Disclaimer: I didn't invent the character or the setting or the Hunger Games Trilogy, which is why I am poor. Enjoy!


"I'm always dreading the others, but maybe Foxface is the real opponent here"

People always said she had a good head on her shoulders, even for a member of District 5.
She'd done the math, calculated the chances, the possibilities-

It still didn't look good.


District 5, for all its smarts, did not have many children. She had entered her name more than once, more than anyone, because she- no, her mother- needed the rations.

Plus, there weren't many eligible children of her age left. Not after the disastrous drug that was supposed to cure any problems with vision in young children. Because District 5 made the drugs, they also got to be the ones to test it. And, well, the tests didn't go well.

Just a few weeks ago, the family had moved from the east to the west of the District. The chances of survival were greater there, though it was difficult to get into the west. Her father had to work three jobs to even pay off the debts, clean the record, have a chance at the lottery.

It's always a struggle to survive.

Ironic, really, that just when they moved to be safer-

There was no point in dwelling on it.

It wasn't going to look any better.


Even the small glimpses she's caught so far of the Capitol seem a world apart from the cobblestone roads and stark white houses in the District. These buildings are colourful, original, special. There are shops on every corner, and people have strange hair.

It's not home.

She wishes she could show these colours to her sister. She wishes she could bring her brother one of the toy planes she'd seen a little boy play with. She wishes she could live here, she wishes her mother could go to the hospitals here, she wishes her father could find work here.

She wishes, she wishes, but she knows, too. And it still doesn't look good.


Her make-up artists compliment her features in the most artificial voices she's ever heard. She suspects this is how they always talk to all their customers in the Capitol. Everyone is placated, pacified to the extreme.

That's what the games are for, aren't they?

She doesn't want to wear the horrendous outfits they chose for District 5. They feel dirty on her skin, she feels like a fraud, this feels like one big circus-

She laughs to herself. Of course it does.

Why should she wear the glorified lab-coat, representing the medicine industry of her district, when that same district somehow can't supply her mother with a cure? Her mother gets to die, while these bubbly, self-centered airheads complain about needing new pain killers, or talk about the latest cream by so-and-so which makes your complexion gleam like a pearl!

She wants to punch something.

But that's not who she is, and it's not who she will become in the games. That much is for sure. Her last impression to the world (and to her mother- no, she can't think of that) shouldn't be of violence and rage. She wants to show the world what District 5 is made of. Smarts, that's for sure. And a certain amount of fight, that too. It's not District 1, where everyone lives comfortably, and it's not District 12, where, apparently, poverty is rampant. It's somewhere in between, if you're lucky. And if you're her family, well-

There's always more work to be found, they say. Work harder and the money for the medicine will come to you.


She quietly surveys the other tributes like a fox on the hunt. There's nothing special about some of them, but others make excellent tributes. There's the Careers, of course, and then there's that Katniss girl.

She looks like real competition.

Her arrows land perfectly, every time. She looks interested in the knots. She knows what she's doing, or is at least good at pretending she does.

That's half the game, isn't it?


She doesn't lack motivation, that's for sure. She just doesn't allow herself to hope. Because if she did, she could imagine herself coming home, greeting the people of District 5, waving to them, kissing her little siblings on the cheek, hugging her parents, providing a new house, more money, money which could be used for the treatment-

This is why she doesn't dare to hope. It's childish in a way, but maybe if she doesn't imagine the best case scenario, she won't be disappointed. She feels that imagining it might jinx it, or something.

With every tribute score announced, it's starting to look even worse.

This was going to be one hell of a Hunger Game.