A Matter of Perspective:

The 67th Annual Hunger Games

By Alex Smith

A/N: Just so everyone knows, this isn't a SYOT (Submit Your Own Tribute) story. As much as I enjoy SYOTs, I also like being free to create my own characters and storylines, and as this is my first piece of Hunger Games fanfiction, I thought I was better off sticking to the latter style of story.

Chapter 1:

I Can't Protect You

District 1 – Jade's POV

'I volunteer.' It's a simple enough sentence, but around here it means so much. It means you're willing to sacrifice everything for a shot at power and glory and fame. It means you're strong enough to take down twenty-three other competitors and confident enough to tell the world about it. It means you're fearless, it means you're ready for anything, and on this particular occasion, it means you're me.

The girls around me all turn and glance my way. None of them look surprised; I've been preparing for this moment for a long time, and I haven't exactly been quiet about it. Slowly, a ripple of murmuring voices spreads through the crowd, the throng of people surrounding me, the entire population of District 1. From atop the gleaming stage, a man with dyed orange hair turns and looks at me, a grin plastered over his face.

'How exciting – a volunteer!' he cries, though he must be faking the excitement because this is no different from any other year. There are always volunteers, sometimes more than one for each slot, dozens of people fighting for two tribute spaces, two chances to be victors; the greatest honour anybody can receive, to be a champion of the Hunger Games.

This year, though, there are no more volunteers. I've made sure of that, by going round and 'having a friendly chat' with the other contenders. We've been training our whole lives for this, but nobody's trained harder than me. I deserve this the most, and I was hardly going to let that stuck-up Sapphire try and take my rightful place on that stage.

I try to catch Sapphire's eye as I walk through the crowd, up towards the stage. I can't see her from ground level, but as I ascend the staircase I spot her, fuming silently in the front row. I flash her a smile, and move on.

The small, scrawny girl who was reaped starts to thank me as I pass her on the stage, but I brush past, nearly knocking her over. I don't have time for children like her, even worse than Sapphire; the kids who don't want the power and riches that the Games bring. They make me feel sick, almost. She stumbles off of the stage, down the stairs, and I lose sight of her in the masses of people.

'Now then, miss,' says my district's escort, the orange-haired man. 'Why not tell us your name?'

'Jade,' I reply, giving my best beaming smile. He laughs, and several members of the crowd cheer. 'Jade Carnelia.'

'Well then, Jade Carnelia, congratulations! You've just become the very first tribute in the 67th Annual Hunger Games!'

District 8 – Guff's POV

Everyone turns to look at me when my name gets called out, but there's only one person who's reaction I'm studying. An old woman, with withered skin and a face that could have been carved from a tree trunk. She sees me, locks eyes with me, and in that moment, her face falls. I see the last vestiges of hope leave her, and I know why. I've as good as killed her grand-daughter.

Azalea is stood on the stage, waiting for me to join her, my fellow tribute. I've never spoken to her, but I see her often, running through the streets, her hair filled with pink ribbons. This is her first year of reaping; she's only twelve years old. She's wearing those pink ribbons today, fluttering in the wind gently. Her name was only in the glass ball once, but still she was chosen. Nobody volunteered to replace her – loyalty, friendship, courage, only goes so far when it comes to the Games. Her only hope was a strong male tribute, someone selected to protect her in the arena. Instead, she gets me.

I walk with a limp as I amble towards the stage. Everybody's looking at me. If someone able-bodied had been reaped, they could have taken care of her, made sure she wasn't hurt, sacrificed themselves to let her live as victor. But someone able-bodied wasn't reaped. I was. The boy with one arm.

When I was thirteen, four years ago now, my father took me into the factory where he worked. We specialise in textiles in District 8, and this particular factory was for heat-dyeing. It's a relatively new process, but very quickly it's become more and more prominent in the factories around where I live, as Capitol fashions change constantly and new clothes need to be produced at an alarming rate.

The heat-dye vats are pretty simple things, really. Clothes made of white fabric are dipped into the vat by an automated rail system, where the clothes hang from steel pegs that go down into the massive steel barrels, pull back up again, then move along to another area of the factory to dry. The vats are filled with dyes of all different colours, depending on whatever's in vogue with the Capitol this or that week. The thing that sets them apart from the other dyeing factories is that the dyes are heated up to something like 130 degrees Celsius, with means the vats are literally bubbling and starting to turn to steam. I'm not quite sure how the science of it all fits together, but apparently it means that the clothes and fully and completely dyed in less than a minute. Something about the way the dye reacts with the fabric at certain temperatures.

I was an idiot when I was thirteen. While my dad's back was turned, I decided it would be funny to sneak a few of my friends in through a loose panel in the far wall of the building. They all thought it was hilarious, hiding from the elderly Peacekeeper who oversaw everything, loitering around the backs of the vats, talking about trivial things like schoolwork and ball games. At one point, one of my little gang pulled out a small rubber ball from his jacket pocket and started springing it off of the side of one of the vats, letting it jump back into his awaiting hands. As he grew more confident, the ball went higher and higher up the side of the vat, until eventually he was bouncing it against the rim at the top of the vat and letting it fall back down to the ground.

Then I decided to take control, since I was pretty confident that I had the best throwing arm. I snatched the ball on its return descent, ignoring my friend's protests, and hurled it upwards at the vat. I overshot myself, and the ball went over the rim; I thought for a moment I had lost the ball, dropped it into the searing hot dye. But then I saw it clang into the automated rail that hung clothes over the vats, and to my surprise it wedged itself in between two pieces of metal that made up the rail.

The four or five boys with me all laughed at my good fortune, except for the boy who's ball I had taken, who looked a little surly. To placate him, I agreed to get his ball back for him, since it was my fault it was up there. The vat's sides were smooth, but the wall of the factory was not; there were plenty of rims and ledges where the metal of the wall had been joined by unsteady hands, a long time ago, and I was able to make footholds out of many of them. I was a good climber, and I must have scaled the wall in five minutes, if not less. None of the factory workers noticed me, and the Peacekeeper was nowhere in sight; probably snuck out back to smoke his foul cigar. I clambered from the side of the building onto the edge of the vat; it wasn't as hot as I expected it to be, perhaps because whatever metal the vats were made of didn't conduct heat so well. I shimmied round the edge until I got to where the rail was, and started looking for the ball, taking hold of a curved metal joint on the rail that formed a useful handhold.

Then everything seemed to happen at once.

In retrospect, it seems pretty obvious that the automated rail would have been about to move along. I had been watching it move up, down and across the factory ceiling for hours that day, so as I reached out for the ball I should have realised that my handhold was going to slip away from me. All I can remember is a sudden, lurching feeling in my stomach as the rail started to move, and then a white hot flare of agony as my arm dipped into the boiling dye and began to burn.

I was told, after I woke up in the District 8 hospital, that I had somehow managed to cling on to the rail as it moved away from me, so that I didn't fall completely into the dye. Instead, only my left arm and left leg were submerged in the scalding liquid. The other workers at the factory have since told me that my father moved like a lightning bolt as soon as he heard my scream. To this day, I find it hard to believe that a middle-aged man with a pot belly was able to climb the wall beside the vat in less than half the time it took me, and pull me single-handedly to safety. But that, so they tell me, is exactly how it happened. At the time, all I was conscious of was the blazing heat raging inside my arm and leg.

Looking on the bright side, they managed to save my leg. I still have deep black scars running down the length of it, and I walk with a heavy limp, but I still have it. My arm was not so fortunate. My burns quickly became infected, and the doctors told me that it was either amputation or death.

Every so often, I still wake up coated in sweat, from nightmares of falling into the dye and never surfacing again, consigned to burn for eternity. If my screams wake him up, then sometimes my dad comes in to try and settle me down. He sits at the edge of my bed and says things like 'don't dismiss yourself' and 'you can still achieve whatever you want to achieve.'

I wonder what he's thinking now.

I look up as I walk onto the stage, try to find him in the audience. But he must be stood near the back somewhere, because I don't recognise him amongst the multitude of faces below me. Azalea turns to me as I stand next to her. Her lip is quivering. She looks like she's about to burst into tears.

I can't protect you, I think. But that doesn't mean I'm not going to try.

A/N: Thank you very much for taking the time to read the first chapter of my story. I've been working on this for quite some time, and it's my first story here that isn't a one-shot. I very much hope you'll stick with me as I continue to update and write new chapters. As the title and summary suggest, we'll be following the Games from every tribute's perspective at some point, so expect future chapters to introduce you to more of this year's unlucky contestants. If you enjoyed the story, or even if you didn't, please consider leaving a review letting me know why you liked or didn't like it. If you're considering staying with Jade, Guff and the rest of the tributes for the 67th Games, why not add this story to your story alerts, so you'll know as soon as it's updated? Updates will probably be weekly, perhaps slightly more regular than that, depending on how busy I am in coming weeks (it's currently exam time for me, so I might be very busy). Anyway, that's enough rambling from me. Thanks once again for your time, and have a nice day.

-Alex