Christina's (Number Ten) POV
I fix my hair in the mirror. I'm fed up the Capitol already. I know why all seven of us, with the exception of Ella, are in the games this year. The Mogadorians are working with the Capitol in order to exterminate us. I'm sure President Snow thought this would be the best way to ally with the Mogs is by putting us in their Hunger Games. Little does Snow realize that as soon as all of us Lorics are gone, the Mogs will enslave the people more than they already have. Snow will most likely realize that his precious Panem will be reduced to nothing with the snap of Setrakus Ra's fingers. Not that people on this side of the globe realize that there's been a war raging on the other continents. A war of intergalactic proportions.
All eleven of us were brought to Earth when we young. Our planet, Lorien was destroyed by the Mogadorians only a handful of us and our Cepans made it off alive. When we landed, the humans that greeted us warned us to never move to Panem. Here we had free will and not be sentenced to death. Although we as kids, were physically superior to most humans we would not survive the games until our legacies came in. Even then, the risk of being discovered was too great to go anywhere near the dystopian society. All eleven of us have been hiding in Europe and all over the rest of world, with the exception of Panem, aka North America. There's been nothing, but corruption and oppression in Panem, while the rest of the world seems fairly civilized and normal. The other governments have not even dared to try and take over Panem because although humble on the outside, Snow is malicious and calculating with the threat of nuclear weapons and the lives of thousands of people who live in his world at his disposal. That is a man made of pure evil. The only person worse than him is Setrakus Ra himself.
It wasn't until that the first three of the Garde were attacked and nearly killed that we were low on options for places to run. We all lost our Cepans and we were left to find each other. We gained our legacies and human allies along the way, including my boyfriend Blake. We were finally making progress as a team until Setrakus Ra came to Earth
The eleven of us met up not long ago, but the Mogs came after us quite quickly. They threw just about everything they could after us, we were winning until Ra came after us himself. He cancelled all of our legacies and we knew we had to run. We barely escaped with our lives. As a consequence, we had to adapt new identities and split into the districts. I found it kind of funny that we picked our corresponding numbers, all except Ella, Three, and I. Three and Marina went to the 7th district together and Ella stayed with me. We decided at least two or more of us needed to stay together. It was only supposed to be temporary, but when the Mogs began hunting us in Panem, they joined with Snow and thought the best way to avoid a war was to kill us in the games. I could read the announcer's thoughts and he was instructed to say our names, no matter whose name he/she picked. Fortunately, Eight and John saw this ahead of time and we had come up with a proper plan.
Of course, Snow has no idea what we have planned or what we're capable of. We're going to use the Games as a way of rallying allies against the Mogadorians and start the rebellion to free these people from their oppression. If we can get some of the Tributes in these games too, if they don't kill each other first. I've seen the first two districts, there's no hope there, but the outer districts may want the chance to come out of this alive.
But until the games, we're stuck acting like the regular tributes and that includes being mentored by idiots and putting on these ugly costumes. I don't really understand what the point is dressing up in costumes and parading us around like show dogs. Our "mentors" tell us it's to gain sponsors, but with the eight of us, we can take care of ourselves. I'm District Ten so that means livestock The drunken stylist wants us dressed up like cowboys, but it makes me want to hurl. I want something more invigorating, less stupid and more creative. Fortunately, I have a great sense of style. I have a few hours until the parade and my stylist is too drunk to care what we do, so I decide to sneak down from the tower.
Yo Six,I tell her in my head.
What's up Christina? she says.
I need to use your invisibility to sneak down to the costumes.
Yes, please, I look like the fricken moon, I need something better.
Let's get the rest of the guys and redesign this crappy costumes.I say.
On my way.
After 20 minutes or so, all of us, plus Adam have made it to the costume room.
"This is my Graceland." I say, and set up two mannequins, one for guys and one for girls.
I start with District 3, technology. The thing Adam has to wear is a silver cape and this ridiculous head dress made of gears or something.
"That is hideous", I say, trying not to laugh at Adam.
My mind begins to race as I see the materials all around me. I begin barking orders.
"Six, hand me some synthetic lighting."
"John, I need some black fabric."
Before long, I've completely stripped the ugly costumes and come up with a totally new design. I've created black synthetic jumpsuits that have trillions of little lights that reflect off the fabric. I also create a light up headband for the girl and matching necklaces that light up with the touch of a button.
"That's much better," Adam says.
Next is District 4, fishing. John shows me the design and I nearly start laughing.
"Eight, hand me something blue silk and Nine some fish netting."
"Sweet! Johnny's getting fish net stockings" Nine cheers.
John slugs Nine in the shoulder.
A bit of some stripping of the blue and a few pieces of netting.
"I hope, Sarah doesn't mind me showing off your chest," I say fitting John up.
I've created a new piece. I've fitted John with a trident chain over top a very thin fish netting muscle shirt and blue shorts that have fish-netting draped over one side of his hip. I fit him with brown sandals and a simple ring of small bubble beads. For the girl, I create a blue bikini style dress with fish netting around the stomach. I find a shell necklace and add bubble accessories to the hair.
"Much better" I grin.
District 5, power. Five, my twin brother tries on the design. All of us burst out laughing, he looks like a cross between a disco ball and a walking satellite dish. Just like in cartoons and coincidentally, a light bulb goes off in my head. I work with lighting again, but work with the silver that the designer has already started off. In te end, I created very dark grey suit for Five that lights up along the sides in line patterns, he basically looks like a power grid or a circuit board, with matching gloves and glasses. The girl's is similar only she has a glowing head band.
I move onto Six and District 6, transportation. She looks like the moon, don't ask me what the stylist was thinking, it's not related to the district at all. I dye some leather suits silver and have Marina, with the best artistic hand, create train tracks that I go over in thread. I fit Six with silver eyeliner and a light dusting of sparkles that makes her skin and eyes pop. I string her hair up with a leather headband and put on high heel boots. She now looks sassy and deadly at the same time.
Marina's District 7 is next, lumber. Her stylist had her dressed in a ruffled dress that I think was supposed to look like paper, but she looks like a giant paper mache sculpture. I go for the original tree idea. I fit her with brown boots that I have a machine stitch embroidered leaves along the sides. I have her in brown tights and a short brown skirt with a similar embroidery design. I fit her in a strapless top that hugs her curves and gradually goes green. I give her a nice leaf necklace and have a small crown of flowers to complete the outfit. I give her green eye shadow and create delicate patterns around her temples that represent a breeze . I apply some earthy tones that make her eyes pop out more and give her neutral lipstick. For Three, I dress him in brown boots and pants, with muscle shirt that I embroider with leaf designs. I add an axe necklace and a crown of leaves.
"Perfect," I say with a smile. He only returns a small grin I really try to be friendly to Three, he'd been living by himself for a long time and is especially timid around us. He sees his inexperience as a liability.
Eight shows me the outfit for District 8, textiles. He looks like a giant quilt with ugly complementary colours.
"Is you stylist colour blind?" I ask.
"Just might be," Eight grumbles.
I decide to show off Eight's bold muscle structure so I only design bottoms. I manage to find a bin of scrap cloth to use. I liked the idea using cloth, but not with ugly colours with matching hats. I use a machine that weaves the fabrics together so it looks less like quilt and more like a woven blanket. The colours complement each other and along the sides make the black thread look like stitching. I finish the outfit with Eight wearing a needle on a chain. For the girl, I create a matching dress with the assorted fabrics and she'll wear a matching headband and a thread spool necklace.
Nine is the last one before my own. District 9, grain. The hideous outfits are silver and I think are supposed to represent the factories or the combine harvesters. Regardless, I start from scratch. I use earthy/golden tons for Nine's pants and cut off the cuffs to give a rough, worn look. I have the machine embroider tufts of wheat. I think about giving him a straw hat, but I decide to let his hair go out. For the female, I give a golden/brown dress a go over to make it look rugged. I get the machine to do the same thing around the hem of the skirt. I also give Nine a tuft of wheat to suck on. I hope the audience likes the touch.
I have little time left for my own costume. I decide to keep the hat and boots, but get rid of the dorky ensemble that is supposed to complete the outfit. I decide to go really simple and wear a plaid tank top and very short jean skirt. For the boy, a plaid t-shirt and jeans. I add cow skin belts with the buckle in the shape of a bull.
"Now I feel better." I say, braiding my hair into pigtail style. "At least, we won't look like idiots."
"What are you going to tell your stylists?" Marina asks.
"Nothing, it'll be too late for them to change anything." I grin. If we need to be show dogs, we'll be damn good ones.
"We gotta hurry." John says. "We've got ten minutes till we need to be in the stables."
"Before we go..." Eight says. "Should we discus..." he stops and looks around. We are no doubt under surveillance. Why the Capitol let us break in here and remake our outfit, I'll never know. I guess if they thought that we had accepted our fate, we coul do whatever we wanted.
How about we do it in a safer environment?I suggest to them.
I agree John says. Let's go
We all walk out of the fabric room, wearing our costumes proudly. We deliver the new designs to our counterparts and make last minute touches on make-up before heading out.
I don't care about what our stylists say or whine about, what I did is better than all of their ideas together. Anyways, they were not my kind of designs.