Chapter 15: Xander Chip

The Mayor of District 3 – a thin, blading man – smiles the smile of any politician as he mounts the small stage erected just beyond the shadow of the massive new structure now looming above the main school's courtyard. Outside of the infirm, just about all of the Technology district is clustered here along the cobblestones, packed in like sardines. At the head of the throng, surrounded by Peacekeepers is a sixteen-year-old, stick-thin kid. He is smirking, arrogant and more than a little smug over how all the biggest Games enthusiasts under-estimated him this past year.

It is winter here now, fresh off the Victory Tour and back in the homeland that was once mostly made up of the State known as West Virginia. From here, you can see the Blue Ridge mountains loom to the Southeast, cutting Three off from the borders of Twelve, their closest neighbor, in the heart of Appalachia.

Capitol paparazzi are here, bulbs flashing as the Mayor begins his speech, occasionally gesturing back to the great monstrosity behind him. Despite his camera-ready smile, he is nonetheless genuine in his words, the relief in his tone palpable.

"Thank you…. Thank you, everybody! He's some Victor, isn't he?!" The cheers go up, and if there is any strain in the district's enthusiasm, it is hard to notice. Relief is outweighing rebellion; Three is just so thankful that finally, one of theirs has made it home alive. "And as long as I am Mayor, this statue will stand beyond when we've all crumbled into dust!" Deep-throated cheers again.

Xander Chip doesn't really pay attention to any of this. He barely acknowledges his neighbors with a lazy wave of his hand. The commission and unveiling of a statue in the district school courtyard has become something of a tradition, ever since Mags won four years ago. Xander appears at least grateful that his likeness is accurate and looks completely in control.

When Mayor Uvalde invites Xander up to cut the ribbon and formally dedicate the statue, the Victor of the 15th Hunger Games strikes a pose to match the one looming twenty feet above and frozen in stone. Xander brandishes a stick out from behind his back, mirroring the one his likeness carries. He had checked with the Peacekeepers before bringing it, and now the paparazzi – those Capitol hounds! – eat it up, shutter fingers snapping and clicking away.

"Xander! Xander! Mr. Chip! Sir – is that your taser?"

"It's a taser," Xander halfway confirms, but his triumphant smirk conveys more of an answer than anything else. He slides his thumb along the catch of the button and blue sparks fly between the mounted prongs. He is nearly blinded by the clicks from the flash cameras.

Following the dedication ceremony, Xander is the guest of honor at the head of a parade which carries him through the district. The Victors' Village – still new and pristine, despite construction having been completed just before Woof Rayon won – sits on the far bank of a stretch of the Ohio River. In the couple of years since the bulldozers and crews went away, the Village has of course sat empty, built on old swampland. And in that time, some of the poorest of Three have ventured across the river and set up squatter communities in the rich mansions. As there was no Victor from District 3 at that point, Peacekeeper Commander Byte hadn't minded.

Until now.

Lowering her binoculars from where she's been observing on the far side of the bank, Byte gives the order:

"Smoke them out."

A Peacekeeper battalion which had forged the river earlier sets off tear gas and smoke screens, driving the squatters out and away through the gates. Many are quickly and quietly rounded up and placed into paddy wagons, while a ferry bearing the new Victor makes its way across the tributary. Within ten minutes, Xander Chip, Victor of the 15th Hunger Games is strolling blithely into the gated community that has just been cleared – all for him to live alone, at least until District 3 gets another Victor.

Many here hope it won't be too long between now and then. Waiting fifteen years for their first champion was enough.

A stretch of land now extends for miles, a thorny forest with the brambles and thickets choked and tight and stretching up towards the heavens. It's like the wheat fields of the Twelfth Games, only much more claustrophobic.

On the face of it, this place doesn't seem like the type of wasteland where a kid from the urban slums of Three would have been able to thrive at all. But Xander Chip had a secret weapon: he could build and hotwire anything. Engineer and repurpose whatever was on hand to suit his needs.

When the gong sounds to commence the Bloodbath, Xander runs into these choked-off thickets of underbrush we now see, but he doesn't go very far. He hides and peers through the branches, watching and waiting.

Once seven kids have been slaughtered and the big animals of Districts 1 and 2 plunder their loot, the group of strong tributes that are already building up a new nickname and reputation – the Capitolites call them 'Careers' - abandon their post and move into the cluster of growth, leaving the Cornucopia horn unguarded.

Unsure when they might circle back, Xander doesn't let a moment go to waste. Rifling through the remainder of supplies at the Cornucopia, he sets to work.

He quickly finds a set of fork prongs, most often used to roast s'mores or cook vegetables over a campfire. Then Xander digs under the tribute pedestals and excavates the landmine explosives. Finding several batteries, he sets these aside and begins to tinker with them and the fork prongs. Within an hour, Xander Chip has made a crude cattleprod taser. As for the bombs, he fiddles with the switches, then replants them back in their proper place, but not before running a wire through the tall grasses and back into his little thicket.

By nightfall that first day, three more cannons have sounded, and the quartet of Careers returns. They don't notice that there has been signs of digging, nor do they notice that a set of fork prongs and a knife are missing from the pile.

Suddenly –

All the pedestals blow up all at once, vaporizing the four Careers. Hiding in his nest from over his remote-controlled, dirty bomb, Xander smirks. Four cannons fire in rapid succession.

Over the next five days, Xander goes hunting, armed with his improvised taser and a knife. His trick is to only engage a tribute in hand-to-hand contact if they are found alone. Except for one instance in which the boys from 9 and 10 have made an alliance (reflecting the close friendship of their mentors), Xander always finds his victims off by themselves.

The trick is to let his opponent rush in before zapping them with the taser, which leaves the other tribute stunned and unconscious. Then Xander finishes them off by slitting their throats with a knife. In the case of the one other alliance in the arena, Xander has to wait until the boy from 10 has wandered off to pick some berries before attacking the boy from 9 unawares. The sound of the cannon lures Ten back, whereupon Xander jumps him too.

When he gets the best of his last opponent – the girl from 11 – the trumpets sound and Xander grins cockily. No one has expected him to win; after all, District 3 tributes always die. Now that he has won, he has proven himself and rubbed it in the presumptuous Capitol's face.

Beetee Latier abruptly pauses the documentary from which he's been listening to the narrator drone on and on about his mentor on the small TV in his corner office at Victors' Mercy hospital. Beetee rubs at the indentations his glasses make at the bridge of his nose and sighs. Xander may have been a little too self-assured, but he proved that District 3 could produce tributes who wouldn't just take it lying down… and thus produce Victors, few though there might have been. Spending nearly three decades as his neighbor as he did, Beetee got to see the Xander that few knew: one who could, despite his occasional egoism, actually have the ability to make some friendships. Xander had been at least tolerant of Wiress and had always praised Beetee for his intellect and his cooking – whether there had been envy laced in those compliments is not for Beetee to say. Xander gave what little he could in acknowledging others – the resentment of growing up poor in the slums and having everyone else count you out ran deep with Three's first Victor. In light of those circumstances, Beetee knows he couldn't have asked of his mentor more than that.

There is a light knock to his office door. "Come in."

The wood creaks as it is pushed aside and Belle Everdeen walks into Beetee's little sanctuary. She's a sweet, if also quiet, woman with flowing blonde hair and a round, attractive face, with the ever-so-slight sign of weathered lines in her cheeks. Beetee can ponder with confidence that he now knows where Katniss Everdeen got her looks. Working with the mother of the Mockingjay has been interesting, but Belle carries herself with confidence in the triage ward and doesn't expect anything just because she happened to birth the young woman who would save their entire country.

"Some more patient charts, Beetee. Pay close attention to the one at the top of the pile. A man in the burn ward – he could be anemic."

"Thank you, Mrs. Ever…. Belle." Beetee nods, picking up his glasses where he had set them down at the edge of his desk. The light from the desk lamp is starting to dance in front of his eyes and once the spectacles are back on his face, he chances a glance out the window: dusk has fallen over the Capitol, and the darkness is quickly rising.

He watches her start a little at addressing her by her first name, before finally allowing a soft smile. "Finally. You're learning! Though I can appreciate a gentleman with manners." She bustles about the side table by the filing cabinets, arranging the patient charts and files in an order she think he'll prefer, prattling on. "It took you longer than Peeta to drop the formalities, and he was still calling me 'Mrs. Everdeen' until just before the Victory Tour!"

Beetee can't help but let out a chuckle at this. It sounds like Peeta. His colleague stills, now freezing curiously when she sees the paused image on the TV screen.

"What's this?"

Beetee waves a hand in the small flatscreen's general direction as he shrugs. "Oh, nothing. Late-night distraction." Only when Belle cocks a ruffled eyebrow, looking almost matronly, does he come clean. "Re-run of a documentary about my old mentor. Found it while channel surfing."

"Oh," Belle says quietly. Next second, she is bunching up her skirts and chuckling weakly. "Forgive me, I was never much of a student of history. Then again, Katty wasn't either. What was his name?"

"Xander Chip," Beetee rumbles. "Won twenty years before I did. Excellent mentor. Average neighbor. On the whole, a terribly maladjusted person, but only because not much came easy to him, at least before the arena."

A long pause, and then: "Do you miss him?" Belle's peering at him curiously.

Beetee shrugs again, trying to act like it doesn't bother him. Though really, it does. "Now and then. He passed the year Finnick got the Crown. The Capitol had just enough advance footage to splice together an interview for Xan's 50th anniversary."

He observes Belle's pretty face roiling in disgust, but then the clinical, professional mask is back on, though now tinged with some sympathy.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thanks." Another slight lull and then: "You oughta be heading on home, Belle. It's getting late. Or do you need a ride or something?"

"Oh, no…. no thank you. I take the bus. I'm subletting a room at Effie Trinket's place until I can put down payment on an apartment. I can walk home from the hospital. But…. thank you." She smiles at him brightly, and Beetee has to conclude that he rather likes her smile. Belle rarely shows it, for good reason, still wrangling with grief as she is. She tamps down that sadness by throwing herself into her work, which Beetee has to respect. Yet another pause, and then, the mother of Katniss Everdeen speaks quietly:

"You're quite the surprising person, Beetee. Or should I call you Dr. Latier?" There's actually a teasing grin to her features, causing her dimples to uplift, and Beetee just laughingly scoffs.

"Now, outside of your first week here, when have you ever called me that?"

Belle smirks. "True. But it only makes your obstinate politeness in how you've addressed me all the more maddening." He waves her off, though he's trying not to smile himself while silently conceding her point. "Good night."

Belle Everdeen takes her leave. There is a subtle, natural sway to her hips, the hem of her dress swishing as she exits his office. Staring at the closed door to his office, Beetee allows himself a hum of curiosity before turning back to his papers.