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Ah, the Appalachians. Ah, the nostalgia...

This is District 12 of Panem. And for the most part, Appalachia still looks the same. Alas, armed androids keep flying over the land.

The androids patrol the highways and the railways, looking for people to help and crime to stop. Now don't you dare panic; these droids work for President Paylor's administration. Snow and his family are long-dead, as are Coin and... Wait-did Coin ever reproduce in life?

Hospitals, clinics, and med schools have taken over District 12. Most of them are AIs. Some dare think of them as "sentient buildings." It's still a work in progress...but then, every economy always is.

There are still coal mines...just not as many as there were under Snow's leadership-for those still alive who'd dare call it that. (Personally, I would've expected all the coal mines of my time to have stopped producing coal sometime after the end of the 21st century...)

But for all we know or care, of course, Katniss Everdeen kills Coin in the late 21st century. And you're probably wondering what happened after that, so here we go.

This is Peeta Mellark. His memories have recovered very much since his captivity in the Revolution. And he's baking for one of the hospital AIs. Alas, the AI can't tell, by itself, whether or not he's good at his job; AIs lack taste buds.

And naturally, hospital cafeteria food is notorious for how awful it tastes. So it seems unlikely that Mellark will win an employee of the month award anytime soon.

But as he'll soon find out, those are the least of his life's problems. He is, after all, happily married to the Girl on Fire.

And I DON'T mean Alicia Keys. Alas, by the time this story is at midpoint, Sweet Peeta will be wishing she was Alicia Keys.

As hard as it is for Peeta to believe, his shift is almost up. It's time for him to go home, check on the wife, fall on the bed, and snore until the shack unravels to rubble.

Ah, home. It may look like another shitty shotgun house...but to at least two people Peeta knows of, including himself, it's home away from the old Hunger Games.

Exhausted, Peeta climbs the front steps to the front door. It's a tall, tall house. Thankfully, though, the front steps are about the height of Peter Dinklage...assuming he's even in Panem's history books. That swing would look just about comfy for him and Katniss...if only he felt achieved enough to share it with her one of these nights.

Buttercup, Katniss's late sister's cat, is loafing on the welcome mat. The hair goes up on his back, and he hisses at Peeta.

Peeta stops, and stares. This is unusual for Buttercup. He usually feels more secure around him than around Katniss. Nonetheless, it seems that getting into the house is going to be harder tonight than before.

Great; as if Peeta's job wasn't impossible enough. But then, that's not to say that Katniss is always an easy wife to have...

An eerie breeze blows. There's just something about it... For some reason, home doesn't feel the way it usually does when Peeta comes home from work. But Peeta mustn't dwell on it; nine out of ten omens are illusory, after all.

Don't quote Peeta on that, though. Most women bail on men who use that as their pickup line.

An eccentric wind chime hangs in front of the other window to the front porch. It's shaped like a hog, as it hangs from its back legs, prepared for slaughter. A string hangs from its chest. Peeta sighs, smiles, and pulls the string, one last time, for kicks.

The wind chime sounds like a hog being tortured, of course. Katniss sometimes uses this as a means of boar-hunting from her front porch.

If Peeta had his way, District 12 would have banned hog-hunting from front porches years ago. But in at least one way, it seems that Panem loves the Girl on Fire more than Peeta does.

Peeta goes in the house. He'd hate to be on the front porch if a wild boar in rut hears that wind chime.

It's dark inside. The boards in the floor creak under his feet. The windows are open. The eerie breeze flows in like a flood.

Something feels wrong. Not that it's more like Katniss to be more nurturing whenever Peeta comes home from work, understand, but...sure would be nice, he thinks, if she did it just once...

He stops when he gets to the dining room. His heart freezes in his chest. There's a vase on it. And there's a bouquet of white roses in it!

Peeta closes in on the vase, dreading the worst. They'd better not smell like what he thinks. If they do... But this isn't possible, right? All of Snow's children died in the last Hunger Games. Or, so the short-lived Coin administration told the press at that time...

Nonsense; Paylor would never let something like this happen. Would she?

Floorboards creak behind Peeta. He freezes. Whoever's behind him sounds heavier than him. In terror, he slowly turns around, and looks.

A light is flipped on in the hallway. Peeta screams. He screams again. And he screams a third time...

Katniss is in the buff. She's bleached her hair-either that or she's evolved into a Norsewoman in the past twenty-four hours. (Days in Panem are still twenty-four hours long, aren't they? I once saw something on TV that says that the days get longer as the Earth's relationship with the sun gets older...)

"Hi, Peeta," Katniss says, smiling. "Want to play?"

Peeta tries to shake his head-but he can barely move. He finds himself both frightened and sexually attracted to his naked wife at the same time.

"Katniss?! What the... Are you stoned?! Where the fuck did you get those roses?!"

She giggles. "Who's Katniss?" She creeps towards him. He backs away. "My name is Katlanna." She flaps her hair, like Farrah Fawcett, after she says this. "Katlanna Snowdeen! So, has the wife put you on guard duty at her house while she's out of town?"

She's flirting with him. It's as if she knows his name...but doesn't know her own.

"What?! No, I'm not on guard duty..."

"PERFECT," Katlanna beams. "We can do whatever we want to in here then!"

Peeta starts to criticize her more-but then she charges him. He runs around the house a few times before she leaps out from behind the staircase, and hisses like Buttercup. Peeta screams. He hides behind the umbrella stand while Katlanna leaps out at him every time he peeks around one side of it.

"You should really take those clothes off," Katlanna hisses, while rubbing her hands together. "You could get hurt wearing them for too long!"

"Yeah, and you could get hurt not wearing any! Katniss, what the fuck is going on with you?!"

Buttercup slithers in, and rubs on Katlanna's bare legs. Katlanna smiles, picks him up, holds him close to her rack, and caresses his fur maternally. She says things in baby talk to him. She rubs her face in his fur.

Now Peeta KNOWS something's wrong with Katniss. She and Buttercup hate each other.

"Yeah, how ya doin', kitty-poo?" Katlanna giggles. "You feel famished. What do they feed you up here? Mm, not mice I hope. Mice are funner to play with than to eat, if you ever ask me." She looks up from the cat. "What's his...name?"

She looks around. Peeta is gone. She peers out the biggest window. A small man is running off into the forest.

Katlanna beams. She drops the cat, and runs to get a few things-but not clothes, or brown hair dye, as Peeta would hope.

Peeta runs. He runs as if Katlanna were right behind him. Alas, it's a big forest. And the terrain is hardly stable.

He slips before long, and rolls down a slope. The slope feels like it has no end. He tries to grab something, but nothing stays put for him. With luck, he won't be dead when and if he stops.

He hits a rock, and bounces off of it. He hits another rock, and bounces off of it. He hits another rock, and bounces off of it. He falls through several trees' canopies, but can't grab onto a stable part of any tree.

At long last, Peeta lands on a coyote, and stops. At first he's relieved. But then he realizes what he's lying on. He rolls over, and takes a look.

The coyote's dead. It died from the impact of Peeta's body.

He was a male. Peeta might've just made several widows out of a single fall.

Peeta hears a scary growl. He looks around, and acknowledges the source. Two boars stand, in the dim light of dusk, facing him. Their eyes glow red.

Peeta panics, and runs. The boars chase him. Peeta KNEW pulling that wind chime's string was a bad call. He just KNEW it. Katniss should get it taken down and destroy it. He keeps trying to tell her that that wind chime is a lawsuit waiting to happen, and now it's become a fucking health hazard-one that he's now running for his life from, for the first time since the Revolution!

Peeta doesn't look back. He just keeps running down the same ravine-which gets deeper and deeper as he goes along. Katniss is stealthy. Peeta will soon learn that Katlanna is stealthy in ways that make Katniss look clumsy.

The ravine dead-ends. Peeta looks around. He tries to climb the cliff. He can't. He's trapped! And he's got two speeding boars who're about to maul him...!

One of the hogs falls dead behind the other. Katlanna rides the other, still in the buff, and still blonde. She takes a spear, and runs the boar through the neck while it's still running. The boar inadvertently does a somersault after its stabbing.

Katlanna hollers, flies off the boar's back, and lands in Peeta's arms. Peeta doesn't mean to save her-he means to save Katniss...who, hopefully, is still in that hot, blonde, feminine, busty, thick, scary female body, somewhere...

"Ah," she sighs seductively, "that little man of mine." She licks his neck. He screams every time she does. "He can't slay a boar worth a lick," she licks his neck again, and causes him to scream louder, "but at least he can sure pancake a coyote alpha when he falls!"

Peeta keeps screaming. He imagines his screams can be heard throughout Appalachia-but apparently not, since the local public-wherever they are, and however far away the nearest one is-sure isn't being prompt in responding to his distress signal.

"Yeah," Katlanna keeps licking Peeta's neck, "my man doesn't need no woman to pick him up! He just needs better pickup lines!"

"O KATNISS, WHERE ARE YOU?! I MISS YOU ALREADY! HELP! HELP! SOMEBODY! MY WIFE'S A...!"

Katlanna stands and cuts him off, by bathing his baby face in kisses. Peeta hardens...but does his best to overlook it.

They're back at the house. From outside, one can hear Peeta's shrill screams-as they once heard Prim Everdeen's screams for many years before her name was drawn for the Hunger Games.

At long last, Peeta's in the buff. Katlanna's atop him. She rubs her pussy back and forth over his abs, and rides his front side. She hollers, and bellows like a cow in heat. She's hurting Peeta's ears. She's beaten him in District 12's epic screaming contest.

Peeta falls asleep before she does. Soon, she's snoring atop him. Peeta doesn't remember, and has no idea, how he gets through this night without suffocating. He forgets to be more thankful that he wasn't mauled by wild boars.

In the night, Katlanna's hair gradually turns from blonde to brunette. And she gets slightly smaller.

She still snores, though. Aside from the body, that's one thing Katniss and Katlanna DO have in common...