The Tribute Returns (Percy Jackson Hunger Games crossover)

Saving District 4

Lydia took the stranger that said he was from the revolution to her house, watching him react nearly the same way Percy had at the yelling from her parents. She'd had to stop him as well before dragging him up the stairs to where she occupied the entire floor by herself, simply because her parents were too lazy to climb the stairs.

She knew exactly how dumb of a decision it had been to take a stranger into her room without proper information, but she was confident she could manage herself and she was at a low at the moment. She didn't particularly care for her best interests.

When the door closed, he took off his mask and she couldn't help but gape for a moment. Not only because he was very handsome in a rugged way that wasn't often found in District 4, but also because this was Gale Hawthorne, the quiet, grey-eyed counterpart to Percy Jackson. She'd seen him on T.V. before, but she thought they were somehow digitally enhancing his looks to elevate the tension between him and Katniss.

Fortunately for her but unfortunately for her ability to speak, that wasn't the case. He was possibly better-looking in real life, and it took a second for her to refocus on the situation at hand. 

"You said we're building a trap?" she asked after remembering how to talk. "What exactly are we trapping?"

Gale shrugged. He sat down on her bed and put his elbows on his knees, leaning his face against his hands as he contemplated. "Traps are what I'm really good at," he said eventually. "Katniss is better than me with a bow, but I can set a better trap than anyone. Not bragging, but it's my specialty. We need to find away to possibly disable to bombs, confuse the aircraft, or bring them to the ground far enough away that the district would be safe."

"How are we going to do that?" she asked desperately. It's not as if they had an excess of aerial warfare equipment. 

Gale smiled. "We know their coming at us from the east. We know they'll be here in two days. It's going to be a bomb strike, and the optimal height for a bomb to be detonated is at roughly two thousand feet above the ground." He bit his lip in concentration, a habit Lydia happened to find incredibly distracting. "We don't have a bunch of planes to fly up there to combat them, but we do know that they're gonna have a remote control detonation device. That way they don't have to worry about getting far enough away, they can control when the bombs go off. They're going to need some sort of transmitter and receiver somewhere on the plane and the bomb itself for that. If they can't get the signal, they can't go off. Boo-yah."

"Wait, what?" Lydia asked, completely lost.

"We need to make an EMP. We'll get a hot air balloon of some sort and fly it up to three thousand feet, just to be safe so we disable it before it reaches the detonation height. Do you have a map?"

Lydia pulled out a mandatory map of the district that every child was required to memorize before graduating the second grade. She spread it across the table, and Gale was immediately scanning and analyzing it with his sharp grey eyes. 

"Alright," he said finally. "There are four places that are strategically the most destructive to hit with a bomb, mostly due to the landscape and population in those areas. Because it's the Capitol, we're going to assume they'll hit all of them. Now, we need four EMPs at these same spots, with a radius large enough to overlap slightly to make up for margin of error. We'll try our best to evacuate the center section just in case they drop it in a strange place and it misses all of our pulse explosions." Gale turned to her. "As much as I trust this plan, I have no idea how to make an EMP bomb or how to program something like a hot air balloon. Got anything?" 

Lydia's blue eyes sparked with excitement as she nodded. "I can get that part taken care of, you just manage the strategy. And... come up with some sort of excuse for me to miss the next two days of work. The Peacekeepers well be here in the morning and ruin our whole plan if we don't."