The Timetrade
Summary: When a group of young men and women claiming to be from a ruined future hijack the 80th Hunger Games, Panem is thrown into confusion and chaos. Declaring that they will change history, the group of twelve time travelers name their target: a tribute in the Hunger Games who they claim will someday bring the world to the brink of destruction
SYOT Info: For this story, I'll be accepting tributes (the usual 24) as well as about 6 time traveler characters. Please go to my profile for submission information. I will only accept submissions through PM and will update my profile page with the accepted characters fairly regularly. This SYOT isn't first come, first serve, so please do your best.
Chapter One: Navigators
Etaín held the timepiece between trembling hands as she stood alone in the center of our group, arranged in a tight circle of eleven human bodies that would soon no longer exist in the world as we knew it. The whirring of machines echoed in the steel walls, nearly blocking out her voice as she turned and looked each of us in the eye. Tears gone, all that was left in each of us was a resolve as cold as the metal plating beneath our feet.
We had said our farewells, if there was anyone left to say goodbye to at all. We had left flowers on makeshift graves and settled our debts and our grudges. After spending one last night staring up at the hazy, smoky sky and the spaces where bits of our world were beginning to peel away, we all gathered at this tiny facility the next morning. It sat among the graves of past research facilities, low to the ground and forever stained by the strange yellow-red streaks left behind by the acid rain. This graveyard would be where we disappeared from our world.
"Never forget where you come from," Etaín said in a steady voice, "or you will lose sight of where you are going. And don't any of you dare die until we can secure a future different from the one you were forced to live through. Remember that this is why we are here."
After the last words left Etaín's lips, the circular silver machinery in her hands began to hum a metallic tune and a sharp ring ran through our ears, piercing our heads with all the force of an iron pike. So intense was the sensation that we could hardly remember to breathe. The sight before our eyes twisted and morphed into a starburst of color so vivid it seemed that we had been living our whole lives blind.
I had never dabbled in the timetrade. Despite the spell that it held over our lives, for many of us in that room it had been the first time we ever experienced the utter disorienting sensation that was time travel. Many had described it as nauseating, alien, or even intrusive.
What I felt at that time was the distinct feeling that me as a person no longer existed.
That is to say, if asked who I was, I would have been unable to respond. It was as if all knowledge, including my own name, had fled from my mind and left me floating in limbo without the ability to move, emote, or even breathe.
It strips you of everything that makes you an intelligent human being. All it is, really, is a jumbled mess of sensations crammed into your head. Your senses are so overwhelmed that you can hardly think past their intensity. In that moment, I was unaware of anything about myself - even of the past that haunted my nights and tugged at my waking days as well.
Maybe because I didn't know who I was anymore, it was the most at peace I had ever felt in my life. I wondered later if anyone else felt the same way - if they, too, were able to experience just one bit of peace in their lives at that moment.
The timetrade is a horrifying beast that rears its head and sinks its fangs into the throat of anyone who approaches it. It shatters conflicts with more conflict, it gives people false hope that they can change the world. It was only after I experienced it for myself did I realize how that promise of peace, the briefest peace in the world, was perhaps the reason why people kept going back to the trade.
It takes away your ability to reason and gives you absolute elation.
And when it spits you out, you are left with the vague sense that you have left some important part of your identity as a human being behind in that limbo. It is something you will never get back.
We landed in the middle of the 80th Annual Hunger Games with those sensations still lingering in every nerve of our bodies.
They appeared out of nowhere, materializing out of thin air in the middle of the Cornucopia as the countdown was about to start. The tributes were probably the most surprised of all, unable to write the phenomenon off as special effects, and even the commentators faltered in that moment.
Etaín held the silver machine in her hands, its round surface thrumming with heat so intense that she was forced to drop it - and as soon as she did, it shattered into a million unrecognizable pieces on the dusty ground beneath her feet. She lifted her head to where they knew a camera would have been strategically placed and fixed her dark blue eyes straight ahead, as if a murderous beast was standing before her.
"This is not a unique gimmick that the Gamemakers have suddenly decided to add into the Games," she spoke in her normal, even, slightly deep voice. The artificial wind twisted her dark hair around her face in wild clouds, but she ignored how it obscured her vision. "We have come here from the future, your future, to change history as we know it will happen."
There was silence for a long stretch of time. The eleven men and women, boys and girls, at her back were as still as statues guarding the halls of some elite palace from another era. Their simple uniforms of tan and dark grey lapels stood out against the fashion of this time period - it was an old style of military uniform that had not been used in Panem in over four hundred years at the time of the 80th Hunger Games.
Figuring that she had given the Gamemakers enough time to make their excuses, Etaín continued: "In the future that we come from, the world as we know it is about to tear itself apart at the seams. The planet itself will simply fracture, reality will become empty. We have come here to stop it from ever happening. You are free to believe us or not."
Etaín was well aware that she was only speaking to the tributes and the Gamemakers at this point, but it had never been their intention to address the masses anyways. She looked around at the trees that stretched out all around them. The slight rise in the land to the west ended in a steep gully, while the rest of the arena was filled to the brim with marshlands.
"We will prevent that future from ever coming to pass," she repeated. "And to do so, we have come to eradicate the one person who will start this world on its path to destruction. That person is standing here now, alive, as one of those tributes who are to take part in your game. What you now decide to do with this knowledge is up to you. Just know that stopping us might mean the end of your peaceful era as you know it."
Etaín turned her upper body slightly to the right, where a tall young man with hair so dark brown as to appear black was standing. Without a word, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a sleek black box. Etaín turned to the dusty ground and watched as the silver flecks, all that remained of the timepiece that brought them here, floated away on the wind.
The young man flicked a switch, adjusted a dial, and suddenly the Gamemakers in the Capitol, miles away from the arena, began to curse and uselessly tap at their control panels.
"And so the Games begin," said a much younger girl with a peculiar shade of auburn hair that seemed almost muddy in color. "They won't let us kill their tributes so easily. Those pressure pads should still work, so they can't move for the moment..."
Etaín shook her head. "We talked about this already, Fianna. We need this time to disappear. Knowing the Gamemakers they probably won't cancel the Games over something that they can easily write off as part of the show, but if we ruin things from the start, they might not be so forgiving. Let the kids go for now. Remember, we only have a few uses left on that signal jammer; we need to use them wisely."
The auburn haired girl nodded her consent, though the draw of her eyebrows indicated that she didn't quite understand Etaín's reasoning. Nevertheless, she failed to speak any further.
The group of twelve people who had come out of literally nowhere began to split into three subgroups, all while the tributes of the 80th Hunger Games looked on, helpless and exposed on the platforms surrounding the Cornucopia.
Perhaps what was on their minds more than the fact that these strangers had appeared out of thin air claiming to be time travelers and more than their doomsday predictions was their clear and cold hearted declaration that one among the tributes was their target.
Who was that target among them? A person so terrible that he or she would cause the destruction of the world had to be someone to respect, to fear, to target. None of the tributes had seemed capable of such a thing back during their training in the Capitol, nor in their interview or reaping.
The tributes of the 80th Hunger Games were simply normal tributes, after all, surely not capable of something so terrible that so many people would come to the past just to kill them.
That was, if this time travel thing was even real, or if this hoax, too, was part of the Games.
Either way, game or not, they faced forward with the grim realization that they would have to play anyways.
By the time the Gamemakers regained control of the central part of the arena, the strange men and women had already disappeared into the forest and the tributes were quietly resting on the platforms. The confusion and uncertainty that lingered on their faces were the only proof that those oddly dressed people had been there at all.
Everyone got a bit of a late start, even the Careers.
Is this story really about time travel? you might ask. Yup, it's straight up time travel. I just wanted to have fun writing about this topic, so I chose fanfiction as a medium. Just go with it, please. Suspend your disbelief for the sake of the story and have fun with the dimension hopping madness. Don't worry, there's a plot in here somewhere.
As you can tell, this story starts in media res, so the reapings, training, and train rides will usually appear in the story later on as flashbacks of some sort. I like this style so that I can start writing and updating even without having all of the spots filled in yet. I have six pre-created characters, so look forward to some updates during the submission period. Also, the "target" tribute who the time travelers want to hunt down has not yet been created, so you can try to apply for that spot if you want (just follow the instructions on my profile).
