"All right, everyone, that's a wrap on Day Twelve! Great work. Let's get the hovercraft in for the Nine kids, activate the fake windows on Two and Six's houses, and then begin to turn the Arena over for the morning karma challenge."
Cerise Emerald leaned back in her chair as activity picked up around her. From what she'd heard, the upcoming challenge was one of the more involved ones, acting as a sort of grand finale to the Events. It wasn't the last challenge – no, there was still more to come afterwards – but this was the last chance to make a show out of it. And the theme of karma was perfect for putting on a show.
Admittedly, Cerise didn't quite understand why she was asked to supervise this process. Now nearly two full Events in, the Gamemakers had gotten pretty good at turning over the Arena. And sure, the stakes were high on this one with only two teams left. But from what Cerise had seen of the plans, the challenge was so extensive and so detailed that there was likely no way to unintentionally rig it in favor of one team or another, and there were all kinds of precautions in place to prevent Gamemakers from intentionally rigging something. Not to mention that the only thing either team had to gain from the challenge was the Medallion of Karma, which probably wouldn't make or break things. After all, the pair from Six had been willed all four of Nine's medallions, plus the medallion from the Elevens the day before, giving them a whopping nine medallions to Two's four. She'd be shocked if that last medallion made any difference as the Events drew to a close.
But Cerise had no reason to argue with her mother. She needed to stay on the president's good side, as she still hadn't managed to get quite what she needed from her mother to put her and Alexios's plan in action. And so, if Ruby wanted her in the room, that's where Cerise would stay.
She just hoped she wouldn't be up all night.
On the plus side, being here gave her an opportunity to see the inner workings of Arena management. Bodies moved across the room in a choreographed dance, as the cacophony of Gamemakers communicating with their grounds crews picked up, a veritable symphony of sound and movement that bordered on chaotic but never quite reached that point. For all that she disagreed with her cousin about, Violet Emerald was really good at managing her Gamemakers. Well, technically they were Soorim's Gamemakers, but it seemed that Soorim had deferred to Violet given the magnitude of the challenge that was being set up.
Cerise stood up from her chair and approached Violet, who was standing in front of a massive, curved monitor that was displaying what must have been twenty-four different views of the Arena. On the ground, a variety of crews had begun to either pull down elements of previous challenges or put up the first structures for the next day's challenge. While she had an earpiece in her ear, Violet seemed to mostly be typing out instructions to the various departments, her fingers flying across her keyboard. A small part of Cerise told her that maybe it wasn't the best idea to distract Violet, but she was genuinely curious how her cousin managed to pull off an organizational challenge of this magnitude. Before Cerise could say anything, however, Violet said, a little sharply, "What's up?"
Caught a bit off guard, Cerise replied, "Oh, I was just curious how you were organizing all of this."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Like, how do the crews know what to do?"
"Well, we had a meeting last night that was mostly just for organizing assignments for the day," Violet explained. "Normally we have half of our crews on takedown and the other half on construction but given the size of today's challenge we've actually had to add a few crews and put two-thirds on construction and the other third on takedown."
"How did you distribute it?"
"Mostly new crews on takedown. It's the easier job, and the new crews are… a bit more cobbled together than I would have liked. I only realized a couple days ago when we started really talking about the logistics of today's turnover that I realized that we might need more hands to get things ready in time."
"Well, at least you had time to compensate."
"That's true."
Suddenly, Violet's brow crinkled. She pressed a few buttons on her keyboard, blowing up a couple of the camera shots to show the area around the Elimination Challenge Arena, which was somehow on fire. It seemed to have happened rather suddenly; Cerise hadn't even noticed it until Violet had zoomed in on those camera shots. "How the fuck did that happen?" Violet muttered, a small crack showing in her composed front.
"My guess is it had something to do with the flames from…"
"Shut up." Quickly pulling herself together, Violet turned around and called out commandingly, "Everyone stop what you're doing! We somehow have a fire." The entire room fell silent as everyone turned to Violet. "Soorim, go get my mother. Euodia, Millicent, Aviel, you're on fire duty; throw whatever we have at it to stop it. Viridian, Bellona, Marcella, I need you guys to take over Team Fire's crews. We should do whatever we can to get this challenge up, but Didrickson, have hovercrafts at the ready."
As the rest of the Gamemakers snapped back into action, Violet took a moment to rewind the footage from the cameras, to try to figure out how the fire started. "What the fuck!" she exclaimed, stopping the footage on an image of Finn and Gil Anderson, picking up one of the bowls of fire from its podium. She'd instructed them to pour the bowl of water on the bowl of fire, but evidently, they either hadn't listened, completely forgot, or screwed the instructions up.
That, or it was a mix of all three.
As they tried to carry the bowl of fire, Finn dropped his end, causing the logs inside of it to spill all over the ground. A tendril of flame tapped Finn's shirt, which quickly caught fire. Rather than do anything intelligent, Finn chose to run around to try to put the fire out, drifting too close to the trees that surrounded the area. A small spark drifted over to one of the trees, which quickly burst up in flames. Violet watched in horror as the fire began to quickly spread across the Arena.
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to put those two on a grounds crew?"
"Did you have any other options?"
"Well, if we didn't, I wish we'd searched harder to find anyone else."
As Violet returned her view to the present moment, she heard the door behind her fling open, ushering a very stressed-looking Ruby Emerald into the room, Soorim Callahan (who was equally stressed) close behind. Everyone else snapped to attention, but Ruby made a quick shooing gesture with her hands, sending them back to work. "What happened?" Ruby asked.
"The Disaster Twins."
"Of course. Why were they on a grounds crew? Never mind. We have bigger issues at hand." Ruby gestured to the screen, where the fire was showing no sign of stopping. "I think we have to get the kids out."
"But the giant challenge to end the Events…" Soorim protested.
"Lives are at stake," Ruby countered. "I don't want to take a risk."
Suddenly, a panicked look crossed Ruby's face. "Oh no."
"What's wrong?" asked Cerise.
Ruby looked up at her daughter. "Cerise, can you do me a favor? Go run to my office and grab my key ring. You know which one I'm talking about."
It took everything in Cerise's body to suppress a grin. "Gladly, mother." Before Ruby could change her mind, Cerise turned on her heel and moved quickly out of the room.
Once she was out in the hallway, Cerise broke into a full-on sprint. She knew that what she wanted to do would take a little bit of time, but she couldn't be gone for too long, lest her mother get suspicious. She had to get to Ruby's office as quickly as possible, to buy her as much time inside the office as she could. Cerise ran down the hallways of the building, nearly running over at least three of the interns who had the misfortune of crossing her path. She knew the path like the back of her hand, which was turning out to be a good thing in this situation.
When she got to her mother's office, Cerise gave the door a strong push; she had a feeling that it was unlocked, given that her mother's keys were in the room, but she was still relieved when it opened, revealing the slightly messy desk. Fortunately, the keyring was sitting rather obviously on top of a pile of papers. Cerise grabbed the ring and quickly began to flip through the keys. She knew what most of them were for and was able to identify quite a few by their shape: the key to the room with the Events slips in it, the key to Ruby's office, keys to the Training Center apartments, et cetera. But it took her a moment to find the key she was looking for, as she'd never actually seen it before.
After what felt like an eternity, Cerise's face lit up; she'd found what she was looking for. Gingerly, she opened up the keyring and slid off one key. Cerise pulled a small, canister-shaped device out of her pocket, one that she'd been carrying around with her for ages, waiting for precisely this moment. She unscrewed the top and slid the key into it, then screwed the top back on. Once the cap was secure, the device came to life, as a series of thin laser beams began to scan every nook and cranny of the key. When it was finished, the laser beams dissipated; after a moment, Cerise felt her cell phone buzz. She pulled it out and swiped on the notification that popped up, more than happy with the image that appeared on her screen.
She now had a perfect 3-D model of the key to Alexios Nox's prison cell.
Cerise carefully slid the key back onto the ring, making sure that everything was in the same order as it was when she found it. Closing the ring, she turned back around and left her mother's office, making sure to lock the door once it closed behind her. Cerise took a deep breath, then took off again, retracing the same path back to the main Games control room.
When she arrived, she took a moment to analyze the situation, recognizing immediately that it had somehow gotten both better and worse. On one screen, she could see that a hovercraft with all four remaining competitors had safely gotten off the ground and was making its way back to the Capitol. But on another, she saw the Arena itself, most of which was now up in flames. "All of the crews have been evacuated below," called Bellona.
"Very good! Let's flood."
With the push of a button, a torrent of rain unleashed itself on the Arena, water pouring not just down from the sky but also out of the sides of the forcefield. Everyone in the room breathed a collective sigh of relief as the flames got weaker and weaker, before eventually going out.
"Great work, everyone," Violet concluded. "Everyone who was in the Arena when the fire started is safe and there do not seem to be any serious injuries. This is why we chose you all as Gamemakers, and you've proven yourselves to us by leaps and bounds."
"I'll explain the situation to the competitors," Ruby volunteered. "I think you have everything taken care of here." As Ruby turned around, she caught Cerise's eye. "Ah!"
"Here are your keys, Mother. I locked your office for you also; you left it unlocked by mistake."
"Oh, thank you, dear," Ruby said. She walked up to Cerise and took the keys from her hand, then gave her daughter an appreciative pat on the shoulder. (Not a hug – it was never a hug.) "I knew I could count on you."
As Cerise watched her mother walk away, she felt a pang of guilt in her chest. But she quickly pushed it aside, putting on a confident expression as she walked towards the elevators. After all, Cerise was doing what she was doing for the good of the country.
She just had to keep telling herself that.
Hm, things are really heating up, aren't they?
This is another thing that I've been planning for a while, at least the District Seven challenge part. I'm not sure if it landed the same way as I was hoping it would in my head; there would have been a lot more build-up to the D7 morning challenge and then… fire whoops. But now we've got something new brewing beneath the surface; whatever could that be?
I hope you all enjoyed our little check-in with the subplot! We'll be back to our regularly scheduled updates and back to the Events on Sunday! Trust me, you won't wanna miss it!
-goldie031
p.s. If you noticed anything in this chapter that seems like it doesn't match previous things in my canon there's a reason for it :smirk: if you noticed it feel free to shoot me a pm or dm! I'm just curious if anyone noticed besides me.