The gong sounded and I dashed to the Cornucopia. Apparently I'm fast cause I was the first there. I grabbed the first things I saw, a backpack, a jacket, and a hat of some kind. I jumped out just before Bryan finished climbing in and ran off in one direction. I quickly jumped into a ditch, not to far off but still close enough that I can see the Cornucopia. I started going through the stuff I got. The jacket was lined with knives and strings; the backpack was filled with pots, pans, and 4 canteens; and the hat was made of some kind of flexible metal.
The bloodbath went on and neither Emily nor Steffany joined me. Finally they both dove into the ditch bruised and bloodied. Emily had a trident, scarlet with blood. Steffany had a bow, a sheath of arrows, and a giant folded piece of aluminum. "We need to get out of here," Steffany yelled at me. We got up and started running, no questions asked. We found a cave and hid there. We sat at the opening and went through our stuff. We had no idea what to do with the aluminum, we couldn't trap anything, all we saw were snakes and giant birds. After a while the sky showed the deaths as 5 cannon fires went off. The girl from 11 who blew up, both from 9, which made Emily smirk, the guy from 3, and both from 12, all died.
"Crap, not as many as usual, these are gonna be some long Games,"
"Great," I mumbled. I walked over to the fire and grabbed a burning stick. I walked to the cave opening, sat down, and closed my eyes. I wish I could keep my promise to the world. I opened my eyes and blew out the stick.
"What was that?" Emily asked staring at me.
"My birthday is the first day of the Games, today," I said with as much disgust as ever.
"So much for happy birthday," Steffany said under her breath.
We took shifts as lookouts. I had the last shift and realized that deserts are cold at night so I put on my jacket of knives. I huddled up at the mouth of the cave and stared at the harsh flat land. I could feel my eyes starting to flutter with tiredness. Then a loud hum started. It got louder and louder, the pebbles on the ground stared moving and rolling. I stood up as Steffany and Emily joined me at the cave entrance. The loud hum turned into huge crashes in an instant. The ground itself exploded!
Before I knew it I was picking myself up from the sand. The sun beat down on me and I took off the jacket and peered around. The arena was still barren and the Cornucopia still stood. Had I dreamed the earthquake? I turned around and was greeted with a sheer cliff. Half of cave was all that was left. There was nothing beyond it but still darkness below. I went into what was left of the cave. I found the backpack I got at the beginning but the hat was gone. Out of the corner of my eye I saw something else. I picked up the necklace, turquoise. I wrapped the jewel around my glove, and put my backpack & jacket on. I climbed a tree to find somewhere- anywhere to go.
A grove of dead trees. I jumped to the ground and started walking. As soon as I entered the grove I found a small stream. I dunked my head in taking large gulps. I took my head up o find an axe inches from my face. Only a foot or 2 away was the towering giant from District 7. "You're a fool for coming here." He boomed in a deep, voice.
"You're a fool for challenging me." I smirked. I leapt back several feet in one bound. I swooped my arm slinging a knife at him, which he easily dodged letting it get stuck in the tree behind him. I grabbed the thin but strong string that tied the knife to my jacket and yanked it to the point it slashed his shoulder wide open.
I jumped over the stream and pinned him down. The axe flew from his hand to the ground, his arm flung around uselessly. Must've hit a nerve, what luck. "How many Tributes are dead?" I growled holding the red knife to his neck.
"Twelve," he droned in a voice hat questioned my sanity.
"How long ago was that earthquake?" I noticed the look in his eyes as he put the pieces together.
"2 days ago, took out 3 Tributes," He answered.
"Which ones?"
"I don't know." At the moment he finished I slashed his neck wide open. The cannon fire almost immediate. I decided to add some flair and slashed II into his wrist. I searched around but couldn't find any supplies other than the axe. The final 11, wow. I wonder if Emily and Steffany are still alive. BOOM! Another cannon fire. These games are going really fast. Final 10 just like that.
I looked around. I saw barren treetops and a faint gray streak, smoke. Which means I can either fight them or run away with my tail between my legs. Guess I'll fight. I silently walked through the grove and started hearing voices, 1 male and 2 female. At that point I started hiding behind the trees. I started getting close when my world was turned upside down. Literally. There I was dangling by my ankle, then the guy from 10 walked up "WOOHOO! Caught one!" He yelled out tying me up with the rope from the trap. He took my backpack, carried the rope, and put it over my head. He picked me up and we couldn't have gone 8 feet before he dropped me to the ground. I heard muffled whispers that soon turned into fighting voices.
They finally took the bag off my head and I felt a wave of relief seeing Emily and Steffany in tattered, bloodied clothes, but alive. "Sorry about him," said Emily untying me.
"Thanks," I groaned. I gave Emily her necklace and the three of them filled me in on what happened. There was an earthquake, but the ground shifted moving Emily and Steffany (or me, they couldn't tell) to the other side of the arena. "WOW, this has to be one of the dirtiest tricks they've ever pulled,"
"Yeah, anyway this is Kyle from 10," He was… wide, but strong. He had a crew cut, and a five o'clock shadow, must be an older Tribute.
A few days past and 2 cannon fires went off, we assume that there've been fights since they haven't tried sending us into battle. The guys from 11 and 6 died. Together they told me the only ones left are us, Christine, Bryan, and the girls from 7 and 5. They've also been counting the days and it's the start of the 2nd week of the games. Then in the dead of night I heard something from the trees, a morphed mix of a hiss, growl, and screech.
I aimed my arm at the sound and saw the out line of a huge cat. Then I saw the glowing yellow eyes. I slowly walked over and nudge Kyle with my shoe. He quietly awoke and caught on. He started at the shape and eyes and whispered "What the hell?"
If he didn't know what it was then I might as well try this. I swung my arm and the knife went flying, the eyes moved at light speed and severed the string. Crap. Claws, speed, and vision, time for some fight. The thing lunged at me and in the instant between that and impact I saw it. The glowing eyes, orange stripes, sand colored wings, and huge claws, all pouncing straight at me.
I quickly leaped out of it's path as it's huge claws scraped at me, catching the side of my face. The monster landed on Kyle and sunk it's teeth into his lower arm as he let out a horrible scream of pain. I quickly grabbed a knife and sunk it into the thing's neck and it went limp in a second. It took Emily Steffany and I to pull the thing off Kyle and pry it's jaws open. This thing was huge so naturally Emily and I started cutting it up and putting it on the fire while Steffany dealt with Kyle's wound. It took probably half an hour but she did it, then started on mine. She couldn't do much for me but she did her best.
None of us could sleep after that. We just stayed up. As the sun started to rise a cannon went off. "Wonder who that is," I said listening for anymore.
"Don't know," Steffany sighed.
"Hopefully Bryan, that guy would kill us easy," Emily said tearing her teeth into a piece of monster, medium rare.
"What about you Kyle?" Steffany said nudging him with her foot. Nothing. "Kyle?" Steffany said turning him over, on to his back. His eyes were open but not moving, his hand gave slight twitches but his chest didn't move.
After further inspection of the bones the monster was part snake, Emily could tell from the jaw, apparently there's a lot of water snakes where she lives. We got some water from a river and made some soup with some berries we found, then we packed the leftovers. We started marching out of the grove when we saw a parachute falling into a canyon. We started our way there, usually Tributes don't move after getting a gift, so we figured we'd try to ambush them. It turned to night so we went to a cave nearby. While Steffany tried getting more wood I pulled Emily over to talk after she made the fire. "Steffany's to strong,"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean even together we won't be able to kill her when she's done with us,"
"Yeah, good point, now what,"
"I just wanted your consent before I do this,"
"What?" she said as I pulled the small organ from my backpack. I walked over to the meat cooking over the fire and squeezed the organ over a piece. The fire beneath the meat flared up and went blue for a second.
"I went through the organs from that thing o find the poison glad and found it,"
"How do you know that's it?"
"I put some on a living plant I found and the thing died before I could back up,"
Steffany came back and threw down the wood and dug into the meat. She fell asleep and Emily and I took watch. After a while the cannon went off and Steffany stopped breathing. "Final 6," I said glaring at the night sky.
Morning came and with it Emily and I got to work, we found boulders and put them at the cliff of the canyon. Turns out that Bryan and Christine were the 2 in the canyon, and even better, they were still sleeping. After finding and lining 10 boulders we each end of the line of huge stones. We got ready to push, and each went closer to the middle pushing them down, by the time the boulders started hitting the bottom Bryan was awake and running away, Christine on the other hand didn't get up in time and we watched her guts spew out onto the canyon floor.
Bryan started climbing the steep incline with ease, rage flaring in his eyes. I dug into my pocket and put on the steel hat I got back from Emily. I signaled her to get back to the cave and I got ready to kill. "No," she said sternly. "Before I came here Finnick came to see me and told me to make sure that if he does die that it's by my hands," she finished. Before I could get a word in she was shooting arrows from Steffany's bow. Each one Bryan dodged. At that point I started slinging knives at him. He finally made it to the top and pounced up to Emily.
She pulled out her trident and let gravity do the rest. In one swift motion he fell right on the trident as blood went everywhere. He slowly slid down the wooden shaft until finally landing right on Emily. She just laid there for a second with a sickening look on her face as the blood pooled on and around her. "Can I get some help here?" she practically yelled at me.
"Yeah, sorry" I pulled the trident tip carefully in my direction, making the trident and Bryan fall to the ground. Afterwards we went through their stuff, we got another trident, a sword, some kunai (throwing daggers, way better than my knives), and a ball and chain. Emily took the trident and sword while I took the chain and kunai.
At that point we realized it was the final 4. It was us and the girls from 7 and 5 still. We decided to stay there for the night and hunt tomorrow. We woke up early hoping to find them before they were really awake. Only minutes after we woke up we heard a cannon fire, but which one is dead? How? Why? We hurried, packed, and ate on our way to where we saw the hovercraft. We were half way there when a huge rock flew down landing only a foot or 2 from smashing me.
We looked to the sky to be greeted with a meteor shower! We dodged Stone after stone, clumsily running for our destination, we soon stumbled into a small campsite to find the sickly green girl from 5. She had scaly patches all over and razor teeth. She looked at us and immediately snarled her fangs. She turned to the shower just as a gigantic rock flew down splattering blood all over followed by cannon fire. As soon as the cannon sounded the stones stopped.
Final 2, me and Emily, fight to the death.
"So this is it," I said with an arctic chill.
"For you," she growled taking out both tridents.
I slung my arm and let the kunai fly. She effortlessly dodged all of them and quickly put one trident away and took the sword from it's sheath. In one swift motion she sliced the strings I tied to the ends, damn. She threw her trident and I dodged the same and used a knife to cut the thin wire I let her use. I noticed the tall thick tree to my left. I quickly slung my arm and let the ball on the chain fly over and knock the entire tree down between us, I quickly ran back in the direction I came from to escape. I hadn't gone far before I tripped over a meteor. I started to get up when I saw Emily's necklace, just lying on the ground. I reached over and picked it up. I wrapped it around my glove and continued away.
I climbed a tree far away and stared out at the arena (now you're caught up), I had seen people poisoned, exploded, splattered, and skewered. Now I was gonna leave this place and I'll be glad to know that I'll never return.
We didn't see each other the rest of the day, but we understood to meet at the Cornucopia in the morning. She arrived a few minutes after I did. I started slinging the chain at her limbs and she started throwing her tridents and then using the string to get them back. This went on for probably 10 minutes. Finally the Gamemakers got bored, we heard the ground move, heard the trees fall, and stones tumble. Then we saw the ground rip open and out flew a flock of huge birds, each one was different but 5 seemed more threatening than the rest. The first I saw was the fattest, it had huge teeth and a rope-like tail that seemed that it could be used to strangle us. Then a long stealthy one with a booming screech (I didn't even a screech could boom!). The next shot darts at us from its mouth, seeing as how it melted a kunai that I dropped; I'm guessing they're poisonous. Then a bird with huge talons and a beak with 2 extra tips on either side. Finally a bird that picked up rocks and launched them at us.
We took them out in about half an hour, but we had a ton of injuries. I took several beaks and talons to the face and she took a ton of rocks and claws to… everywhere. We faced each other, bruised and blood stained. I was left with 2 knives and she had all3 of her weapons, a sword and 2 tridents. She threw her trident which I dodged, she threw the other and I used a knife to cut it in half, but of course the string broke and we were left with one weapon each.
She leaped over and had the sword to my throat. I thought for a millisecond before I slung my last knife to the Cornucopia, it struck a curve at just the right angle and it flew over and stuck out her mouth the blood dripped on me, and I winced, ready for the blade to fall and slice into my face, but it fell right into the ground.
The Games were over.
