Raiden Pazima
Age 15
District 5 Female
Raiden had spent sixteen years mentoring girls from District Five. Sixteen girls who were just like her once, doomed by fate and waiting to die.
Sixteen girls who were kept from rising in the world simply because they were born in the districts.
Sixteen girls that were sentenced to death because of a war they weren't even alive for.
Out of those sixteen, only two of them made it out alive. One had become a single mother and was forced to raise her child alone. The other was left paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her shortened life. Porter may have lived longer than the other fifteen girls but she still died young. Shannon and Neo too, killed because Snow wanted to get rid of two teenagers. She may not have mentored them, but they were still her neighbors and friends.
And Raiden had failed them all.
As the hovercraft came to collect Shannon's body, she promised herself that she wouldn't fail again.
When the arena came down and the fighting started, Raiden joined up with a rebel cell in District Five. She had spent far too long being downtrodden and looked down upon to do otherwise.
She had to lie, steal, and cheat in order to survive her entire childhood. She was barred from higher schooling because she was from the slums and would have been doomed to a shorter life in the power plants had it not been for her being Reaped. She was dubbed a joke tribute because of her size and age and was left to die as the government celebrated.
Raiden had shown the world that she was no joke before. In order to survive the slums, you either had to be charismatic, sneaky, smart, or fast. She showed Panem that she was all of those things when she took the Games by storm with her speed and her makeshift bombs.
Now, she was ready to do the same to the Capitol. She helped spread propaganda, sabotaged the Peacekeepers with her smoke grenades and pipe bombs, but it wasn't enough. The Peacekeepers didn't strike back at the rebels directly, instead attacking the non-combatants themselves as a way to punish them. This, of course, led to more rebels and the cycle continued. Attack, crackdown, recruit, over and over again until something had to give.
Then, the Mockingjay sang amongst the ruins of Twelve, and it became a rallying cry.
When the rebels in Five decided to blow up the hydroelectric dam and knock out power to the Capitol, it went unsaid that the odds of making it out alive were slim. Even if the Peacekeepers didn't gun them down, once the dam went, the deluge of water would wash everyone away.
Raiden was the first to sign up. She had learned that a few of her fellow victors were being held hostage in the Capitol, and whatever she could do to help them, she would.
It was a good thing she was still a fast runner, even in her older years.
Five hundred people marched on the hydroelectric dam in the cover of night, singing that same tune like an anthem. It was the final thing most of them would hear.
They stormed the Peacekeepers stationed at the dam and overwhelmed them easily, though not without losses. Raiden helped carry one of the bombs, her own creation, and had watched the woman next to her disappear under a blaze of gunfire, but she kept going.
She refused to give up.
When the bombs went off and a watery hell was unleashed on everyone there, Raiden ran like hell. She ran as fast as she could. She kept running even as the Peacekeepers realized they weren't going to make it and focused on taking as many rebels with them as possible.
A bullet slammed into her back and Raiden hit the ground hard. She grasped at her chest, gasping for air that died in her now ruined lungs.
However, she had the perfect view of the lights in the Capitol flickering and dying out. She might have failed to escape with her life, but she didn't fail.
As the wave washed over her, she thought of all the girls she had failed, all of the friends she had lost in her many years, and smiled.
Maybe now they could rest.
She could rest too. She had done all that she could.
It was up to the others now.
A nice easy chapter after the last three. Still a tragic ending, but a lot more hopeful methinks. Today's theme was failure, so I hoped I worked it in well.