—A Punch in the Face—

Persephone stood patiently next to the tracks of the train carrying the tributes, a gift for her tribute in hand. Unlike her day of supposed graduation, she was stuck with the Academy Rouge uniforms once again. The unisex attire appeared quite unflattering for most students unless they wore the clothes with pride.

However, red had not been a color she favored on herself.

With heavy footsteps, which she could detect instantly, Persephone found Coriolanus standing next to her with a white rose in hand. The Ignis girl decided it was fitting for him, but superficial to anyone outside the Capitol. "Just a rose? You can only hope Lucy Gray Baird thinks it as fitting as you believe it to be."

Coryo furrowed his brows and cocked his head. "What do you mean? This is a kind gesture, to build trust and meet my tribute."

"Trust is important, but tributes are probably starving. Nobody has fed them since the Reaping and a starved tribute is not a good one." Persephone opened the box in her hands for him to see a simple cold sandwich and looked up into his eyes. "If I feed a starving dog, it'll just come back for more. Then, he can listen to me and take my advice. Every District wants the Capitol dead, including my tribute, but I need to change that to form someone great out of him."

The boy had to admit, when given a challenge or problem to solve using critical thinking, Persephone Ignis was no fool. She sometimes thought with a brain better suited for a military general or someone of high rank with power. If she were to be his wife and he President, he might let her make a few decisions of power.

"The hardest part, however," Persephone sighed as the train was heard screeching to a halt and seen entering the station, "is getting the traumatized dog out of its cage to feed in the first place. You're lucky with Lucy Gray being so open from the beginning."

He hummed in agreement and twisted the rose around with his fingers. Lucy Gray, no doubt, was an excellent tribute to receive in the performing part of winning the Plinth Prize. She had a voice like a songbird and exuded confidence from her pores. If he played his cards right, he could easily morph her into a spectacle.

But Coryo wanted a survivor, not a performer.

And Persephone was taking hers for granted.

It was like she was jealous of his tribute for her natural instinct to make everyone in the room look only at her. Who was she to complain about the fighter she received, Reaper? He certainly put up a fight and had the highest chance of standing his own against the other weak tributes. If she could see that it takes little effort to bring attention to him as a strong candidate for the victor, she would not need to complain so much.

He wanted a survivor, she wanted a spectacle.

The Peacekeepers began to round up the tributes, forcing open the doors and pushing them out. One of the soldiers used extra force with Reaper, who was dangerously compliant. He even kept his gun pointed directly at the boy's back, to which Persephone frowned deeply.

"Hey, lay off with the force." She scolded the Peacekeeper, stepping forward to introduce herself to Reaper and give him food. "Reaper Ash? I'm your Mentor, Persephone Ignis. You must be hungry so I brought you some food..." she trailed off as she received one of the coldest death stares in her life.

"I don't need your help." His raspy voice spoke low and true. "Capitol scum," he mumbled.

The same violent Peacekeeper heard his insult and stuck his gun into the boy's stomach with a loud shout. "What did you say? District filth!" As soon as the man raised his fist to punch Reaper, Persephone yelled for him to stop and stood in front of her tribute to protect him.

A loud crack echoed through the open station. The Ignis girl lost her stance and stumbled down, leaving a regretful soldier drunk on his power with wide eyes.

"You foolish girl!" He turned to blame his insubordination on her. "Get out of here! You don't belong with these savages!"

It was the man's turn to get slammed into one cart of the train. His back hit the metal with a painful boom, Coriolanus pushing him up against it with a murderous look in his eyes. He had felt this before, when he saw Persephone squirm under Highbottom's watchful gaze.

But unlike Highbottom, this soldier, a Peacekeeper of all things, laid hands on an important Academy Rouge with powerful ties to get him executed. Coryo could worry about his legal punishment later, but now he only cared about the girl he supposedly did not care for on the ground. When he took a glance over at her to see if she was okay, he saw one side of her face pink and a nosebleed. Tears formed in her eyes from the pain—as she looked up at him for help, he had to fight every urge in his body to completely kill the Peacekeeper responsible.

"Coryo," Persephone croaked softly, wiping away the blood from under her nose with her hand hovering over her bruised cheek. She shook her head once against his violent action, all while he could see the tremors of her hand.

And although Coriolanus felt it was her fault for taking the punch for a tribute who insulted her, he could not deny her pain. Her eyes pleaded for him to stop, so plainly he could not ignore it. Matter of fact, if he instead helped her up and dust off her feet, she would thank him and rely on him more. Yet another demonstration of his power over her.

But if he threw a few punches at the Peacekeeper...

He decided his revenge would come another day, letting his tight fists around the soldier's vest uncurl to extend a hand to his future First Lady of Panem. Persephone took his help gratefully, groaning over the newfound pain in her face.

"You might as well resign now, soldier." Persephone told him with a glare. "You should know not to injure the tributes before the Games, much less my tribute."

"Oh yeah?" The Peacekeeper did not understand just when to stop. Coryo practically begged for Persephone to let him have just one punch. "Who are you to tell me what to do, Academy Rouge? Last I checked, you're all just a bunch of snobs riding on the coattails of Daddy's money. The real men, Capitol leaders, are who I respect."

Before she could reply, Persephone's lips were left parted and speechless as another Peacekeeper pulled the soldier away, most likely someone about to discharge him for misconduct. They could beat and kill all the District citizens they want, but as soon as they touch a hair on a Capitol citizen's head, they're done.

She watched as her tribute, led by a different Peacekeeper, was guided to an armored truck away from her. "Excuse me!" The Ignis girl called out, running forward to catch up with the two men. "I need to speak with my tribute-"

"No. Get lost." He replied harshly, assembling Reaper into a line with other tributes. "Speak to them later."

"But please-"

"We got direct orders to round these hounds up and take them to the zoo. Find your pick of the litter there."

He walked off before she could reply, leaving Persephone to ponder her thoughts. "The zoo?" She voiced her confused thoughts aloud. Were they making these tributes like animals on display? With a glance over to Coriolanus attempting to talk to some of the soldiers about his own tribute, she caught a glimpse of his uniform and remembered their class at the Academy started soon.

"Coryo, we need to leave, we're going to be late." As she approached him, he mumbled a quick apology and raced forward to slip into the truck unnoticed. "No, Coryo-"

It was no use. The boy disappeared into the den of lions, leaving behind the girl with an aching face.

Persephone arrived to her class that day with a light bruise that was only going to turn darker and a sheet over her hurt cheek to numb her injury with its cooling effect. She avoided the whispers from Arachne and climbed up to her seat next to Sejanus.

As she passed by Clemensia, the girl stopped her and furrowed her brows. "Why was Coryo in a zoo with the tributes?"

"You heard?" Persephone had been inclined to ask.

"You can see it on his face, Highbottom is pissed." Clemensia nodded over to the short man in the middle of the room, an irritated look on his face.

The Ignis girl nodded in agreement. "Not only will Coryo be late, he will also be scolded. We went to see the train dock with the tributes and I tried to get him to leave with me but he ran into a truck with the District kids."

"An enclosed space with the tributes?" She repeated with shock. Clemensia shook her head and curled her lips. "They're bloodthirsty, I would have expected them to tear him apart limb by limb. If he comes in here with the stench of District, I'll need to switch seats with someone."

Coriolanus Snow broke open the doors to the classroom and made his way up to his seat next to Clemensia soundlessly. Persephone noticed he, in fact, did not reek of District from the tributes, or whatever sort of nasty smell she was referring to.

"Your little excursion is in violation of about five different Academy rules, Mr. Snow." Highbottom spoke with a foul tongue, not bothering to look up at the boy. "Chief amongst them endangering a Capitol student."

"Who?" Coriolanus was inclined to ask.

"You." The short man answered curtly. "I'm moving for the Gamemakers to disqualify you as mentor immediately."

Persephone attempted to cover up the way her face dropped and heart skipped a beat. If Highbottom found out she had come up with the plan to visit her tribute and ended with a brutal punch to the face by a Peacekeeper, she could almost feel the letter of expulsion in her hands. A tarnished mark on her reputation, the Ignis reputation? A shiver racked her spine at the possibility.

For as long as the Ignis girl knew the boy, Coriolanus Snow would not go down without a fight as he leaned over the edge of his desk and began an argument of reason. "You said we had to get our tributes to perform, not that we had to stay away."

"Glad insubordination as well."

"Holding her hand, Coryo? Introducing her to people?" Arachne interrupted with her unnecessary commentary. Persephone felt a pang of confusion first—holding her hand? Lucy Gray did not need him to hold her hand, that's for sure. And then her confusion was replaced with a wave of odd jealousy. "You make it look as if one is the same as those animals."

Then again. Another term referring to the District tributes. First savage, then Clemensia's judgment of a stench they carried, and now animals. Her father taught her pride, yes, but not in the Capitol. In their name and their family line.

"Did you not starve at least once in the war, Arachne?" Persephone wished she could ask the girl, humiliate her in front of their class and feel pride in herself. But she kept her mouth shut. No peeps that could make their way through the Capitol and ruin Ignis.

As Coryo finally sat down in his chair, the girl felt his hand cover hers and squeeze it gently. Persephone looked over at him to find a hint of worry in his eyes, gaze flickering over her bruised cheek. "I'm okay," she mouthed to him with a nod.

Neither of them retracted their hand.

And before anyone could stop him, Sejanus took his chance to preach his beliefs. "Coriolanus didn't show those people anything they didn't already know."

"I don't need your help, Sejanus." Coryo mumbled to him. He did not need the other boy's input to start yet another losing argument that the Games needed to stop.

The Plinth boy ignored his friend. "That the tributes are human beings. Just like us."

"Sejanus, please-" Persephone attempted to shut him down so they could drop their conversation, but the boy persisted.

"That's why nobody wants to watch the Games. Because people know, deep down, that winning a war ten years ago doesn't justify starving people's children, taking away their freedoms, their rights-"

Volumnia Gaul took heavy steps down the steep stairs, interrupting Sejanus. An eerie feeling crawled up Persephone's spine when the Doctor looked directly into her eyes. "Snow fell down in the cage, it fell down in the cage, but it landed..."

"On stage." Coriolanus finished her sentence.

Gaul smiled widely at the boy. "You're good at games. Maybe one day, you'll be a Gamemaker like me." Her eyes ran wild at the possibilities of Snow's future.

Highbottom muttered from his desk on the floor of the classroom. "Only if the Games continue at all."

And there it was again. He lacked the average pride one had of their creation, and the Hunger Games was a carefully calculated creation creatively pieced together as a revolutionary event. Highbottom seemed to be uninterested in its affairs, even bored at some moments. His behavior was peculiar. Too peculiar to not pique the interest of a curious Ignis girl.

"Oh, they'll continue." Gaul assured him as if it were already known. "With performances like young Mister Snow's in that zoo. And I came here to ask our star Mentor a question."

A thick silence followed the Head Gamemaker's praise. Persephone shared a questioning look with Sejanus, wondering how an action so extreme such as getting stuck in a zoo cage with bloodthirsty District tributes landed him a favorite spot with Doctor Gaul. Especially after he had been threatened with expulsion by Highbottom, even Coryo himself expected to pack his things and leave.

Fortune favors the bold—how tantalizing.

"What are the Hunger Games for?"

And the entire class had to stop and think.

"They're to punish the Districts for their uprising." He answered too fast, he skipped the chance to think of an answer. "To..." he had to pause and think from his mistake of a hasty reply, "commemorate the end of the war-"

"Commemorate the dull, dull, dull." Gaul retorted, irritated with his wrong answer. Coriolanus shifted uncomfortably in his seat with the shame of rejection and inaccuracy, purposefully dropping the girl's hand first. "Punishing it can take merely at fools. But not drop bombs, cancel food shipments, stage executions, why Games?"

"Shouldn't we be asking ourselves whether or not they're right in the first place?" Sejanus interrupted the conversation again.

"Do you have a problem with my Games?"

"Some of those kids were only two years old when the war ended. The oldest of them were only eight!" The Plinth boy looked around at his peers, hoping to spark the hatred he felt against the brutal Hunger Games. "The Capitol is supposed to be everyone's government now, it is supposed to protect all of us. I don't see how making children fight each other to the death is protecting anyone."

Persephone refused to lie to herself that moment—although Sejanus liked to shove the idea down their throats of the immorality the Hunger Games carried, he had a clear point.

"That sort of sympathy might interfere with your Mentoring assignment." The Doctor teased Sejanus, as if to break him back down and let her Games play out.

All eyes flew to Highbottom as he began to speak. "Perhaps the Capitol students are ill-suited to be Mentoring tributes. Perhaps the Games' time has passed."

And there he went again. Highbottom continued to slip in comments against his own creation of the Hunger Games, like he was planting the idea in their heads to cease the Games without outright telling them to stop the event. Persephone had never met someone who criticized their own creation in front of others. It was like he was not proud of the Hunger Games. Like he wanted them discontinued.

Like he wanted the Hunger Games, his own idea, stopped.

And Highbottom's poorly hidden beliefs against the Games were revealed only to Persephone Ignis, the revelation hitting her like a punch to the face.

"The Games are supposed to be a demonstration of power." The Ignis girl plucked all her courage to voice her opinion. "The Capitol is a wolf, the Districts are the Sheep. Once a year, we swoop in and remind them who truly is in control. We show who has sharp teeth and who is just defenseless meat."

For the first time since she walked into the room, Gaul hummed with slight agreement. "Perhaps. We do exercise our right to pluck two children from each District to fight a bloody, sickening battle as human nature always resorts to carnage." She leaned closer and lowered her voice. "Just a small hint."

"I suppose there will never be equality—a power imbalance prevails for order among chaos. The wolf and sheep will live for eternity, even after one overthrows the other." When she was not so busy observing other people and maintaining her perfect appearance, Persephone was truly a marvel with her mind.

"Now let me ask you something, Miss Ignis," the doctor narrowed her eyes to scan the girl, "in these Games, this society, are you a sheep or wolf?"

And Persephone pursed her lips tightly, glancing between the heterochromatic eyes of Doctor Volumnia Gaul. For some reason, she felt as if there was a hidden meaning within any possible answer she could give. The Ignis girl proceeded with caution, only faking confidence in her posture. "A bit of both, I suppose. Not exactly one or the other."

Just enough ambiguity to scrape by without Gaul dissecting too much of her.

"Dean Highbottom is wrong." Coriolanus interrupted their tension-filled exchange to the Ignis girl's relief, gaze flickering over to her as he began. Her eyes flew to the boy who had just held her hand a minute ago. "My classmates too." He stood up abruptly to make his point. "Maybe Sejanus is onto something here. Maybe we should be viewing those tributes as human beings. I mean, you saw those kids in the zoo, they just... just wanted to get to know Lucy Gray. If we need people to watch, we should be letting them get closer to the tributes before the Games. They make the stakes personal."

"Who will watch the Games if they care what happens to the tributes?" Gaul asked.

"Everyone." Coryo nodded with pride in his idea. "If they thought the tribute they cared about had a chance of winning. People need someone to root for and someone to root against. We need them to invest."

Persephone felt a thick air fill her lungs. Was he really going to encourage the Games even after Sejanus continued to tell him they are wrong? She didn't want to believe it—so she didn't. In her mind, Coryo was just doing this to become a favorite of Gaul's. A leg up in the competition for the Plinth Prize with his charismatic personality. She took a glance down at Highbottom with her newfound discovery of his secret and watched as he shook his head at the boy's exciting new ideas. As the two locked eyes, deep in the back of her mind, she knew he had spoken just a little truth after their supposed graduation ceremony.

And out of thin air, Persephone began to curate a deep sympathy for the man who had the desire to destroy the thing he created.

"And if we bend a few Capitol laws, we can even have them place bets." She could hear the pride oozing from his words. "Look, I- I know Lucy Gray may not win in the arena, but if you give her a chance, I would bet the Plinth Prize that she can win peoples' attention." As he nodded along with his proposal, Persephone found herself somewhat jealous of the way Coryo talked about Lucy Gray. She was a performer, a damn good natural at it, but she couldn't help herself to imagine what he said when he described her, or if he even talked about her when she wasn't present.

"I'd like you to write a proposal of these thoughts tonight, Mister Snow." Gaul tasked, intrigued by his input.

"Wait," Clemensia rose from her seat to stand, "you mean like, we might actually use his ideas?"

"If it'll help the ratings, why not?"

She could only imagine Highbottom harboring the urge to stick a dagger in his eye at the potential extension of the Games and instead focused on the way she figured out who Dean Highbottom was just a little more.

For the first time in her life, Persephone felt the urge to speak with Highbottom on her own free will to crack his character down bit by bit until she knew him like the back of her hand.

Like Coriolanus enjoyed to emphasize in his mind, she would make a perfect First Lady.

"Coriolanus and I are class partners, Doctor Gaul, we do all of our assignments together." And Persephone knew, with a quick glance and who she knew Clemensia Dovecote to be, that she only wanted to share the attention and validation from Gaul, not just inspiration to add creative flair to the Games.

The Head Gamemaker laughed, ducking her head with a great grin, then bid her farewell to the class. "It will be an interesting test."

And Persephone held her breath for the real bombshell to hit.