One by one, each batch of footage from the Reapings comes in. There are seventeen people sitting in a closed room in the Gamemaking Center, and when the first package pings in they all start in surprise and sit up straight and give each other half-hearted smiles. This team of editors work under the Senior Assistant Gamemaker, and it is their job to cut the hours and hours of Reaping film together into something respectable. The fruits of their labor will be the first televised event of the 11th Annual Hunger Games.
"The Best Case Scenario," says the Gamemaker, each capital letter clear, "is that every Reaping finishes at about the same time, that each Reaping occurs without incident, and that no Reaping deviates from the prescribed procedures. But some districts take longer than others, and mishaps happen, and disruptions, and volunteers. No two districts are quite the same. Frankly, we're going to have quite a fucking mess to deal with here. Not to mention what I've heard about that little monster in District 9."
In District 1, they dress up. This isn't the Capitol, but it's close. A sparkling pin in a girl's hair, black shiny shoes, a new gaudy yellow shirt, a dress with silver stitching. Eridan Ampora buys a cape for the occasion, a silly purple thing that he has to hold awkwardly to keep it from touching the ground. This is my year, he thinks, walking up the steps to the stage, his eyes bright with triumph, and a fistful of purple cloth in each hand. In the crowd below, a gold-bangled Meenah Peixes waits for her turn.
District 2 has its Reaping in the shadow of a mountain peak. At these high altitudes, the green-skinned and pink-haired Capitol representatives are dizzy and short of breath. The peacekeepers, though — they are home. They breathe the clear cold air and smile. In Aradia Megido's long hair they see their sisters, smiling nervously and preparing for their own Reaping Days so many years ago. In her calloused and rope-burned quarry-worker hands, they see their mothers, returning from work with a sweat-soaked brow. In her face they see the victims of their peacekeeping, terrified and dead and screaming. And in Terezi Pyrope, they see themselves.
In District 3, both their tributes are small and unassuming. Sollux Captor, who works in a spare parts depot and is now one of his district's two hopeless hopes, eyes the girl who stands opposite him. Curly-haired and obviously hungover, she looks as if she's about to be sick. Oh god, Sollux thinks, as Roxy Lalonde drops to her knees and loses her stomach,oh god, I am so sorry for what will happen to you.
District 4 is rowdy. People push each other and jockey for a better view. Their feet get stepped on and their ribs get elbowed. As Vriska Serket shoves the boy in front of her to the ground and yells "I volunteer!", a girl in a pale pink dress watches quietly from the back of the crowd. She knows that these people will eat each other alive, that this tribute will tear out the throats of her competitors, that these workers and parents and children around her will shout and curse but swallow the broadcasts whole. This quiet girl is Feferi Peixes, and she's going to change the world.
The tributes from District 5 are quiet, too. Dirk Strider crackles with a silent electric energy, perhaps imbued by his job as a generator technician, perhaps as inherent as his dark skin and sharp hair. Aranea Serket has a different and stranger energy about her. In the distance, she watches the water break across the top of the great dam and crash to the river below. The wet misty spray creeps all the way down to the Reaping stage, touching the tributes with cold and insubstantial hands.
District 6's Reaping passes quickly. There are a few noises of pity from the crowd as Gamzee Makara has to be helped up to the stage, stumbling and strung-out on morphling, smiling a vacant smile. The second tribute, John Egbert, though more coordinated and cogent, seems mostly unfazed by his reaping as well. Later, on the train or at the Capitol, it will finally hit him, and he will rage and scream and cry until his voice is gone, and even then he will pound his fists against the floor like a child. "I was going to be a pilot!" he will yell, but nothing will come out. "I was going to fly!" For Gamzee, the awful realization of what has happened will take even longer to occur. If he dies before withdrawal, perhaps it never will.
The first tribute of District 7 is a crowd-pleaser. This is what our tribute should be, the people of District 7 think. Tall and handsome. Passably good at hiding his paralyzing fear. Jake English, a good sturdy name. And after spending his childhood climbing trees, he has grown to be built like one, broad-shouldered with big calloused hands. Next to him, the second tribute is vanishingly small, and they do not smile at her as her name is called. Even up here they hate me, Calliope thinks. God, I'm ugly even here.
It's smoggy and bitter in District 8, even in the sparsely green park at the top of the hill where the Reaping is held. Kanaya Maryam's face is impossible to read when she hears her name ring through the gray air, her nose and mouth covered with a surgical mask. As she reaches the stage, the District 8 escort covers his microphone and whispers to her urgently, "take it off, take it off." She pauses, her dark eyes hesitant. "Come on," says Rose Lalonde to her fellow tribute, "show them your fangs."
District 9 is a simple and unassuming district. It's accustomed to playing second fiddle to District 11, with only a bit of modest beauty in its endless fields of wheat — endless golden fields, some people like to say, but wheat is not quite golden in the dull District 9 sun. Jane Crocker is a simple girl to match her district, plain-faced, with white flour stains on her plain dress. Like many tributes before her, she cries plain clear tears. Like many Reapings before, a father tries rush up onto the stage and grab his child from the jaws of death. As the crowd sighs and tuts as he is removed, they do not know what is about to happen. The second tribute's name is called out: "Caliborn."
Of all the districts, District 10 is perhaps the most used to bloodshed. It is one thing to watch people kill each other on a flickering and torn projection screen. It's another to have hot thick blood spill from a cow's soft neck onto your clothes and hands. "It's okay, they need to die for us to live. They're just animals,"the butchers of District 10 have said, as they stripped the guts from sheep and pigs, and Tavros Nitram and Equius Zahhak believed them. Maybe it will be easier for them in the Arena, these two tall boys, to think this and believe. As they watch them bleed: they're just animals. As they kill them: they need to die for me to live.
District 11, despite being the largest, the most populous, and undoubtedly the most wretched, has a Reaping that is orderly and still. The crowd stands in quiet, neat lines. Unlike some other districts, like 1 or 3 or 6, the citizens of District 11 do not ask for chairs, or lean against each other as the Reaping drags on. They are used to standing, and standing and standing and standing. Jade Harley and Dave Strider stand side by side, their fingers locked together and their hearts in their throats. District 11 will stand until it dies.
In District 12, Karkat Vantas struggles to walk to the stage. He takes one step. There is coal dust still under his fingernails — he couldn't clean it all out even after a solid five minutes of scrubbing. He takes another step. Nepeta Leijon swims in his vision, straight-backed and tear-stained. After so many years of staring, she refuses to meet his eye. He takes a third step, and stumbles. As his breath catches and his head spins, all he can think is of course. Of course it had to be me.
"We have four hours and twenty one minutes to edit," the Senior Assistant Gamemaker says, checking his watch. "Starting now."