Fumer Griffin from District 5
Victor of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Hunger Games, the First Quarter Quell
President Marcus Cornelius was found dead in his study about three months before the twenty-fifth games were set to begin. The team of Capitol officials inhabiting his mansion tried to keep it a secret, at least until they could catch the culprit, but the news escaped nonetheless. A peacekeeper might tell his brother, who might tell his wife. Within hours, everyone in Panem knew that the president was dead.
They didn't rebel. They didn't even try. Over the last quarter century, they'd learned that rising up against the Capitol only brought about stricter security, higher labor quotas, and maybe even a bullet in your head if you were loud enough.
To make matters worse, the new president was just as dastardly as Cornelius, if not more so. The people of Panem could have sworn they'd seen him somewhere before – on television, through the windows of the presidential mansion wearing a servant's uniform. Something about his snakelike face was impossible to forget.
The man's name was Rio, which was, of course, short for Coriolanus. Having seized the presidency, he felt the need to rebrand; his last name "Frost" just wouldn't do.
One evening, he was relaxing in the newly-decorated presidential study, watching the winter storm transpiring outside his window. He turned his eyes from the window to the fireplace, which was roaring with a healthy flame. The tiles around the fire were decorated with scenes of power and glory: towering heroes, old gods and goddesses, moments of virtue and righteousness. But if the tiles reflected the inside of Coriolanus' mind, there would have been a dead child on every one.
He turned his eyes back toward the window. The storm had thickened so that only a solid swath of white could be seen.
Snow.
He declared a mandatory announcement two months before the twenty-fifth games were set to begin. There was no excuse for missing it other than being dead. That meant the head gamemaker and the master of ceremonies were both off the hook.
The people of Panem crowded around their old, crumbling television sets in their houses that were falling apart. Everyone older than thirty remembered the so-called Dark Days – the fight for freedom, the fight for a democracy, the fight for humanity. And what had that led to?
A face materialized on their television screens. The face of a snake. Their "president".
"Good afternoon, Panem," said Coriolanus Snow. "First, I'd like to thank you all for tuning in." Like they had a choice. "We are gathered to witness a historic moment – the beginning of a very, very special Hunger Games."
Snow clapped his hands. A small boy dressed head-to-toe in white appeared before him, bearing a small wooden box. The inside of the box was lined with envelopes. They were beautiful: thick white paper with gold trim and bold red lettering. Those envelopes paralleled the Capitol itself: beautiful, with deadly secrets inside.
"Every twenty-five years, I, President Coriolanus Snow, declare a Quarter Quell. The reapings will feature a special twist. What will this year's twist be, you may ask? Well…"
He snatched the envelope labeled "XXV".
"On the twenty-fifth anniversary, as a reminder to the rebels that their children are dying because of their choice to initiate violence, every district will be made to hold an election, to vote on the tributes who will represent it."
His lips curled into a small, but almost childish smile. "The Hunger Games are an elaborate celebration here in the Capitol. They are a spectacle, a pageant, a party. But, first and foremost, they will always be your punishment."
Snow's snakelike face resumed its former state. He returned the envelope to the box and dismissed the young boy.
"Every district citizen ages twelve and up will be required to cast a vote. This is your punishment. This is the consequence of your tomfoolery. Have fun dooming your friends to die."
The anthem played, and the screen went black.
Cue pandemonium.
That year, the reaping was a long and complicated affair. Before entering the square, every man and woman passed through a closed booth where they electronically submitted their ballot. Each reaping ball contained a single piece of paper: the name of the child who'd been chosen to enter the games.
Those youths who had lied, stolen, killed, raped, and gotten others arrested walked solemnly to the stage, unable to make eye contact with their peers who had doomed them to die. The odds were not in their favor. Coriolanus Snow's first presidential act – the creation of the Quarter Quell system – had been designed to divide the district citizens from each other, to stamp out the cooling coals of rebellion. And it had certainly worked. District citizens were left more hopeless than ever as they watching their elected tributes pass through the pre-games festivities.
District 1 sent two classically beautiful tributes. The girl was a beauty pageant queen who'd infamously murdered three of her competitors. The boy was a psychotic murderer who'd killed three people the year prior, but escaped justice because his father had connections with the mayor of District 1.
District 2 chose a less impressive duo. Their girl, a short brunette with dark eyes, had led a conspiracy to explode the Justice Building of District 2. She was caught before all the explosives could be detonated, but she still destroyed several businesses neighboring the Justice Building and gravely injured three people. The boy was a profane gangster who was known for his gun violence. In his absence, the streets of the masonry district were safer than ever before.
District 3 was a small and weak district; they couldn't afford to not be pragmatic. They voted in a pair of dirty little orphans who wouldn't be missed. Nobody was left behind to cry for them.
District 4's tributes were completely insane. The girl was a crazy arsonist who'd burned down a massive pier, leaving dozens of people drowning in the deep and violent water when the structure collapsed. The boy – possible the most deranged tribute in these games – was the perpetrator of several horrific crimes: raping a girl, stowing the corpse of his stillborn child in his fishing boat for nearly a year, and violently resisting arrest. Also, he had nearly a dozen charges of theft. Every single resident of District 4 was glad to see him go.
District 5 went for the "eye for an eye" rationale. Their girl was the daughter of the extremely corrupt mayor. The mayor had been convicted of embezzling funds, stealing tessara grain and oil for his own family, and much more. The daughter herself had done nothing wrong, but that didn't matter. The boy was the son of a surgeon who'd botched nearly a dozen surgeries, destroying his victim's lives. Some even suspected that he botched the procedures on purpose, that he delighted in ruining his patients' bodies.
District 6's girl was a homeless little wench, chosen because she would not be missed. She bonded with the tributes from 3 who'd been chosen for the same reason, and they were sure to be close allies in the arena. The boy from 6 was much worse; the year prior, he'd hijacked a small plane and tried to crash into a large town before the peacekeepers stopped him. It was intended to be suicide flight, but he'd been placed on death row instead, having been forced out of the air by skilled peacekeeper pilots and then thrown in jail.
District 7 offered up two deranged tributes. The girl got a sexual high from lighting fires. This wasn't a problem at first, since she only lighted them in abandoned areas without any residents. But when she lit a forest ablaze, destroying millions of dollars of property, the people of District 7 voted her into the Quell. The boy was yet another rapist: the perpetrator of nearly two dozen sexual crimes. He was handsome and charismatic enough to deceive dozens of young girls into his dangerous proximity. He wasn't a murderer, but he'd ruined countless lives and the people of 7 figured he was better off dead than alive anyway.
District 8 had no shortage of juvenile delinquents to choose from. The girl was one of the most notorious pickpockets in Panem. She wasn't even in need of money – she just stole things for the fun, for the high. Meanwhile, the boy was an infamous drug dealer, primarily to teens and young adults. He'd ruined countless lives, and there were even rumors he'd blackmailed and threatened several of his peers into giving him money and possessions.
District 9 provided yet another pair of dastardly competitors. The girl wasn't a criminal, but she was a manipulative bully who was known by her peers for being the most toxic person imaginable. She was unpopular enough to land her a place in the Quell, which was really saying something given how many unpleasant young people District 9 had to choose from. The boy was even more unlikable: a cult leader who'd lured dozens of young people into an environment of violence, rape, and even murder.
District 10 did not take kindly to the abuse of their livestock. They picked a girl who'd lit a giant field on fire, killing all the sheep within, and a boy who liked to shoot and kill livestock for fun. In his interview, he claimed he'd been voted in for a pathetic reason, but the people of District 10 disagreed. If he didn't want to be chosen, he shouldn't have killed all those animals.
District 11, the second most populous district after District 6, had a lot of candidates to choose from; the vote was extremely spread out. In the end, they offered up a girl who'd lied and gotten several friends killed for her own crimes of theft and assault; and an extremely racist boy who'd vandalized hundreds of buildings with derogatory words and phrases. They need not be listed here.
District 12 was so sick of seeing their tributes die in the bloodbath every year that they voted in the strongest kids among them: a tall, strong girl from the merchant district and an attractively muscled miner with incredible strength. Maybe they'd finally have a shot at winning.
The day of the bloodbath, the victors were gathered in the front row of Caesar Flickerman's auditorium. The young and lively master of ceremonies filled the absence left by his uncle, and he offered bright and goofy entertainment in contrast to the more laid-back and charming commentary of his uncle. President Snow was sure he could entrust Caesar to make the audience roar with laughter as they watched twenty-three of the tributes die.
In the front row, however, Electra Wilty could not have been enjoying herself less. It had been more than twenty years since she won the Hunger Games – more than two torturous decades – but she had still not paid the price of the lavish victor life. She never would.
Caesar Flickerman took a quick drink of water, and then turned toward the giant screen. "Let the twenty-fifth Hunger Games begin!" he roared.
Someone standing outside Caesar's auditorium might guess that a bomb had went off inside. Electra had never heard a group of people scream so loudly. It was sickening, sickening how thrilled these Capitolites were with the carnage happening in front of them. Made her want to throw up.
The cornucopia this year was made out of stone: old, cracked, and overgrown with ivy and ferns. The camera zoomed outward to show more and more of the landscape: rows of dusty streets, metal frameworks of broken buildings.
"The ruins of District 13!" Caesar said. "What a fitting arena for our first Quarter Quell! Some of the Capitol's greatest scientist have – shall we say – cleaned up part of District 13, making it fit for human habitation. We wouldn't want our tributes dying from radiation poisoning, now would we?"
The audience exploded into even louder laughter.
Electra turned to the victor sitting next to her, Jaguar. "I think I'm gonna be sick," she muttered.
Jaguar just nodded gravely. He knew the feeling.
As the tributes rose up into the arena, they fell into two categories: the ones who looked excited, and the ones who looked moments away from having a heart attack.
Electra's tributes fell into the latter category. Her boy, Fumer Griffin, was voted into the games not because he was a criminal or a bully but because his father had a bad reputation. What kind of reason was that? The girl, Tasha Spark, was picked because her daddy was the worst mayor District 5 had ever seen. But that didn't justify taking the young girl's life, did it?
Electra glanced at the victors seated around her. Cobalt was weeping softly with her head in her hands. Citrine and Peridot were chatting excitedly with one another. Disgusting. But one victor in particular caught Electra's eye:
Luxor Dodge. The victor of the first annual Hunger Games. He stared at the bloodbath with the saddest expression Electra had ever seen. That face said so many things: it was an expression of the most horrifying kind of acceptance imaginable. It seemed to say, I live in a world where the government forces children to kill each other and there's nothing I can do about it. Luxor had seen so much, gone through so much. No wonder his heart had turned to stone.
Luxor slowly turned his head, making eye contact with Electra, and Electra said the only thing that came to her mind. "This is going to suck."
She was right.
When the horn sounded, every single tribute ran into the bloodbath. Fleeing into such a desolate arena without any kind of supplies or food would have been suicide. The serial killer from District 1, Lord, grabbed a knife and went to work instantly, cutting open the abdomen of the rapist from District 7 with two heavy chops. He was quickly joined by the utterly deranged murderer from District 4, who was armed with a spear and had already taken down the pickpocket from 8.
The boy from 4, Coral, proved to be the biggest threat in the ensuing minutes. He killed three more tributes before the first five minutes were over: the compulsive liar from 11, the orphan boy from 3, and the livestock shooter from 10.
Surprisingly enough, a large alliance started forming among the tributes from the lower districts: the girl from 3, Tasha and Fumer from 5, the girl from 9, and both from 12. They didn't seem ready to risk their lives for one another, but they did at least something to watch each other's backs as the bloodbath progressed.
Of course, such a large group couldn't survive the bloodbath without some kind of injury. The girl from 9 died less than two minutes later, shot through the neck by the pageant queen from District 1. Her allies were shocked, but they didn't cry. They'd never really gotten to know her anyway.
District 2's boy, the gangster named Homer, made the next blow. He targeted the boy from 6, who'd hijacked a plane the year prior and almost destroyed an entire town. By the time he was dead, his district partner Elizabeth had been slaughtered at the hands of Lord and Coral.
The arsonist from 4, Penelope, seemed to have made friends with the girl from 1, Nefertiti. They made their next two kills together: spearing the girl from 2 and tackling/beating the girl from 7. That, finally, was the end of the bloodbath.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
"Ten tributes dead!" Caesar Flickerman shouted. "And what an amazing bloodbath that was! Let's hit rewind, shall we?"
"Keep going. Keep going," Peridot whispered.
On the screen, Nefertiti and Penelope were trekking over the desolate ruins of District 13. They'd traveled miles, expecting to find some kind of refuge, but there was no such thing in sight. Nothing but endless piles of wreckage, broken buildings, and steaming trash.
"I can't… go any more," Penelope burst out.
Nefertiti squeezed her eyes shut, her mind racing. She clearly wanted to complain, but she too was exhausted beyond belief.
They nestled themselves in the wreckage of a partially-intact graphite storage building. In there, it was shadowy and cool, giving something of a refuge from the burning sun outside. They started their snack break, and the cameras cut away from them, allowing the audience to catch up on the other tributes.
The careers (Lord from 1, Homer from 2, and Coral from 4) weren't technically careers at all; they hadn't been to the academies a day in their lives. But they allied anyway; after all, they were some of the strongest tributes, and they could go even further with one another's help.
Peridot's tribute, Nefertiti from 1, was of course her top priority, but she also had a soft spot for Lord. He was also a District 1 tribute, and a somewhat impressive one at that. He was sure to go far.
Next, the cameras showed the drug dealer from 8. Whether he was experiencing withdrawal symptoms or whether he was just terrified Peridot couldn't tell. It could well have been both. He never stopped trembling as he travelled lightly through the formless wasteland, searching for food and water. The cult leader from 9 was in a similar situation. He didn't have many supplies, but he was smart enough to make ends meet using what little refuge the arena itself could give him.
The girl from 10 and the boy from 11, an arsonist and an infamous racist respectively, seemed to have allied. They weren't picky with where they travelled: they went anywhere the wind took them, never seeming to settle down in one place.
The cameras saved the huge outlier alliance for last. There were five members: Circuit from 3, Tasha from 5, Fumer from 5, Brynn from 12, and Hunter from 12. Partridge was pretty repulsed as she watched them explore the arena, eventually settling down near a pool of clear water. They were the boring tributes: the ones without flashy interviews, without exciting backstories. Just scared kids banding together to survive.
On Day 2, Nefertiti and Penelope attacked the large alliance. They didn't even have time to breathe before the two girls came careening out of nowhere, teeth bared and weapons ready. Hunter from 12 was dead before he even knew what had hit him. The others fled for their lives, scattering so hopelessly far that they would probably never be united again.
So much for being allies, Peridot thought smugly as she took a sip of her wine.
Crow's tribute, Springe, was possibly the most disgusting competitor to watch on screen. He did nothing but grunt and yell. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if what he was yelling weren't the most heinous racial insults imaginable.
Racism was a problem in District 11, sure. But this was simply unbelievable. Whether he had some kind of disability that kept him from keeping his mouth shut, Crow couldn't be sure. But nothing could make his awful words friendly on the ears of the audience members.
His ally, Jane from 10, did her best to calm him down. She kept him in conversation about more casual things, which certainly kept his voice down, though he still yelled out racial slurs every now and then. As night fell, Jane's face contracted with worry. Was she risking her life by staying allies with this dangerous boy?
She was. Lord and Homer came barreling out of the darkness that night, attracted by the noise of his yells, and they barely escaped with their lives. Jane and Springe fled their separate ways, and Jane promised she'd never befriend a tribute like that ever again.
Crow discreetly watched the other victors, his burning fury easing slightly as he turned away from the giant screen. Despite eleven deaths, only two districts were out of the running completely. The victors from those districts (Jaguar, Rowan, Willow, and Ebony) looked too exhausted to be even upset. For them, it had been decades of watching their tributes die. This was nothing new to them.
It wasn't until Day 5 that the arena posed its first threat. Thus far, the games had been completely devoid of natural disasters and mutts. The latter was to be expected – it was hard to believe any creature could survive in this desolate wasteland – but the former was more surprising. So far, there had not been a single storm, a single flood. It was a bit spooky how calm the sky was, in fact. So spotlessly blue it could have been plastic.
That was when the first bomb dropped.
Fumer was the only tribute who saw it coming. He'd been watching the sky all morning, captivated and transfixed by its smoothness. When the hovercraft appeared, Fumer remembered the old tapes he'd watched back home in District 5 – recordings of the bombing craft – and he knew right away what the arena was in for.
If he wasn't so observant, he would have died. He escaped to the very edges of the arena before the bomb dropped, killing two tributes instantly. Homer from 2 was the first victim. Early that morning, he'd spit away from Lord and Coral, wanting to violently kill other tributes without needing to pay attention to or share food with two other people. He heard the bomb whistling as it fell toward the ground, and then he was no more. The other victim, Circuit from 3, died when a peace of heavy debris slammed into her. A split second later, her cannon fired.
Fumer saw Circuit's face in the sky that night, and his chest ached with loss. They'd only been friends for a few days, but she had been just that – a good friend.
His mourning turned to rage when Tasha died the next day, her head savagely broken open by Coral from 4 as she screamed for mercy. When Fumer saw her face in the death recap, his mouth broke open with fury.
This was the phase that every tribute went through sooner or later. The moment he realized that there was absolutely no stopping the atrocity that was bound to occur before this thing was over.
Tasha's death planted the very first seed of rebellion in his spirit.
Back in the Capitol, Izzy watched the games with a plaintive expression. Her tribute, the narcissistic bully girl, was long since dead and forgotten. The other tribute from 9, the cult leader, was still very much alive though, and he was on the prowl.
His name was TR, which was probably short for something, but Izzy didn't know what. She didn't really care. She'd long since stopped caring about who lived and who died in the Hunger Games. It was all she could do to watch with tired eyes every year and try to forget about them as soon as she could.
Looks like Izzy Mayfleet's unstoppable lust for life had been quenched after all.
When the second bomb dropped, on Day 8, only one tribute died. Everyone knew what to expect when the hovercraft rolled in, so they ran for cover as soon as possible. Izzy watched as TR took shelter in the basement of a warehouse-like building, holding his hands over his neck as the explosives shook the world.
When the dust cleared away, everyone saw the dead body of Jane from 10. Izzy didn't know much about her, but from what she'd seen, Jane seemed like a nice girl who'd done one terrible thing in the past. It didn't matter, though. She was dead and gone now. If Izzy fretted about every dead tribute, she'd look eighty by the time she was forty.
The strong alliances (Nefertiti and Penelope, Lord and Coral) started hunting immediately in the aftermath of the explosion. They wanted to catch the other tributes off-guard after such a catastrophic event, and they certainly got their wish. Nefertiti made the first kill of Day 9, firing an arrow through Brynn's chest.
"Nice one, Titi!" Penelope said. "Who was…"
But she never had time to finish her sentence, because Nefertiti turned suddenly around and fired an arrow straight through Penelope's neck. She fell to the cobbled ground, screaming and coughing up blood as she looked into the eyes of the girl she'd thought to be her friend.
"There are no friends here," Nefertiti said, letting Penelope catch one more glimpse of her dangerously beautiful face before she sprinted away.
"Six tributes left!" Caesar Flickerman shouted. "Only a quarter of the original crowd. It's hard to believe it's been two weeks already, and soon the fun will be all over."
Rowan Dobson watched with bated breath as the cameras showed the final six tributes in rapid succession. He seemed to be waiting anxiously for something, but what was it? Both of his tributes were dead.
Maybe, Rowan realized, he was waiting for everything to be dark again. It'd been nearly a week since the last bomb, and the way the screen went completely black from the debris was oddly peaceful. The blood couldn't be seen through the smoke. The screams couldn't be heard over the low rumble of the explosion. There was only darkness and the roar of oncoming death.
This was the most gruesome thought Rowan had ever formed, and he hated himself for having it.
Nefertiti was all on her own after betraying her ally. She dutifully drilled circles around the arena, searching for prey. She was a bit low on food and water, but with so many sponsors clawing at her this was unlikely to be much of a problem. Lord and Coral, the only alliance left in the Quell, were starting to grate against each other. They started disagreements over the most ridiculous things. Whether it was the stress of the games of merely the appeal of chaotic argument that was driving them off the deep end, Rowan had no clue. Either way, the cameras would certainly be watching them with great interest.
The drug dealer from 8, Thimble, was doubtlessly the most forgettable tribute left in the games. He'd done absolutely nothing since the games started, only laid low while the others laid assault and murder on one another. He had a close call when the second bomb fell, a piece of shrapnel hitting him the shoulder, but after a few bandages and a day of pressurizing the wound he was just fine. TR from 9 was actively hunting for victims, which seemed to pay off for him when he found Springe from 11 at the end of Day 15. However, Springe had the edge: he'd seen TR first, and he had the better weapon too. Less than a minute later, TR's cannon fired, and Springe stood caked with blood over the dead body of his first kill.
Despite Springe's appalling personality, Rowan couldn't help but sympathize with him as he broke out into tears. Rowan remembered feeling just like that when he made his first kill. "I've been there too, buddy," he wanted to tell him.
What Rowan knew was that, in a matter of days, the Quell would be over.
What he didn't know was that Fumer Griffin from District 5 was still very much alive. Several days earlier, he'd gouged out his tracker and smashed it to pieces. The gamemakers couldn't find any evidence of his death, so they assumed he'd been demolished by the second bomb. He was marked dead, while he was really still alive, hunkering down in a dark old basement and nursing the wound on his arm.
Panem hadn't seen the last of Fumer Griffin.
The third explosion, which took place on Day 17, didn't kill anybody, but it certainly stirred things up in the arena. In fact, the bomb was intentionally dropped in an area where there were no tributes; the gamemakers hoped to merely drive the last few competitors toward each other rather than kill them directly.
Lord and Coral ganged up on Thimble later that day. A piece of shrapnel had landed in Thimble's face, effectively blinding him in one eye until the wound could heal. That would take weeks. Maybe even months. He was helpless as Lord and Coral pounced out of the rubble, dicing him to bits with their deadly weapons.
Lord and Coral turned sharply on one another, their swords drawn. They'd both been intending to betray each other at the same time, and the result was a messy and bloody fight that lasted hours. The gamemakers zoomed in on the brawl, showing every detail as the strong boys rolled and turned and fought. By sunset, both tributes were caked in blood and littered with small scrapes and bruises. Lord dealt the final blow, though, puncturing Coral's abdomen with one heavy thrust of his weapon. Coral fell to his knees. Blood gushed out of his torso as quickly as water out of a faucet.
The "only" other tributes, Nefertiti and Springe, were driven toward the horn by a series of minor explosions throughout the next four days. Fumer used this as an opportunity to make minor advancements toward the cornucopia. He had to stay under the cover of darkness, and he could only travel in the immediate aftermath of a cannon shot, because that was when the gamemakers were the most inattentive to other parts of the entire arena.
Back then, the gamemaker team only consisted of four or five people every year. In years after, though, a much larger staff was consistently hired. Wouldn't want a repeat of the frankly embarrassing first Quarter Quell.
Springe died next, leaving Nefertiti and Lord to vie for the victor's crown. The fight was long and brutal. It didn't end for nearly two hours, by which time they were both gravely injured. Lord was clutching his stomach, trying to hold his organs inside his body. Meanwhile, Nefertiti's hand was clutched over her empty eye socket; Lord had literally gouged out one of her eyeballs.
BOOM! Nefertiti fell to her knees, Lord's broadsword buried several inches into her neck.
The chorus of trumpets sounded, accompanied by Caesar Flickerman's merry voice. "I present the victor of the first Quarter Quell, Lord Parthos from District 1!"
But it wasn't over yet.
Fumer dashed out of the shadows, chuckling, a wicked-looking dagger closed in his hand.
Lord vaguely heard something stirring behind him, and the next moment he was dead, Fumer having dashed the knife through his head so suddenly that his skull cracked open like a rotten melon. Lord let out a single gasp before tumbling to the ground, groaning with shock and pain.
"Uh… scratch that!" Caesar corrected, his voice dripping with confusion. "Hey, where has he been…"
But they'd cut him off.
They'd been beaten. They'd been outsmarted. Fumer Griffin had cheated the system.
The head gamemaker's first instinct was to blow him to bits. But that was clearly off the table. They couldn't hurt him now; he was a victor.
Fumer was whisked off to the Capitol, where Electra warned him ominously that he was on the Capitol's bad side.
"You showed them up," she muttered. "That was a bad idea, kid. A really, really bad idea."
"What, and I should have died instead?"
"They're going to make your life hell. You know that, right?"
"I don't care."
But he did, when he returned to District 5 to find his mother and his girlfriend both dead, with two red roses left in their places.
Fumer's controversial victory stirred mayhem in Panem. In the very first year of the Snow administration, there were already riots, uprisings, and strikes. Fumer had given the people hope, which – as Snow would soon learn – is the only thing stronger than fear. Or something like that. Gunning the rebels down, dozen by dozen, hundred by hundred, made them lose hope fairly quickly.
Luxor Dodge committed suicide the day before the Quell ended. He dressed himself head-to-toe in white, so that the peacekeepers who found him would see every drop of blood he'd taken from himself. Then he squirmed into his bed in the Victor's Village and thrust an old kitchen knife into his neck. Just like little Elsie Chappell. It had been a quarter of a century, but he hadn't forgotten her name. If only he'd waited until after the Quell, he might have seen that the Capitol was not infinitely-powerful like it so often seemed. He might have had the hope to keep going. But such is the cruelest irony of all.
Fumer died eight months after the Quell. A group of psychotic landowners from District 2, angry at the property damage caused by the riots that Fumer started, broke into his house in the Victor's Village and put a bullet through his brain. The men were all hanged, of course, their executions played publicly on repeat until everyone knew the entire video clip by heart.
Thus began the Quarter Quell trend: "the victor wins in a controversial and rebellious manner, triggering a nationwide rebellion". The rebellions started by the first two Quells were beaten down fairly quickly. But there must be some weight in that old saying third time's the charm; after the third Quell, a certain mockingjay would eventually bring about an overturning of Panem's political climate forever.
But the viewers of the first Quell didn't know that. Their riots were stopped almost instantly. Within weeks, they were all sent back to work, under heavier quotas and stricter lockdowns than ever before.
The entire vicious cycle had truly just begun.
List of Victors
District 1 (4 Victors): Luxor Dodge (1st), Citrine Whitacre (9th), Peridot Partridge (18th), Vintner Aphelion (23rd)
District 2 (4 Victors): Tyrell Crowley (3rd), Lancaster Percy (6th), Ajax Mathers (15th), Maximus Decimus (21st)
District 3 (2 Victors): Lumen Orlaith (12th), Cobalt Thindrel (19th)
District 4 (2 Victors): Mags Flanagan (11th), Ripple Hart (16th)
District 5 (2 Victors): Electra Wilty (4th), Fumer Griffin (25th)
District 6 (1 Victor): Jaguar Stratton (7th)
District 7 (3 Victors): Rowan Dobson (2nd), Willow Merrick (13th), Ebony Merrick (14th)
District 8 (2 Victors): Georgio Bronte (8th), Burton Flax (22nd)
District 9 (1 Victor): Izzy Mayfleet (17th)
District 10 (1 Victor): Argus Collymore (24th)
District 11 (2 Victors): Bluebell Singer (5th), Crow Kensington (20th)
District 12 (1 Victor): Canary Roselock (10th)
A/N: This is probably my favorite chapter of this story so far. It was SO much fun to write and string together and I hope you had fun reading it as well (:
Snow is officially the president now. Ever since his first (brief) appearance in Chapter 15, I've been having lots of fun sparsely mentioning him here and there, just to make his rise to power a bit more thrilling.
Tell me all your thoughts please, I love to hear them. Any standout tributes? Coming up with all of them sure was a blast. In a dark way. Maybe I should get checked out XD Also, I've been trying to write some of the old victors in these new chapters. I personally think it helps solidify the idea that all these chapters take place on a timeline in the same universe. If you want, let me know which victors you'd like to see more of. Don't forget that four of them are already dead though 0_0
Finally as always, thanks for reading. See you next time!