Willoughby R. Shakira, 55

President of Panem

Presidential Mansion, Capitol

June 2, 329 AEDD


President Willoughby Shakira was not a morning person. He didn't have enough willpower to make himself shower right when he got out of bed, so he tended to begin the day with some quiet time. He might not have liked many things, but he loved his family very much. Although Willoughby himself had trouble getting moving in the mornings, his wife Eurydice was something of an early bird. On this day, she was relaxing in one of the dining room chairs that she had dragged out onto the balcony. With a cup of bitter tea in her hand, she drank in the sights and sounds of the Capitol waking up from its slumber as she nibbled on a cinnamon bun from a nearby platter.

Willoughby joined her on the terrace and took one for himself, leaning against the ornate guardrail. There was a moment of comfortable silence. Then, without even needing to speak, they joined hands. Quiet contentment reigned until Eurydice said, "Lula Jacobsen just called to say that Nikolai Fassnacht requested a meeting with us today."

"What about?"

"I don't know. Lula said he refused to tell her."

Oh. That meant things were going to be dangerous. Nikolai and Lula were friendly with each other. If Nikolai didn't think it was safe for her to know about his topic of conversation, it meant that Willoughby was facing a more serious issue than he initially thought.

He didn't like that prospect. Willoughby was pretty useless on his own, leading a lazy, indecisive life that was interspersed with occasional bouts of fury and barbarism. Eurydice was the real power behind the throne, and whereas he managed the Capitol with great difficulty, she managed the districts with practiced ease. Although he wasn't much for the responsibilities that came with it, he admittedly enjoyed the perks of being the president, like the enormous mansion, ability to do whatever he wanted, and abundance of money to waste on frivolous things. However, there were two things he abhorred with a passion that could only be overcome by his utter buffoonery, those being his freeloading brother-in-law and the tabloids.

Part of the reason his morning was beginning slowly was that he didn't like getting up. Part of it was that he had to get his act together and project an air of wisdom and assuredness while Nikolai presented him with an unsolvable problem that he had to fix (or rather, ask Eurydice to fix). The last part was due to the fact that he had recently appeared in the newspaper's gossip column after a run-in with Linus Cannon in the financial sector, in which Linus had emerged with a broken nose.

Linus had no real relevance, fame, or job, but he did have plenty of cash and powerful relatives to make up for it. He initially rode in on the coattails of his older sister Eurydice Shakira (née Cannon) when she entered the public consciousness as Willoughby's wife, and he took the opportunity to acquaint himself with various political characters. He married a Victor who was in her fifties but underwent enough plastic surgery to look twenty, then had a child with her that he had christened Derpamachus, which only cemented Willoughby's low opinion of him. He milked his family connection for all it was worth, securing his now-adult son a position as a Gamemaker. He had been at the Panemian Bank and took the opportunity to speak badly about Willoughby, who didn't particularly care for that. Eurydice liked him, though, and had not appreciated Willoughby's violent response.

It was an error in judgement, but nothing more. At least that's the story that he had told the press. Disloyalty to the regime would never be tolerated, and he mistook Linus's jesting as an actual threat of rebellion, and, being the upstanding, strong President, took it upon himself to demonstrate that he would always put the interests of the government over his own. Lula had spun a genius PR strategy for him. He was back to feeling rather important and was deep in conversation with Eurydice when Will wandered out too.

Willoughby Shakira Jr. was the spitting image of his father. Practically everyone knew that he was set to be the next President. He took after dear old Dad in every way possible, and it was rumored that he would make a fine addition to either the Gamemaking Team or the Peacekeeping Force when he came of age. Will was only seventeen but had already gone under the knife for numerous procedures to look older and more mature. There had been a hot debate about whether he would be allowed to get surgery, but in the end, both parents had said no. Will's solution had been getting surgery without permission and going missing for a week as he had several operations done at once. Willoughby and Eurydice were very relieved when he returned home safely, and then they had promptly grounded him.

Willoughby thought that a month of confinement to one's house was an appropriate punishment, even a mild one. Three weeks of it had already come and gone, and Will was itching to go out. There was something strange about talking to a seventeen-year-old who looked thirty, Willoughby decided. Will was already begging his parents to let him visit his friends' houses, or run errands at the shopping center, or even accompany them to the office. Eurydice got up to deliver the standard "You're not weaseling out of this, you have to accept the consequences of your actions!" lecture that Willoughby was sure every parent in the country was familiar with, and elected to spend the time getting ready. He showered, shaved, dressed, and did his hair. When he was ready to go to work, Eurydice was too, and Will tearfully bade them goodbye. (He had hoped dripping water on his cheeks would give them the impression that their harshness had made him cry. It did not–Willoughby was, in fact, close to laughing.)

Both Shakiras sailed into the office a few minutes before their meeting with Nikolai was scheduled. Willoughby wasn't thrilled about it. The agreement was that he was in charge of all Capitol matters and Eurydice would keep things running in the rest of Panem. He sincerely hoped that whatever the Peacekeeping problem was, it was taking place in a far-off district, like Nine or Ten. That way it would fall firmly outside of his jurisdiction. Nikolai had cooperated with Eurydice in the past, and they worked well as a team. However, if things were just going on somewhere distant, Nikolai would've probably told Lula. He generally only kept secrets when they involved people in his immediate circle, namely, Capitolites.

Willoughby didn't have to wonder for long, because Nikolai was also early. He was coiffed to perfection and his tie was crisply knotted. He looked to be just as much of a morning person as Eurydice. Despite being equally as dapper, Willoughby was far less alert. After only a short bit of smalltalk, Nikolai got to the meat of the issue. "Good morning Mr. President, Madam Shakira. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me on such short notice. You see, there's been a rather concerning breach of trust within the elite Peacekeeping squads. Do you recall when we instated the Floy statutes four years ago? They established some new laws about what Peacekeepers can and cannot record."

"Yes, I do." In actuality, Willoughby hadn't remembered signing off on that at all, but then again, he also couldn't remember if the shoes he was wearing were brown or black. Memory was not his strong point.

"Well, a Peacekeeper violated those rules in spectacular fashion. In the past week or so, did you hear anything about a Wisteria Hitchcock or an execution set to be carried out in District Eleven?"

"I did not." Executions were fairly rare occurrences, and he should have been notified if one was going to happen. In fact, he knew that Nikolai had to personally order an execution for it to take place.

"Neither did I, but one apparently happened anyhow." Nikolai explained in great detail the letter and recording that he had been presented with. He had feared taking them to the forensics lab, though, because it was located in the Center of Peacekeeping and staffed exclusively by Peacekeepers. He was very adamant that there was no way this whole thing could have been a prank or other practical joke. "I got Eleven's mayor on the phone and he confirmed that Ms. Hitchcock was executed two days ago, on the basis of rebellion. I have at least one rogue Peacekeeper here in the Capitol Center, and possibly another in the districts. Nobody in my department can be trusted with any information relating to this." Willoughby nodded in understanding.

"How do you intend to find them?" After a lifetime of dealing with political matters that he didn't know how to solve, he had become a master at passing the responsibility onto other people. He was immensely pleased with Nikolai's plan for two reasons: it required almost no work on his part, and it would slow the spread of rebellion, at least temporarily. While Willoughby tended to be a little slow on the uptake, he wasn't stupid. He knew that his critics were growing bolder, and he knew that the districts saw through his veneer of dignity and control far better than the Capitol did.

"There are many steps we need to take," Nikolai was saying. "I already mentioned that I can't use the Peacekeeper lab, but I need to run tests on the paper and equipment. I initially thought about the Gamemakers, but they're preoccupied with the Hunger Games, and their forensics lab is in constant use analyzing mutts and all that. This mission will also require a robust team of Panem's most loyal. And who could be more loyal than those who were shown mercy, whose lives we so generously spared? I propose that we enlist this year's mentors to help us. They will serve as informants. They must tell us of suspicious behavior under the guise of rooting out the contact when in fact we are not looking for that contact at all, but the Peacekeeper."

"That sounds like an excellent plan. Nikolai, this is clearly a very high-stakes game that we're playing, which is why I'm placing you in charge of it. It takes a man of your caliber and experience to lead such a delicate undertaking. I, sadly, must attend to the running of the country, but Eurydice will be happy to assist you with everything that you need. I am giving you full agency to do whatever you must to uncover the corruption in our system. After all, it could be tied to something even worse."

"Yes sir, I agree. Just to reiterate, we must be the only three people who know the real reason for this. I will tell the necessary folks at my own discretion. However, the first step is following our existing leads, so I will need a forensics specialist in on this at some point, preferably sooner rather than later. Other than that, I have nothing further to discuss. Do you require anything more of me today?"

"No, Nikolai, you're free to go. Thank you for being such a productive member of the team."

"Always a pleasure, sir, always a pleasure."

"Wait!" Eurydice said quickly. "I can connect you with a forensics specialist. My brother, Linus, went to school for it. I'm sure he'd be delighted to help us out."

"Really? That's great. How soon is he available?"

"I'll get him on board right away. Have an excellent day, Nikolai."

"You too."

Inside, Willoughby was grimacing. It was hard enough explaining to Eurydice that hey honey, sorry, but I may have punched your brother in the face because his mere existence pissed me off, but this would be even worse. The good thing was that he didn't have to deal with it. A rule-breaking Peacekeeper with unknown intentions was an automatic threat, especially so close to the Hunger Games. That was why he had put his wife and his right-hand man in charge of rectifying it. Despite his near-hatred for him, Willoughby had to admit that Linus was also competent in his area of study.

Willoughby would not inquire into it too much, he decided. If he knew what could have been prevented if only he was more active in his role as the nation's leader, he would've balked at the amount of work and refused anyways. It was truly a shame that his negligence resulted in such a great quantity of suffering, but that was just the sort of man he was. Willoughby was instead content with living the sweet life and ignoring his duties to Panem. Little did he know, his fortunes were about to turn sour.


Hey y'all!

First of all, I'd like to address the fact that I've received a total of eleven submissions thus far! That's a very exciting number for almost halfway through the submission window, and I've been promised a few more in the near future, so I want to say that I'm impressed by the quality of the tributes I'm being sent and I can't wait to see what else you come up with. I also noticed that the spacing on the tribute blog is a little funky on mobile, so I might fiddle with that and see what I can do to fix it. Other than that, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. We're now halfway through the prologues, but you still have over a month to submit tributes if you'd like. I'll see you with the fourth prologue on 8 August!