Porsche Romeo, 17

District 6 Female

Porsche tapped her cane rhythmically on the sidewalk in time with her off-key humming as she walked to work. Working as a valet was not a dream job - in fact, not having a job was the dream - but it was a job. It kept food on the table, and Porsche did enjoy food. She tapped out a dramatic ending to her original song and rounded the corner. She was promptly hit in the face by a car key.

"Ow! Chaz!" she shouted, drawing the attention of several people, including the perpetrator.

"Sorry!" her coworker yelled back, wincing a little. "I thought you were paying attention!"

"Since when I have been paying attention," Porsche shouted back, despite being in front of him now.

"Jeez, volume," Chaz grumbled. "But that's a fair point. Where are the keys?"

"Over there," Porsche told him, gesturing over her shoulder.

"You didn't pick them up?!" Chez yelled, pushing past her and snatching the keys off the ground. Porsche cackled.

"You threw them," she reminded him. A flash of bright blue caught her attention, and she frowned. "Fuck."

"What? Wait, hey! Where are you going?" But Porsche was off, leaving a confused Chaz behind to do her job. She'd recognize that blue coat anywhere, and she knew it meant business.

She limped after Miss Lane, moving as quietly as she was able to. The blue-clad woman stopped in a back alleyway and turned to face Porsche with her arms crossed. A tall, buff woman with a buzzcut was standing behind her.

"Nice haircut," Porsche said. "We match." She gestured to own short brown hair with a grin. The woman didn't say anything, but Miss Lane laughed humorlessly.

"You're not an idiot Porsche. You know why we're here."

"For a nice chat and catch up? I missed you too," Porsche teased. Miss Lane narrowed her eyes.

"Enough of this foolishness. You owe me at least $1,000. It's time to cough it up."

Porsche cocked her head.

"$1000? I wouldn't have borrowed that much from you. I'd have gone to Lenny."

"Fuck you," Miss Lane spat. "Heidi, teach her a lesson."

Porsche took a defensive stance and gripped her cane tighter. Her poker addiction had landed her in some sticky spots before, but she hadn't died yet. Just gained a permanent limp.

Heidi rushed forward, fists up, and Porsche feinted to the side before whacking her on the ass with her cane. Heidi growled in fury and whirled around, decking a smirking Porsche across the face. The green-eyed girl staggered back, tenderly touching her smarting cheek. The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth, and adrenaline rushed through her veins.

Porsche lunged forward, keeping her weight on her good leg, and delivered a swift punch to Heidi's nose. She lashed out with her cane at the same time, smashing it against the bigger woman's shin. Heidi groaned, dropping to one knee, and Porsche skirted past her.

"Lovely to see you," she shouted to Miss Lane as she hurried away. "I promise I'll write!" And then she was hurrying back to Chaz as fast she was able to.

When she arrived back at work, she took a seat beside Chaz and gave him a grin.

"I survived," she reported proudly.

"I noticed," he said drily. "Go put on some makeup."

RJ MacReady, 16

District 6 Male

The beeping in the room was overwhelming him. It was only one machine, not even a loud one at that, but MacReady hated it. He didn't mind the volume level too much. He minded what it meant. Each beep was a little bit further apart than the last one had been. His patient's heartrate was slowing. He had to be moving faster, which wasn't easy when it was a complex job. MacReady was doing everything he could to fix this guy's pancreas, but it was a lot harder when he had a clotting issue and his assistant had to hold him down because he kept trying to move in his sleep.

His hands were trembling while he worked and he glared at them, which only served to lessen his field of vision. The tumor he was trying to remove from this man's pancreas was massive. His hands were trembling around the mound of flesh he had to differentiate from another mound of flesh without tearing the very delicate mound of flesh he was working on. It was nerve wracking, to say the least.

Little by little he worked his surgery scissors forward, cutting out what felt like ten pounds of flesh. He knew it wasn't; Dad would have taken a job that hard. It was one thing to ask a kid to help with surgeries and another to ask for help with the ones that would almost certainly go awry. MacReeady wouldn't even have been given this surgery if not for his dad having a sudden emergency job when someone came in with a ruptured large intestine. All of a sudden he was the one handling a surgery that was far less important than a different one.

'In a perfect world', he thought while I worked, knowing it was a worthless thought. Well, no. No thoughts were truly worthless, and this train was serving to keep him calm and steady his hands, but it was a thought that would never have meaning beyond that. 'In a perfect world, no kid would be doing surgery. Everyone would be able to afford to get taken care of by medical professionals, not a half-way self-taught guy who taught his kid. Because medical care wouldn't only be available to the rich and the privileged. Because even people like us would be able to do better than two heart monitors and absolutely nothing else.'

Thoughts like that were ones he entertained often but never vocalized. MacReady never vocalized. Saying 'the Capitol is deliberately oppressing us because we could rise up if only we'd gather,' or 'the only reason to limit travel is to separate the masses'. For one thing, almost everyone knew it. For another thing, he'd be dead if he said it. The Capitol couldn't control his thoughts, but they had done a great job controlling his words.

With steadying breaths he sewed my patient up, each stitch its own work of art. Then it was time for my assistant to awake him, the assistant whose name he should have known but always managed to forget during surgeries. 'Almost like I had other things to focus on', he thought wryly. 'Like the fact that this man still might die'.

Hi everyone! New story! This is Organized Chaos, a story I'm writing alongside several other authors. We're not supposed to read each others' stories, but we'll see how that goes. I had Silver choose a random number, and this chapter was born! I hope everyone who reads this enjoys! And thanks to Max DeLoria for RJ and SilverflowerXRavenpaw for Porsche. And thanks to Silver for helping me with RJ's PoV. You shouldn't be reading this, but you're awesome!

Have a nice day, be kind to each other, and never stop reading!

- Fiona