Disclaimer: Angel and the Hunger Games are the intellectual property of Joss Whedon and Suzanne Collins, respectively, and the concept for this story belongs to Marcus S. Lazarus. Only the execution of it is mine.

Timeline: first part of this chapter picks up from the end of NFA, then jumps to the end of the 74th Hunger Games.

Pairings: TBA as the rules of the challenge didn't specify any and I haven't decided yet. Unless things develop differently as I go on, I'll probably stick to canon couples.

"Let's go to work."

With Angel in the lead, the remaining members of his team charged forward to meet the approaching army. Hack, slash, tear, punch, kick, bite, behead…the world dissolved into a blur of violent motion as they clashed with one demon after another, and another, and another - the horde came on in endless waves, and the ceaseless battle was a tide that swept them up and washed away everything else, the grief over Wesley's death and Lorne's departure, the worry over what else the senior partners might throw at them if by some miracle they survived this battle…

Then the pungent scent of human blood suffused the air, drawing the attention of every vampire present. Gunn, already weakened by his previous injury, had just gotten a chunk torn out of him by something with very long claws, spraying a geyser of blood across the alley. Angel threw aside a demon that was trying to attack him from the side in time to get a clear view of Gunn using the last of his strength to bury a blade in the thing's throat before his body realized it was dying and gave out. He crumpled to the ground and never got up again. He had beaten Illyria's estimate of how long he would last - ten minutes at best - by a full five minutes.

There was no time to mourn or even retrieve his body, because the army continued to pour in on them, and they were now outnumbered a million to three instead of four. The odds against them worsened yet again when four demons got hold of Spike; they each seized a limb and pulled as if to draw and quarter him, and then a fifth grabbed his head and removed it with a single mighty yank.

Spike's body crumbled into a shower of dust, leaving Angel feeling oddly bereft. He couldn't exactly say he was fond of his grand-childe - the man was far too good at pushing his buttons - yet he'd grown used to having Spike around. Whether as an ally or an enemy, Spike had been part of Angel's existence for so long that Angel had believed he would always be there, and the prospect was no longer as repulsive as it had once been. Now he was gone, taken down by a pack of berserker demons of all things. At least it had taken five of them to destroy him; Spike would be proud that he hadn't gone down easily.

The ground shuddered, and Angel realized he wasn't just feeling shaken after witnessing Spike's demise - the earth actually was shaking as the giant creature whose silhouette he'd glimpsed at a distance lumbered closer, trampling a great number of demons on its own side. It let out a deafening roar when it saw Angel and swung a weapon resembling a huge meat tenderizer at him…

###

Angel woke with a start, breathing hard after reliving that long-ago clash with the Senior Partners' army. It was that time of year again; the nightmares always got particularly bad during the Games. The world he lived in now provided a wide variety of subject matter for nightmares, but throughout the Hunger Games he dreamed exclusively of the battle that had claimed the lives of Spike, Gunn, and Wesley. It only seemed right that one brutal slaughter brought back memories of another, which only ended when he and Illyria had managed to kill the giant by leaping onto its shoulders and sawing through its neck. It crushed the remainder of the army, those that hadn't already been killed by Angel's team or fled when one of their own began stepping on them, as it fell to the ground in its death throes.

Afterward, the two of them that were left thought they'd won; only later did they realize how horrifyingly wrong they were. The demonic legion the Senior Partners sicced on them hadn't been their opposition in some great final battle but a mere distraction - assassinating the Circle of the Black Thorn proved beyond doubt that Angel could never be won over to the side of evil, so the Senior Partners wanted him out of the way while they put their millennia-old plans for a real apocalypse into play.

Wolfram and Hart's influence had already spread to every corner of the globe, and now they finally used it to orchestrate the total collapse of human society, which they then rebuilt into a demon's paradise. North America was reorganized into a single nation called Panem, its human population imprisoned in twelve districts which were actually little more than labor camps where they were forced to spend their lives toiling in service to the demons who now ruled the world.

Of course, some demons required more than the fruits of their subjects' labor, and so the Hunger Games were born. The humans thought the Games were designed to remind them of the Capitol's power and the uselessness of resisting it, but if that was their only purpose the bodies of fallen tributes could at least be returned to their families for a proper burial. No bodies were ever returned, however, because the 'tributes' were in reality sacrifices for demons who preferred to dine on - or had other, even more gruesome uses for - human flesh, and the fact that these were the bodies of humans who had slaughtered each other made them all the tastier. Nearly every single creature spat out by any of the various hell dimensions thrived on the orgy of violence and corruption that was the Hunger Games, delighting in pitting mankind against itself and turning children, who should have been the most innocent among them, into murderers.

Intercontinental travel was impossible thanks to magical barriers, so there was no way of knowing if the rest of the world was this bad, if there were Hunger Games everywhere; Angel had to hope things might be better elsewhere, but he couldn't know for sure unless he found some way of breaking the boundary around North America. Breaking the boundary, however, would mean breaking the Senior Partners' hold on power, which was beginning to seem impossible. Almost a year after the apocalypse they had somehow managed to undo or at least block the effects of Willow's Slayer activation spell; as far as he knew, there hadn't been a single Slayer anywhere in the world since that day, and with nearly every other supernatural entity either cowed into submission or willingly aligning themselves with Wolfram and Hart, Angel and Illyria, the one true ally he had left, were hopelessly outnumbered.

Speak of the devil, and she will appear, he thought as Illyria forced his door open. "I have been monitoring the Games," she announced unnecessarily - she always watched the Games whereas Angel refused to, preferring instead to stay in his quarters and read the books Wesley, Fred, and Gunn had left behind. Gunn's taste in reading material ran mostly to comic books - at least before his brain was altered to make him a legal expert - which were now yellowed with age and frayed around the edges, some of Wesley's books which had already been ancient when he had them were ready to fall apart, and Angel pretty much had them all memorized…still, the choice between rereading his old friends' favorites or watching the Hunger Games was never hard.

"There has been a development," Illyria continued, ignoring his scowl. "I believe it is significant, but you should see it for yourself."

Although reluctant, Angel knew she wouldn't try to get him to watch anything pertaining to the Games without a very good reason, so he followed her to the viewing room they had set up in order to keep an eye out for any sign that the people had had enough and were ready to overthrow their demonic overlords; however, as the decades went by with no indication that rebellion was imminent, Angel had spent less and less time in there. Still, the TVs stayed - at least they provided a diversion for Illyria.

Frozen onscreen was what appeared to be a scene from the end of this year's Games; there were only two tributes left standing, a blond boy and a girl with dark hair in a long braid. The girl had a bow and arrows, while the boy appeared to be unarmed. She would take him down easily. Instead, when the playback commenced, the girl threw away her weapon and took out a handful of nightlock berries.

When the boy grabbed her arm to stop her from eating them, she took his hand and poured some of the berries into his palm, keeping half for herself. "Trust me." A meaningful look passed between them, an unspoken agreement that neither of them would leave without the other.

"Together?" the boy asked.

"Together," she confirmed.

They began counting, the boy pausing to finger the girl's braid when they got to two. On three, they both raised the berries to their mouths.

"They love one another," Illyria explained as Angel stared at the screen. "Both of them come from District Twelve, and their affair became a recurring theme throughout the Games. There was even talk of allowing two victors from the same district so that both could leave the arena alive, but of course the decision was revoked once all the other tributes were dead. There can only be one victor; they must have the correct number of dead to sacrifice, yet they also need a victor to provide the feelings of guilt and shame that are more valuable to certain of their ilk than a corpse." A puzzled frown briefly creased her face; even after a few centuries in the modern world she still had some difficulty grasping the fact that there were demons to whom humans were more valuable alive than dead.

With both remaining tributes poised to end their lives and deprive the Capitol of their 'living sacrifice', the voice of Claudius Templesmith boomed through the speakers, yelling, "Stop! Stop! Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the victors of the seventy-fourth annual Hunger Games, Katniss Everdeen and Peeta Mellark of District Twelve!"

Illyria's ice-blue eyes flicked toward Angel to gauge his reaction. "You once said overthrowing the Wolf, Ram, and Hart and their allies will be impossible until others are ready to defy their masters and fight alongside us. Is Katniss Everdeen's audacious ploy the act of defiance you have been waiting for?"

Angel finally tore his eyes off the TV. "It'll take more than one act of defiance, Illyria, and Katniss Everdeen just signed her own death warrant - maybe her boyfriend's too. Wolfram and Hart still need another body, and they'll get it one way or another. …They can't touch her in the Capitol, though," he added slowly, thinking aloud. "They may have taken over, but they still thrive on what they've always drawn their strength from: man's inhumanity to man. That's why they've kept so many people alive, why they pit them against each other in these Games…that's why they still keep up the façade, especially in the Capitol so that the humans who've bought in to their regime don't realize what it is they're really following. They won't risk exposing themselves attacking her in their own city when they can wait until she goes home to the most isolated place in Panem and they can arrange an 'accidental' death for her. If I move fast, maybe there's a chance…" He rushed off, leaving his sentence unfinished.

Illyria followed, easily keeping pace with the vampire. "Where are you going?"

"District Twelve! I have to get to Katniss Everdeen before Wolfram and Hart do!"

This is my first time responding to a challenge (i.e. writing someone else's idea) but this one looked interesting and when I found out no one else had taken it up I just couldn't resist. I haven't quite figured out where this will fit into my updating schedule along with my three other active fics, but rest assured I have every intention of finishing it.