Chapter 1: Beginnings
Hello! [call me Miche shortened from Michelle]
This is my first successfully finished story, so I ask that you know I'm still a starting author. I've tried writing other stories in the past to no success. Please, if there are any details in the world of the hunger games you think I'm missing or getting wrong, I ask you let me know in a PM so I can make the correct edits and help the story progress better :) Any compliments or comments you have concerning this first chapter, please review! I'd love to hear from my readers!
Thank you to those who read this! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own anything Hunger Games [that's Suzanne Collins] just the characters I put within the story!
-Miche 3
It was my turn. One shot throwing my spear and I had to hit the training dummy. If I failed in any way, today of all days, I'd be placed in the group behind my own, ages 10 to 14. I took a shot, lining myself up in mere seconds, and hit the target from the 40 foot distance they set us at. No applause. Only, "Hit the stomach or head next time," was what I got. the headshot would kill instantly, the stomach would ensure a long death for my opponent. this was my other life, a district 4 tribute in training.
My mother and father, Cece and Cade, were married in the year of the 46th games. When I was eight turning nine years old, my mother and father went on a boating trip with old friends of theirs. There was wine and fine dining. On their way back from being out at sea, the waves began to pick up, and since they were all drinking things were twice as bad. My mother fell from the boat, one big wave sending her over. The moment my father noticed what had happened, he had jumped in to save her. They found she'd hit her head on the propeller, cracking her skull and damaging her brain, but that was found after they took her to the hospital.
Even though they brought her in the E.R. in time to save her life, the incident caused her to be mentally impaired since. The doctors who treated her put her through occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, psychology, physiatry, and social support, and it helped observe her speaking and motor abilities, which she had to relearn. However much they helped, we were told in the end she had lost all of her past memories from falling to when she was 6 about six or seven years old.
Today at the age of 42, she has problems with her short term memory. Slight convulsions happen when she is frustrated or confused. She is able to eat, sleep, and clothe herself now, but she can't pronounce words properly, and gets childlike frustrations when brushing her hair. Some days she will talk to my father, her memories from that year and up with her speech impeding slur, but the same day lose parts of her memory of us. My father has grown used to her fits of crying and anger rants, always being the one to hold her and keep her from hurting herself. We define them as good and bad days.
It has been difficult growing up with a mother like that. Yes, it has always been normal for me, but still I would always wonder what it would be like if she hadn't had her accident. I 'lost' her at a growing part of my life, My little sister had just been born months previously, and my other brothers needed her guidance. We had our father, but he was as distracted with trying to get her to remember as we were with everyday life. Most things we learned ourselves growing up rather quickly.
People who used to know her still check up on us, but most others are almost afraid of her. No one we know says her name much anymore. She cant leave the house when my father isn't here, or she'll have a fit and fight us. We never see any family from her side or my fathers during holidays. They both claim to be only children with no parents. We only have neighbors and family friends who have been mentors to us. My father has grown used to her fits of crying and anger rants, always being the one to hold her and keep her from hurting herself.
Troy was born in the 47th year of games, before her incident. He matched my father's characteristics with my mother's genetic colouring, brown hair and brown hazel eyes. He's always been distant and also authoritative, the classic "older brother." Now, he is a fishermen and has married a girl named Arabella acck in the 69th year in the summer. They have three young sons: Harper, Nik, and Aden.
My second older brother, Saxon, was born in the 52nd year. He looks a lot like my father in his hair and laugh, but holds my mother's kind face. Contrasting to Troy, Sax looks at the finer details of things. he is logical and precise. He's also very creative, helping run the jewelery shop my mother used to own, taking it over at only thirteen, and selling the products they make together. Saxon had stepped up as a role model for me. He was an older brother using some fighting as fun and guidance, but he was also caring and my hero. Trey was always 'too old' to play with being the oldest sibling, so Sax and I found amusment in playing knights and dragons (he the dragon and I the knight), teaching me to surf, and collecting seashells together for the shop. He was my best friend and more understanding of me than my own father.
In the spring of the 62rd, my little sister April was born. She was born only four months before the accident, when my mother and father were still connected in those ways. Unlike my other siblings, she looked just like me. I in turn looked like our mother. She had dark chocolate hair with eyes that held every colour in them. April was the epitome of kind, caring, and innocent. when she was put into training once a week, she'd often come home crying saying she wasn't good enough or that she couldn't kill anyone. I believed she couldn't and never wanted to see her do so. Many children would bully her and compare her to mom's mental illness. This year had been her first.
When every child in our district turns ten, they begin their training for the Hunger Games. We are put through many test, all mentally and physically challenging, and placed in categories based upon our skill set. Some improve to higher standings, the highest top ten being the volunteers of our district, while others fall behind within the first three years. I was always threatened that I was going to fail, but never did. I fought for my placing and fought hard.
When we turn 15, the weakest children's are chosen of half of us. Because the capitol forces us to kill in the games we have to learn how to kill and be trained in killing. From ages ten to fourteen we are taught to defend and survive. At age fifteen the top ten and the bottom ten are pinned against either the weaker or the stronger kids our age and told to fight them to the death. With our bare hands. Why not kill before you're a killer right?
I was pinned against a very skinny boy with curly red hair. I didn't know his name, but in a matter of minutes (with the threat of dying myself) I had his neck bent over my shoulder. I remember feeling his pulse under my hands as my instructor gave me the signal to end him. Head jerking in a quick motion. Painless and instantaneous. The instructors were allowed to let us kill each other if they said to. If someone was killed they claimed it as either an accident when training, or a suicide. No one was allowed to tell of these events in training. I had been a killer at an early age and no one, not even April, knew what I had done.
Today wasn't any different, besides the fact tomorrow was the reaping day. after todays training, we would find out what tributes from what ages would volunteer. the rules were as followed: if a tribute who was not a chosen volunteer was reaped, only the top ten students of that persons age group could volunteer. this rule was set to ensure that the younger tributes be ready to kill and represent their district. it was tragic and horrible, but it happened.
Unfortunately I was one of those top ten kids for the past three years. I had never had the real responsibility to volunteer, for each year someone else from a different age was called. Some kids I knew, others were strangers, but that didn't stop the nauseous feeling from hitting me as I watched them walk up, scared, but willing. We will normally have volunteers eight out of every ten years, and only one of those ten will normally win it all.
Our last living Victor to win had been Finnick Odair. He won the 65th games after being reaped. No one volunteered for him simply because he was within the top five students of his age. He was 14 when he won, I was eleven. I knew of him in training and watched him perform. He was almost flawless in his attack strategy but the defect is what caused him to succeed. People would see his slight hesitation in striking as weakness, and he'd trick them by using that to study his opponent and finish them off in the end. That was his personality.
I met him once. He had taken interest in my fathers business a few years ago when I was 13. Him being 16, he made me blush in the slightest. I hated him for that. He could willingly trick any girl into thinking he thought they were different or special. I had caught his trick and refused to let him get in my head. From then on I despised the man in a way.
Even thought I had despised him and his social ways, I still learned from his fighting technique. Wait and bait the opponent, studying their movement and weaknesses, make strikes few times for them to study my own false weakness, and strike in their mistake, winning.
"Troute! Pay attention!" I snapped from my day dream to see the rubber dummies on cords quickly approaching me, as if they were attacking me. I had to fight them off with a sword and hit them without being hit by their motorized foam arms.
They swung, and missed, at me as I weaved my way through. There would be sure chance of me being hit, as I always was when opponents my age were the student assistants.
Sure enough, when I thought too easily on my directions and not who was swinging, Anna hit me in the face hard with one of the bats. Anna and I never got along. We have always compete to see who was better when I beat her in a fight five years ago. she's always found more reasons to hate me, but that was what sparked the duel. she was currently number seven in the standings, I was wavering between 8 and 9.
The instructor stopped the training and helped me get up with one arm. "You good, Troute?"
"Sure, if my nose wasn't broken." I directed a glare at Anna, she smirked.
"Well if you would've ducked like your suppose to, then we would have this problem." I could've decked her right then and there, but was more focused on what I'd look like tomorrow at the reaping. I'd have a large purple and green splotch on the ridge of my nose.
"Okay, you're done for the day, Troute." Matt had been my ages instructor since we started, each trainer growing with their group so they know strengths, weaknesses, how far to push them, and how.
"Are you kidding me-?!" I protested.
"Get some ice and go home! Score 25 of 30, instead of the 100 like everyone. Happy?"
"It helps." My nose was currently bleeding, and I had to rest the rest of the day. I visited the injury station on my way out and was treated. It wasn't broken, but badly banged up. I'd go back tonight for my private training to prepare better for tomorrow, though. Tomorrow would be interesting.