The second night in the Training Centre was better for most of them, a few of them still tossed and turned, Sango had taken to sleeping on the floor and Britney made sure she broke something before she gave into her fatigue.
The first day of training reared its ugly head and gradually the tributes got dressed and made their way down to the training area. The careers were the first to arrive, naturally, and the boys immediately started trying to show off to the girls. Darren told Jamie how far he could throw a spear, Joe bragged to Devin about how strong he was and Joey was re-enacting the time he caught a giant fish by himself to Alle-Faye who, frankly, looked as if she'd picked the short straw. Before Joey could completely freak her out, more of the tributes arrived and their conversation moved on to what they thought their weaknesses would be. The district 5 tributes arrived next, Brian stood a good distance away from everyone else and Arielle looked extremely awkward standing between him and the careers.
District 3 were the next to arrive, they shuffled towards everyone and stood next to Brian.
"Hi" Meredith smiled at Brian.
"...hi" he replied, for the first time taking notice of any of the other tributes. She had an endearing quality about her, for some reason he couldn't take his eyes off of her.
8 and 10 arrived at the same time, the girls looking more like babysitters as the boys looked around the room buzzing with excitement, somehow unaware of the bleakness of their situation. They were all sizing up the others, thinking of whether they could overpower them in some way, all apart from JoMo and Brosenthal who were annoying their fellow district members by pointing out everything around them, even June was getting tired of JoMo's constant badgering. Denise looked as if Brosenthal hadn't shut up for the majority of their time together, every time he found something new to comment on she had to take a deep breath to stop herself from smacking him. Fair to say neither Denise nor June were looking to make allies within their district.
Next to arrive was district 6, Sango appeared with pigtails in her hair and bags under her eyes, the prep team had done their best to conceal them but her lack of sleep wasn't helping. Jeff sidled in completely indifferent to everything, as if he was just going to class instead of preparing to kill everyone else in the room. Denise couldn't help but admire this in him, nothing seemed to faze him. Jeff looked over to her and noticed she was looking at him, she held his gaze and gave him a sly smile. Was she planning how to kill him? Oh come on, everyone's planning how to kill everyone right now. Nevertheless he couldn't show his thoughts, or even show he had thoughts; his plan was always to be completely neutral about everything. He returned her smile and they stared into each others eyes for a moment until they were interrupted by the arrival of the district 9.
At first it just looked like Jim had arrived on his own, but then Lauren poked her head out from behind him and stared sheepishly at the others before ducking back to her hiding spot. The careers were in deep conversation about Jim, his height and stature would be a great advantage to them but they didn't want that little girl hanging around them, they'd look ridiculous and she'd only slow them down, that is if she even made it through the bloodbath. They came to a decision and Joe went and approached the giant.
"Hey Jim, listen, the guys wanna talk to you about something. Can you come and talk to them, you know...on your own?" Joe asked him, he wasn't a short boy, he would actually be consider quite tall for his age, but next to Jim he looked tiny. Jim thought for a few seconds before answering.
"What about her?" He asked gesturing to Lauren. Joe wasn't quite sure what to say, he really didn't want to be seen hanging round with a little girl, what would people think of him?
"Don't worry about her, uh, I'll look after her." Joe suggested pulling off a jovial smile. Jim considered this, looked and Lauren and then nodded. Without another word he walked over to the rest of the careers and Joe was left alone with Lauren. She just stood there awkwardly, avoiding his eyes.
"So...um...what's your name again?" Joe asked her, trying to get something out of the kid.
"Lauren." She said in a small voice.
"Oh well, I'm Joe." He told her, not knowing what to say next. "Nice to meet you, Lauren." It was a weird thing to say considering the circumstances, but it seemed to stir something in Lauren as she turned to Joe and looked into his eyes. He had never really seen her before, her eyes were so pretty, so...pure. That was the only word he could think of to describe her. Pure.
11 and 12 came within a minute of each other, their dynamics completely different; Corey and Britney were standing apart, not even looking at each other, not even trying to kid themselves about there status as opponents whereas Nick and Lily huddled together, both trying to blend in with the other, hoping that they could just disappear all-together.
The last to arrive was district 7 who, of course, were arguing. Julia was shouting at Dylan about being late and Dylan was just ignoring her.
"Hey guys." He said to everyone, more to annoying Julia than to actually greet anyone.
"Don't ignore me! Look we're the last here! All because you took so long to get ready! What are you gonna do in the area, huh? You can't just stroll along, you'll be dead before the thought to go a bit quicker has reached your slow brain!" She shouted, her face as red as a tomato.
"Juls, calm down." He chuckled, turning to her. "It's only training, and they haven't even started yet." Julia just tutted and turned her head to the tall woman that had just entered the room.
"Hello, my name is Atala and I am the head trainer." The woman told them "As you can see, there are various stations around the gymnasium teaching a variety of skills from spear-throwing to knot-tying. Experts in each skill will remain at their stations, you are free to travel from area to area as you choose, per your mentor's instructions. You are forbidden to engage in any combative exercise with another tribute, there are assistants on hand if you want to practice with a partner." She then read out the list of skill stations and then left the tributes to decide where to go first.
The careers travelled as a pack along with Jim and Lauren, they couldn't get Jim to come without her and Joe was sort of warming up to her. Corey L went over to the station about edible plants and Meredith went to follow, but was stopped by Brian asking if she could help him with snares, she was slightly surprised by his request by agreed nonetheless and they made their way over to that station. Arielle had gone to learn how to start a fire, she thought it best to start off with the survival skills seeing as she was hoping to use them a lot more than combat. Sango decided to start with camoflage and found that she was joined by June, who was glad to be away from JoMo. He had gone off to the obstacle course and was hanging upside-down, pretending he was a spider. Dylan and Julia had gone to the opposite ends of the room with Dylan joining Sango at the campfire section and Julia learning hand-to-hand combat. Nick and Lily joined Corey L with tieing knots, none of them making conversation. Britney went straight to the section with knives whilst Corey learnt about projectiles. Brosenthal joined JoMo on the obstacle course leaving Denise and Jeff on their own, figuring out where to go first. Jeff turned to Denise who was watching Julia spar with the trainer.
"Fancy having a go at throwing a spear?" He asked her. She turned to him with a slightly quizzical expression before her sly smile creeped back onto her face.
"Sure." She agreed. "Then we can see how good you are at wielding a knife." She added as they made their way over to the spear section.
The tributes staying in their chosen groups and made their way around from station to station, then they went into the dining room for lunch. Joey sat down between to Alle-Faye and Jim and got stuck into the fish dish before him.
"Ah, delicious. I love trout! You know the trick to catching a trout is to play the harmonica. Now I don't play the harmonica, so I don't catch that many trout, but I do catch a lot of haddock." He told them, he was about to carry on but Alle-Faye quickly interrupted her.
"So, Lauren, that was quite a shot you had at the archery station." She smiled, Lauren shrunk into herself as her cheeks went red. "Where did that come from?"
"Hehe, yeah, you could say you were a bit of a red herring!" Joey giggled. The whole table rolled their eyes, apart from Lauren who was the only one who seemed to find it funny, and tried too keep the conversation as far from fish as possible, which was a hard feat as Joey seemed to have a complete backlog of fish puns.
The next few training sessions went mostly the same way, Brian and Meredith stuck together, as did Jeff and Denise, the careers also stuck with each other but Jim and Lauren decided to do their own thing.
Soon came their private sessions and all the tributes were sat in the dining room, preparing for their time to show the gamemakers what they could do.
Joe went in first, he lifted weights, threw spears and showed off his muscles profusely.
Devin entered the room like it was a catwalk then proceeded to run around the room, jump off of walls, throw knifes and wield a machete with perfect style.
Corey shuffled in and made complicated snares with ease and super-fast precision.
Before Meredith went in Brian grabbed her hand. "You can do this, Mere." He smiled. She took a deep breath and tried to return the smile but it was half-hearted. She slowly walked through the doors and shut them behind her. When she was out of sight Brian let go of a breath that he didn't even know he was holding. He couldn't help his feelings for her, he just wanted to protect from everything. The worst part was that she really had a chance to win, her snares were amazing as she was a fast runner, she wasn't heavy either so she could easily climb a tree to get out of harms way, but she just couldn't see it. She was too busy concentrating on how good everyone else was.
Lauren was sitting on her own, thinking about what she would do when it was her turn when Joey came up behind her and made her jump.
"Oh, sorry for scaring you, I'm just Bream-ing with nerves." He smiled, making Lauren let out a small giggle. "How are you feeling?"
"Terrified." Lauren confessed. "I'm totally out of my depth, everyone is so good and has something that they're amazing at. I have nothing, and I'm not even gonna start thinking about the actual games because I know I'm gonna be dead in seconds." She sighed. "I'm sorry, I just...I have no idea what I'm gonna do."
"Well, I know it may not be my Plaice to say..." That got another giggle out of her "but you're amazing! You have some real skills at archery, and you can't tell me it was a fluke, I saw you shooting arrows after you went on your own, plus you're really fast and good at climbing, you could hide in a tree and no one would be able to find you! Don't write yourself off yet." He grinned at her.
"Thanks Joey, that's probably the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me." She beamed.
Just then a horrible, blood-curdling scream errupted from inside the training room.
