I.

peracto — to carry through, complete, accomplish

I'm almost out of pages in this wretched thing.

I'm sure I'm not the first person in Gamemaking history to keep up with such a thing—perhaps the first one to truly care so undoubtedly, but it's important to me. History. Record-keeping, and all of that.

Two years ago Ariston pulled me out of one of my classes. Guess Professor Artura said enough about me in the monthly write-up to prompt his curiosity. I was never a model student, not like Elide or Kosta or anyone else. Didn't participate. But I knew everything, about every Games and every tribute and every little thing in-between.

Sue me for thinking I'd earn praise for it. He just tore me a new asshole. Said I paid too much attention. How do you pay too much attention? Frankly, I'm glad the asshole got a bullet to the head. You shouldn't be able to call yourself a Head Gamemaker if you don't care about the little things. Elide looks better in the job than he ever did, as much as a part of me hates her for it. I keep wondering what I would have done had she been executed, too. More than likely wouldn't have been so public, so I wouldn't know what happened to her. That's closed casket shit. Probably for the best.

But she's not dead, for some reason. None of us are. I guess my hatred for her in this position wasn't enough to stop me from saving her. We could have left Twelve down there longer, kept searching for Six. Elide would have died. The world would have kept spinning.

On and on and on.

I guess you could say I wouldn't be here without her. Sure, maybe she didn't pick me in the team in the first place, but she brought me on in the end. Figured out what she was missing, I guess. But I also wouldn't be here without her. A speck on the wall. Amounting to nothing. My name won't be in any books but these logs. Technically I don't even have an official title. They call me an assistant to anyone who asks, to keep me around.

I am not all wrong in hating her. She did this to me. Kiss me one minute, abandon me the next. Elide could get rid of me as easily as she brought me back. That's a killer if I ever did see one.

Funny how in one year she killed more kids than any other Maker before her. Given she didn't write the damn card herself, didn't ask for that, but she certainly didn't have a problem with it.

You know who did, though? Basically everyone else in the world.

I still see it. I don't know how any of them can look around and see anything else. The Districts are pissed, you know, well what else is new? It's this city that terrifies me. The first couple of months went by as expected. No real outrage. It was gradual, actually. By the summertime rolled around, the parades had ceased the watch parties and the nightly gatherings. Tickets for the opening ceremonies stopped selling out. By the time September hit kids would die and you'd see people openly weeping in the streets like they had just lost their partner of forty years. No one here has that kind of dedication.

The city born from this, raised on it and cultivated in its image, is sick of the Games.

I never thought I would say that.

Frankly, I don't think anyone did. President Rey knows it as well as I do. She stopped with the gatherings, the announcements, the fanfare. She called all of the paparazzi back from Twelve the day after he got back. There's hardly been a word breathed about the 101st; it's planned, sure, but no one talks about it. No posters, no begging for secrets. Merride started a blog—that's what Petrova said, anyway, haven't read it myself. But apparently she's already bitching about how the interviews are going to 'flop' if no one watches them. She's got more air in her head than sense. I mean she's right, but still.

I can't be surprised that it happened. Finally, finally happened. A hundred years. Thousands of dead kids. 287 in the last year alone. You spill enough blood, finally people begin to despise the sight of it on their television screens.

So I guess there's a golden question. A few, at least. What the hell happens now that people aren't just tuning out, but actively wishing for it to go away? Why do we make an arena and plan to fill it with kids again? Honestly, fuck if I know. Maybe because no one's told us not to. Until the President says not to, we kill again. Stick with the program.

Right now people are upset. That's it. It seems easy. But upset turns to anger and anger turns into ugliness, things that can't be controlled. They almost had a rebellion after the 75th. That's what we're driving towards now, and I'm not sure anyone is planning on turning the damn car around.

I'm not quite sure I can imagine a world without the Games in it. I've tried before, but when it's all you ever know, creating an image in your head doesn't come so easily. I guess it would be peacefully. Hopefully better.

That's what everyone wants now, isn't it? Better. I think it might be.

Tell that to that last set of twenty-three dead kids in January, though. Tell that to Weston Katsouris. It's a bit too late for them, the last victims of the Quell's glorious murder spree. History will remember it regardless of who wants to or not. It will remember all of those kids, and its victor, and the names of the people who put them there.

Still not me. If I want my name anywhere, I'll have to figure out some other way to do it. If things keep tilting in the direction of total collapse, I better do it fast. Running out of time, and all that.

I'm also running out of space on this paper, I'm realizing. It's the last one. The back cover is too tattered to write on. I guess this is why everyone switched to tablets.

No book will ever compare to this, to what happened and what it all meant. And who knows. Maybe it's going to mean more soon.

Or maybe we'll all be dead. That's a great way to end this log, isn't it?

—T. Mazaryn-Reinhart, 04/13/101
(Hopefully you see me again.)

Before anyone asks no, this is not a SYOT.

(That's later.)

As originally intended, IFE was supposed to be a fic outlining both the 101st Games themselves and what happened behind the scenes. That would have meant a more complicated scheme of things and also probably a much longer fic, but due to the expected falling of Aidan O'Daly directly into my lap, the 101st Games were displayed in Gens Una Sumus. Meaning yes, I do actually get to write a mini-fic solely about the behind the scenes. Someone on Reddit defined that as less than 100 words but they can go fuck themselves.

You may ask why I'm writing this at all, what the purpose of it is... that will become obvious eventually. Submissions for the SYOT that follows will come after the end of this fic, and I recommend reading this if you have any intention of giving me a kid. Trust me, it'll just make things way easier for you in the long run. But regardless, thank you to everyone who is still on this journey with me, who is just joining, or who plans to join in the future. It means a lot.

Until next time.