"The 'Net' is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it." William Gibson.

Thank you for wasting some time reading my story.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Hunger Games characters, only my plot line.

Here is the next installment of the story, enjoy and review if you can.

After all, it would be good manners according to Effie.

The Queen however, went so frequently to see her precious children that the King, self absorbed as his was in his own power climb, could not fail to observe her absences; he was curious and wanted to know what she did when she was quite alone in the forest.

Over the first year of his marriage, the King had slowly manipulated, bribed, threatened, and poisoned his way into controlling the entirety of the kingdom. He was never seen without a rose or handkerchief.

He gave a great deal of money to the queen lady's maid Glimmer who was jealous of the Queen's fine things.
She betrayed the secret to the King that the children hadn't gone away to a boarding school but were hidden in the woods, and told him likewise of the fishing lure which alone could point out the way to the hidden estate.
After she told him, he had her poisoned so he was the only one besides the Queen who knew where the royal children were hidden.

And now the King and his servants knew no rest until he had learnt where the Queen kept the fishing lure, and then he had his valet Crane make up shirts of fine white silk which he enchanted using the forbidden arts of witchcraft he had learned from mother.

He placed a wicked charm inside them, designed to turn the children into an animal human hybrids or mutts as the common folk whispered about in fear at night.
There had been birds with voices of ones who died and the tracker jackers whose sting showed one their worst nightmares and the bright pink spiders whose bite was sudden death. The king planned to turn the children into a new kind of mutt, roosters whose call was like a knife to the heart to all who heard them caw.

The king then waited until he was able to distract the Queen with rumors of an illness in one of the villages.

And once when the Queen had ridden forth to lend her aid to the village, he took the enchanted shirts and went into the forest, and the fishing lure showed him the way.

The boys were practicing their sword fighting, when Cinna saw a cloud of dust to indicate a rider coming to their home.

"Look, someone is coming."

"Let's race to meet them." Gale challenged his brothers.

They all ran, thinking that it was their dear mother who was coming to see them.

When they saw it was the king, Gale and Haymitch caught each other's eye and moved in front of the younger boys, lifting their wooden practice swords.

"What are you doing here, your majesty?' Haymitch spat out, crossing his arms.

Then King however, smiled benevolently at them and withdrew a jar with a dozen tracker jackers humming inside. The boys instantly fell silent and stood still under the threat of being stung though their glares expressed their anger loud enough.

"Now, let's not misunderstand each other." The King started off pleasantly.
"I have nothing against you, I just need to ensure a stable future for the kingdom. With so many boys, different factions will spring up, each supporting a different one of you for the throne. Endless battles will be fought and lives will be lost. So much waste..." He trailed off sadly.

"We would never contest the throne." Gale declared.
"The laws of inheritance are quite clear." Beetee added.

"Boys, boys" The King shook his head. "It would have been better if you had never been born. Alas, I can't change that."

"Are you going to kill us then?" Boggs asked.

"Kill you? Why no! That would be so wasteful, why, I don't want to make you martyrs." The King smiled wickedly.
"Just mutts."

And with that, he threw one of the white shirts over each of them, and no sooner had the shirts touched their bodies than they started to shake and twitch and soon fell down to the ground as they grew ghostly pale and feathers sprouted from their arms. They cried out in fright and in anger.

The King left as they were still twitching, thinking he had poisoned all of the step children. He threw down the jar of normal tracker jackers, from his horse, to make it seem as though the boys had died from a tracker jacker nest, so the Queen wouldn't suspect him.
He went home quite delighted, thinking he had gotten rid of all of his competition and developed a new mutt to use as a weapon if the hope grew too strong in his kingdom.

However, the boys had been holding wooden swords and the wood helped to counteract the magic, to mitigate it. Though they could not escape becoming mutts, their noble hearts swayed the magic to turn them into wild swans whose sound only caused a pang of longing and loneliness in the heart, not death as the King had intended.

Annie had been swimming in a pond on the estate entrance and had heard her brothers racing. She had been about to get out and join them and when she heard Haymitch address someone rudely. She immediately hid herself in the water and listened to her brother's cries of pain. She jumped up to go and help them but only found a rose amongst several white feathers on the ground.

Before she could do more than look around, three normal but virulent tracker jackers stung her.

The poor girl went into hysterics as her world went shiny and she saw visions of strange creatures killing her brothers and then chasing her.
She kept saying to herself, "It's not real, it's not real" but couldn't believe the truth or reality.

She ran, out of her mind with pain, to the woods until she could go no farther for the pain.

As she collapsed, she saw a forest-hut, but then a wave of blood red roses with shiny thorns rushed at her and she knew no more.