Woohoo! Let the proper Hunger Games... Begin!

Very long chapter – took me ages to finally finish. Not that happy with it, but I suck at writing bloodbath scenes. Sorry. It will improve as I get into the swing of the arena.

The Hunger Games and its characters belong to Suzanne Collins.


Chapter Seven: The Arena

To his everlasting credit, Xenya gave me a full break down of what to expect in the arena from the clothes I had been given. I had been slightly afraid that he would just give me my clothes and then bugger off back to the Capitol and his drinks. But he stayed with me in the room while I dressed and explained the clothes.

"It's very baggy, which will allow for more sweating, and white, which reflects the heat, so expect the arena to be very hot. But there's so much material that it could be used for a blanket, which means there might be some cold places. Be careful about getting it wet, the material will just absorb all the water and it will be wet for a very long time." He passed me some sturdy boots and a pair of very thin socks, and then proceeded to wrap a longer piece of cloth around my head, shading my eyes. "It's going to be a hot year. It may or may not be humid, but keep out of the sun as much as you can. You don't want bad sunburn in the arena, it will seriously hinder you, that's why you have a hood – to protect your face from the sun. As for the rest, you're going to have to figure it out yourself."

"Thanks," I told him as I stepped onto the metal disc.

He nodded and strode out the room as the disc moved upwards, towards the hole in the ceiling and the arena.

I felt like swearing as it was revealed to me.

The sun beat down on my back like a physical blow with no clouds to shield me from the burning. The pale yellow sand reflected the sun's rays back to us, making me uncomfortably hot in the outfit that was supposedly designed to keep my cool. A desert. That's what the arena was. A massive desert stretching as far as the eye could see ahead of me. There was a black, dead wood on one side that offered a bit of shade and, hopefully, water and food. The Cornucopia lay ahead, spilling its gifts all over the sand, with the twenty four tributes evenly spread around it. Inside the horn, I could see a sword and a few belts of throwing knives, but no trident. Maybe it was buried under the mountain of stuff; hopefully it was buried under the mountain of stuff.

I cast my eyes around to find my allies. Cloud and Bryd were next to each other on the opposite side of the Cornucopia. Jewel was on my right, and Alys stood next to her. There were three tributes to the left of me and then it was Demon. It was an even spread of Careers.

Usually, a minute was quick. But when you were waiting a minute before diving straight into a bloodbath, it passed considerably slower. Glancing around, I looked for something that would be useful. There were a few bottles of sunscreen lying around, and I could see two canteens of water. But they were closer to other tributes who would want them too. The closest weapon was a small sheath of about five knives. Those would be useful in the beginnings of the Cornucopia fights, but I would need a better weapon when the fray reached the more valuable items.

The gong sounded and I sprinted forward, picking up the knives and belting them around my waist. The tribute that was standing on my left was also headed towards the knives and I only just managed to avoid his fist. Before I was conscious of my actions, one of the knives was out of the sheath and in his stomach. I kept running towards my goal – the Cornucopia – without stopping to check if he was dead. I guess I would know when the cannons went off this evening.

"Hey Finnick!" Jewel called, jogging up to me. She was covered in blood.

"What have you been doing?" I asked while picking up a brown backpack and shoving some bottles of sunscreen into it.

"Getting this. Another girl thought it should be hers." She uncovered a crossbow that had been wrapped up in her clothes.

I swung the straps of the backpack onto my shoulders while taking another two knives from the sheath just as the boy from 5 – I didn't know his name – ran towards us with the sword I had noticed earlier in his hands. Before I could even raise my hand to through the knife, Jewel had levelled the crossbow and sent bolts straight into his leg. He cried out in pain, tipping over his own feet to get away. Jewel swore as he disappeared round the other side of the Cornucopia.

Desperate to get a proper weapon, I threw myself into the fighting at the base of the Cornucopia. As I dug through the pile of tents and food to find a weapon, I became aware of something behind me. I turned and slashed out with a knife, but the person behind me skipper a few steps back. It was Zoe, the twelve year old, braving the fray to get something good. I hesitated as I stared as her tiny body, not wanting to hurt someone that young. The hesitation wasn't a good idea, I realised, when Zoe leapt at me, her lips pulling back into a feral snarl. She had an arrow – probably because she hadn't managed to find anything better – clutched in one small hand which she tried to stab me with.

Age be damned, I thought as the arrow scraped across my arm, leaving a long, bleeding gash. I leapt towards her, unthinking. My knife was slitting her throat before I even registered that my hand was moving.

I pushed the dead twelve year old away and went back to digging through the pile.

Lots of bows and arrows. Not useful. No spears or tridents. I found another three sheaths of bigger and deadlier throwing knives which I hid in my bag and an axe that I had to hold because it was too large to fit in. There was also a water bag that could be attached to a backpack, saving room for other things. A spare set of protective clothing and a fire starting kit also went in before another tribute tried to kill me.

It was the boy from 8. I didn't know his name, either. I was unused to wielding an axe, so my movements were clumsy. When I first swung I completely missed my target (his stomach) and hit his neck. It got stuck a few centimetres into his skin, not deep enough to kill him or make him pass out; he just screamed in agony and grasped at the axe. As I pulled it out, I realised it had gone deeper than I first though – I could see a bit of white bone – and I couldn't understand how he was still alive. But his screams informed me he definitely was.

My next swing hit the target: his gut. But there still wasn't enough power in it and, though his intestines were spilling on onto the floor, he wasn't dead. I couldn't bear trying to lift the stupid thing again, so I dropped the axe and turned my back on the tribute and the weapon. It didn't block out his screaming, but at least I didn't have to see the gore.

Another tribute standing close by started screaming. It was the girl from 8, screaming for her partner who I had just half-killed.

"Dexter! Dexter! Wake up, wake up!" She ran passed, completely ignoring me. "You said you were going to protect me. Dexter, you said you we were going to help each other. Dex-" Her pleas were cut off when Bryd threw the axe I had just dropped into her neck, severing it in half. The boy, Dexter, had stopped moving.

"Nice axe, Finnick," Bryd said and attempted to hand it back. I held up my hands.

"If you want it then keep it. I couldn't work that stupid thing."

"Thanks dude," Bryd said, swinging the awe over his shoulder. "If I see a trident, I'll give it to you."

That was my main worry. While the other tributes were hacking each other to pieces with their favourite weapons – I saw Alys fighting the boy from 5 to get her sword and Jewel practising her knife throwing using the girl from 6 as a target – I couldn't find my trident anywhere. Although I didn't want to, I had to accept that the gamemakers hadn't included a trident. My rage was overpowering for a minute as I grabbed another two backpacks and started shoving more water and food into them.

What was the point in spending so much time and effort wooing the Capitol audience if they didn't even give me what I needed?

I pushed the anger aside; it wouldn't help me that much anymore. It would have been useful when I was trying to kill that tribute.

Around me, the violence was ending as the tributes either died or ran away from the Careers. The cannons would be going off soon for the dead. I became aware of how hot I was. The sun that I had noticed earlier was pounding down on my back and I was sweating profusely. The point of the sunscreen became clear to me when Alys arrived at my elbow, sword in hand, with a slightly-pink face. Obviously our clothes didn't protect us from sunburn. With that in mind I started pouring bottles of the stuff onto my skin – I sometimes got sunburn while fishing out on the boat, and it was not fun.

"You got your sword back, I see," I said to Alys.

"Yeah." She grinned at the blade. "Pity that idiot got it first, though. I got this," she pointed to a scratched on her cheek, "because I didn't have a proper weapon."

"Just be glad that there's a sword in the arena," I said dully, bandaging the scrape on my arm from the arrow. "No trident for me. Not even a spear. I've got no idea what I'm going to do."

Alys patted my shoulder sympathetically. "At least you've got the knives to fall back on. I saw you... using them earlier like an expert."

Out of the Career pack, I liked Alys the best. She, like me, hadn't volunteered for the Games. She wanted to win so that she could see her family, not for the glory. And unlike the Careers, Alys avoided the thought of killing. She did it because that's what happened in the Games. Like me.

"Still," she continued, breaking up my thoughts. "It does suck. I mean, Jewel's got her crossbow, Bryd's got that axe, I've got my sword. They should have given you a spear at least. It's not like you can make one."

"I could make a net though," I said, thinking about how to improve my weapon-less status.

"A net?"

"Good for, y'know, trapping fish... or people..." I made a throwing gesture and then sighed, straightening out the cloth that protected my face. "Oh well, I'll have to do the best I can with my knives."

Alys nodded and we wandered over to the group of Careers, who were comparing their spoils.

"What have you got?" Cloud demanded as soon as we were near.

"A sword," Alys said, holding up her sword.

"Some daggers, a heck of a lot of water bottles, sunscreen and a backpack."

"No food?" We both shook our heads. "Okay, there was no food in the Cornucopia, so which ones of you can hunt?"

"I can fish," I volunteered. "But we're in a desert, so I doubt there are many places to fish."

"And I hate animals."

Cloud and Bryd looked pointedly at Jewel.

"Fine!" Jewel said in exasperation. "I'll hunt. But all of you are helping; I refuse to do it by myself. Finnick, you can come with me on my first shift. Which is now."

"Can I come?" Alys asked.

Jewel gave her an icy glare that answered her question before dragging me off into the woods.

"Stay there," she called over her shoulder at our allies. "We'll be back within an hour. If not, listen out for the cannon." She winked: I just felt mildly ill.

We walked in silence for a while. "You know how to hunt?"

She shrugged. "So does Bryd. And probably Demon and Cloud too. The ones who want to be tributes learn it in training."

"Training?"

"Every day," she nodded. "Four in the afternoon until nine in the evening on school days, and then all day on the weekends or in holidays. We're allowed our birthdays and some national holidays off."

"That's... intense. When do you do your homework?"

Jewel's derisive snort at the word 'homework' told me a lot. "It's not too bad. It's what District 1 is like. Besides, only the best train that hard. And only the best of the best are allowed to volunteer. I thought District 4 was like ours – do you not train?"

"Not like you do. Some people do, but they do it privately with personal trainers that they've hired."

"You didn't do that?"

"I fished. And ate whatever food my sister served me." I fell silent, talking about Ariel made me depressed. But the silence didn't comfort me – the woods were creepy. The trees were all dead and the branches were completely still from the lack of wind.

"Is that all that happened in District 4? I mean, did Danty and others just do that too?"

"Yeah, I guess. If you don't fish, you starve. It's kind of a no brainer. There were some richer families who bought their own food and just sat around all day, but mostly even the richest ones fished, otherwise you would die of boredom."

Jewel hushed me as she walked forward quietly, a bolt ready in her crossbow. I stood still, knowing that if I moved I would probably make a sound and scare away all the game. A small lizard was sunning on a tree branch, completely unbothered by the proximity of humans. It opened an eye, seeming to sense my looking, and crawled a little further along the branch before relaxing once more.

The twang of the crossbow brought my attention back to Jewel. She was standing several metres to the left, picking up a dead, furred thing.

"They have squirrels here!" she announced cheerfully.

"Yay. That made my day. Hey, I was almost stabbed in the Cornucopia half an hour ago and there are no weapons I can use, but who cares? There's a squirrel!"

"You'll be grateful about that when you try to choke down raw lizard. It tastes disgusting."

"How do you know that?" I asked.

"It's a District 1 delicacy," she said, shuddering. "And it tastes like eating the half-digested contents of a cows stomach."

"I'm worshipping the squirrel, then." I sketched a small bow at the animal hanging from Jewel's hand.

Jewel rolled her eyes and ordered me to be silent again as she hunted. The lizard on the branch was still there, waving its tail slowly.

"What are you staring at?" Jewel asked when she returned, squirrels clutched in both of her hands. She followed my gaze and glared at the little black lizard. Before I could stop her, she had pulled one of my knives of the sheath and stabbed the lizard.

"I quite liked that lizard," I said mildly.

"I have a thing against the whole species. It makes me happier knowing that that one isn't near me anymore." She handed the knife back and picked up the squirrels she had dropped in her haste to kill the reptile. We started walking back to the other tributes, the squirrels in hand.

When we got back to the Cornucopia, the hovercraft had been and gone, leaving only the bloodstains from the bodies. The other tributes were arguing under an awning that they had covered the golden horn with, to provide shelter from the ever-present sun. I sat down on the hot sand next to Alys, who wasn't contributing to the discussion.

"What are we all arguing about?" I drawled from the floor. "It's only the first day, you realise, and usually alliances don't break up this quickly."

I was ignored by the Careers. Alys, unnoticed, rolled her eyes at them and explained to me.

"Bryd wants to move to the forest, Cloud doesn't. They've been arguing like this pretty much ever since you left. I think Cloud's about four seconds away from stabbing him."

"We had to move to let the hovercraft come and get the bodies! There's nothing here! It's a terrible place to have our camp!" Cloud was yelling at Bryd, throwing her hands in the air to add to her exasperation.

Bryd, too, was on the edge of his temper it appeared. "What makes you think there's going to be anything in the forest except mutts and other tributes?"

"We can fight them off easily!"

"I don't want to waste our energy on protecting ourselves," Bryd growled. "If we stay put then we'll only be the predators, it's so clear out here that no one would dare attack us. We can go into the woods to hunt and a person can guard our stuff with the crossbow."

"We want to give the viewers some entertainment, not just sit around here all day."

"We're not going to do that! We're going to go and hunt tributes all day and sit around here for a few minutes to eat. Does that satisfy your desires, princess?"

Cloud grinned, or snarled. It was hard to tell, both were extremely menacing expressions were on her face. "We better get going soon; I want to take my anger out on something."

The other Careers volunteered immediately, too. I declined, seeing as I had no useful weapon when it came to any sort of proper fight. Instead I sat in the shade of the sheet, rubbing even more sunscreen in. Bryd ordered Alys to stay and prepare the squirrels, ignoring the scathing look she gave him as he jogged to join Jewel, Demon and Cloud waiting under the cover of the trees. He had my axe in his belt.

"I don't even know how to cook," Alys said in disgust when the others and vanished into the forest.

"Get rid of the fur and then take out all of the parts you don't want to eat," I told her.

As I had little else to do while Alys prepared the food I lay down on the floor and covered my eyes with an arm. A late-afternoon nap seemed like a perfect plan until I was rudely jerked awake by the cannons. I opened my eyes and stared up at the sky, waiting for the faces.

The first cannon and the first face.

"Danty," I breathed as my District partner appeared on the temporary list of the dead. I hadn't even spared her a thought since coming to the arena. My problems had been more important.

"Didn't you know?" Alys had joined me with staring at the sky.

I shook my head as the next face appeared. The boy from 5 who Alys had killed for her sword.

Alys remained silent through his picture, only speaking again when the next one came. "Oh, it's that little girl. What was she doing in the Cornucopia mess?"

The thirteen year old girl from 5 was followed by the thirteen year old girl from 6. I hadn't realised that they both had similar tributes. I couldn't even remember their names. The next two were the ones I had tried to kill with the axe, from District 8. The girl had called the boy Dexter. Her name was Davyn. I'd noticed her in training. She had been quite good. However nobody could be classed as 'good' with an axe sticking through their neck.

They weren't the only two District partners to die. The last two were the pair from twelve. I didn't know the boy's name, or who had killed him – but I could clearly remember the girl, and how I had slit her throat.

"Wasn't that the twelve year old?"

"Zoe," I croaked, and then cleared my throat. "Her name was Zoe. I killed her."

Alys was only silent for a moment and then said the perfect thing. "I killed Maddox and Laria."

"Laria?"

"The girl from 6."

"Oh."

"But I'm alive now, so I think it's justifiable."

Zoe's face faded from the sky at last. Eight people had died. Only eight. It was almost unheard of to have that little people dying. The average for the Cornucopia bloodbath was thirteen or fourteen.

"Do you know what happened to Danty?" I asked, sitting up and brushing the sand out of my hair. Alys went back to skinning the squirrels.

"Not particularly, I wasn't paying that much attention. But I saw Jewel running towards her, and then I saw her when the hovercraft picked up the bodies."

"Jewel?"

"Yeah."

I had no idea why it bugged me so much. Jewel was a Career as much as the others, but I had started to think of her as a friend. Stupid to make friends in the Hunger Games, though. They ended up, or they killed your other friends. Either way, you lost out.

"Did you like her?" Alys tentatively asked.

I shrugged. "Not particularly. But I didn't want her dead, you know? Especially not killed by one of my allies on the first day. Did your partner survive today?" I couldn't remember seeing the boy from 9, but already the dead were blurring together in my mind. To keep my hands busy, I stowed my backpack behind a few water bottles and grabbed the fire making kit from one of the piles of stuff before settling down to try and start our cooking fire.

Alys snorted. "Yeah. Carlo didn't even get his hands dirty, he just ran. Which I guess is good for him, but unless he can find water he's going to be dead pretty soon."

"There's definitely water out there. They didn't give us enough at the Cornucopia for everyone."

A cannon fired, followed by another one and both of our heads jerked up in surprise at the noise, but we recovered quickly and kept at our chores.

"Guess they found a group," I remarked. "They didn't take as long as I thought."

"They'll probably try to make another kill before they come back."

I glanced at the horizon where the sun was currently setting. "I don't think so. It's getting late and they'll probably want food."

We were both sort of right. They arrived shortly after a third cannon fired. Alys and I were both sitting as far away from the heat of the fire as we could, while we cooked the squirrel meat.

The four of them were laughing and appeared drunk on their success. Jewel dropped onto the ground next to me and used me as a backrest while she got her breath back. The other three crowded round the fire first, grabbing bits of cooked squirrel. I grabbed a handful before they were all gone, using my lap as a plate.

"Were all of those cannons because of you four?" I asked Jewel.

"Two of them were. We found two tributes that were fighting already, the boys from 9 and 10. We finished them off. We've got no idea who the third cannon was for. Can I have a piece of food?"

She opened her mouth expectantly and I dropped the squirrel in.

"Mmm... That's good, Finnick. You should be a chef."

I laughed at the image of me working in a restaurant after the Hunger Games. "Say that again when you've got food poisoning from it being undercooked."

"I'm sure it's fine. Can I have another piece?" I placed some more food in her mouth and ate the last few pieces myself.

"Eleven dead today," I said quietly.

"Twelve more to go." Jewel clapped her hands to together in anticipation. "These are going to be good Games, I can tell."


Poor Finnick... A desert with no trident. He has dreadful luck.

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~Charlotte-LOVE-