One Man's Rebellion
Chapter 1

Disclaimer: This work of fan-fiction is not intended for personal profit. All characters utilized herein which are not creations of myself belong to Suzanne Collins.

I'm Plutarch Heavensbee, and by rights many of the people of Panem should despise me; hell, they probably do.

I'm a Gamemaker, after all. But I'm also a double agent. I'm one of the leaders of the rebellion we've been putting together slowly and painstakingly.

Let me tell you how it got started.

Obviously, I'm Capitol-born. Got to be, to get the cushiest jobs and the best of everything Panem has. I went to the best schools. Had the best clothes. Anything I wanted (well, with some exceptions) I got.

And of course I watched the Hunger Games. I even bet on the tributes. I sponsored one or two. It's a diseased system, but an effective one. If you don't think too hard about the tributes except as exciting figures on the screen, it's even better than any computer game invented.

How I got started in my current ostensible profession goes back to an English class in my last year of school.

Topic: "Discuss a unique method of increasing the attractiveness of the Hunger Games."

Well, that's when the idea of being a Gamemaker seized me and wouldn't let me go. What would I do if I were Gamemaker?

I'd put the Games in outer space!

Enthralled with the idea, I wrote it all up and turned it in. Little did I know how much they liked my fanciful idea until the week after when Seneca Crane, one of the Gamemakers, walked into my classroom.

Well, he loved it and said I had a bright mind. Shook my hand in front of the class and slipped me a card with his particulars on it. I was a minor celebrity for a while after that, and hard as it may be to believe now, I actually got a few girls out of it. Some boys, too. We experimented a lot.

To be a Gamemaker, you needed a degree in something that showed you were creative. So I picked Literature and History as a double major when I went to college. You would normally think history has little to recommend it as grounding for a Gamemaker, but an eccentric History of Science professor I had would regale me with stories, stories about the wars between the old nations from back when Panem was North America. I would sit, enthralled as he regaled me with stories of such exotic things as high-flying planes, military satellites, cell disintegrators, drones, even biological weapons with expiration dates.

But the same kind of equipment and machinery of war could be used for Hunger Games, too, and the concept of strategy and tactics lends itself well to seeing how tributes organize themselves into alliances and which ones will succeed or fail. In general, though, the Districts are so far behind technologically we have simply mothballed or destroyed much of the expensive equipment that can no longer be used. So we use guns, muttations and hovercrafts to keep them in line.

The Capitol, obviously, is kept in line by that wonderful old phrase, that phrase from Latin, a language far older than the English we speak: 'Panem et Circenses'. Bread and Circuses. The Capitol never wants for food or drink. And they certainly get their circuses every year, thanks mostly to the Hunger Games.

I kept in touch with Seneca Crane occasionally as I went through my academics. It went to my head, really. I have no idea why he indulged my occasional videophone calls, but this system of grooming new Gamemakers has its advantages for the Capitol.

It's a lot harder to resign your job if you feel personally indebted to someone helping you get one of the most prestigious jobs in our society.

Still, because my connection to Crane wasn't widely known, I had to attend mandatory career counseling sessions in my last year of college. The Capitol has lots of jobs, but the ones open to me with a combined History and Lit degree were either being some dusty old librarian maintaining historical archives on paper (which I later found out really meant carefully censoring them) or an English teacher.

I barely restrained myself from laughing out loud. As if! I'd had enough of school when I was a teenager to last me a lifetime and libraries and archives didn't excite me. In retrospect, though… well, the road not taken and all that.

The day I graduated, I put the videophone call through to Crane's office. He appeared on the screen, and I said in restrained pride, "Sir, I graduated."

He nodded. "Good to hear! Outer space Hunger Games, am I right, sonny?"

That little bit of folksy humor disarmed me. I barked a laugh, then blushed at that indiscretion. Of course he remembered me and wanted me for the job; otherwise he'd have had my videophone calls blocked a long time ago.

As soon as I got started out, I let my ego get the better of me. I wanted to make better Games. Ever more entertaining Games. We couldn't have bored Capitol citizens demanding something that cost even more than just better Games, now could we?

Crane gave me the job of Assistant Gamemaker that day. The way it worked, there was the Head Gamemaker, the Gamemaker judging committee, and the Assistants. We Assistants did all the scut work – scouting out sites, arranging for construction of the arenas, prepping the drawing balls for the Reapings, all that.

For the first few years, it was all right. The tributes were just part of an exciting show I got to see up front – up close and personal. I'd see a particular landscaping or vegetation choice on the screen and I'd pat myself on the back and say, "I did that. I added that little extra hitch for the Games."

But then I became a full Gamemaker.

And I had to start looking those kids in the eye as they ran through their routines for us to issue preliminary judgement numbers from zero to twelve so the sponsor feeding frenzy could start.

I'd see them again on the screen and I'd see them die.

And that's when my rebellion started. When the scales fell from my eyes and I realized just how unnatural our society has become.

I rebelled in what you might think is probably the stupidest way imaginable, especially for a Capitol citizen with access to all our fancy medical gadgetry. I quit going to all the rejuvenation clinics and I quit drinking that cocktail that lets you overindulge at parties without it all going straight to your gut.

Laughable, isn't it? Gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee rebelled by gaining weight. Even I have to chuckle ironically.

But you know, given how obsessed – almost diseasedly obsessed – Capitol citizens are about maintaining their vanity and their looks and their special surgical procedures and the disgustingly revolting things they do to themselves to stay as thin and young as possible, yeah, it's rebellion.

Rebellion in the form of pushing 250 pounds when that Caesar Flickerman fella probably has what should be my next heart attack if he goes over 180 on a bad day. Funnily enough, I haven't had one yet. I wonder if my doctor slips me a mickey when I'm not looking.

Salvation came – or what I thought might be it – after something like twenty years. Sometimes it feels even longer than that. My entire adult life has revolved around watching these Games come and go.

But the truth of a rebellion is that if you look hard enough, someone else out there is thinking the same thing you are.

Author Note: Modified to be more Mockingjay-compliant.