Are you, are you, coming to the tree?

[etcircenses]

Who| All those on the liberation mission and all those being made to fight against them.
What| The liberation of District 9.
Where| District 9
When| This week.
Warnings/Notes| War, violence, death. Please warn for more in headers.

By now, even the most remote and isolated Districts are well aware of the chaos ravaging Panem. District Nine, golden with wheat and blinding with its expansive blue horizon, is quiet, and yet nothing about it feels safe; the stillness is less like a serene oasis than like tall grass that cannot help but contain lions prowling. An air raid siren was going off an hour ago at the sight of hovercrafts, driving everyone inside. No one is outside working the fields or traveling the dirt roads to the hub of the District, which sits in the center like a spider in its web or the axel of a wheel. Displaced Capitolite and Districter both are hunkered down within the corrugated-metal buildings.

The air is hot, and once outside the hovercrafts one finds that what was previously mistaken for silence is in fact the monotonous hum and whine of insects, too continuous and amorphous to really qualify as actual sound but certainly not the absence of it. The sun glares down from a cloudless sky. The earth was tilled until an hour ago, and many of the fields are only partially plowed. Some still have farm equipment left out. Mills and water towers sit awkwardly at the edge of the fields like sentinels or oversized dominos.

The crops stretch out to the horizon, ranging from waist-height to taller than the average full-grown man, depending on the breed. The sheer variety is astonishing, the quality even moreso; ears of corn are as large as toddlers and the wheat is a flawless golden color, thanks to Capitol technology and genetic modification. There are no pests, as most of the plants have a natural pesticide that is fatal upon ingestion and only removable with sprays available to importers to the Capitol, to prevent theft by the hungry employees.

There are crop circles, many in the Capitol’s logo and a few stamped with the insignias of local Capitol-run businesses. It does not reflect the sentiments of the natives but rather an attempt by those clinging to their echelons to enforce a mindset in vain. The propaganda has largely been repelled from the souls of the people here like bugs to a windshield. Only the rarest bit of graffiti may be spotted saying "All is not lost" and "you are weak" both of which have clear attempts to be scrubbed away.

The war continues, and in the back of everyone's mind is a familiar phrase; may the odds be ever in your favor.

Comments

[the_marshal]

A hand appears, wrapping around Firo's head to push a cloth toward his mouth. It wasn't much, but it was all Wyatt had. He held another, tattered and worn, over his own, trying to breath into it as much as possible.

"Here." he said, ducking as far as he could under the black smoke that billowed through the now open doorway. "Kids first. Low an' fast."

[foundafamily]

Was that how he'd die? Suffocated or poisoned with some rag in a burning building? Firo was about to grab the arm to try to fight for his life. but he stopped just short when he could make out the person coming at him--and the fact that he also had a cloth for himself.

He blinked; he would've been wide-eyed if keeping his eyes open didn't hurt so much with all the smoke. Okay, so it wasn't an ambush. Firo mirrored the man's posture, leaning down, and nodded his gratitude. "...Thanks."

There was no time to consider what this uneasy alliance would mean if they were on opposite sides, and Firo supposed that he'd deserve it if it came to a knife in the back. So he shoved those thoughts aside and moved in farther, hands groping for someone to rescue.

He tried to shout over the fire, "I can hand 'em out to you. Like an assembly line?"

[the_marshal]

Wyatt started to follow, but when a flare of flame pushed him back again, he had to admit that the other man's idea was a better one. Raising a hand to try and shield himself from the heat, he nodded.

"Hurry!" he called back, "They've already been in there too long!"

[foundafamily]

That was all the further prompting he needed; Firo charged in. Maybe they still had some luck, because it didn't take long for a kid fleeing the worst of the flames to run straight into him and be promptly ushered out.

"You know any first aid?" He sucked in a breath of fresh air. When it came to these things, he was clueless, but even Firo could tell that the limp and coughing child wasn't doing so well despite being hardly singed.

[the_marshal]

Wyatt scooped the child up and carried it away from the immediate heat and smoke. Crouching with the boy, he looked him over quickly while speaking to him softly in that slow, easy drawl of his.

"It's alright," he promised. "Yer alright now. We're gonna help." He reached for the boy's ankle and touched it gently. "It hurts, don't it? I'm sorry, we'll take care of it. You jus' hold still, okay?"

He glanced at Firo.

"It ain't broken, so far as I can tell. But he needs somebody who can look inside, the heat and the smoke ain't good for his lungs. And there's nothin' I can do here."

[foundafamily]

Luckily at least one of them had a good bedside manner. Comfort wasn't really a top priority or anything, but Firo imagined having someone who seemed to get how to calm someone down would go a long way towards helping in this situation.

He shook his head. "Shit. So we just--?" Just wait? See if he made it? Probably not questions that were important enough to ask in front of their patient.

But there was something else that maybe needed to be said, tact or no. "I'm not sure how many are still in there. I'm hopin' they were just taken by other people." The alternative didn't need to be spelled out. He sighed, trying to clear his lungs of the rasp. "I'll go back in and do what I can."

[the_marshal]

"We need to get 'em to the doctors, to one'a the hospitals." To somebody proper, like Joan. She'd been teaching him here and there, but there was still a lot she knew that he didn't.

But of course, if he left, Firo wouldn't have any help if he found anymore - or God forbid, if something happened to him while he was inside.

It was a terrible choice.

"I'll wait - jus' a few minutes. Then I've got to get this boy to help."

[foundafamily]

Which doctors, he wondered briefly. With any luck, it wouldn't be the side Firo was fighting for.

"Yeah." He gave the building a quick glance. It was bigger than the factories back home, but the fire would certainly have made parts of it impossible to travel. If he took too long inside, the most likely causes would be because he couldn't find anyone or because he was out of the game. He nodded, something like a wry smile on his face. "If it takes too long, that means I'm probably not gonna be draggin' any more out for one reason or another, so it'd be pointless for you to stick around."

Even from his brief foray a moment ago, he couldn't tell how much ground there was to cover. He clucked his tongue, pausing just a stride beyond the entrance, where the heat was already unbearable. "Is five minutes too long?"

[the_marshal]

"Go." Wyatt watched him head back toward the flames and couldn't help but respect him, even if he didn't know a thing about him, even if he couldn't say for certain the man was even on his side. "Yer wastin' time."

He'd wait. And then he would go.

It wouldn't be the ending he had wanted, but it wouldn't be the worst he could have imagined either.