Hey guys, what's up? Oh, me? I'm good, thanks for asking. ;) So I wanted to thank everyone for following this story, I am very grateful. You guys are awesome. Also, sorry in advance if any of the information about trawling is wrong.


District 4

Talisa Cress POV

"Shut up," I said playfully. I pushed my brother, Marlins' shoulder, which caused our small fishing boat to rock back and forth.

"You're scaring away the fish!" He replied. We were fishing for dinner before the Reaping. I was volunteering this year. I had trained ever since I was eleven and I was finally old and strong enough to volunteer, I just had to beat everyone to it.

"We should get going," my father said disappointedly. We had yet to catch a fish, and that was probably because Marlin and I couldn't stop rocking the boat. Feeling a little sheepish, I asked for five more minutes.

"Last one to catch a fish is a rotten egg," Marlin said childishly.

"You're on brother," I confidently said. We fished in silence for a few minutes until I felt a tug on my line. I eventually reeled it in to reveal a decent sized flounder.

"Look who just caught your delicious dinner," I said with a smug look on my face.

"Too bad you won't be here to eat it," he said kind of depressingly, but then he snapped out of it. "Oh well, more for me," he said sounding more like himself.

We decided to head back to the docks, where I scaled, skinned, and cleaned out the fish. Once all that was left was meat, I wrapped it and put it back in our cooler. We headed back to our house which was conveniently located right on the beach.

Once inside, I went to go walk up to my room when the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I sensed that something was off. I spun around and grabbed by brothers wrist as it was in mid-air. He thought he was so sneaky throwing a punch at me when I wasn't paying attention.

I simultaneously pulled his arm down while I grabbed the inside of his elbow forcing his arm to bend. I pulled him towards me and stepped to the side, then turned so that I was behind him. I held his arm to his back and pulled his wrist up towards his neck. He let out a groan of pain, so I let him go.

"I broke you arm and then slit your neck before you had a chance to react," I told him smugly. My brother helped me train for the Games, so I was used to him pulling these stunts. He smiled and then heavily patted my back with the arm that I didn't almost rip off.

"Congrats, you're officially ready," he said.

"Please, I was ready six years ago, I learned that when I was ten," I gloated.

"Sis, six years ago you were eleven and you had just started training," he replied with a smirk on his face.

"And you already had a year of training yet I could still beat you in a fight."

"Nuh-uh," he replied like a child, even though he was eighteen.

"Then explain to me why you never volunteered for the Games," I replied. He didn't have a response, so he just pushed my shoulder jokingly.

"I'm going to miss you while you're in the arena," he said. He had no doubt that I would come home. One we realized that the Reaping was in thirty minutes, she both went to get ready.

I walked in my aqua painted room and pulled a green dress that matched my eyes out of my closet. The color reminded me of the ocean water on a stormy day. I put on the dress and looked at myself in the mirror.

The dress flowed from my waist to my knees and from the waist up it was tight, giving it a corset look. I let my hair out of the pony-tail that it had been in for almost week. Wavy golden locks flowed down to my shoulders. There were dents in my hair from the pony-tail holder that I had to tame to get straight.

I looked at myself in the mirror and felt dissatisfied. I pulled out a clear lip gloss and dabbed it on to my lips. I smiled to myself; I had achieved my goal. The dress and my wavy hair made me look flirty, but the dress revealed enough of my muscular arms and legs to make me look tough. The clear lip gloss made me look desirable, but because it was so little I didn't look too innocent.

I walked down to the parlor to find my brother sitting on the couch. I hopped over the back of the couch, using my arm for support and landed next to him.

"Talisa, what are do you need to remember," Marlin asked. I slightly groaned. We had gone over this a million times already.

"First: Make myself the mentors favorite. Second: Make the sponsors love me. Third: Don't become attached to anyone. Fourth: Never let your guard down. Fifth: Don't trust anyone. Sixth: Never hesitate to kill," I said. We made those guidelines together a few months before and he had not stopped reminding me about them.

"Talisa, this is serious," he said sternly.

"I know, Marlin. I know them by heart."

He stared at me for a few seconds until he stood up.

"We have to go," he said.

I got my parents and then we all walked to the Reaping together. I hugged my father and he wished me good luck, and then I awkwardly hugged my mother; she and I were never close. I went with Marlin to check in and then we went our separate ways. I wanted in my section anxiously as our escort, Noahlani, walked to the stage.

She looked like a rainbow puked on her; she had on a rainbow puffy dress with hair that looked like cotton candy. It swirled in to a cone on her head that had a different color on each layer. She was wearing blue, platform shoes that were four inches high on the front of her feet and an extra three on the heel, making her a grand total of seven inches taller than normal. I could have sworn that she would fall over.

She forced us to endure watching the video from the Capitol. I felt like clapping my hands when it was finally over.

"First we will pick the female tribute," she said with her annoying high-pitched voice and weird accent. She walked over to the glass bowl and stuck her hand all the way to the bottom before picking a name.

"Mae Cadrin," she barely got the words out before I yelled, "I volunteer!"

I pushed my way through the crowd and practically ran up the stage.

"What is your name sweetheart," she said and I internally rolled my eyes at how she called me sweetheart.

"Talisa Cress." She smiled and then moved on to the male tribute. I looked out into the sea of girls and noticed some of my friends from training were looking at me with angry faces. They were mad that I volunteered before them.

"Finley Baldwin," she said.

"I volunteer as tribute!" a sixteen year old boy said. He walked to the stage and told Noahlani that his name was Darius Lucian.

"Excellent! You may shake hands," she said. I shook hands with Darius and I could have sworn that I saw regret in his eyes.

Darius Lucian POV

I sat in my fathers pelagic, or mid-water, trawling boat while I practiced tying advanced knots. I dropped out of school and started working with him last year. He owned trawling boat for his independent business. Basically we lower a net into the water, I wait a good hour or so while he pilots boat, and then we pull the net up to find around three hundred mackerel on the good days. Afterwards we would put the fish into machines to be processed and deep frozen at sea and then sent to the Capitol.

Basically, I got paid to do nothing. It was a pretty good job. My father expected me to take over the business, which is why he was so pissed when I told him that I was going to volunteer for the Hunger Games

Both he and my sister, Iris, thought that the Games were barbarous and idiotic. My sister had smacked me up top the head when I told her. They had been constantly telling me that I was being witless and hadn't been thinking things through.

Although we had lived in a career district, neither Iris nor I had trained for the Games. However, I had gained muscle from carrying boxes of fish all my life, and I knew my way around a spear or trident.

The Hunger Games were a way of showing off your skills and becoming famous, and that was exactly what I wanted to do.

After my father and I finished up our work, we headed back to get ready for the Reaping. I walked in to our house to be greeted by a cold shoulder from Iris. I had already told my friends about how I was volunteering and they accepted my decision and wished me good luck.

Once we got to the Reaping, I was surprised when my sister hugged me and whispered, "Please don't get yourself killed." She pulled back, her blonde hair flowing in the wind and tears falling from her eyes on to her tan cheeks.

We both checked in and then went to stand in our assigned spots. My heart was beating in my ears and I felt jitters in my stomach from nervousness. I was determined to be the first to volunteer.

Our escort, Noahlani, took the stage and began talking. I was not paying attention as they played the video, I couldn't have paid attention because I was too anxious. Before I knew it, Noahlani was already reading the female name.

Noahlani said, "Mae Cadrin," and just as the words left her lips, I heard someone yell, "I volunteer!" I looked over and saw a girl from the seventeen year old section that looked just like me walk on the stage. She told Noahlani her name and then Noahlani moved on to the male tribute. She picked a name and read, "Finley Baldwin."

I didn't even hear the name as I yelled, "I volunteer as tribute!" Relief rushed through me as I walked towards the stage.

As I got closer, I recognized the female tribute, Talisa. I remembered seeing her practice throwing a spear one time when I walked in the training center to check it out longingly. I remembered thinking that she was better than me, and that I wouldn't be able to beat her. That is when I realized that my sister was right. What had I gotten myself into?

Talisa Cress POV

I sat at the dinner table inside the train. Darius was sitting to my left, Noahlani and Finnick Odair were sitting in front of me, and to my right was our other mentor, Mags. I thought that it was pointless for her to be a mentor because she couldn't talk, but her and Finnick were inseparable. I had always thought Finnick was attractive and seeing him up close, I must say, damn he is fine.

I picked up a flower shaped bread roll from the center of the table and took a bite. I immediately wanted to spit it out. It tasted like plain white flour. The District 4 bread was salty, fish-shaped bread with seaweed, giving it a green tint. It was funny how every district had its own kind of bread. Hell, the word Panem meant bread in Latin. I swore that one day, there would be another rebellion and there would be a bread roll or cracker that had some symbol on it.

I looked at the buffet of foods laid before me, trying to find something that I was used to. I saw this weird fish-looking meat that I had never seen before, so I put a sliver on my plate and took a bite. It tasted good, but was unrecognizable.

"What kind of fish is this?" I asked no one in particular.

"Fugu," Noahlani replied. I looked at her confused.

"Puffer Fish," she answered, this time in English. I picked up my napkin and spit it out.

"Are they trying to kill us!" I asked. Puffer Fish were extremely poisonous, they contained a toxin 1,200 times more deadly than cyanide.

"Sweetheart, the best chefs in Panem made it, cutting it precisely. Then, they tested it on an Avox. Plus, if they were trying to kill you, you would be dead by now," she said.

Even after that, neither Darius nor I ate the fish.

Later, when everyone finished dinner and had gone to bed, I walked in the parlor to find Finnick sitting on the couch with a bottle of liquor in his hands. I walked up behind the couch and did the same thing I had earlier; I hopped over the back and landed next to him.

"That is not very lady-like," he said.

"Well I'm not a very lady-like kind of gal," I said. I reached over and took the liquor from his hands.

"Aren't you a little young to be drinking that?" he asked.

"Look, I might die in that arena even if I am fairly certain that I won't, if I do, I am not going down without trying this at least once," I replied and took a long sip. The alcohol burned my throat, but I pushed threw it and didn't even wince. He grinned and took the bottle from my hands. I was growing on him.

If I kept this up, I would be his favorite in no time.


Thanks for reading!