For you.

I sighed, leaning back heavily onto the heaps on pillows that topped my frothy bed. Capitol pillows. Shiny silver Capitol bedspread. Custom stitched "D3" Capitol pajamas, folded neatly at the foot. Capitol lanterns, swaying gently to the movement of this Capitol train. My own Capitol bedroom. My own Capitol bathroom.

Every single insignificant object was a sharp reminder that these aren't just fancy chambers—their sheer perfection branded them with their origins. And consistently told me that I'm just borrowing all this stuff as they send me off to slaughter.

Me. Charles Hunter. A tribute.

I'd thought I would be able to get through all my Reapings like most kids did. That Reaping day would be just an annoying occasion that you have to dress up for. To play along with our darling Capitol's Games.

I hadn't always been a rebellious type. The Capitol's name used to just be a repeated word in drawling History classes; just about as notable as "North America" and "Latin" and other useless old stuff. Of course I didn't like watching the Games. Nobody did. But most of the time, I didn't connect one and one to blame the Capitol for forcing them upon us. Until Lucy.

Lucy Burrows wasn't my first girlfriend. I'd had other short stands with other girls—but those were just pretty faces and fun flirting. Lucy was different—she wasn't a pretty face; she was glowing emerald eyes. A perfectly centered nose that she hated for being shiny, but I thought was cute. A set of sugary-sweet pink lips that she never slathered color onto. She was silky auburn hair that my fingers always felt at home in; she was narrow shoulders that fit into my arms perfectly; she was gentle hands that mine almost never freed. And she was reaped. She was murdered.

I've never been one for tacky love poems, or mournful songs about a girl I once had. I'm not going to waste my time thinking she's going to come back, or dreaming of what I really think was love. I guess I'm just another guy who's loved and lost. And will never be stupid enough to love again.

The painful months after her Games, the only Games I've ever remembered, were the low point of my existence. The only things I had left of her were the ever-bleeding gash across my eye and the last memory of watching her flesh be burned off her bones by flames that someone in the Gamekeeper's controls could extinguish with the flick of a button.

Days upon weeks of my head and heart lost in some other dark, twisted place… my leg broke sometime in those months. Any memories I have from then are diluted and freakishly contorted, making it impossible to remember exactly how my injury came about. I always rack my brain for memories of great pain… but they all are.

What pulled me out of the gloom was anger. I'd gone through great joy, I'd experienced great pain, and now all I had left was raging, blinding anger. Hatred of the Games for taking away the only thing I really cared about in this lonely District. Hatred of the Gamemakers for consenting with her death. Stinging loathing of the Peacekeepers who split my face open with a knife I'd made the week before. But the Games, the Gamemakers, the Peacekeepers, even the idiot escort who had the wit to choose Lucy's name out of thousands—all had one common origin.

And I'm heading there now. In the same train that stole Lucy from me last year.

My stomach groaned in protest to the rich Capitol food I'd stuffed it with. The swaying of the train didn't help either—it felt strange to be on such a fast-moving vehicle, and hardly feel the movement. I would be more comfortable air-pressed to the wall at the back of my room, with the enormous wind tearing at my face and my stomach left in 3. Because that's how it really is. Me speeding toward my death. These are just props.

Ignoring the pajamas and shower, I slithered down to lay ontop of all the covers. It was comfortable enough—the mattress was the softest I'd ever felt, the pillows squashing down into one another. I dreaded closing my eyes, for childish fear of the nightmares that lurked in the back of my head. So I did what I usually do when can't sleep; only closed my left eye.

Instantly my bedroom's lines were blurred, its colors fogged into a shade more bleached. I'd never understood why, but bright green was the only color that stayed the same in my right vision—a lime book jumped out at me from the hickory bookshelf. My vision issues used to make me jumpy and high-strung, in the early months. I would glance over my right shoulder at least three times every ten seconds, head swinging back and forth, back and forth, to try and see everything at once. This had become exhausting, and I slowly accepted the fact that I couldn't see my right side very well. I learned how to discifer the blobs in my right vision, how to try and make sense of what I was looking at. It was a sort of relaxing process for me; a good way to unwind and let my brain tick away on its own for a while.

That shimmery rectangle must be the door to the Capitol bathroom. The blob on the ground is the Capitol rug. The glowing orbs that just float in the air are the Capitol lanterns. One by one, I took the disjointed blurs and assigned them names, eventually luring myself into an uneasy sleep.

Crack. Crack. Pause. Crack-crack.

I was off my bed and eyeing the door with a pounding chest before I registered I was awake. My head spun franticly from the sudden movement, both eyes popping with dizzyingly different results.

"Charlie? Charlie—it's time to get up! Don't want to miss breakfast, do we—we're arriving at the Captiol in five hours! Up, up, up!"

How could she be so chipper? It's—I glanced at the clock on my bedside stand—eight o'clock. Hm. I'd actually slept in.

Rolling my shoulders to a few satisfying cracks, I headed to the door with mussed hair and crumpled clothes. Our Capitol escort would hate it. So of course I didn't change.

The steady thump-thumpa-thump of my familiar footsteps stirred me back to the world of the living. The nightmares of last night shied away from the morning sunlight that lit the dining room, receding to the dark place where they stayed all day.

Reg Knut, our mentor, was already seated at the pristine table. "Good morning," he said calmly. Calm. That was the best way to describe this guy. He was soft-spoken, brainy, and calm. But not friendly. The few times he'd spoken to Ida Topia and I, he treated us like business partners. People that he respected, and has to work with because it's his job. Not friends.

We were supposed to have two mentors, but Nancy Greg, our only other victor, had died last month of old age. A few of the girls at school had cried over it—the ones who'd gotten to know her in her older years, the ones she used to tell thrilling stories of the Games to—but it was just an inconvenience to me. Because, obviously, two mentors are better than one.

At that moment, Ida came sprawling into the room, her twiggy legs shaking and her face red and puffy from a night of sobbing.

"Good morning," Reg greeted her in the exact tone he had me. He took no notice of her obvious unease, her knocking knees and gasping breaths. She fell into one of the two open chairs, mumbling something that sounded like 'mrning'.

Our escort quickly followed her, sliding soundlessly into the open seat at my left. I pointed scooted in the opposite direction.

"Our food shall be just in—oh, here we are. Don't stuff your faces like you did last night. It was disgusting." Her high, pitchy Capitol voice plucked every one of my nerves, but before I could do anything stupid, three waiters swept into the room with huge platters of every breakfast delight I could've ever imagined—and more that I couldn't have.

Ida's eyes swelled to the size of tennis balls as she stared at the food.

"You can eat. Slowly, remember, or you'll just loose it all." Reg helped himself to small portions of each fancy dish.

Ida hardly even used her plate—food went straight from the platters to her mouth. She moaned in delight after her first three mouthfuls.

"I'm not one for small talk," Reg admitted serenely after a while of eating in silence. "So let's just cut to the point—before we arrive at the Capitol, in," he glanced at the old watch on his wrist, "four hours, I'd like to get a good idea of what I'm working with here. Your personalities, your strengths, your weaknesses. But first I must ask if you'd rather be trained together or separately?"

"Separately," I said at the same time Ida squeaked, "Together."

I shot her an icy glare, and she shrunk a little in her chair. "Separately is fine."

.:!:.:!:.:!:.:!:.:!:.:!:.:!:.

"Hm. I won't lie and say I'm not impressed." Reg nodded thoughtfully as he laid his cloth napkin back on the lunch table and settled into his chair. "You have talent. How you managed to get it, I haven't a clue."

"My father builds Peacekeeper weapons," I said in an emotionless monotone. "I help."

"I see."

We sat in silence for a moment as I chased the remains of my Capitol food around my platter. My fingers ached from the hours of work I'd put them though—but it was a pleasant feeling, a familiar soreness that I only achieved after the longest days at home.

Darkness swept over the train car as suddenly as if somebody had flicked a switch and turned off the sun. The few lighting fixtures quickly flitted to life, casting ominous shadows across Reg's angular face. Seeing my expression of panic, he gave the tiniest smile of amusement. "The tunnel, Charles. Under the mountains. Don't they teach you anything in school?" It was a joke, but it still made me feel stupid. The mountains, that used to be called the Rockies hundreds of years ago, I remembered from History, where the Capitol's greatest advantage—the huge things separated them from the rest of the Districts. The only ways into the Capitol were over the ginormous rocks, or through the highly guarded tunnels. One of the Rebel's biggest issues, during the Rebellion.

My lungs gasped for air, even though the inside of the train car was exactly as it had been the whole ride. I felt suffocated and oddly cut-off… back into darkness that I didn't have the power to escape…

As quickly as the tunnel had began, it ended. Brilliant light burst through the windows in rectangular pillars, illuminating the whole car with bright, clean luminosity.

A blur of bright, almost unreal colors began sweeping past, gradually growing more distinguishable as the train slowed. The tallest buildings I've ever seen towered over us; the streets were paved in candy-colored bricks; the shingles of the smaller buildings all neon colors that hurt my eyes to look directly at. And the people—weren't like people at all. They were like haunting, color-infused animals that walked like us and laughed like us, but were yet entirely different. The Capitol-ites would stop in their tracks, or nudge their friends, brightly indicating the train and staring with delight. I was willing to bet that every other tribute on the train had their face pressed to the window, staring out at a world that the cameras really hadn't expressed.

Lies. All of this ridiculously cheery, well-fed city with their blinding colors and ridiculous clothes was just a cover-up for the real Capitol—the one that delights in killing kids. The one who doesn't mind letting us Districts starve. The ones who pay us next to nothing for the longest houred days we could possibly manage without keeling over of exhaustion. The ones who took Lucy.

I made a point of glowering at the city with as much hatred and blame I could manage to stick to my expression. If there were cameras on me, all the better. A delighted, amazed tribute who is blown away by such an impressive city looks like a happy, content tribute. A pissed-off, imposing tribute who looks at the city like he would look at trash is an obviously unhappy tribute. Who's saying I don't enjoy this. This city is crap. This is all wrong.

The train's speed slowed to a crawl, such a pace that the Capitol people below me could jog along with it, smiling and waving their arms as if welcoming home a town hero. It was disgusting. I drew back from the window, hiding my face once more in the shadows, and glanced to Reg for one last confirmation.

"Remember what we talked about. For your stylist. For your interview. For the arena. I've only got your back for a ways, Hunter. It's all you from there."

I nodded as the vehicle finally slid to a complete stop in the bursting station. It was like a sea of contorted, mix-matched bright colors out my window—I took a deep breath, sliding my eyelids shut. The sound of the door sliding open. Excited screams washing over my face.

I opened both eyes.

Welcome to the Capitol, everyone. Enjoy your stay.
Topsy
**I'm no longer accepting stylists or designs. The remaining Districts will be designed by some of the elite stylists on my team.

Sponsor Points, as of September 5th:

Claratrix LeChatham: 15 points

Misticalcookie: 7

Wirtting2StayHalfSane: 12

3rdbase101: 7

Twirlgirl821: 12

Akai-Pyon: 12

MadMan95: 8

Song of the Moon: 5

Lightninllamas: 5

Vampirah: 5

These are the points as I've tallied them, and you must remember that I control this world. I only credited reviews that mentioned the writing and/or the way the characters were portrayed, and each mentor receives 5 points just for submitting their tribute.
Please do not PM me with complaints about how many points you or others have-I hate complainers, and I control your tributes lives... and deaths. What I say goes. The end.