A Games Unlike Any Other
Chapter 4 The Mentor
This isn't what I signed up for, thought Theresia as she exited Wallenston's room.
The Hunger Games had been in effect for twenty-five years, and the victories had been dominated by a few Districts: Two, Five, and Ten. The reasons were fairly obvious: once a District had victors, they could advise subsequent tributes on strategies for fighting and survival. Meanwhile the other tributes were simply thrown into the arenas unprepared and were easily slaughtered.
A few years earlier the Gamesmasters finally decided to do something about it, not because they were upset by the unfairness, but because the Games were getting dull with the same Districts winning predictable victories each year. The victor-advisors were made official with a title, "Mentors", and a fund was set up to hire Mentors for the rest of the districts. It still wasn't ideal: the salary was not high, and the hired mentors lacked the experience of the victors. The Gamesmasters rationalized that eventually every District would have a victor and the problem would be solved.
Theresia had not gotten involved for the money. She was from a wealthy Capitol family and didn't need the extra pay. She was disturbed by the tribute system itself. The rationale behind it all was the ancient Roman idea that children were the property of their parents and that one could punish a guilty citizen by targeting his progeny. There was a brief period in Theresia's youth where her father had antagonised President Shrub. Peacekeepers summoned Theresia to their headquarters and tried to get her to give evidence of supposed wrongdoing on her father's part, making vague threats of punishment if she did not. Fortunately Shrub died at exactly that point and the new President took her family back into favor, but it had taught Theresia a few things. That there was injustice in Panem, that children were particularly vulnerable to it, that she had just encountered the tip of the iceberg and had luckily been saved from the full brunt of it. And was it really luck that President Shrub had died at that point? Or was there a real conspiracy that Theresia didn't happen to know about?
Whenever Thereseia felt stressed, she tended to have a nightmare of that day at the Peacekeepers. But when she mentioned it to other people, they said it was nerves. Shrub may have been corrupt, but they had a new, honest President now.
One who still kept the Hunger Games going.
Theresia readily saw parallels between tributes and herself: children who had done nothing wrong except to be born to parents whom the government disliked. So she got involved in the mentoring program. There were still difficulties, particularly at the beginning. How could she advise tributes when she had no experience of the Games itself? She tried to compensate by viewing past games. Her tapes were from the public broadcasts; the more extensive records made by the Gamesmasters were not available.
Her research paid off when her tribute from District 11 actually won the 23rd Hunger Games. This made her famous, but more important to her was the fact that she had saved a tribute who would otherwise have been killed.
Now that District 11 had a victor/mentor of its own, she was moved to District 7, which still lacked a victor. Her tributes there were both killed before the finale of the 24th Games, but she could at least tell herself that she had given her innocent victims a few extra days of life.
Then the government changed the rules for the 25th Games. The kids were not innocent victims this time; they had been chosen by their Districts for their ordeal. Theresia had to determine whether they had been deservedly chosen or not.
Diana had frankly admitted to a nasty prank: leading a gang of local girls in smearing a local memorial with horse dung. But she defended it on the grounds that the officer honored by the memorial had murdered her parents. To evaluate that, Theresia had to judge local politics. What she saw of the District 7 government had not impressed her. The Peacekeepers had tried to torture an innocent girl into confessing to the crime. And Theresia had seen a video of one of Diana's partners being whipped half-naked in public; not only suffering the pain of the lash, but pathetically trying to hide her breasts from the crowd and the camera. Finally Theresia had come to the conclusion that whatever Diana had done, it didn't deserve death in the arena.
The case of Bruce Wallenston seemed more straightforward. He was accused of trying to rape his girlfriend. The accusation came not from Peacekeepers, whom Theresia might have doubted, but citizens who had heard the girl scream and found her with Bruce, bruised and with her dress torn. Theresia wanted to be fair, and decided to get the boy's own story after talking to Diana.
Bruce was in a rage, and part of it was understandable. The Peacekeepers, fearing that he would be a threat to Diana or Theresia herself, had injected him with a powerful drug that made him impotent. The effect was temporary, but of course there was a high probability of his being killed in the Hunger Games, in which case the impotence might well be considered permanent. And there was a scarier way of describing the effect of the medication. Call it "chemical castration". Certainly Bruce was regarding it that way.
He did not understand the importance of getting Theresia's sympathy, or if he did, he certainly did not go about it the right way. He referred to his girlfriend as a "bitch" who had promised to give up her virginity to him and then broken the promise; that, to him, seemed to justify using force to claim what was "his". That she could have meant the promise and yet panicked at the idea afterwards was beyond his understanding. Theresia was disgusted.
A mentor's moral responsibility was to help her tributes win. But she knew that if it came to a choice between Diana and Bruce, she'd back Diana.
This evening it didn't matter. She faced the two tributes and gave directions for the next day.
"We'll arrive at the Capitol railway station mid-morning tomorrow. I'll go ahead to the Training Center, but you are required to stay in the station until all the tributes have arrived. You aren't allowed to talk to other district's tributes, and there will be Peacekeepers there to enforce that rule."
"But we can at least LOOK at the other tributes, right?" asked Diana. "See which ones look the strongest?"
"Yes. But keep in mind that strength in itself may not determine the winner. Another tribute may be faster, or smarter, or better able to survive on their own. If there're from a district with an earlier Victor, they've gotten a lot of practical advice on how to win. Currently the Districts with that distinction are 1, 2, 4, 5, 10, and 11. So there are a lot of things that could determine the winner." She decided not to mention at this point that she had trained the victor from 11.
"When all of the tributes have arrived, the entire group will make a formal procession from the railway station to the training center. Huge crowds of Capitol dwellers are likely to turn out to watch the procession. Don't do anything silly. You want to make the best possible impression on the onlookers, because they may sponsor you in the Games. And this is the crucial point: DO NOT try to escape, no matter how tempting it seems. The Capitol Peacekeepers know all the likely hiding places in the city and you don't. If you get caught, you'll be whipped so thoroughly that you'll still be hurting when the Games begin, and start off with a severe disadvantage. Understand?"
The two nodded somberly. Even Bruce had figured out that staying angry would not work. He needed to keep a cool head.
"Once you reach the Training Center, I'll meet you and we'll talk about the next stage. For now, go to bed, and try to get a good sleep for the next few nights. Because I guarantee that once you're in the arena, you won't sleep well at all."
TO BE CONTINUED
(Author's Note: The idea of the impotence drug is borrowed from fanfiction by "Fernwithy", with his permission. In his stories the purpose of the drug is to prevent tributes from committing sexual assaults in the arena. Fernwithy also presented the idea that the Capitol does include decent people who realize the barbarity of the Games. I highly recommend his Hunger Games stories)
(Author's Note: For the sake of some variety, I am assuming that in the 25th Games the protocols are different from the ones Katniss described in the 74th and 75th Games. No filmed reapings, no costuming, no parade with horses and chariots. They are later developments.)
