Hello everyone! Paradigm of Writing here and back again with a new prologue for Tales of Flesh and Fortune, Prologue #3: Aspirations of Misguided Souls! I am excited for you all to read this today because this is from Plutarch Heavensbee's pov which I have never actually seen before, so I'm excited! Submissions are still open and there's still about three slots or so without a single submission to them so please make sure to check my profile and or pinned message on SYOT Verses… we're about a month out from submissions closing! Please enjoy the next prologue!


"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee POV

Progress is the enemy of the damned.

That is what Plutarch Heavensbee tells himself every morning as he stands in front of the full-length mirror of his less than stellar apartment, fingers needling away at the tie cinched around his neck. His fingers pluck at the fabric, tightening the yoke,over and under, and the words of his ancestors linger on his lips.

The damned, whomever that may be, for his father never shared with Plutarch the specifics of that information, were those scared of moving forward. Believing themselves eternally locked into despair and struggle before ever getting to make their own decisions, lesser men would sabotage themselves willingly instead of making progress for the future.

He was told to recite that every day before going into work, whether it was sweeping up the sidewalks out of the city circle, or brewing coffee for the other Capitol elites. He had certainly not expected it to be for going into a sterile building every day designing weapons of mass destruction to kill twenty-three pre-teens as spectacularly as possible.

"What we do for the wheel," Plutarch grimaces as he finishes tying the last knot of his tie, ruffling out the creases of his sports jacket.

The one plus about Seneca Crane becoming Head Gamemaker – not that Plutarch Heavensbee also did not deign for the crown, to feel its power sit on his sweating, shiny brow – is that he had dropped the dress code of having to wear all white lab coats. Cain Passionia in the onset of the Games creation back then as Vice President didn't have one either.Progress.Perhaps Seneca Crane would not become one of the damned.

Plutarch spins away from the mirror and grabs a piece of half-burnt toast off of a plate, sinking his teeth into the edges and crunching away at the crust. Crumbs spill everywhere, coating the sleeves of his uniform, and all the Gamemaker does is eye them. His eyes narrow in on them, picking up individual ones and rolling them between his fingers like he were mulling over a piece of grain.

The 72ndyear of the Games were upon them soon, and if Plutarch wasted any more time looking at the grains of society, his project in the arena would not be complete. Thankfully, with how stupid – he views it to be stupid, nonetheless, though he knows his opinion would not be shared by the other sports jacket wearing sycophants – the chain of command is in the Capitol, it'd all fall onto Seneca's shoulders as his problem to deal with, not Plutarch's.

The media did not care for the removal or death of a simple lowly Gamemaker, but the top dog, the commander willing to shoulder all of the suffering that his crew would bestow on the tributes sent into the Games.

Plutarch grabs his suitcase, a gauche piece of antiquated machinery from the Dark Days that his grandfather had insisted keeping in the family. Back then, the Heavensbee family were on the fringes of Capitol society, watching as far braver (and much more idiotic) men and women were sent into the districts to die for Emrick Israel's war. Plutarch was told his grandfather and father (who was quite young at the time) had only seen the president and his entourage from their television screens, and one single time in person.

Forwarded to now, with Plutarch about to head into a meeting withtheCoriolanus Snow, all of people to be ensconced with.

His grandfather had never appreciated or enjoyed the Games. Plutarch recalls one dinner, when he may have been coming up on reaping age, seeing the barbarity reflected on screen match how violently he was cutting into the pork chop they were having, how his grandfather sneered at the actions taking place.

"You think by now we'd have figured out how to not have this happen," his grandfather shook his head with derision, a fork stabbing away at lettuce. The vinaigrette spilled over the salad, like blood running down the body of the killed outlier on screen, a triumphant face from the Career that took a piece of the competition.

"Have what happen?" Plutarch asked, forgetting himself. In the Heavensbee family, one did not speak if not granted permission.

"A Panem without the Hunger Games," the old man said, biting too harshly into a tomato that the juices splattered everywhere on the oak table, rivets of red running into the creases and the cracks. Plutarch could taste the metallic hint of blood in the back of his throat as he bit down on his tongue.

"Don't listen to the old man," his father rolled his eyes, settling down his water glass, fingers imprinting fossil memories on the rim. "He's growing more senile by the day."

"I recall you not liking the Games either, young man," Plutarch's grandfather pointed at his flesh and blood with the knife, a look of zeal reflecting back in emerald eyes. Plutarch wondered briefly if his grandfather was going to give into the bloodlust radiating around their dining room from the Games and stab his own son in the chest.

"That was before I got to see the district savages for what they really were."

It came as little surprise to Plutarch that his father one day had returned home from work – sweeping the city streets, after the next Hunger Games' tribute parade, picking up the horse droppings – with sorrow in his voice, but not reflected in his stare. Grandfather was hanged for treason that morning and the Peacekeepers were to bring his body back to the house tomorrow morning for final burial preparations.

Plutarch had always thought that traitors were blasted to bits like those in District 13 were, bodies left to rot and burn and scream in agony as the flames licked away at their flesh. Not that they were granted burials for the country to see and memorialize.

Would his grandfather be rolling in his grave knowing his grandson has become an architect for the same madness he loathed?

"I would ask him," Plutarch mutters to himself, finishing off the piece of toast and wiping away its remnants onto the carpet for the maid to clean later, "But he is dead, and I am not going graveyard hunting…"

He is going to be late if he hangs around one more second. "Progress is the enemy of the damned, progress is the enemy of the damned…" Plutarch whispers to himself. Over and over again, the reminder that the work he does is not meant to be overlooked, that the work he does is important and will carry on far into the future.

Plutarch is aware of Seneca Crane's legendary stance on legacy, wanting to craft one for himself as the Crane name has come from nothing, clawing and fighting its way in the streets of the Capitol desperate for air, desperate for a seat at the table.

"That's what all of this is about?" Plutarch asked him, shortly after the announcement had been made and Seneca rose to his new position. The two had met up in a bar downtown over near the Training Center. Handshakes were gripped with a look of loathing reflected in both men's eyes, and Plutarch had the same look of loathing staring back at him hours later when the two were kissing up against Seneca's refrigerator, the cold metal pressing into Plutarch's back. "Having a legacy?"

"You disapprove?" Seneca's mouth quirked downwards for a split instant, nearly invisible enough to the untrained eye, but Plutarch spent a lot of time trapped in the hall of venomous vipers to see one baring its fangs at him for none to see.

"I think there's more to the Games than simply building a legacy," Plutarch sniffed, stirring his martini and sucking the liquid off of the tiny straw. Bitter strawberry schnapps coated his tongue. "How many Career tributes from One, Two, and Four believe they are going to create a legacy, and yet when they die they have been forgotten about come the next cycle of change?" he asked, tilting his head.

Seneca's eyes blazed with indignation, though he seemed to swallow it for a bite of the orzo on his plate. "I am much more than some Career whelp from District 2."

"I didn't mean to offend."

"I am not offended."

"The tips of your ears are scarlet, Seneca dear," Plutarch quipped back with a smirk, swerving out of the way as one of Seneca's many soup spoons was flung in the Gamemaker's direction, missing him and colliding with the tile in an unceremonious clang.

In the bedroom later that night, Seneca's ears stayed flushed.

This was not all to say that Plutarch stayed with the Gamemaker team to dismantle Seneca Crane's idea of legacy. There were greater things afoot than trying to make someone remember the 72ndyear of the Hunger Games as one of a spectacle.

The presidential mansion's main foyer always manages to take Plutarch's breath away, even though it is not his first time seeing it, with the opulent columns and the carpets that feel like they were woven by Arachne herself.

An Avox guides him into the waiting room outside of Coriolanus Snow's office, the very sight of the shut doors making a lump form in Plutarch's throat. He's bandied words with the president many a time, often complimentary, and Plutarch could not tell if it was a blessing or a curse that he had never actually been on the biting end of Snow's venom. Crane already had been in the few short months, though he'd never admit it, but that is what happened when one became Head Gamemaker.

Seneca is already waiting, legs crossed over the other, and his newly trimmed beard glistening with aftershave in the sun. "Ah, there you are," he greets Plutarch as amicably as he can when the Gamemaker walks in, skipping right over the Avox who bowed their head to greet him. "I was beginning to wonder if you weren't going to show."

"That's odd, I was thinking the same thing about you, Seneca dear," Plutarch smiles, placing a hand up against Seneca's chest to stop him from reaching around for a hug. If it had been a morning of toast crumbs splattered over the carpet, he did not care for physical affection. He ignores the brewing thunderstorm in the Head Gamemaker's eyes. Subtle, again, but in the highest circles of the Capitol elite, subtlety was too loud.

Seneca's smile lines around his eyes do not quite reach the white edges, his hands falling back to his sides, his tongue balling up on the right corner of his mouth. "Please tell me you brought the files as requested. I'd hate to have to kill another Avox for your incompetence."

"Right here," Plutarch nods, hands going to pat the bag that he's carrying, the one from his grandfather's scorned legacy. It had cost a lot of money for Plutarch's father to wipe the slate clean and change the cause of death toWork Related…"Right, for being a traitor,"Plutarch thinks to himself, but it kept the Heavensbee name in the clear for the time being, away from wandering eyes.

"And that reminds me, I have a file for you," Seneca says, hands digging into the left sleeve of his jacket. He pulls out a letter, folded up neatly, white pressed paper with Plutarch's name fancifully written in pink pen across the top. The water in Plutarch's mouth dries instantly. "I swear to you I didn't read it."

Plutarch controls himself the best he can to not snatch the piece of paper from the Head Gamemaker and quasi-lover with all that he can sustain, plucking it from Seneca's grasp. Only one person writes to him with his name in pink pen across pages of white, done so to not raise alarm… though if it has fallen into Seneca's grasp…

He controls his breathing the best he can, unfurling the creases, the text clear to him with Seneca's eyes trained on his face for every quirk of the lip or brow. Plutarch's heart sinks into his stomach at the words.

Progress is the enemy of the damned, and he is running out of time…

The letter is not long, and it reads, "We need the victor now. She's growing impatient, and we are out of time," ~ signed, in dark,darkink so black it bleeds through the page, B.

Boggs.


And there we have it ladies and gents, Prologue #3: Aspirations of Misguided Souls and of course the ruminations and beginning of the plot of the trilogy of y'know a rebellion and all ruminating but since I am connecting Libertyverse and Slaughterverse together, I think we all know where Plutarch + D13 are going… oops. Anyhow, I'm happy to have this out and very excited to see where we go from here! We've got more prologues coming, and remember that submissions are still open till November 22nd, so feel free to keep em coming! Next prologue will be from another one of the characters I've been dying to write and that is victor Lyme from District 2. Have a great day! Bye!

~ Paradigm