CW: Gun violence
Barnaby Horn
Age 18
District 10 Male
Six Lessons Volumnia Gaul learned from the Fourth Annual Hunger Games
1. The rebels are just as cowardly and dangerous as they were in the war.
The tributes from Eight didn't even make it to the train station. The pathetic cowards tried to flee despite being handcuffed. The particularly quick girl made it to the train tracks before the Peacekeepers realized there would be no catching her and shot her in the leg to stop her in her tracks. It would have worked had the girl not struck her head on the train platform and died instantly. Another boy went for the Peacekeeper's gun and was taken out almost immediately. Gaul ordered their bodies strung up between the train cars in order to dissuade other tributes from doing the same.
Volumnia knew that such a thing had to be prevented at all costs going forward. The Peacekeepers were valiant and capable, but for every child that decided to run from their duty, the odds of one of them successfully escaping grew ever higher, and Volumnia would at least have liked all twenty-four of them to make it to the Capitol. It was more fun that way. She read into ways to keep the children under control, and when an article on the ethics of shock collars came up, inspiration struck. She had Magnus call the engineers in District Three. They had one year to put that idea into reality.
Electric handcuffs…
How no one had thought of that sooner was beyond her.
2. Threatening the tributes' friends and families is sometimes more effective than threatening their lives.
"We're having trouble with the girl from Eleven," Magnus explained when asked for the status of all the tributes. "She's shown little to no respect for the Capitol during her stay here. She's emboldened several of the tributes to do the same. President Ravinstill has demanded we do something about it."
Volumnia nodded. It had been decided to keep the tributes imprisoned for a day or so before they were released to the arena, as punishment for last year's debacle, as well as to account for any delays in transporting them so that said issues wouldn't delay the Games themselves.
That was the explanation Volumnia gave, anyway. In reality, she wanted to punish the tributes for the debacle with the knife last year and the escapees this year. No food or water would be given, of course. So what if it meant one or two dropped of heat stroke? This was the Hunger Games after all. If they couldn't handle a day of fasting, then they certainly couldn't handle the arena.
Unfortunately, a side effect of this was that the tributes would complain, and apparently the girl from Eleven was doing just that. "You said she was inciting rebellious behavior in my other tributes?" Volumnia asked.
Magnus nodded. "Rebel nonsense, but rebel all the same."
Volumnia nodded. "Even after seeing what becomes of traitors in the Eights, she still continues." She turned to her assistant. "Bring me her file."
Her assistant nodded and pulled up the girl's information on a tablet. Volumnia looked through it and her face twisted into a cruel smirk as an idea came to her. "She has two parents, and a sister, yes?"
Magnus nodded.
Volumnia's smile grew slightly wider. "Contact President Ravinstill. Tell him I have a solution to his little problem."
Unsurprisingly, President Ravinstill approved of Volumnia's idea and within a few hours, the girl's sister was brought to the Capitol and avoxed before being paraded in front of her, with a warning that any further incitement of insurrection would result in her parents meeting similar fates.
Of course, what the girl didn't know was that her parents were already dead and displayed in the arena, ready to show both the girl and the world the cost of defying the Capitol.
Upon being brought to the arena, the girl had just enough time to scream and wail and run to them before a Peacekeeper's gun took her out for leaving her mark.
3. Peacekeeper safety is paramount.
As it turned out, the girl from Eleven had a greater effect that Volumnia thought.
As soon as the buzzer rang, the girl's district partner ran right for a crossbow and it misfired. The bolt struck a peacekeeper in the neck.
Volumnia was ashamed to admit it, but she didn't anticipate someone would dare attack the Peacekeepers, even by accident, as the boy's horrified face seemed to relay.
Not that she minded. It made it easier to show the people in the districts for what they were, and keep the people of Capitol fearful of them. Still, it definitely would make some people angry. Why were Peacekeepers in the line of fire of these animals? Why were crossbows even in the arena?
The boy who shot the Peacekeeper was shot dead immediately, of course. Unfortunately, the boy had no family to kill either, so Volumnia settled on a classmate of his. She also recommended that quotas be increased for the district as punishment for producing two rebellious children.
The safety of the Peacekeepers was called into question, which Volumnia wanted to laugh at. Didn't they know that these people risked their lives on a daily basis? Safety was never a part of the job description. However, it was a topic that put her Games in jeopardy, so of course Volumnia had to respond. Instead of being stationed at the gates of the arena, snipers were positioned in the stands. Volumnia did hope that the Games would get to a point where less tributes died by gunfire and more died by each other, that day was unfortunately not today.
Of course, District Eleven was not the last district to be punished that day, not with what happened next.
4. No guns in the arena.
Volumnia was relieved when she listened to Magnus and didn't put firearms in the arena that year. She was also relieved when she listened to Magnus when he warned her that the boy picked that year was trouble.
It made picking him off when he ran for the fallen Peacekeeper's gun easier, but not before he took out two more. Other tributes followed suit and ran for the guns, not just to take out the Peacekeepers, but to take out each other.
One such tribute was Barnaby Horn from District Ten. He was a cattle rancher, and was trained to use a firearm in the event that one of the leftovers mutts unleashed in the district during the war threatened a Capitol citizen's next meal. He was also a loyalist, which made his fate extra unfortunate, but it did mean that the boy was able to mow down the other tributes before they could do anymore damage.
Volumnia was never a fan of firearms. They were too impersonal, too quick to kill. When she considered putting them in the arena, it was to be a mere experiment more than anything. Magnus vehemently protested against the idea. The weapons were effective, but unpredictable and definitely boring to watch from an entertainment perspective.
This year proved that Magnus was right.
Volumnia knew she did right choosing him as her assistant.
3. Live audiences are not viable
Volumnia wasn't stupid. She knew that having a live audience, dwindling as it was, was just asking for a civilian casualty, so she had force fields installed around the arena stands. However, the technology was primitive at best, and faulty at worst. The power supplies were left exposed, and stray gunfire left them inoperable.
When the dust settled, three Capitol citizens were dead.
Peacekeepers, Volumnia could spin as part of a narrative. However, while she was able to cut the cameras, three dead Capitol citizens made her furious. All she could hear was the districts sounding the horn to rebel once again. Something had to be done. The districts had to be shown that such behavior would not be tolerated. President Ravinstill, after reprimanding her for allowing such a thing to occur, reassured her that a crackdown would be imminent to prevent the districts from getting ideas about starting another war.
However, things had to change. The Games had to be adjusted. They were meant to suppress the districts and divide the people, not unite them in outrage.
The first thing Volumnia did was wipe all traces of the Fourth Hunger Games away, including the "victor."
The second thing Volumnia did was make an announcement. The Hunger Games were to be strictly televised. Live audiences were no more.
6. The Hunger Games are losing popularity.
The disaster of the Fourth Hunger Games would be forgotten by most. Barnaby Horn was quietly overdosed with morphling and buried. His official cause of death was his injuries in the arena.
However, people were asking questions, not just about the Fourth Games but the Games in general.
What was the point of them if they didn't accomplish their intended purpose? Why were they even created to begin with? Why wasn't one enough?
Suddenly, Volumnia found that her beloved Games were in jeopardy, just as she feared. "Give me five more years," Volumnia told President Ravinstill. "Five more Games is all I need to prove that they are effective."
Once Ravinstill reluctantly agreed, Volumnia got to work. No live audiences, no Peacekeepers in the arena itself during the Games, control the movements of the tributes to prevent escape attempts. Silence any utterance before it could begin.
The Games started to change, but the complaints and questioning of them stayed the same.
The first ten Hunger Games likely consisted of a bunch of trial and error to see what worked and what didn't. The Fourth Hunger Games were probably the biggest disaster of the first ten Games, but Volumnia learned a lot from them.
Unfortunately, we don't learn a lot about our Victor, Barnaby, as Gaul's efforts to erase the games involved erasing him, something she could get away with because victors weren't nearly as sacred to the Capitol as they are come the 74th Games. Dr. Gaul is pretty prominent in these chapters, given that she's Head Gamemaker and the Games are her passion project, so I went ahead and called this section of this project the "Gaul Saga." Rest assured, the next victor will be a little more prominent.