Written (very quickly) for the Caesar's palace forum monthly challenge contest, for the April prompt of "illusions."

Disclaimers: No beta, low budget, etc etc.

The timer clicked backwards. Ten. Nine. Twenty-four tributes calculated the odds. Six. Five. Deciduous biome. Temperate climate. Three. Two. A classic arena. Zero.

The arena rocked with a high-pitched horn that launched fifteen of the tributes directly towards the cornucopia. The other nine turned tail and fled into the screen of trees, only one of them screaming their head off to spoil the thrilling effect.

All in all, it was shaping up to be a glorious Hunger Games.

Claudius Templeton's pink wig shook as he hooted. "Well, well, Caesar, how about that bloodbath!"

"Let me tell you, Claudius, I have never - never - seen such ruthlessness in a bloodbath, and I've seen my share of bloodbaths!" He held both hands over his chest. "I mean, Greco – wow. Now, we all knew going into the games his rather impressive training score –"

" – an eleven, Caesar, nothing less than an eleven."

"– and so we all knew his potential. But I would have never seen this coming." He paused, tension gathering in the silence. Then the bubble burst from his maroon lips: "Four tributes killed single handedly in the first ten minutes!"

"Incredible!"

"It's incredible! And I have to wonder – is this some kind of a record?" He stood up, gesturing with both hands to someone out of frame. "Can we find out if this is a record?"

Claudius pulled at his sequined jacket. "Sit down, Caesar, sit down!" he laughed.

"I need to know if this is a record!"

"You're such a sucker for statistics, but I think right now what we need…" Claudius swung his face to the camera with a wide grin. "...is to take a look at the rest of the career pack!"

Caesar pumped his fist. "Yes, yes, yes!"

"One word." Claudius held up his forefinger. "Ruby."

Caesar whistled. "She had no trouble taking out that pair from four. I would really not want to be on the wrong side of that girl."

"But her district partner…."

"Now, Claudius." Caesar wagged his finger, his voice reproachful. "Let's not ruin a triumphant moment."

"But it's such a shame!"

"It is a shame," he said, voice low. "Especially when you consider how promising Marble seemed in the interview!"

"A nasty leg wound."

"A terrifying leg wound." Caesar shivered. "Can we get a replay of what happened." A screen near the pair popped to life, displaying a magnified image of a slow-motion sword that inched it's way toward an unwitting leg. "Yes, yes right there and - boom - straight into the thigh."

Claudius shook his head with a smile. "But I have to say, Caesar." He held out his palms, a pose of entreaty. "It's – it's what I love about the hunger games."

Caesar nodded sagely. "The unexpected."

"And it's one of the things that keeps us coming back year after year after year!"

"Oh, I know it's what keeps me coming back." He threw back his head with a throttling laugh. "And I hope – I sincerely hope – that it's what will keep all of you –" He pointed, wide eyes enhanced with heavy, black liner, straight at the camera and a breathless audience beyond. "Yes, all of you, coming back for years to come! We've got ten already dead, excitement and danger lurking around every corner, so stay tuned, Panem! And happy Hunger Games!"

Ruby sat upright on a rotting log, sharpening her dagger against a broad stone. "So you're saying his leg's not going to heal?" Not a single muscle twitched on her expressionless face.

Greco shrugged. "I dunno. I guess one of Marble's sponsors could send some medicine, but without it…." He shrugged again. "Without it it's just gonna fester and die."

"And then he'll become a liability."

Greco licked his lips. He watched Ruby's lean, strong arms as they worked the blade to a razor's edge, muscles stretching and contracting under her thin shirt. "So, uh, I know he's your district partner and all, so Athena and I thought you should decide how to handle it."

Ruby tested the blade against her thumb. A thin line of red blossomed and she slowly licked it away. Then she flung her knife into the hard dirt, handle twanging as she gave her first sign of emotion: a wide grin. "Do you want to do the honors, or should I?"

Athena lifted her hand. "Wait. I hear something." She pointed up. "In the tree. Something's moving."

Greco aimed the flashlight towards a faint rustle. "Ooooh. I remember this one from training." He swaggered towards the trunk and barked out a laugh. "Remember, Ruby? The fail girl, the one who couldn't take out a practice dummy to save her life."

"Nothing she could do would save her life." Ruby walked over and tapped the tip of her blade against the trunk. "Pathetic. I should kill her now and put her out of her misery."

Athena locked eyes with the blonde, eyebrows raised, and lobbed a challenge: "You'll have to climb up there, Ruby."

"Why me?" Ruby lifted her chin. "Are you afraid of heights?"

"She's not worth my time. I'd rather just leave her." She raised her voice. "Let her freeze or starve or both up in that tree!" Leaves fluttered down with a distinct sound of crying.

"What do you think, Greco?" asked Ruby.

"I think Athena's right." He spat into the dirt. "She's a stupid waste of time, and I hate climbing trees."

Ruby rolled her eyes. "Fine. Let's get hunting."

His glasses slipped down his nose for the third time. Hack pushed them up again, idly considered fashioning some kind of lanyard to keep them in place. But he forgot the initiative a beat later, most of his consequential brain power occupied with a captive idea that ran wild in his mind, calculations flowing behind like a slipstream.

"Detonator connects at four hundred volts…"

The careers, while out on their hunt, had left their base at the cornucopia vulnerable, and Hack had used the opening to sneak back and remove the explosives from the base of the pods. As the night hours lingered, two more cannons echoed, a list of the dead unfurled across the sky. Hack ignored it all as he parsed through the devices, muttering, writing long strands of equations with a sharp stick in the dirt.

"Blast radius equal to the square of velocity…."

By morning, a backpack stuffed with two explosive devices hung off his back, one for the careers, and one for the cohort formed by the pair from five and the boy from eight who had allied together during training. Hack hiked towards the camp of the latter, a snug and highly defendable cave tucked into the base of the mountain.

Sweat drenched his back and collar. He slunk as close as he could without detection. Deft fingers armed the unit, and thin legs sped him away till his lungs burned and his chest heaved.

Hack collapsed once he reached the safety zone. He rolled onto his back and smiled at the clouds. He would take this lot out in one fell swoop, then the careers. His heart pumped and pumped, dizzied his mind with the thought that scrawny little Hack could be crowned victor of the Hunger Games – as long as he had the calculations right, and in all his short yet illustrious life in District Three they had never, ever been wrong.

Hack pressed the trigger on the detonator just as he remembered – forgot to carry the five – and a second later four cannons rang out over the treetops.

"Are you still sulking? He's still sulking, people!"

Caesar flung his hands into the air. "I can't get over it. Killed by his own trap!"

"It happens, it happens."

Caesar pointed to the large screen where a slew of body parts rained down with leaves, branches, and earth over a decimated part of the arena. "Obviously!"

Claudius tapped his chin thoughtfully. "What I've noticed is that these tributes are killing each other off at an impressive rate."

"Not too fast, I hope." Caesar sighed. "These games only come once a year. And as much as I love the drama, I'd hate to see it go so soon." A row of gleaming white teeth flashed at the camera. "And I think all of Panem can agree!"

Rose cupped her mouth and yelled up to the branches. "It's all right! You can come down!" She received a crying shriek in reply.

Saffron stepped forward. "We won't hurt you!" He pointed to a satchel at his side. "We've got some food! Aren't you hungry?"

A quivering voice drifted down. "Starving."

"Then come down," Rose pleaded. "We're not going to kill you or anybody."

Leaves fluttered. Branches swayed. A girl slid down the thick trunk and landed without a sound on the soft forest floor. Deathly thin, a shock of tangled brown hair hiding most of her face, she pressed her back against the trunk as if it she could absorb into the bark, fear dilating her eyes.

Rose said nothing, only held out a small piece of stale bread. The girl took small, halting steps forward. Once within arms reach, she snatched the bread out of Rose's palm, then ran back to the tree and gobbled it down.

"We're both from eleven," Saffron said. "How about you?"

She sniffed and rubbed her nose. "Seven."

Rose smiled. "So this place must feel like home to you."

"No." She hugged her lank arms around herself. "It feels nothing like home." Then she scurried back up the tree.

Rose and Saffron watched her climb until she vanished into the foliage. "Was it right to help her?" he asked. "There's no way she'll make it. Why prolong the inevitable?"

Rose didn't answer. Instead she placed a hand against his cheek and gazed into his face. Brown eyes met brown. Recollections surfaced. On reaping day, when the escort had announced that two life long friends would be competing in the Hunger Games together, they had wept in each other's arms all the way to the Capitol. The night before the games, they had made whispered vows into each other's lips. The only way we can be sure we won't be forced to kill each other is if we decide right now not to kill at all.

A pact, a contract till death do them part. And today, neither one of them cried, simply held hands as they walked away from the cowering girl and into the embrace of their fate.

Trish stared up at the tall tree, the girl crouching on the uppermost limbs, and decided her energy was better spent on tributes still on the ground, on the two from eleven that left an easily tracked trail of broken twigs, disturbed detritus, and a pair of cloying smiles.

She tailed them, a predator stalking its prey, until dusk, when their vigilance waned with the sun and they stopped to rest upon a fallen tree, two heads bent together, talking, laughing.

Were they in love?

Trish frowned. Whatever they were, friends or lovers or otherwise, their end would come quick. She pulled out two glinting blades, and thanked her mother one more time for teaching her how to throw knives with both hands.

Caesar moaned into his arms.

"There, there, Caesar." Claudius patted the poof of blue hair that belonged to his co-host. "They come and they go. If I've said it once I've said it a hundred times: Romance and hunger games are two things which emphatically do not go together."

Caesar raised his head, arms beseeching the camera. "But the way they looked at each other, the way they cared for each other! Can you imagine –" both his fists shook in the air "– if they were the final two? It could have been epic!"

Claudius smirked. "More epic than a double kill?"

Caesar froze. "That would certainly be hard to top."

"Then shall we watch it again?"

"Let's watch it again!"

The smiling visages of Rose and Saffron zapped onto the screen, the scene of their demise replayed three times to a chorus of: "Love it, love it, love it!"

When the excitement boiled down, Caesar grew sober, rested his chin over steepled fingers, his mouth pursed. "But it's time to get serious. It's down to the wire." He held out both hands. "On the one hand we have the career pack – strong, lethal, and with the numbers advantage. On the other – our dark horse: Trish."

Claudius leaned forward. "Trishhhhhh…"

"Just her name gives me a chill." He shivered. "And I must say, Claudius, she hid that killer instinct well. I saw none of it at her interview."

"She was all smiles and giggles then!"

"But she's traded those in for a pair of claws, hasn't she?"

"Don't you mean knives?" Claudius said with a sly look.

Caesar pointed at his partner, his mouth a wordless 'O.'"A pair of knives, a pair of kills!" The two shook with laughter. Caesar wiped his eyes and said, "But I think she could take this." He nodded. "I really do, I think it's anybody's game out there."

"Except, of course…." Claudius twirled a finger through the air with a smile. "Our little tree hugger!"

Caesar shook his head. "I think we've only seen her, what – three times the entire games?"

"She hasn't left that tree. Not once."

"And what was her score?" Caesar shuffled a pile of papers on the table. "A three?" he squeaked, appalled. "That's an all time low for the decade."

"She's been lucky. But I think her luck could soon run out."

Caesar slammed both hands on the table. "Let's hope so!"

Trish ran. If I can make the lake, I might have a chance. The hounds were at her heels, and they all wanted her dead.

A spear thunked into the ground a hairsbreadth away. Her shoeless feet bled, legs propelling her towards the bank of the lake and its concealing waters. A few more steps and she could dive to safety. Knives whizzed by her ear. One hit, sunk into her calf with a white hot bolt of pain. Trish stumbled, fell, and stared up into the sky as a hatchet tore into her other leg and a scream wrenched from her throat.

A mocking voice approached. "Well, well, if it isn't the little renegade." A female. "What do you think, Greco?" A head full of ravishing blonde hair bobbed into view and kneeled beside her, tendrils tickling her face.

Another voice. "I think we've been denied a bit of fun the past few days." Male. Low and bloodthirsty.

Ruby straddled the gasping Trish. She waved a large blade over her face. "Then let's play!"

Athena watched from a distance as the two of them toyed and tinkered with their kill, flicked blood in each other's faces and laughed over the unabated screams.

She took off before the killing blow. When the cannon finally sounded, hours later, Athena stopped and glanced at the sky. Down to three.

She knew to get out early. Once the competition had been eliminated, it wouldn't be long before the pack started to devour its own, and Athena was no fool. Greco may be her district partner, but she knew how the wind blew, had known it from the first day of training. The secret smiles, the way Greco's hungry eyes followed Ruby's every move.

Traipsing through the thick woodland, she congratulated herself for her quick thinking and foresight. How often had her mentors praised her, not only for her skill with weapons, but for her tactician's mine? Ruby and Greco – strong and deadly, but utterly lacking in strategy – would no doubt trip into one of her schemes, and as a spider weaves her delicate web, Athena began concocting a her final, brilliant plan to thwart the traitorous pair.

It will start with a false trail – her last living thought before an axe flew out from the shadow of a tree and landed deep within her skull.

A slim waif of a girl dropped from a low branch. She stood up, back strong and erect, her face a mask steely resolve, and retrieved her hatchet from Athena's still twitching corpse.

Axe in hand, her lips lifted into a smile and she set forward, ready to embed it into two more skulls.

A cannon blast reverberated across the arena. Another shortly followed suit.

A voice split open the sky:

"Congratulations Johanna Mason! You are the winner of the Seventy-first Hunger Games!"