DISCLAIMER: I do not own Hunger Games, I am merely taking a stroll in it's backdrop. Heck if I owned The Hunger Games why would I be writing fanfiction? Suzanne Collins owns the masterpieces, I wish I had her talent.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Okay I only posted one other fic on this site and that was eons ago, when I was still a Harry Potter fan and I was just starting college back then. Please be gentle in your reviews, and don't say "write more", I like hearing how people like characters, or scenes. I will post more when I have time on my side.

This is my FIRST Hunger Games fic, and its completed, I just have to break it up and edit the subsequent chapters. I don't know who won all the other games so please forgive any flubs on my part and enjoy the read, I certainly enjoyed the write.

Chapter the First

Reaping day

I wake with a start as a cold feeling runs down my spine. Odd since it's hotter then the devil's den outside. Even so I know why I feel like a ghost has just run thru me.
It's reaping day.

You'd think after the first time you feel a bit better, find it easier to breath...one down only five years left to go. But it's never easier, I look off to my left where my friend Xania Harris used to sleep, 'used to' being the key words, she was taken two years ago, died on day two...

I made ten dollars...

Yes it's cold hearted to wage on your best friend but in the end I can only trust two truths:

One: You can't trust friends only family
And Two: The capital won't let go of the gun pointed at your head until you are nineteen years old.

I'm thirteen! Six years of wondering if I will live until next year never agrees with me...

"Ari! Come on get up or you won't get anything to eat!" Seneca calls from the doorway of the girls dormitory

"not hungry" I turn over in bed pulling the blanket around me and the pillow over my head, not until my brother unearths me from my cozy cocoon do I relent, or to be more precise I release my fears on him.

"I don't want to go to the reaping Sen!" I cry, "the odds aren't with us, they never will be!"

He wraps me in his arms and hushes me, "Ari don't be scared, look there are girls in this dorm who have twice the number of ballots as you do or even worse three times! And that doesn't stop them from getting up on reaping day, I have six times the amount and I'm up, dressed and ready for the party...don't let them see you crack right?"
Damn he had to say dad's line

The line he told Seneca on his first reaping day

The line I never got to hear because mom and dad died in a power plant explosion before I turned eleven

"I hate you" I say flatly

"I know you love me lightning bug" Seneca smirks, "otherwise I would have had an atlatl spear in my gut by now" he rubs my back briefly then a pat on the head, "now get up, get wash and get something to eat before the rest of the kids finish off the cereal"

I get up.

I get changed, into the only dress I own, I hate skirts, I feel vulnerable, especially since it gives absolutely no protection from the few snakes that get under the fence. But all the girls at the community home have to wear dresses and all the boys have to wear those awful dark suits.

I wash my face and hands thoroughly and head downstairs, get a bowl of dry cereal and got out onto the porch to eat in solitude, enjoying the brief quiet before we are herded off to get poked and prodded.

We have to be in town square by ten, I hear that in district twelve they only have to be there for two in the afternoon...at least it's better than district one they have to be there for six in the morning. I finish my meager breakfast and return my bowl to the kitchen, Jack Marriott and Sen are talking both already in their dress clothes, Jack is Seneca's best friend and it's his last year in the reaping, same as my brother, if only I could be that lucky.

"There is the twerp now!" Jack says

"Don't say that about the glow worm" says Farrow another eighteen year old, he's huge and his voice broke when he was fifteen, he picks me up, the only one other than my brother who I will allow to get this close, "all set shrimp?" he rumbles with a smile.

The boys always seem to try and make me feel better, Farrow is my honorary bodyguard when the girls try and pick on me. I think Seneca asked him to. Farrow likes to coddle me anyway so it's no surprise he gives me a shoulder ride to town center.

A prick of my finger and I'm shunted off to where the other thirteen year olds are told to wait. I see Michael O'Shea on the other side, he gives a sheepish wave and shrugs, he's the clothier's son, no tesserae for him, four ballots have his name on them. Lucky.

The clock chimes the hour and the mayor stands and addresses us, the escort Madame Perusse sits with the mentors, last year's winner Tracker Kingsly and Hellen Tellermark from three years ago.

Blah blah Great civil war, blah blah Capital obliterating district thirteen blah blah Be grateful blah blah Hunger games and the treaty of treason blah blah, I wonder if anyone really cares anymore. It comes down to the fact the Capital, in all its glory, didn't like the uprising so to teach us not to do it again two kids from each district, one boy one girl are put into this arena and are told only one can survive. They call it 'the hunger games' but you are only fooling yourself if you call it as such, Seneca calls it 'survival of the fastest' games, I call it something I won't mention. Seneca spots me and gives a low whistle to get my attention since I've become so still he thought I stopped breathing, he mouths "are you ok?" and I reply with a brief nod, my vision has become tunneled like nothing else exists except Madame Perusse going to the microphone and saying "ladies first" she goes over to the bowl in her pointy high heals and pulls out an innocent piece of paper.

It doesn't hit me until the girls take a step away from me to know what had just happened.

She said my name.

"Ariana crane"