It's amazing the things that get stuck in your head when you're supposed to be writing a 100 page science dissertation.
The Training Center
I look up as the two men start shouting instructions to the crowd below. With precise gestures and signals the message is passed on and the pulley lift is loaded with another box of roof nails and begins its trip up the side of the wooden scaffolding. Efficiency at its finest. Anyone from our district would be proud.
"It sure has gone up quick," Arkose says at my side, nodding approvingly as the hammering starts again. For someone who initially wanted no part in this plan and who physically threw me out of his house when I first suggested it he's become quite invested in the success of our little project.
Garret was always on my side and had been paying a few of the street kids to do odd jobs around the Victor's Village that involved heavy lifting and physical endurance for years. I had tried to get around it all by simply buying food and clothing for the less fortunate of our district with my ridiculously large victor's salary. After just seven months I was barred from ordering more than five meals worth of anything at a time and one of our Capitol Liasons personally met with me to inform me that any clothing I purchased that wasn't my size would be charged directly to the Community Home's account.
I stopped of course, and immediately set about planning some approved method of spending all this unnecessary money on the people who needed it most. The idea hit me as I watched the girl from my district volunteer. She was a ragged thing from the poorest end of town, with seven younger siblings and a crippled father. While she didn't admit it I suspected she was one of the crowd selling herself out for anything she could to keep food on their table.
She came so very close to achieving her dream of winning the Games and giving her family a life of riches and the only thing that stopped her was the Capitol crowd preferring the pretty blonde bitch who talked better. It made me wonder if they would only spend their money buying arena gifts for the good looking, or whether they would respect a strong and fearless competitor for their own sake. It was certainly worth considering, and after speaking to Garret's crowd of yard-workers I felt sure that there would be enough in our district to take up the burden and risk.
After all, one of the cruellest things about the Hunger Games is that if forces young, helpless children into a strange environment where they would struggle to survive even if they weren't trying to bash each-other's heads in. The victor more often than not is just whoever is strongest or maybe knows that particular environment well enough to gain an advantage. Usually they are amongst the older tributes, with their extra size and greater life knowledge.
I was lucky in my Games. No-one else really knew much about surviving in a desert. My knowledge came mostly from a handful of school library books I had been reading as an extension of a class project. They all talked about how the native creatures of the desert had evolved to need minimal water, and how important it was for non-desert animals to stay hydrated. They also gave me the idea of sleeping in shelter during the hot days and travelling mostly at night, and to cover myself completely to avoid sunburn, though my olive skin wasn't prone to it which helped a lot.
The Gamemakers had apparently provided enough water scattered around the starting supply pile for each tribute to have one bottle. The plan had been for the tributes to each gather their share and be forced to fight one another once their own supply ran out. Instead most of them ran for the weapons right in the middle of the pile and fought for them while I loaded the largest bag I could find with nine bottles and ran for safety. There were no arena gifts bought by Capitol fans back then and the Gamemakers weren't impressed when they watched their tributes drop one by one from dehydration.
I made sure to stay suitably humble in the interviews of course. I was a scrawny, scared fifteen-year-old who's Games highlights were killing two scorpions, a baby snake and a long-eared fox. And not stumbling around ranting hoarsely about hallucinations before my withered body collapsed on the sand. I played up the shy, likeable kid who couldn't believe his luck that he got out alive. I didn't complain when made me up like my old native ancestors and suggested that I probably believed in totem animals and wind spirits. I played nice for President Yates and he didn't give me any trouble.
I got to go home to my folks and live with my Mom and Dad and two big sisters in my nice big new house, and see them all fed and safe. Until I found out that once I turned eighteen they would have to all move out back to town as I would be a legal adult with no younger siblings to guardian.
The day they left to take up their old jobs at the steel refinery I approached my fellow victors with my plan. After a few rounds of negotiation with Arkose, who personally fought with the Thirteen rebels during the Dark Days and despite his public image as the first killer of any of the Games, didn't want to be seen actively supporting the Capitol I contacted our Liason and gave him our proposal.
We had all heard the complaints about the downfall of Peacekeeper numbers over the past few years. Apparently every step further we got away from the war meant more young Capitol folk preferring to spend their lives in glamour and ease rather than in hard training and a dismal post in some district keeping the locals in line. Our district had been the first to turn against the overbearing leadership of Thirteen during the war, with over half of our people actively fighting for the Capitol by the time Thirteen was bombed out of existence.
Compared to the complete Rebel loyalists, Six, Seven, Ten, Eleven and Twelve, and even the other Districts who had started to turn at least towards peace if not entirely favouring the Capitol, our people were practically trustworthy. If the Capitol got them young and trained them hard it's not like they would grow up with any seditious ideals. Of course the Capitol couldn't be seen taking district children away before they had stood their turn at the reaping, which meant the training school would have to be situated here. And they didn't actively want to be seen recruiting from the districts either, so the whole thing would have to be supervised yet informal. They would need someone with Capitol connections who they wouldn't have to pay to oversee the school. Someone like three bored, lonely victors.
It took us months of negotiations, but after agreeing to a strict schedule of inspections (to ensure we were teaching proper rhetoric and ideology) and with all three of us turning over a full half of our victor salaries to pay for the running costs, we got permission to build our Junior Peacekeeper Training Center.
Garret and I immediately started recruiting and our first crop of students helped our small crew of builders lay the foundations and haul supplies as part of their daily work-out. Six boys and five girls between the ages of nine and sixteen, half from the Community Home, the others from poor families who couldn't afford the extra mouth to feed. All survivors and solid hard workers. With the three daily meals provided, as well as their physical training regimen they have all grown strong. And like anyone from our district, they know who they owe their debt to and will hold their honour.
Every year the strongest amongst them will provide us with a willing volunteer for the Hunger Games so that no scared, helpless child from District Two will ever have to compete again.