Ritz Marquette, 18
District Nine Quell "Male"

As Ritz Marquette walked down the dusty paths of District Nine, they could feel the beads of sweat dripping down their face and soaking their shirt. Summers in Nine could be rather warm, but this was a particularly hot day, which was somewhat inconvenient for Ritz, as they had been sent out on a mission quite a ways away from their home. Not that any place to which they'd be sent on a mission was anywhere near their home; Ritz and their community were pretty far from any other sign of civilization in Nine. In fact, at only about four miles round trip, Ritz's route today was one of the shortest mission routes that Society members regularly took, because they had to get back for the afternoon's round of ceremonies. Ritz was certainly not complaining, however; in comparison to some of the other missions they'd been sent on, today's four-mile round trip felt like a walk in the park.

The young adult tugged on their collar, trying their best to get some relief from the blistering sunlight and suffocating humidity that was making their significantly regret wearing their tweed blazer on top of their tan shirt. As much as they liked wearing jackets, this was without a question not the day to wear one. Ritz stepped over to the side of the road so as not to block traffic – not that there was much traffic out here – then put down their briefcase and opened it up to put their jacket away, causing a whole bunch of crudely bound booklets to come tumbling out. Evidently, they had forgotten how many copies of the Cypher they had stuffed in their briefcase that morning. Ritz was supposed to be going on this mission with Sock, one of their closest friends, but they'd called in sick this morning. Even though Ritz would be visiting the same number of houses as they otherwise would, they had to pack all the extra copies of the Cypher in case someone passed by who was interested in the Society rather than splitting those copies with Sock. But with this many extra copies of the Cypher, there was definitely not enough room for their jacket in their briefcase. Oh, well, thought Ritz, hopefully there will be enough room for my jacket on the way back.

After picking up the fallen Cyphers and closing their briefcase back up, Ritz continued their trek, soon coming upon their destination, a small hamlet that was just a little ways away from Nine's border with Six. Despite being one of the closest towns to the Society's headquarters on the outskirts of Nine, this was the first missionary visit that anyone had been able to make to them since the previous winter, which would bode well for recruitment purposes. After all, earlier missionaries normally had far better luck than those who went out later in the season, a fact that Ritz's parents had always attributed that to the fact that the later in the year it was, the more focused people were on the impending winter. Consequently, the citizens of Nine who were visited by missionaries in the late summer and early fall didn't have the brain power to fully think about or internalize the mission of the Society. But Ritz had a feeling that the actual reason that missionaries who went out later in the recruiting season had more success was far more simple: by the fall, people were tired of the Society's missionaries. It wasn't unusual for the same house to be visited three or four times in a year by three or four different missionaries, even if the first had been turned away. But for some reason, Ritz's parents insisted on sending their missionaries back out to those houses anyway. It was just one of the many things about Ritz's parents that raised questions in Ritz's mind, questions that Ritz had gotten all too used to suppressing as soon as they thought of them. After all, they were the children of the leaders of the Society; they couldn't possibly leak even a droplet of the oceans of doubt that threatened to drown them at any moment.

Ritz walked down the main street – well, the only street – of the hamlet, stopping at the last house on the lane. It was Society protocol to start with the farthest house from the entrance to each town that the missionaries visited; this way, if an angry mob chased you out (which happened a surprisingly high number of times), the odds of getting trapped by the mob would decrease tremendously. Ritz took a moment to grab a few copies of the Cypher from their briefcase, careful not to let them spill all over the road again. After sliding them carefully into their jacket pocket, Ritz stood as straight as they could, then confidently knocked on the door.

"Good morning, friend," Ritz said as the door opened. "My name is Ritz Marquette and I'm here to tell you about a little utopia that we've developed here in District Nine."

The person standing in front of Ritz gave the young mane a look-over, then said, "I think I'll pass."

"No worries! Would you like this free booklet about our Society's beliefs just in case you become interested later?"

"I'm good, thank you." The individual gently closed the door.

Not deterred, Ritz quickly pivoted and made their way to the next house. After a few unanswered knocks on the door, Ritz decided to move on to the third house; normally they'd be a bit more persistent, but they knew that if they were late to the evening's ceremonies they could be in big trouble, and they were fairly confident that someone else would be sent out to this hamlet fairly soon. A few more steps brought them to the third house. This time the door opened, but before Ritz could get more than three words out, or even a glimpse of the person who opened it, the door was slammed in their face. The young adult sighed. As much as Ritz was used to this kind of rejection – with the values of the Society, who wouldn't be? – it still felt a little like a slap in the face to them every time.

As Ritz progressed down the lane going from house to house, they found that every house they went to did exactly the same thing as one of the first three they visited: hear them out for seven seconds and then say no, outright say no as soon as they registered Ritz's uniform, or not even answer the door. It wasn't until they knocked on the door of the very last house that, for the first time, Ritz didn't feel like the door opening was accompanied by a blast of ice-cold air. And for the first time, the person who opened the door spoke first.

"Hello, there, son," said the person, who had long hair and was wearing a worn-out, dirty apron. "You look like you've come quite a long way. Would you care for a glass of water?"

"Why, thank you, Mx. You're the first person who's asked me that today."

"Well, it's the least I could do. Come on in, take a seat. Make yourself at home." Ritz stepped into the house and took a seat on an old, worn sofa. The person picked up a cup from their counter filled it up with water from a jug that was sitting next to a rather full bowl of what was probably oil and grain.

"Thank you kindly."

"It's my pleasure. Now, what brings you all the way out here?"

"Well, I just want to spread the word about the utopian community that I live in, which is just about a two mile's walk from here. We're always happy to have new members join our community, and we'd love to have you as well."

"Oh, a utopian community? I didn't know that was possible in Panem."

"Well, maybe it's not a complete utopia, but I'd like to think it's pretty close."

"I'm certainly curious. How did you manage that?"

"Well, it's very simple. We live in a small commune called the Sexless Society that doesn't believe in the idea of gender. The gender binary has done far too bad of a job of preparing children and teenagers to live in the real world and to exist as functioning members of society, and so we have done away with it."

The person put the cup down in front of Ritz with a confused look on their face. "What do you mean by that? Surely you understand that, without gender, children can't be born, without which there would be no, well, anything."

"Well, it is true that you do need one person born with a penis and one person born with a vagina to birth children. But that doesn't necessarily mean that those people have a gender. In our society, we believe that the only purpose of your sex is having kids. Otherwise, all people are completely equal."

"And how does that make it a utopia?"

"Well, for one thing, it means that there's no arguments about who has what job in the house. I mean, you can't tell me that you haven't had that argument once or twice about whose turn it is to cook dinner, or to wash the clothing, or to patch a hole in your roof. Instead, everything is everyone's job. We all work together to build the best possible society."

The person thought for a moment. "I suppose that's a compelling argument. But if you have a good marriage, it shouldn't matter. Not to mention the fact that everyone can do any role in the house doesn't mean that there aren't differences between men and women. I mean, our bodies look different."

"That is true." Ritz took a copy of the Cypher out of their pocket and offered it to the person. "Perhaps this might explain things a little bit better. This is our Cypher, which was written by the Sexless Society's founders. It helps to detail what we believe and explain a little bit about how our society is run. Would you like a copy? I'd be happy to come back here in a few weeks if you'd like to discuss moving to our commune."

"Well, that's very kind of you, but I'll have to pass. We just moved here a few weeks ago; we're not really in a position to move again. It was lovely to meet you and hear about your utopia, though," they said with a smile, like that of a parent humoring their child's fantasies. "But if you ever need a glass of water the next time you come by, feel free to stop by."

"Thank you kindly, Mx.," Ritz said, standing up and straightening out their jacket. "I'll see you around." Giving a friendly nod, Ritz turned and left the house, beginning their long, hot trek back to the commune.

There wasn't even enough room in their briefcase to put their jacket away.

Well, howdy everybody! Fancy seeing you back here! And if this is the first chapter of OTWT you're reading, welcome! I'm so happy to have all of you along for this wild and crazy ride.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update again. I was hoping to just duck out for a few weeks until I got all my subs in so I could pick out intro POVs, and then a few weeks turned into a few months. But we're here now with our first subbed kid intro, and that's what matters! A huge thank you to ladyqueerfoot for Ritz; I'm so excited to work with them, and with all of your kids!

Now that I have a full cast I just want to reiterate one more time that OTWT is a passion project for me, which means that I'm not going to be holding myself to any sort of POV standard. This means, most importantly, that far from every character is going to get an intro, mostly so we can get into the meat of the story. I'm going to do my best to give as many as I can POVs somewhere in the story, but because the Victors (and one of the Survivors) of this story have been canon for a while I kind of need to work backwards almost to make sure I get to where I need to, and so I have to plan POVs with that goal in mind. If you have any concerns about your character feel free to DM me and I'm happy to talk it out!

I haven't decided yet how many more intros there will be; my guess is at least two more chapters of them before we hit the Reapings, which will also function as intros for a few characters, but at this point I'm not quite sure. In general, my plan is to put a bit more weight behind IDIDE2 until I can get the Events chapters written over there, so I'm targeting about one update a month for this story until probably the mid to late spring. So unless things change, I guess I'll see you sometime in January for the next update!

-goldie031