Hey everyone, Paradigm of Writing here with another new chapter of Liberty - typing out Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Death every time will get old fast, so we'll leave it as just Liberty for the shorthand. I must say, I am unbelievably blown away by the amount of support I've received from this first chapter of my SYOT. I mean, twenty reviews in two days? I've never had that happen, let alone the quick surge of follows, favorites, the super quick amount of submissions, and even the view count, just on the first SYOT. It humbles me, but also makes me smile... and just thank you. Our opening introduced us to Friedrich Calvary, the mayor of District 1, and it is time to meet more of the characters that have been around the beginning of the first Games. Please enjoy Chapter #2: Herald of Punishment.
"Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment." ~ Gandhi
Emrick Israel: President of Panem P.O.V
It is the decisions that are the hardest to make that require the toughest of wills to complete them.
It is his mantra, and it is the mantra that has run the last twenty years of life without hesitation, without a single night containing a loss of sleep.
Or at least, that is what Emrick Israel tells himself, the president of Panem, when he notices the greyed hair thinning in the back as age starts to settle into his bones, when the firmness of his voice has shaken a bit, requiring the evolution to using your fists on a table, or dare be it, fists against someone's nose. He cannot stand the sight of blood, but he has no issue pressing the barrel of the gun up against the underside of Friedrich Calvary's jaw to get him squeal; the man has never fully known what is good for him, stupidly accepting some invitation to the Capitol even when he's at war with those involved in the invitation... Emrick doesn't contest the idea, and rather feels giddy seeing that darkening spot on Friedrich's pants bloom the moment the gun is cocked.
Having someone with that weak of a backbone in your pocket... it feels quite nice.
Emrick is sitting at his desk, his head down on the oak surface, rubbing his forehead back and forth on top of it. He knows how weird it would look for someone to see him if they were to walk on - there is a sign that people must always knock before his entering his office, for the door is shut, or there's a fine, no exceptions, and he's even often thought about charging himself, cause he's entered through the double doors without knocking beforehand - but there's an itch in the center of his head, and he's too relaxed with his hands resting aside his head, splayed outwards, fingers stretched out like webbed frog feet. He doesn't even have his eyes closed, eyelashes batting away with a blink at the dust particles beneath him, his vision so close to the surface that every detail is picked apart and scrutinized.
That is what the entire country must be dealing with, he realizes, with a sudden moment of clarity, lifting his head. But it isn't the clarity that has him raise his head, but a knock at the door.
"Come in," he intones gravely, wincing at the sudden drop in decorum that is his voice. He thinks he sounds like he just smoke a cigarette, but he doesn't smoke; there are much easier ways to cope with stress than inhaling tar sticks of death. Sending twenty-three kids - tributes, his mind corrects, use the correct terminology from now on; it helps remove the humanity away from them. I'm not killing people, I'm killing tributes... sacrifices up for the gods. - to their death is a much better process; he can wash his hands of it. At the end of the day, all he did is write an order, create a law, and ratify it with the districts help to make it true. Sure, he has to sit around and have his new staff, revolutionized from a typical political administration become some sort of technological genius in ten quick months, but they've done it.
Emrick sits straight up, a lock of hair falling into his eyes, he combing it immediately behind his ears at the sight of his vice president, with his new title Head Gamemaker, Cain Passionia waltz in through the double doors, all suited up like a cherry blossom on a cake, doused in a sweet mix of polyester red and silk pink. He cannot lie to himself, he wishes there could be a way of turning back time so he could be thirty years younger like his associate, where he'd keep the sandpaper color to his hair, rather than the wispy gray he's starting to see in the bathroom mirror. Emrick's eyes are no longer sapphires gleaming at the bottom of an ocean bed, but runny ink spilled over on parchment paper, bleak and murky, where they've lost their luster.
Cain marches straight up to the desk, Emrick getting a good look at his vice president, a tall man, taller than he is, with glossy curls of onyx black hair, like he's slept in a barrel of oil before waking up every morning. Bright, almost ivory white eyes, genetically altered, like he's some sort of angelic offspring, and a smile that has found its place in every situation. The Head Gamemaker - it is strange, calling him that, but I need to acclimate just like everyone else; it's only fair, no? Emrick ponders to himself with a frown - appraises over him with a quick one-over, and then bites on his lower lip, sucking it into his mouth to suckle on, releasing it with the unsatisfying pop.
"You look like shit, Emrick," he says. Ah, ever a man of grace, style, and dignity.
Emrick scowls, pushing off of the desk, rolling back in his chair. "If you're going to insult me, at least refer to me as Mr. President next time," but holding a grudge or being angry with Cain Passionia is almost as if he's fighting against God and his legions of seraphs watching them above. Then, keeping the frown, he leans back over the desk. It isn't the best reflective surface in the world, but it does its job well enough. "Do I?"
"Just slightly," Cain smirks, bringing his hands into his pockets.
"Is there something I can help you with, Cain, or do you just need miss my company, something your wife can't provide?" he teases back with him. Emrick finds it hard to believe that the same little boy he met on a street corner selling newspapers, while he's getting his morning coffee, has grown into the young man standing before him, helping run the country with him. Cain's neck doesn't flush red like he expects after the insult, after the barbed statement... normally anyone else who waltzes into the office - he seldom ever uses the word waltz to describe someone's movement, it's too uppity of a word - would be rolling over themselves trying out for excuses and babbling over their words. Not Cain.
"Please, Mr. President," the man waves off with his hand. Emrick raises an eyebrow. Ah, now is the usage of his proper title. "If I wanted company that my wife couldn't give, I'd go to Friedrich."
Emrick brings his eyebrows together, but doesn't say anything for a moment. It had been some slight altercation, before the ashes of District 13 threaten to stir and blow in the wind, about that mayor from One trying to get into the bed of his vice president, despite both men being married with families and children... he is not sure what comes over the blonde haired idiot out of the jewel sector, but Cain politely refuses, and that had been that... unless...? "Is that why you came into my office? Friedrich giving you trouble again, Cain?"
His vice president smiles, scuffing the tip of his dress shoes on the hardwood floor of the office. Ida has always complained to him about getting tile, true tile with the grit and the weathered appearance, but Emrick gives his wife a look that silences her aggravated tone, as if it is his family's concern on what his office looks like; it isn't as if she's ever stopped by. Cain scratches the back of his neck, running his tongue over his lips, and Emrick cannot help but follow the motion with his eyes; a vulture watching for an animal to collapse from exhaustion for as long as he has does wonders on his perceptive skills. "No, Emrick, he hasn't," Cain sucks in a breath, hollowing out his cheeks, "But he's had the offer still stand if I ever needed it."
"You mean if he ever needed it, no?"
"I haven't worked out the specifics, nor do I want to," Cain shrugs his shoulders. "Besides, I have Bella; there's no need for an other," and the Head Gamemaker - Emrick is not sure if he'll ever get used to it, using the title. Doing what he's done... what will be happening soon, on his watch, on his orders - shakes his head perceptively. "That's not the reason I came by; it's a quarter to Noon, Mr. President, and we need to get you on camera."
Emrick moves away from his desk, wandering off to the far wall of his office, which leads to a window, that is shaped like a half-open circle, or a blinking eyelid, if he is to look at it long enough and truly stare. His office is on the third floor of the mansion, but for the time being, he's felt the need to keep it in the same building as is the Hunger Games facility, one where all the operations that are integral stay that way, without a game of telephone spanning the entire city. His people, his real people, the Capitol populace, they've been waiting for this day for ten months. He can feel their bloodlust rise above the streets, almost like an invisible vapor that glows crimson underneath a street lamp when it is dark inside, and he'll be lying to not admit that he can add some of his bloodlust to that, to seeing the youth of his country pay for the sins of their mothers and fathers.
But... but still, even after ten months, and with all the hard work and the labor and the sleepless nights that he's never had in his entire life... is it enough?
"Are we doing the right thing, here, Cain?"
He can see his vice president's face in the reflection, in case his second in command wishes to pull any fast moves on him. It wouldn't be the first time, but Emrick has to forgive Cain, even when suckling the strawberry jam off of bony fingers and brushing stormy curls out of eyes, or the entire thing collapses in his hands, a bookcase withering away to the long years of decay if he were to harbor hate in his heart. Cain frowns, lifting his head up slightly, but he does not rock back on his heels; he never swings himself in motion.
"I'm not sure what you mean, Mr. President. Please, be honest with me."
"The Hunger Games," Emrick says point blank, but he does not dare lose the power he holds by looking back. He keeps his face grim, resolute. "That doing what we're doing is a much better option than what I had previously considered," he remembers that night, a foggy one where a settling veneer of blindness rushes in from Five, from the electric-powered dam, and Emrick breaks the first wine glass he's ever destroyed in his life against the edge of his bedroom dresser, and Ida shrieks her pretty little dumbass head off without a care in the world, for Emrick has destroyed the dresser, let alone the shards piercing through his hand. He wants to drop twelve individual bombs, all with varying nuclear intensity on each district, Thirteen already dead and gone, and the others hiding in the corner like cowering children.
Children, that is what they are. Not districts, no, they're not adult enough anymore for that; they're kids, and he isn't voted president of Panem to babysit.
"Mr. President, we have already had this discussion once before," Cain makes a move closer towards him, but he stops at the chair, resting a hand on the leather, running his fingers through one of the splits, rubbing back and forth. "This is the way. The right way. A constant reminder for what they've done. If we slaughter them all now, then there won't be anyone left, and whatever generations come after that will have forgotten," Cain's gaze hardens in his reflection, and his jaw stays firm in place. An angel, switching into a fallen one within the blink of an eye. Emrick recalls when he had that political power, just starting out, twenty-five years before the period labeled the Dark Days by historians had ever been a thing, the ability to make men bow down before him, and women just signing up replace Ida as his wife... but all he can do now is have an already broken mayor wet himself at a dinner party.
Granted, there's the barrel of the gun pressed underneath his jaw, but Emrick knows he wouldn't have been able to pull the trigger, which is why Head Peacekeeper Lydia Wickervein standing in the shadows is there, to do his dirty work.
He listens to Cain's answer, but does not raise a hand to strike himself across the face for the thought of weaknesses. He'll have to force himself to watch the blood spill out of limp twelve year-old bodies before too long, and if he has to excuse himself from a slight showboat splash of blood, he might as well resign out of the presidency immediately and save everyone the trouble. Old age has given him sentimentality, and sentimentality has turned him weak. Something confuses him, however, rerunning what his vice president just told him, but once again he does not turn around. It is Cain, with the strawberry jam and the tousled hair and the sickening sweet smiles, with fingers plaiting into his shoulder blades, cracking him open like a walnut and smashed to pieces after the fact, to order restraint. Nuclearizing the entire country beyond the Capitol would lead to certain death, and being removed from office most definitely, but Emrick is only half listening while he makes geometric shapes on his palm with the jagged glass piece.
Ordering restraint means that every year, for as long as he can imagine it, twenty-three vermin from the districts must die, and he is okay with this.
"Mr. Passionia, I don't understand..." he shakes his head, swallowing heavily, noting how dry his throat is. That is not the right phraseology, not with someone like Cain. "You've always struck me as being the one who'd order me to not limit restraint, but unleash it instead, after what has happened. After what Nathaniel did, I wouldn't have that much restraint."
Cain locks eyes with him, and a pang runs through Emrick's body. He might be president, and the gentleman in front of him might be an underling beneath that, just another rung to step on, but there's lines that shouldn't be crossed, and he knows he just crossed one. He can see his vice president physically swallow his rage, the bobbing of his throat, and the clenching of his fingers... Emrick tries to keep his attention focused on the Head Gamemaker and the hole being torn up in his office chair, spilling out cotton onto the wood floor. "You do not get to bring up Raziel, Emrick," the pretense has dropped, and so with it, the decorum of the conversation. "Nor do you receive the privilege to discuss Bella and her operation..."
"As you wish, Cain," Emrick licks his lips, eyes darting over to the clock in the corner. It is now ten minutes to noon, and Districts One and Two will be starting their reapings very soon. Most of the district would already be arriving for the blood sample intake to account for attendance, and the Peacekeepers will be doing their rounds to check on any stragglers, and if need be, drag unwilling participants by their feet towards the town square, but he hopes that won't have to happen. "I respect your wishes."
"Clearly they must've slipped, Mr. President, since you brought it up," Cain lifts his head, stepping up to match his superior, equal to equal now, and there's a darkness in his eyes, no longer just shining beacons of light, but supernovas, black holes rather, consuming the supernova wave into the abyss of dark. "You never actually asked me why I offered the volunteer option, Emrick, you know that?" The president is unsure whether or not to even nod at the question, to placate the truth. "I mean, why not just have those reaped be the ones who are culled? That would be fair, wouldn't it? No, not enough," Cain shakes his head, the bulking of his throat returning. "Nathaniel didn't give my son a second chance before he slit his throat open from ear to ear. He didn't give Bella a way out before he pressed himself on her... and of all people to start a war with, he does so with the vice president of the country..." Cain locks his jaw, shuddering out a breath. "Nathaniel Coin and his entire stupid fucking district died, so everyone else can live, and I am going to have to live with that," he points a finger at himself, before jamming it into Emrick's chest. "And if I have to deal with it, so do you."
"Of- of course, Cain," Emrick stutters, breaking into a slight smile. He'll be punishing himself for that when the cameras aren't looking. A man of the people, a leader such as he is... one does not waver in their speech. He is the god of Death, he is an oracle bringing the plague down upon people's homes, and he's stuttering?
The vice president steps back some, his shoulders visibly relaxing and falling down, he tugging at the edges of his suit, bringing them in tighter, but there's still no smile. "Come on, Mr. President; we need to get you on camera," he turns around briskly, marking his exit out of the office doors, but not before passing out one final execution sentence. "It is time to watch the masses eat the herd."
Emrick lets out a shaky breath, watching his vice president leave the room. Why did he ever take up the lad's proposition on entering politics?
He makes a step towards his office chair, running a finger over the incision made by Cain's fingernails, which must've been recently sharpened. It is a wound, sure, and it can be fixed, but Emrick knows his ways, that'll he have to replace the entire chair and just get a new one, and maybe dole out a punishment on the last designer of the product, for it shouldn't be able to be sliced open by a man's fingernails, even if said man is Cain Passionia or not. The Dark Days, and the rebellion led by District 13, it is its wound, to Panem, bleeding stuffing and cotton from an overly complicated office chair.
The Hunger Games is the new chair replacing the old one.
Emrick sighs to himself, running a hand through his silver locks of hair, which feels more and more like he's brushing up against a tumbleweed.
It is time to be the heralder of punishment to the herd, to call the tributes out of their stocks and pens, and to be slaughtered... to be offered up as sacrifices to the gods.
Alrighty, ladies and gentlemen, that was Chapter #2: Herald of Punishment, for Liberty, and I am shaking in excitement. I must've run over the conversation I had of Emrick and Cain in my head a thousand times before writing it down, and I haven't felt this sort of power from my work in some time. So, here are another two characters: the president of Panem, Mr. Emrick Israel, and his vice president turned Head Gamemaker Cain Passionia, who has been an absolute treat to create. As you can imagine, there's been some new 'lore' I've explored, such as the start of the Dark Days, led by the District 13 leader Nathaniel Coin... and I think we all recognize a name when we see one, no?
I hope you all to continue to express your unbelievably sweet and incredible support, which has been overwhelming and has blown me off my feet like I've never seen before. Submissions are open, with the form in the first chapter or on my profile, along with the associated stats for it. I am seeing myself ending submissions sometime around early May, which feels like a long time away, so please, work on your ideas if you wish to submit. Reviews would be greatly appreciated, telling others about it would be awesome, and just your general love and support as usual makes my day. I love you all so much! Have a great day! Bye!
~ Paradigm