Every Monster has a Creator

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The Stylist

Haymitch sat in a fancy chair thinking about the things Calypso had told him only moments ago. It seemed unbelievable. He wanted nothing more than to sign onto her plan and help however he could but Calypso's instructions had been very specific. He could only listen and look but he could not interfere unless asked to. The one thing she did need help with, that she asked Haymitch to do, was to get in contact with certain people. As soon as they arrived at The Capitol he'd have to find a way to get a message out

Calypso yawned as she got up the next morning. Lowering herself into a bridge she cracked her back and stretched. She had only been asleep for a few hours but she felt refreshed and completely rested. It seemed like Calypso had woken up in a better mood than she was in yesterday. She had slipped on a pair of silk pants and a black tank top last night and decided she didn't feel like changing since as soon as they arrived her stylist was going to make her get undressed anyway. Instead she walked down the hallway and into the dining room and was greeted by a tense silence that had permeated the room.

Gale sat at the table in complete silence. He could feel the eyes of Calte, Peeta, and Haymitch as they silently asked what had happened. It wasn't everyday that both he and Katniss stared at their plates with looks that could kill. His head told him to just forgive her and get over it, but he couldn't, no, he wouldn't, not after the things she had said last night. They had gotten into another fight. It had started with Katniss trying to coach him, give him some tips. But this hadn't been a friendly coaching; she had been acting utterly superior to him.

Every time he tried to offer a different approach to a situation she proposed she would say something along the lines of "I survived this game before. Have you even killed someone before? All you've ever done was shot bunnies. Do as I say." He had to admit Katniss was under a lot of stress from her family, the rebels, The Capitol, but that gave her no right to talk to him the way she did. They had started to argue and somehow to topic had gotten back Peeta, as always, and the feelings of betrayal he felt whenever his name came up, reared their ugly heads.

"At least I didn't pretend to love someone to save my own life!" he had snapped at her. He shouldn't have said it, he knew that as soon as the statement had left his mouth, but he had just been so angry. Gale had tried to apologize but Katniss had pushed him away and said something like "I least I have someone. No one will ever love you!" That had been the last straw. He left the room and Katniss slammed the door and when he came to breakfast that morning he refused to acknowledge her presence let alone talk to her.

Gale's thoughts were interrupted when the door opened and Calypso walked in. He had to admit, she had rubbed the wrong way a few times, but he could understand where she was coming from. She was nice enough to Peeta and she seemed to like Haymitch, but that was because they were her mentors and it was them that would decided whether she lived or died. She didn't really put any effort into being kind to Calte but she wasn't outwardly mean either, Gale's guess was that she thought Calte was useless but it was a good idea to keep her happy incase she did prove useful. But Calypso had absolutely no reason to be civil to Katniss in any way, not when it was completely obvious that she had a bias toward Gale and would help him over her when they finally had to kill each other. And as for Gale, himself, he was her opponent, her enemy, her competition, and being distant was the only thing she could do. So, needless to say, it was surprising when Calypso placed a small plate in front of Gale and took a seat right next to him.

"That fruit is good for you," she said pointing at the strange blue fruit she had set down on the table, "It has a chemical that absorbs water and stores it. If you eat some at every meal and drink a lot of water it'll take longer to dehydrate once we get to the games since your body can work off the stored water." She took a piece of her own plate and popped it into her mouth.

"I've never heard of a fruit that can do that," Calte said fascinated and poked the fruit with her fork.

"It's a Capitol invention. They created it toward the middle of the rebellion so that they could feed it to their soldiers and cut off all the water going into the districts and kill all the rebels from dehydration without losing any of their own men," Calypso informed them with a shrug and Gale picked up a slice of the fruit and cautiously ate it. It didn't taste too bad, kind of sour but he could eat it.

"How did you find out about it?" Peeta asked. Calypso shrugged again and offered no answer.

"Why are you telling me this?" Gale asked suddenly, catching Calypso off guard. She looked at him like she didn't know what he was talking about. "You're going to have to kill me eventually!" he growled in annoyance, "why make it easier for me to survive, I'm your adversary!" Calypso looked at him for a moment and took a second to think.

"I'm not going to kill you," she told him after a minute, "and as for killing me, you're welcome to." Gale looked at her in shock and she just smiled. "I like you," she continued, "You're not like other people."

"What do you mean?" Gale asked softly, not believing what he was hearing.

"A selfish man draws a circle around himself and protects those within it. A good man draws a circle around himself and his family and his friends, and protects those within it. A great man draws a circle around himself and protects everyone one outside it," Calypso said with a smile, "You are a great man."

"How can you know that?" Gale accused her darkly. He didn't consider himself a great man; he just did what he had to survive. Calypso touched her finger to her nose and her eyes sparkled.

"Your eyes tell me everything," she said.

"Are you saying that you'd like to enter an alliance with Gale? You don't even know his skills," Haymitch commented and Gale was glad the old man had decided to change the subject. Calypso reached out and took Gale's right hand in her own and flipped his hand so she could see his palm. With her index finger she traced the top joints of his index, middle, and ring finger.

"You only get calluses here from using a bow, frequently, so I know he's a hunter and a good one at that," she explained to Haymitch, "if he's a hunter then he can probably use a knife and I'm willing to bet he is very good at setting snares and traps, which is good because I can't trap if my life depended on it." Gale looked at her in awe. She knew so much just from looking at his fingers? It was then that he noticed how pretty Calypso really was.

She wasn't stunning or extravagant but the more looked at her the harder it was to look away. In fact, at first glance she seemed ordinary but the more attention he paid the more difficult it became to identify an imperfections. Gale couldn't help but think about how soft her blonde hair looked as it flipped upward slightly at the ends and framed her face. Her skin was perfect but it had a gentle glow about it and her eyes, that seemed common at first, had specks of silver and purple in them that gave her eyes a haunting look. Gale snapped out his thoughts had realized his and Calypso's hands still lingered against each other on the table. He let his arm fall to his side and caught Calypso's eyes as she glanced at him.

Calypso sighed as she watched three primped and colored women circled her with tweezers and wax. They had spent the last hour searching for hair to pluck or skin to buff and were thoroughly annoyed that they couldn't find any. The first of the colored women was a girl by the name of Danie; she was the youngest of the three and looked like she was around twenty. She had bubblegum pink hair and bright blue eyes, and she wore an all black pants suit with gold threading and a neon teal butterfly design on the back. The second was a tall thin woman, by the name of Fatan, whose orange hair was accompanied by lavender colored skin and a pink skin tight dress. The last was Judie, who had jet black hair with bleach blonde roots and look like she had been so surgically alter that if she stopped smiling for one second her face would crack into a thousand pieces. "I can't seem to find anything ladies," Judie whined with her ever present smile. The others agreed and they decided it was time to call in the Stylist.

Gale looked at himself in the body length mirror on the wall. His stylist stood beside him and was making some quick changes to his costumes. Three hours he had spent with his prep team and it had been the worst three hours of his life. He had never realized the prep teams were as bad as they seemed on television. At least his stylist, Tali, wasn't too crazy. She had pale skin and her fingers long and slender. She had multicolored hair that included the colors, brown, pink, blue, yellow, and orange. It was cut in a messy crop style, her eyes with a bronze color and she had two black studs below her lips. She wasn't as crazy as he thought she was going to be. Although she was slightly hyper she wasn't insane. She actually had some good ideas that had nothing to with coal dust in any form.

"We burn coal, as Cinna said last year. But we burn it to produce electricity to power The Capitol and all the districts," she had told him as she explained the inspiration behind the outfit he was wearing. He had on a loose white shirt that was open in the front and a pair of black slacks with black boots. The thing about his shirt that made it different was the fiber optics sewn into it. The fiber optics wouldn't stand out on their own, but when there were sparklers thrown into the mix there was sure to be a show. Tali had sewn sparklers into the sleeves of his shirt and braided them into his hair that the prep team had spiked out in all different directions. She promised the sparklers wouldn't burn him but Gale was still slightly skeptical.

He was busy trying to figure out what he was going to do about burning alive that he didn't hear Calypso come in until she was only a few feet away. He turned and let a small gasp escape his lips. She looked fantastic. Her dress was corseted with a flower pattern on the bodice and fiber optics braided throughout it. It came to about four inches below her knees. Her hair had been scrunched so it was slightly curly and there were a few sparklers braided in. Sparklers hung from the ends of her dress and there were some short one on the straps of the dress. She smiled at him lightly and they turned to walk toward their chariot. It was gold with mechanisms to throw sparks off the wheels and sparklers lined the sides.

"So we're partners huh?" Gale asked as they stepped up into the chariot.

"Yep, just one condition," Calypso said and glanced at him. He nodded as the doors opened and the horses began to move forward. "Don't fall in love with me." She said.