(A/N) Ohhhh has this been done before. I don't know. Not really caring right now. Hunger Games! The rest of the details don't matter! (Hopefully though, this will be a new twist on the thing since I've never read any of the other avatar hunger games deals.

It happens every single year. One boy and one girl from each of the districts of the four nations compete for their lives in The Hunger Games. It has been over twenty-five years since they began. The districts have decided a new way to try to win more of the games: Carrier tributes. In district four a young woman named Korra finally volunteers for the Hunger Games. She has only one drive, to be able to come home again.

As you expected. I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender or Avatar: Legend of Korra. All the characters that I use belong to whoever made them. I also don't own The Hunger Games. While none of the characters are in this story the basis for the story belongs to Suzanne Collins.

Chapter 1

The people were lined up. Every shoulder touched. Under her dress her dark skin burned in the heat. The sun always seemed to be unforgiving. Especially today. It took all of her strength not to wipe the sweat that formed at her brow.

Around her was only silence as the people waited. Children really, just like her, not a single one over eighteen. Some threw glances at their siblings in fear. Many looked at her with worry. She lifted her chin. This was not the time to seem afraid.

She heard a name called. Had so much of the ceremony passed already? She needed to pay more attention.

A different gaze called it away again. Green eyes that glinted in the sunlight. She looked away. She couldn't face those eyes she would betray.

A boy was dragged from the gathered crowd. He could not have been more than thirteen years old. He did not fight but he trembled when he was brought on stage. The two locked eyes, this boy she barely knew, and she nodded as though it would give him confidence.

She watched the girl who had been brought up next. She stood bravely, fearlessly almost. She was eighteen years old. This would be her last reaping. And she would live. She knew the next words would be the ones that saved her life.

"I volunteer as tribute!" She shouted when the time came. There was little surprise. Very few had been kept from the knowledge. Among those few were the green eyed girl she refused to look at.

"It looks like our volunteer tribute this year is Korra!" Kozan, district 4's escort announced. Korra took her place and the other female tribute disappeared back into the crowd. Korra raised a welcoming hand at the crowd. She even smiled. The sort of bright smile that showed her teeth.

The people actually clapped for her. It was slow and weak, but it is the only applause Korra ever heard. It was the least that they can offer the girl who would be risking her life for her district. Only the family of the boy didnt join in. They knew that he wouldn't be returning.

Korra was led away by the peacekeepers then and into the Justice Building. The escort was required but not necessary. Korra had no plans to run away. She was placed in a nicely decorated room and told to wait. Korra sat on the long couch with her hands folded behind her head. When her eyes closed she hated that the first thought was how to eliminate that boy from the competition.

Korra was what the districts called a career tribute. She had trained all her life how to fight, how to kill, how to survive. Of course there was always a chance that there would be a better, stronger tribute. Korra refused to think about it. For now all that mattered was survival.

The door opened and Korra sat up with a start. The first person to come and say goodby was there. She was taller than Korra. Her hair was soft ebony that spirits would envy. Her dress was beautiful as well, a slimming deep red adorned with gold and sparkling diamonds. Her face was all that tainted this perfect image. Lines of anger creased her face and her eyes were a blaze of fury. Korra all but welcomed the slap to her face when it came.

"How could you?" She cried,

"Asami you know I had to at some point."

"You could have waited one more year."

"There wasn't another career ready. I am." She rose only to put her hands on Asami's slender shoulders and guide her to a seat. Korra knelt in front of her holding her hands. No matter what Korra tried hers would always be rougher than asami's delicate fingers. "Everything will be alright. All I have to do is win."

"That just happens to be the exact strategy of everyone else. And they'll kill you to get it." Korra wiped the single tear that fell down her cheek with a thumb.

"Don't think like that." Korra told her, "I need you to trust me."

Asami shook her head. Korra couldn't stand seeing her girlfriend this way. Asami had always been the stronger one, at least when it came to the more emotional issues. She was the one to comfort Korra when the dreams became too real. It took almost too long for her to recompose herself just to manage to make a single nod painted with a smile that was obviously fake.

All that work fell apart when the peacekeepers came to take Asami away. She faintly struggled wanting just one more moment with her girlfriend. Korra heard Asami call one last thing to her. She said she loved her. The very first time Korra heard those words. The door was shut in the next instant. Korra was left alone again, her heard torn. Did she want to say those words to her? Yes, she decided, she did. It was entirely possible she would never have that chance.

Korra paced the room until the door opened again. Her parents had come to see her like she expected. Senna had a nervousness to her Korra could feel when mother and daughter embraced. Tonraq placed a heavy hand on his daughter. Firm and strong like him.

Tonraq had volunteered for his own hunger games over twenty years ago. He had been waiting for his own daughter to be entered into the games ever since she was a child. He had been as much of a mentor as a father since she learned how to fight. The capitol would not allow a family member as a mentor during the games though so he would be left behind here.

"You'll do fine." Tonraq told her. Her mother shed a few fearful tears but wiped them away, "You remember what to do, everything I taught you."

"As if you would ever let me forget."

"And your sponsors?"

"There will be plenty of people I could convince once I'm there." Korra sighed, "but for now make sure Asami doesn't buy me anything until the final six." Tonraq nodded and finally sat. Finally Korra managed to ask the question she had been wanting to ask since she knew she was going to volunteer. "What about my bending?"

"You won't know about that until the other tributes are gathered." Bending was a difficult thing to allow in the Hunger Games. If only one tribute happened to be a bender his advantage over the others were astronomical, for obvious reasons. That never makes much of a show. To keep things fresh bending sometimes wasn't allowed at all. The decision was based on how many benders happened to be collected. "Just be sure that you remember that you are only a waterbender here."

"But what if-"

"No. The gamemakers will make sure that you do not come out of that arena alive. You are my daughter, you are Korra, you are a waterbender, and a very powerful one at that. No matter what happens you can let no one know that you are the avatar."

Korra only nodded. She knew the truth of what he said. The Hunger Games themselves took place in the Capitol deep in the heart of the Fire Nation. Almost fifty years ago what began as an anti-Zuko organization grew into what eventually became a ruling power. They grew, not only claiming the Fire Nation, but the entire world as well. To establish this as a new world order states and countries were torn down and geography was sorted into districts, each with a main task. When the first signs of rebellion came the first Hunger Games began. Only the Capitol would be spared from them.

The previous avatar, an airbender named Aang, did not support the games. He had stood against the New Ozai society since its very beginning. These games were the final straw that turned the peaceful nomad into an avatar capable of the hottest fires of rage. There was a lot of battles, a lot of sacrifices, a lot of pointless deaths. Seventeen years ago Aang finally lost the war and his life along with it.

Tonraq remembered the scrutiny that the waterbenders in district four had to deal with. Every newborn child was hunted and analyzed. Babies were taken from their homes on suspicion of being the avatar, some never to return. In places there were stories of mothers who tried to escape the peacekeepers by hiding in the wilderness. Most would be found much later after the cold would become too much for them.

Tonraq was careful with Korra. She was capable of bending the other elements since she was a toddler. He taught her to suppress those feelings and instincts. Korra had taken to practicing in secret on her own. Faceless voices in her heart seemed to be the only teachers she needed. Not a single member of her tribe knew her true identity.

"I'll be alright dad," Korra promised. The door opened as peacekeepers told them their time was up. They held each other one last time before they were gone and the door shut again.

Korra saw many more families that day. The people of district four knew she was a career and were proud of her for it. Winning the games in this district was the highest honor, especially among the men of the tribe. They were the true warriors who wore their titles more proudly then the men in the Fire Nation that once called themselves Dragon. On the reverse side the shame of losing the games was a strain of all the family left behind. Siblings of fallen tributes were shunned and, in some cases, considered unfit for marriage.

The people wished her luck and gave her little trinkets. A few asked her to wear their little crafts to the Capitol. Being only allowed to bring one Korra would choose only after they all were gathered. She ended up choosing a small necklace that hung a delicately carved tear shaped sapphire. The stone was encircled with small diamonds that glittered in the sunlight. The boy that had given it to her was young, too young to even had been entered into the games. He seemed all too nervous as he gave it to her saying "She forgot to give this to you," Then disappeared out the door. Korra fitted it around her neck smiling as the stone rested perfectly in the hollow of her neck.

At last the goodbys were over and she stepped into the brightness of the day. The cameras were all around Korra as she waved and smiled to the gathered people. They were cheering and the praise was all for her. Korra had so many memories of being on the other side of the crowds, watching the tributes go. They did just like she did, maybe calling out the names of loved ones somewhere out there. Sometimes Korra hadn't wanted to clap but her father had made her.

Beside her the boy seemed small and insignificant. It was more than obvious that he had been crying. He kept his head low and his shoulders hunched. Maybe he thought if he made himself the shape of a rock then he would become one. The cameras only spent a moment on him. He wasn't going to be an interesting find for the capitol at all.

Kozan raised a few words to the cameras and they boarded the boat that would take them to the capitol.

(A/N) Very short chapter. I figure introductions to characters we mostly already know is a little pointless. Give a review if you can and I'll love you forever.