Author's Note: Back to two of my favourite districts and their victors, central to the rebellion. A final hurrah for some of the victors before they're in the hands of the Capitol.
….
An Arena of their Own
As soon as the arena fell, they would be uncovered. If Beetee were so instrumental to the rebel plan, he would not be acting alone. Three's other victors would surely be involved too. Anyone alive and not in District Thirteen would be hunted down. Their homes would be pulled apart. But Three's victors decided to have the last laugh.
None of them was materialistic but they spent the final days before the Capitol clearing out their homes and securing any possessions they did want to keep, should they live to see them again. Then they set about their wider plan.
The peacekeepers would come bounding into the Victors' Village to rip up their floors, destroy their furniture and ransack their cupboards in the hope of finding any shred of evidence to tie them to the rebel plot. But they would fail. District Three's victors would be one step ahead.
They were not reckless enough to keep any incriminating evidence in their homes. Notes were destroyed, the weapons distributed, and any inventions had been put to work. But the peacekeepers did not know that and would come running in regardless.
In the days before the Capitol, they began putting their plan in place. The Victors' Village would become an arena and the peacekeepers, the tributes.
Nothing would be activated until they left for the Capitol and there were mechanisms to override some of their plans in case anything went wrong. They could not be seen dancing around the Village in the style of District Five's girl from the previous Hunger Games. But upon their departure, their former home would become dangerous to anyone who entered.
The Mayor had been forewarned. Their associates who visited were told to stay away and any food remaining was going to be donated. Their contacts would make sure people stayed away. Most ordinary folks did anyway. The Victors' Village was not somewhere they wanted to be, and people did not encroach on the four occupants' space.
The same could not be said for the peacekeepers. On entry, once they passed through the gate, a forcefield would be activated, trapping them inside. Beetee was aware of the pods the Capitol had employed as one of the city's defence mechanisms and so Three's victors made their own. Some of the route towards the houses would trigger their own pods. Mutts of Wiress' creation and Halley's explosives would line the route.
Their own houses would be littered with traps and downfalls for the peacekeepers. Pluto was going to line the door handles with corrosive substances, strong enough to burn through the peacekeepers' gloves. His house would be booby-trapped with certain doors and switches triggering varying traps designed to kill or maim.
Beetee had replicated his Games victory. Whoever opened the door to his home, by whatever means, would fall victim to the same trap the District Eight girl did in the Thirty-Sixth Games. He had created a maze of live wires that would shock whoever disturbed them. His kitchen appliances would violently explode when opened or moved. The electrical fittings had been rigged to deliver severe electric shocks and before leaving, Beetee would set various traps involving water or flammable liquids for maximum impact.
Wiress would leave the incoming peacekeepers a collection of her favourite mutts. Genetically modified, birds, bats and insects would emerge from cupboards, drawers and upon opening doors. Certain steps along the staircase would trigger thick slime, fixing anyone caught in its path to where they stood, sitting ducks for the arrival of other muttations their colleagues triggered. They were designed to bite, deliver poisonous venom, and attack and rip with their enhanced beaks and claws. There was to be no escape. Wiress would leave no stone unturned in her final project.
Halley would also revert to her arena. District Three's centre would be treated to a firework display as the peacekeepers attempted to make their way through her home. The whole place was rigged. Many of the handles, appliances, furniture and storage were linked to an explosive in some way, whether it be starting timers or exploding immediately. Each particular bomb could explode in front of its triggering peacekeeper, or cause an explosion elsewhere in the house, hopefully taking more down with it. They would not know where to turn for fear of triggering another explosion.
For good measure, their youngest victor would rig up the rest of the houses in the Village too and set traps in their gardens. Their workshop was a joint project with each of the victors eager to set traps of their own design should any peacekeeper get that far.
No peacekeeper who entered was to leave alive. They did not think survival would be possible. It was their arena, and they were to become the Gamemakers.
The Village was to be destroyed but the victors found they did not mind. It was not the physical houses which made it their home, it was the company of each other and that would never be the same again. They were leaving this era of Hunger Games victors behind. Whoever survived would build a new life in the new District Three.
In the new world, there may be no place for victors anyway. They each had their own dreams and ideals for life in Panem beyond the rebellion and none of them revolved around living in the same house. It was to be a clean break from the life they were living now.
Life as a victor had kept them separate from the rest of their people. They were District Three through and through but could not live like one of their own. The victors were wealthy, the ordinary people were not. The victors did not have to carry out harsh factory labour whilst the rest did. The victors were healthier and better fed whilst almost everyone else had struggled. It all had to end. The more explosive and dramatic the better. It was a final piece of flair as they departed the old.
It was a statement too. Three's victors were rebels. They were powerful and controlled more strings than the peacekeepers could have ever imagined. They were not afraid of anyone who would try to stand in their way. It was their time, and they were going to emerge victorious.
….
They were not going to destroy the Victors' Village in Four. They were not materialistic, they had not kept up with replenishing the earliest luxuries provided by the Capitol either, but the Village was still their home.
Not all of them would leave for the Capitol following the reaping either. Rowan and Song would remain, along with Shai and Annie. They would remain in their homes until the arena fell and it all began. Shai and Annie were to be transferred to the rebel command, underground, in the basement of Mags' daughters' bar. Rowan and Song would stay with their fighting units, wherever they were needed.
But they hoped some of them would survive to return and they would always have their home in the Village. As with the other districts, the ordinary citizen left the Village alone but Four respected their leading figures and would let them do with their home as they pleased once they were finally free.
Instead, the entire district would become an arena for the incoming Capitol forces. The fun would begin in the borderlands where Noah had transferred leadership of his 'bandits' to one of his former charges in the Centre. No longer needed as a potential career tribute, Noah's boy would begin the fight for Four's freedom before the peacekeepers would arrive.
Incoming trains would meet roadblocks, derailment, thieves and disorder before they had crossed Four's borders. Immediately within the boundaries and along the transport routes, there were to be fighting groups ready to ambush the unwelcome arrivals. Battalions were also strategically placed in and around Four to defend key areas and to prevent advances from where the people had full control.
Their fishing crews were ready on the water too, prepared for a sea-based invasion. Four could only watch as Panem's coastguard and naval presence in their waters increased, giving their crews a chance to observe their opponents.
What Four lacked in technology compared to Three or the Capitol, they made up for in numbers and determination. Almost all of Four's fishing crews were prepared to fight and do whatever it took to free their home from the control of the Capitol.
They were to be helped by the sheer number of peacekeepers who had or were about to defect too. They had taken their weapons with them, exposed the defences, or lack of, around the barracks and allowed Four's citizens access to the weapons that could be deployed against them. They were to fight the remaining peacekeepers and the naval forces with their own tools.
Four knew they would win. They knew their home, its twists and turns, the roads and their waters better than any invader. They hoped for a quick victory but were prepared to endure whatever came their way. They were organised, they were united, and it was their home at stake. They were not going to lose it or let each other down.
