fight as a soldier. But I am grateful, because in that position I could see what others desperately wanted to and could not."

Already amidst the torn city I feel life returning the Panem, my country and my home. I feel a warm love and admiration sprout in me like a new shoot of maize. I notice that my mum, the Mockingjay is beginning to stroll back to the Capitol, as hovercrafts and army cars rumble in to secure the Capitol and to rebuild as quickly as possible.

"I am thankful for having a home." my mum says. "Deep in the meadow, the place where I love you. District 12. I am home."

I feel heady as I remember the days of my innocent childhood that I had thought of as long diminished. Those days, gamboling with Bagel while mum and dad looked on, smiling. I would giggle whenever I caught my dad planting a peck on my mum's forehead.

"I am thankful that I have a family. My dearest Peeta, Bagel and Jay. My precious dandelions."

Dandelions. The very plants which saved her. When mum was starving, her hope and father robbed by the vicious mechanisms of injustice, she was saved from the clutches of starvation when my own father suffered a beating to give her bread. But it was the dandelions that reminded her that she could forage and hunt, to ensure her independence and her survival. Indirectly, these humble weeds preserved the saviour of Panem.

"I wonder what I'll do now, with the war with the Decepticons over." I wonder aloud. "I should catch up with the time I lost."

"Jay, you didn't lose anything." mum says comfortingly. "You became stronger and braver. You challenged pain although pain can rob you of your spirit. Being the Mockingjay is never easy, and we shouldn't expect it to be."

"Is it possible to just become normal, for once?" I ask.

"You mean give it up?" mum frowns a little. "Jay, things that are worth doing are never easy, especially when we do it for others. I know that you are weary of shedding blood, undergoing trials and choosing risk over the safer options. I did it many times myself. But I want you to do something for me. If you are tired of being Panem's Mockingjay, then be my Mockingjay. Be my legacy. Uphold freedom and liberty as a legacy."

"I feel that it's easier." I say. "Panem isn't actually a tiny nation to stand up for."

"If that is bearable for you, then its settled." my mother beams. "Now, let us go join the others. We still have work to do."