DISTRICT 6
Angelina : Anika
The Reaping
Anika had known what was going to happen well before the Reaping. The first promotion for the Centennial Censure had just sealed the deal: this was going to be the DA's Games.
Which, of course, meant she had to get busy.
The very first thing she did was spread the word: she was volunteering for the thirteen year-olds, and no other child of her age needed to worry. When it came time to collect tesserae she stood at the front of the line that year telling each and every person in her class (or of similar age) to take out as much as they liked.
Some didn't trust her. Some did. Regardless, a few less would be going hungry.
Step 2: Preparation.
She wasn't as worried about the fighting aspect of it—she'd trained for that for a while already, and honestly she didn't know whether they'd even end up in the arena: the DA would likely just have to listen to Death (if it was feeling chatty) over when the best time to instigate the rebellion was.
Of course, that meant she still had to figure out how to institute a revolutionary force here.
She couldn't do much about the other districts—not yet, at least—but District 6 was her home, and at least she could do some things in her own neighborhood.
Anika remembered from her first life's history lessons that there were only five base elements to fester a revolution: economic strain, alienation among the elites, widespread anger at injustice, a shared narrative of resistance, and sufficient resources to succeed.
The first three Panem more than qualified for.
The fifth Anika was less sure of, but Death seemed fairly certain that they were capable.
And the need for the fourth was satisfied by one main factor: District 13.
Yes, yes, District 13 had lost. It had been bombed into nothingness and no one had (officially or unofficially) heard a peep from it since.
But that didn't dampen the idea of it, the idea of the rebellious district that nearly brought the Capitol to its knees.
To this day '13' was a number which, while never explained for fear of walls with eyes, everyone in District 6 knew the meaning of—don't abandon hope, the resistance will rise again, never count 13 out.
Anika decided to use the remaining time she had to ramp up that pressure.
It took little effort to convince her drug-mule fellows to steal a few cannisters of spray paint and begin to draw numbers everywhere (she didn't care which, she'd told them, but somehow 13 seemed to appear more than any other.) It wasn't a sign of rebellion that was used before, but then it was different, and things that were different were always watched carefully. She wasn't silent on the drug front itself, either—"Get ready." She'd told every drug dealer.
In District 6 dealing with minimal information was the norm, so she saw no reason to explain more than that.
Without instruction they did exactly as she wanted—they took stock of the numbers appearing everywhere, took stock of Anika and the Old Man and every other bookie in the area slowly shifting to trying to drain any peacekeepers that were willing to gamble dry, even if it meant operating at a loss in other markets, took stock of the sudden drive in black markets (who Anika had given the same message to) to boost production more than they ever had before.
And the drug dealers, nearly as one, started lowering the amounts of morph and coke and LSD and every other drug they sold. Instead they began using their resources—their secret labs, their hidden transport, their everything—to stockpile medicinal drugs, and to help some of the more useful morphlings—not the Victors, they were far too gone—clean up.
District 6's more obvious underground market, the one the Peacekeepers regularly reported on and avidly kept in line, marched on as always, completely unaffected. Drugs were still distributed in pseudo-secrecy, gambling was still a key District pastime, markets of illegally obtained goods (mostly food) still set up in the exact same places it had before. Its deep underground, on the other hand—the portion of the District that Peacekeepers had been instructed to ignore, truly didn't understand, or didn't want to bother dealing with—they were ready.
It might all be for naught, of course: similar preparations had been built up and left unused before, but this district—her district—would never, ever abandon hope.
And when George (or possibly Fred, and that had been a surprise even to her, one which made her much yearned for reunion much less likely) had volunteered, and then Neville, and then Luna, and then Katie, and then Alicia, and then Oliver...
Yes, District 6 had a very good feeling about this attempt, and so did she.