lady labyrinth, shiv irvine mayoral toast.

It's the same stand she'd given a speech at for the last decade and a half. A new stylist, after her former retired. Shiv had seen to it that she got a nice little stipend now, credit for some design trends she'd helped proliferate.

Shiv isn't sold on the new girl yet. She like to try and convince Shiv to straighten her hair, something about how the slicked back buns play to the Capitol audiences, but the mayor has never much given a fuck one way or the other what they think of her up there in their city in the mountains.

Nonetheless, ratings had gone up. And that meant better funding for the Saturday schools, so she'd bite the bullet.

"Friends," she starts, ignoring the low ache collecting at the base of her skull. "It is so good to see so many familiar faces today."

A glance out at the crowd, she finds she means what might have been a platitude. These people are her home, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. She recognizes the woman who sells her jams at the farmers market on the first Sunday every month. She also sees, stationed like quiet ghosts throughout the crowd, the different troupes of Peacekeepers about the square. Some on duty, some there just to support, wearing their military whites. Surprisingly, some of them have become her people, too. When she made the deal all those years ago, she hadn't foreseen that.

"As most of you all know I'm sure, my campaign efforts were curtailed a few weeks ago after I contracted our familiar friend Rose to bolster my immune system." A grimace, but it's met with a few chuckles, so she continues. "I'm grateful to our wonderful team of doctors here in Nine who were able to get me treated and back on my feet so quickly. Without them, and their help, you all know we'd be lost. I had barely been showing symptoms, but their tracing teams were able to contain the exposure to our people and take care of us all safely. Without them, I'd never be able to honor the commitment I made to you all as your mayor.

"Your lives matter so much to me, your health and safety, your well-beings. I so cherish the opportunity to serve you all as your leader, and am grateful my health is in safe hands.

"For too long, our home had been neglected, but in the last decade we've been able to make huge strides towards reform and building our communities back up. Decades of fear-mongering and crime ruling the streets, the taste of safety and peace has been hard earned if I do say so myself.

"That being said, we still have a long ways to go in terms of reform. Our unemployment numbers have continued to drop, and drop out rates in our school system have plummeted. Getting our kids back in our classrooms has been a huge mission of mine, and I'm excited to push us all the miles we still need to go. I am committing to meetings with our district principals, and as many teachers will make time for me. I want to hear what they need, what I can do for them, how I can serve our kids and help them grow into the leaders we will need them to become one day."

She goes on, gives credits to regional chambers, names colleagues she thinks aren't worth her time and does a damn good job pretending she respects them. No one sees all the invisible strings she has attached to a single loop, tied around her pinky finger. When the lights flash at the end, she makes sure to give it a little tug.

Everyone falls in line.