The second thing they tell you when you begin is that you will be the first to obtain perfection. The first thing, of course, being that whichever one of you volunteers will emerge victorious and bring great glory to the District. They can't just tell you that you'll win and that you'll be the first to score that pretty little twelve, they have to be perfect in telling you about how perfect you'll be. Some of you will be consumed with it, that quest for perfection, winning forgotten in a sea of arrogance, already reaching for a goal made impossible by years of premeditated nitpicking.
But of course, that's the whole point. Give the Districts who don't desperately need the victory something to keep them focused on the Games, on their blood sport. Keep them hating each other, keep someone waiting to be the first, to be guaranteed and extra shower of glory as they float off to their guaranteed victory.
It's funny, really. Anyone smart would avoid that twelve and leave a target off their back, but you'll still brag to your friends through eight years of training about how you'll be the first one to get twelve. And you'll watch the games, and you'll mock all those who can't obtain this impossibility through sheer cockiness or skill or ability that you'll never have anywhere except your clouded mind.
Until two brilliant idiots finally piss off the Gamemakers so much that years of purposeful tradition are screwed over and leave that perfection you'll have been pushing for for so long meaningless. And where will that leave you? That extra carrot dangled under your nose will be gone. You'll still want to win, but even if you win you'll be no different than every other winner ever before you. So I suggest you give up now, ignore the cockiness and pretentiousness and competitiveness. But of course you'll never hear me, never have that seed of doubt. And you will try for perfection, and you'll all die like the rest of them, in one way or another imperfect, always a seven or eight or nine or ten or eleven. Never a twelve.
A/N: This was written for Starvation Forum's December one-shot contest (Perfection). I'm experimenting with second person , so feedback would be awesome.
