It came as no surprise to anyone in District 10 when L Lawliet was chosen as tribute.
Even from where Mello is standing, the flurry of paper slips in the bingo ball cage spell out fragments of his brother's name hundreds of times, flashes of "Law"s and "lie"s behind the metal wires.
L is fifteen, the eldest of sixty-three. His name had been entered 444 times.
"Come on up young man!" the announcer calls out.
"Make sure Beyond doesn't set the house on fire," L tells Mello before they cart him off to murder children.
Mello is disgusted by the glitzing gaudiness of District 1 every year, but this time he thinks he's personally offended.
The diamond-encrusted chariot passes leisurely across their fitzing television screen, ash-white horses with gleaming gold horns sprouting from their foreheads (Mello hears one of the kids ask Beyond if they're really unicorns; Beyond is all too quick to shatter their dreams with that high mocking laughter everyone hates) trotting slow enough for their riders to sip flutes of champagne.
For a region that specializes in luxury items, no expense was spared in their tributes' attire. Rubies stud the girl's back, glinting scarlet against her black silk bouffant gown. Her pigtails are held back by shining silver skeletal hands, clutching blonde hair tight. She has a genuinely pleased look on her face when she fist-pumps along with the screaming crowds, grin and eyes too wide to be fake.
The boy is less enthusiastic, but captivates the crowds all the same. He greets the audience with a head held high and a smile Mello can't help but think of as "winning". His suit jacket catches the breeze, fine crystals and a blue rose pattern peeking from the underside.
The thick pairs of black wings flexing from their backs trail feathers, flying into the riders' mouths behind them. Mello hopes L's entrance embarrasses his competitors just as much.
"That boy's name is literally Light," Near says aloud, to no one in particular, but everyone groans.
"I hate him," Mello says, absent-mindedly rubbing at a chicken scratch on his forearm. "I hope L rips his heart out."
"He looks like he takes it up the ass," Beyond says. His blood-blotted uniform hangs low around his shoulders, lower than it had last week. He'll be filling it in better in the coming week, as one less mouth to feed means a bit more on everyone's plates. "When's L going to be on?"
As soon as L rolls into vision, Wammy's Slaughterhouse lapses into a horrified silence.
L, squatting on a high plastic stool, has a half-eaten three-tier chocolate cake on his lap. He ignores the confused cheers from the crowds to chew thoughtfully and stare at the back of his horse's head, an old quivering nag with a mane tangled with candy wrappers.
His wooden cart is piled high with bowls of ice cream and plates of slices of cherry pie, towers of multi-coloured macarons swaying perilously.
The audiences have stopped cheering onscreen. District 10 is a livestock industry. They had expected a cowboy hat, or a leather jacket, or at the very least, a bounty of meat rather than sweet.
"Is he wearing the same clothes he was on the day he left? Holy shit, he is," Matt says, before doubling over in laughter, gloved hands still bloodied from cow entrails staining his sides.
Mello knocks Matt upside the head.
"The ride to the Training Center is a chance for L to impress Capitol citizens and intimidate rivals," he says. "I"m sure this is all part of some sneaky manipulative plan."
Linda laughs from across the room.
"Shut up, Lin!"
She laughs louder.
The night before the games, Watari shuts down business operations. They'll be losing out on plenty of profit, since most only buy food after sunset and their 14-hour shifts had ended. But it would be too cruel to make any child miss seeing L alive and safe for what could be the last time. The cattle can wait for their deaths a little longer.
Most of the interviews pass by without incident. District 12's tribute kicked off the night, declaring she would be a "god of death" in the arena and blowing kisses to District 1's Misa, who looked unimpressed when the cameras cut to her reaction. District 6's Aiber had dazzled audiences with a card trick sure to draw the fickler sponsors, enticed by a smooth-talker's flashy sleight of hand rather than his low training score. District 3's Wedy cool, clipped answers about her technological prowess had Matt gushing for several minutes, while Misa and District 2's Mikami had Beyond practically smushing his face into the screen, saying "get a good look at those eyes, these kids are gonna go far" over and over.
District 1's now wingless Light Yagami went after his female counterpart. As they pass each other on the stage, Misa gives Light a quick peck on the cheek before sashaying away, leaving a wildly cheering audience in her wake.
"That's no good," Near says under his breath.
Mello would never admit it, but he agreed. As career tributes from the richest region, they had the advantage of life-long training and an abundance of resources. The fact that they were both charismatic and knew how to attract support from the masses made it all the more likely they would be the biggest threats to L.
The Games usually has two tributes per district, but for this year's Quarter Quell, every even-numbered district was to send only one tribute. It would be an unusual kindness from the Capitol, the sparing of one child, except those districts receive no aid from a mentor. The odd-numbered districts has the handicap of only having one sponsor, as chosen by their mentor.
Since District 1 could only have one sponsor, chances are their actions just netted them one of the wealthiest. Mello scowls throughout the rest of Light's interview, cursing the boy's carefully chosen answers and open body language. He thinks he'll pray for Light's first gift to be expired chocolate tonight, or something useless like an empty bag of potato chips or a diary.
Beyond notices Mello's foul mood and slings an arm around him, pulling him close.
"Awww, don't feel bad, baby bro. Worried about L? It'd be best to accept his death now and move on."
"Come off, B. L's not going to lose," Mello says, hitting the other off with a headbutt to the neck. "Has L ever lost once in his life?"
"No, I suppose you have a point," Beyond says.
"Exactly," Mello begins to say, but Beyond has already grabbed him by the shoulders, rough enough that the rush of air chokes the word out of him.
"L does have experience killing after all. Remember A?" he says, his voice low and breath hot on Mello' ear.
"Fuck you," Mello hisses.
Adrastos is Beyond's favourite bedtime story. The boy had run off a decade before Mello's time, back when the home was a small meat market headed by two old butchers and three orphans. Run off is what L wants you to think, Beyond would tell the younger kids, imitating the high squeals of meat grinders.
(Stop spreading lies about me, L would say as he passed by their bunks. I used a chainsaw.)
"He's on!" Linda yells, and Mello bats away a cackling Beyond just in time to catch L giving the worst interview ever.
"Now, I heard your name was entered over 400 times," Demegawa says, smiling over the audience's gasps. "Your family must be up to their heads with grains by now!"
"They would, if I didn't have 63 mouths to feed," L says. His bare feet peek out from frayed jeans ("Still wearing them," Matt mutters with an amused shake of his head), body slouched into the armchair. "The Capitol's tessera per entry isn't very much."
"Oh yes, yes. You poor thing! That must have been so hard on you. What's it like living with so many brothers and sisters?"
"None of us are related. We're all orphans of executed rebels," L takes a sip of tea and grimaces. "This needs more sugar."
Demegawa makes a small choking sound that echoes in a deafeningly silent stadium.
L stares deadpan at him, before tipping an entire pot of sugar cubes into his drink.
It's a strange enough action that some of the audience has started to laugh. The sound of positive reaction startles Demegawa back into his role.
"So! You made quite an entrance in the chariot ride."
"I apologize for making that parade tradition more ridiculous than it already was," L says. "We don't get the chance to eat a lot of of sweet things back home."
"It shows! Now, let's see, your training score was," he winces jokingly, "One out of twelve. Yikes. How do you think you'll do?"
"I grew up in a slaughterhouse. People aren't that different from cattle."
"Really?"
"Yes. We're both bred to work. Beasts of burden, I think, is the term. We get the same weary look in our eyes when we're too tired and hungry to fight."
"You look awfully tired," Demgawa says.
"And I'm awfully hungry," L says, taking out a lollipop from his jeans. The crowd erupts in laughter.
Near seems to realize something, because he begins to chuckle along.
"We're almost done here. Is there any skill we can look forward to seeing from you?"
L pulls the candy from his mouth.
"I'd like to say I will be a force of justice," he says. "But I've yet to see real justice exist in this world yet. So I think I will become justice. Please look forward to that."
The pale sickled horizon stretches a faint green line across the sky on the morning of the 125th Hunger Games, a trick of the sun making it curve around the edges of Matsuda's vision. He blinks hard and fast, trying to see the world right again. He can't afford to have bad eyesight before the bloodbath.
A boy, also from District 3, had dominated the bloodbath last year, shooting his jerryrigged handgun willy nilly. Matsuda's good with guns, he's built thousands of them back home while on the factory line; even his mentor Aizawa had complimented his sharp-shooting, a kind word heavier in the absence of others.
He wonders if he'll be able to even lift a gun, what with the throbbing pain in his forearm from the tracker injection. It flares up underneath his blouse with every movement.
It shouldn't bother him so much. But he's 13, he's hurting, and he's about to commit televised mass murder.
Or be murdered, a small voice in his head says, a voice that made his chest tight every time it talked.
No, he can't let doubt in, not now. Matsuda takes deep breathes. In the glass cylinder, the smell of his own sweat is heavy in the air.
He focuses on the good things he's known. Doughnuts bursting with jelly from the big-armed baker's down the road. Cops and robbers games played with his best friends until sundown. Talking to the Police Chief's daughter on the way to first period.
It's her voice that's in his ears when the gong finally rings, the cylinder zips up, and he's running, running faster than he's ever ran at recess, her laugh tinkling as he darts around the umbrellas and boxes of matches strewn far from the Corncopia.
The giant horn structure has the best items stuffed near it, backpacks and knives and somewhere, a handgun with enough ammunition to take down half the competition. He can build his own bullets afterwards, like the boy from last year, handloaded rounds from sharp thin bits of bronze or sintered metal deposits pilfered near the river lying eastward from the bloodbath.
He darts past the others, feet hitting the grass underneath in hard thwacks. He's close enough to the gun, can see its metallic glint near the horn's mouth, untouched, he'll be the first one there –
But he's not, another boy surges past him, he's late, he's too late.
Matsuda slumps on the ground, two bullets burning deep in his chest.
The last thing he sees are the District 5's boy tribute's eyes peering down at him.
Raye doesn't escape the bloodbath unscathed. He grips the handgun loose, his arm bloodied and weak from one of Misa's throwing knives. It had lodged itself into his shoulder, narrowly missing his neck. He ducked into the woods in time, making sure not to let the knife slip out – it was a valuable tool, despite his agonizing acquiring of it. Taking a quick glance at the field behind him, Raye sees several bodies are already pooling blood. Most of the items are gone, and Raye likes to think he'd taken the pick of the litter.
He thought he would feel something after his first kill, like a twinge of regret, but the blood pumping in his ears and the fear thumping wildly in his chest drown out any noble trait he had once had. He thinks Naomi feels the same, wherever she is.
They had spent last night together, comforting each other the only way scared teenagers could. In another life, Raye thinks he would have liked to marry a girl like Naomi. She's strong, smart and has a built-in bullshit detector, the only child of two meltdown investigators at the plant they had both worked at after school. Raye remembers watching her interrogate suspected saboteurs with the brutality that had earned her the moniker "Misora Massacre." He hopes she puts that name to good use here.
He's been running for an hour now, putting a good distance between him and the others. He's all alone, except for the unseen cameras and voice recorders scattered throughout the arena, broadcasting him and the other contenders throughout Pandem.
Still, the illusion of solitude calms Raye. There's nothing but the sounds of cicadas and cry of mockingjays flying overhead and, oh, thank god, the faint trickling of a creek further north. It might be the only source of water in the entire forest. Raye thinks he'll fill several of his flasks. While they'll be be heavier to travel with, he doesn't know how safe staying by a creek will be when others will also be depending on it. And maybe if he and Naomi cross paths, he can lend her a few.
When Raye reaches the creek, he starts to clean his wound. After wrapping it in a torn sleeve, he drinks, using two hands to guzzle deep, two hands that hold nothing but water when District 8's tribute creeps up behind him, wraps heavy hands around his throat and squeezes.
Rod Ross wipes Raye's blood from his face carefully. The boy had convulsed, his arm flailing splatters of blood across Rod's mouth.
He licks some off his lips, tasting the tang of iron. It's a taste he knows well, from fights both here and back home.
Rummaging through Raye's supplies, he takes what they need, leaving items the pack doesn't crushed under his feet, unsalvageable for anyone else.
Light's scythe is the most expensive gift Mikami has ever seen.
It shines bright under the glow of the campfire like a celestial weapon, illuminating its holder in soft panes of golden gleams.
It had arrived sometime after nightfall, parachuted from the sky and falling gently by Light's side, as if returning to its rightful place. The note attached held no words, only a crudely drawn apple scrawled in pencil.
"Are you going to name it?" Misa asks, giggling as she plucked berries from Rem's stash. The girl had snarled harsh words at Mikami when he attempted to take some too, saying something about being a god of death ready to reap his dick off if he tried again. "Oh, how about Kira? It sure sparkles."
"Don't be daft," Naomi says, sharpening her sickle with fast jerky strikes against a rough rock. "Light wouldn't be so childish, he's –"
"I don't mind Kira," Light says.
"–wonderful at taking suggestions," Kiyomi finishes quickly. "It's a valuable trait of a leader. Kira's such a lovely name. Right, Mikami?"
"Right," agrees Mikami. Kira does have a nice ring to it and besides, he's not keen to cause dissent in the pack. While they are all career tributes, he scored lowest among them in training, a mark of weakness that could cost him his life if he's not careful.
Even Rem, from the coal mines of District 12, could turn on him. Despite hailing from the poorest region, her hulking frame could snap bodies like twigs. He's seen her do so, under direction from a crowing Misa, the girl's throwing knives never failing to hit their targets. Together, they had killed the most in the bloodbath. He thinks Misa and Rem could easily form their own alliance, strong enough to best Light's.
"Killed another on my way here," a rough voice calls out. It's Rod, dumping water flasks, netting, strips of beef jerky, and an assortment of small weapons onto the campsite.
"Hey, this one's mine!" Misa says, reaching out for a knife. "Ew, it's all crusty."
Wedy's landmines haven't killed anyone yet, but she assures L they'll definitely go off when they need to.
They are sitting still in the high branches of a pine tree. There's not enough room in Wedy's sleeping bag for L. There had been, and Wedy had insisted L bring his "skinny frog ass in", but Aiber had a concussion and would need better conditions to sleep.
L thinks Watari would like these kids; a no-nonsense girl good with the wiring inside machines and a nonsense-filled boy good with the wiring inside people. If they had met under other circumstances, he would have offered them employment at the slaughterhouse. But they had met on a battlefield, so the best he can do is try to keep them alive long enough for him to survive this.
The booming of the anthem starts, filling the arena. Then, The sky blackens itself for the death roll call.
A cannon fires and a headshot of a boy from District 3's face appears. Matsuda, Touta.
Wedy flinches. Aiber gives her a one-armed hug.
"He wasn't much, but he was from home," she says, before lying down. She does not watch the rest with them.
A canon fires and a headshot from District 5 appears. Penber, Raye.
"None of the careers have died yet," Aiber says. "En garde, folks."
Two canons fire and the headshots for both District 7 tributes flash. Lidner, Halle. Gevanni, Stephen.
The names and faces don't mean much to L right now. If he could see how they had died, what advantages the remaining contestants had, he would care to watch. But since the dead have no value to him now, he rolls over and closes his eyes. He probably won't be able to sleep, but he can at least rest his eyes and regulate his breathing into slow rhythmic exhales, unheard as the night air exploded with the bomb-knells for District 9 and District 11.
And then, a silence broken only by rodents scuttling below, looking for safe places before bigger predators awaken.
Everyone at Wammy's Slaughterhouse is going slightly mad.
Linda won't stop painting portraits of L. She shows up to washing duty with blackened fingers and flecks of blue acrylic on her eyelids, which fall into the pig stomachs in the sink.
Matt smokes a pack a day, bartering for them at the Speakhard. When kids talk about the Games at school, he excuses himself out of class and lights up in the boy's bathroom, trembling fingers cranking open the window for air. The smell never really comes off him though, and he comes home reeking bad enough to make people cough when they pass him by.
Beyond's hair is growing longer. He has started wearing all of L's clothes, even the unwashed ones. The younger children cry when they see him.
Mello thinks he's the worst of them all. He doesn't paint, smoke, or mimic.
He believes. He believes L will win so much it terrifies him.
When his mind tries to imagine scenarios where L doesn't, it comes up with nothing but images of L eviscerating the other tributes or escaping certain death through clever tricks.
If there is any other outcome, Mello doesn't know how he'll be able to take it.
Tonight is the fifth night of the games. No one has died since the bloodbath, a sure sign the Gamemakers will cause a "natural" disaster soon.
Near says it will likely be fire. He, along with Watari and Roger, haven't acted out of the ordinary since L left. Mello chalks it up to stiff upper lips for the two men, but can't say for sure whether Near really cares.
In a fit of anger yesterday, he had grabbed the boy by the collar and asked him just that.
The boy had replied, "I don't have to care. He'll win whether I do or don't," before Mello had dropped him and stormed off.
Despite his fury, Mello was relieved by Near's answer. They were the smartest ones there, except for maybe Beyond on good days, and if they had came to the same conclusions.
Well. Maybe the odds were in L's favour after all.