AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm not going to post the last few chapters till I get 20 more reviews!
Just kidding. I'll post it soon; I just don't have anything witty to say here (and I hate people that beg for reviews). Clove makes a stop in Districts 6, 7, and 8, as indicated by the title, and the tour takes a few unusual turns. Nothing too big, but there's going to be something right around the corner as she approaches Districts 11 and 12.
Happy Reading!

CHAPTER 27: Six, Seven, Eight...

Miracles happened. That was about the only logical explanation Clove had for how District 6 functioned. Sure she had heard the stories from returning Peacekeepers about the endemic there, but seeing it in person was totally different. Everyone seemed to move a little slower, and seemed to behave more tranquilly. Clove wondered if this was a Capitol scheme. District 6 was a very large district—arguably containing a larger population than any other district—and while their behavior was erratic, they seemed complacent enough. Had the Capitol aided this addiction epidemic?

Clove was determined to crack this case. She only had half a day to do it, before she would get escorted back to the train and whisked off to District 7 for tomorrow's stop, and so she already started planning this out as the train flew towards the place where it had most likely been constructed years ago: District 6, the Transportation District—sometimes also nicknamed the Morphling District.

"It's been a while since '6 has produced a victor," Enobaria explained as they whizzed across the Panemian countryside, leaving the mountains far to the west, "they've had 5 in their history so far. The three that are up and kicking the most are Zerviah Hawke, 37th Hunger Games; Meili Meisha, 58th Hunger Games; and Dezna Meraxa, 45th Hunger Games. He's the one you'll probably want to try and talk to if you think your parents fell to a drug endemic. He's apparently one of the best in the business."

Perhaps District 6 was cleverer than Clove gave them credit for. Jason and his partner had not exactly been formidable foes during her games, and so Clove asked Athena for help in writing her speech, figuring that a generic speech for somewhat generic tributes was fitting. Besides, it would keep the Capitol happy and not cause any incidents—most of the time anyways.

Clove was dressed in a sharp grey suit that seemed to match the mood and color of the district fairly well. Enobaria's outfit, while still pretty, appeared even more subdued than Clove's.

There was nothing overly remarkable about her speech or the tributes she spoke about during that arm of the stop. Clove rambled off something fairly generic, just as she had for Districts 4 and 5, and so while she had mixed feelings about the giddy Athena, the woman did serve at least one useful purpose. Her speech went off without a hitch, and soon she found herself mingling with the addled folks of District 6, most of which had tranquil expressions and pink eyes.

She tried singling out Dezna Meraxa, which turned out to be harder than it looked. She stopped a middle-aged man with dark greying fluffy hair, who turned around at Clove's touch.

"Dezna?" the young victor raised an eyebrow.

"Arza," the girl corrected her—for it was in fact, a woman. "Dezna's my brother, and he's right over there. Want me to introduce you?"
"uhh…" Clove scratched the back of her head, slightly embarrassed, "sure."

To Clove's slight surprise, Dezna and Arza looked rather familiar. They wore similar baggy clothes which hid most of their curves or features, and had the same untamed, fluffy hairstyle. The only difference between them even at this age was that Arza had some dark grey eyeshadow over her eyelids, whilst Dezna did not. Either way, Clove was not here to try and play an identification game with a weird pair of middle-aged twins. She was here to learn something.

"I'm here to ask you about what you know about the recent peacekeepers" she explained as they sat down, "It's a District 2 thing, really."
"Most Peacekeepers that come through '6 are real fond of our Substance 21." Arza explained, "I help market it, and Dezna and I sell it. It's a real popular one on the market, and folks from District 1 seem like mixing it with a wine they call "Red Gold".

"Red Gold", and "Substance 21"… this was an interesting lead for Clove. Had this substance (since she was pretty sure the wine had not been the ultimate culprit) been what had fried the brains of her parents? Or had it just been the distance between them and their children that had done the job?

"So why do you all take so many painkillers and drugs then? Is life that bad, here?"
"It's mostly a recreational thing at first," Dezna shrugged, "but then it becomes an addiction."
"What's it do to people?" This was where she would know for sure.

"It mostly just makes them hallucinate something cool." Dezna laughed, "sunshine, rainbows, a few exploding engines or paint cans or something… purple lightning… it's pretty cool, to be honest."

Clove was not sure that this man and his sister were even all here. And yet… the story seemed fitting. Maybe this drug, combined with their distance, had been what had happened to Clove's parents—or maybe, she just had to accept the grim truth that her parents didn't know her.

She sighed, and it took Enobaria challenging her to a drinking game to finally cheer her up—or rather, Enobaria drank Clove under the table, and they had to drag her back to the train later that evening.

Thankfully, Capitol medicine had long since figured out a way around hangovers, and Clove theorized that it was probably created in District 6 after a victory tour some-odd decades ago. Whatever the case, it was now on to District 7. Similar to '6, there would be nothing too fanciful here, she suspected.

She was wrong. As she stepped up onto the stage to give her speech, things started out normally. The weather was beautiful and the wind rustled through the trees, many of which were all through the district center. The odd part about it that shook Clove right to her core was not what had happened—but *who* had happened.

There, jumping from one tree to the other before landing deftly on one of the upper branches, was Rue Keniye. She froze, glaring at Clove with a pair of blank eyes, a jagged pair of daggers in her hands that she sheathed before giving Clove a respectful hand sign. Clove paused, tilting her head in a slightly confused position, not noticing the awkward looks people were giving her. A few turned around to see what she was gazing at, but all they saw were branches Rue had seemed so very real to her.

"Sorry…" she shook her head as she tried to recover herself, "I got distracted… this is such a beautiful district—and its tributes were beautiful as well…"
she was lying through her teeth, but frankly, that was about as good as any of the tripe that Athena had put on the card for her to read, and so the rest of the stop went by without incident, and the feast was the same way later that evening.

"You saw something, didn't you?" Enobaria confronted Clove as the train whizzed away from District 7 and on its way to District 8.

"I saw her," Clove grunted, displeased with admitting this, "Rue was in those trees. She's not done haunting me, Enobaria. She's not done reminding me that I killed her. She's not done reminding me that she simply wanted to survive." Clove's fist clenched tighter around the glass she was holding.

"Clove," Enobaria stopped her and brandished a syringe; "you need another sedative, don't you?"
"Fine," Clove sighed, and Enobaria helped shoot her up. Clove grew drowsy, and while it stopped her from freaking out again like she had done in the operating room after the 'games, it did not make the nightmares go away.

District 8 the next morning had Clove waking up in a cold sweat, with Rue fresh on her mind again. Luckily, she managed to calm down as the train pulled into District 8 for the day. The moment she stepped out onto that platform, however; she knew there would be trouble.

Peacekeepers that went to districts like 8 or 11 often had trouble handling the rebellious populace. District 12, while much more rebellious in theory than District 8 or District 11; played it safe and stayed under the radar, causing few problems for the Peacekeeping force there.

Rue did not show her face in District 8 at all, although Clove's speech seemed to stir up some of the citizens, despite that she was reading it off of Athena's card. She was a bit rushed near the end, before being escorted back into the Justice Building for a moment. There were noises that slowly subsided, and a few minutes later, they headed down for the nightly Victory Feast. Otherwise, nothing else really happened here, although Clvoe had a few ideas as to what might have happened to the would-be rioters. It was not a pleasant thing to think about.

As the train flew from District 8 to District 9 later that evening though, Clove began to grow tense. She wasn't worried about the next two stops, but if she saw Rue in a random place like District 7—the odds that she would see that girl again in District 11—her home—were extremely high. The worst part was that she couldn't do anything about it. Slowly, that stop would come her way, and Clove would just have to handle it when it arrived…