On to the real stuff now, the important bit, the one I was dying to write! Hellooo Games! (And darkness, destruction, murder, horror...)


Part II


I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked-

The countdown reaches zero and the arena explodes into action. No longer is anyone thinking about the cameras, or the viewers, or anything at all other than our immediate survival. I see tributes gathering up things from the ground- some are already engaging in battle, some are already running away.

The girl from 2 has somehow gotten a hold of a good weapon close to her platform and with it is slashing her way towards the Cornucopia.

The boy from 11 reaches for a humongous survival backpack with one hand, and with the other pounds in the head of some smaller tribute who thought it was a good idea to reach out for the same item.

Mera is nowhere to be found.

Dammit Gale, concentrate now.

Fight or flight instincts kick in, and it's in a moment like this is when you discover who you really are.

Me?

I run towards the knife.

An arms length away from it, I have to roll to the ground to avoid a rock that comes sailing towards my head with dangerous precision. I lift my head and stare straight into the smirking face of my platform neighbor, the girl from district 4. Her mission in diverting me from the weapon accomplished, she turns her body slightly away from me and towards my knife. I scramble to my feet and run to intercept her, yet as soon as I am back on my feet she turns back to face me, putting her body in my direct line of vision- right between me and my knife.

We stare at each other for a moment, trying to gauge our opponents strengths and weaknesses only by sight. I can vaguely remember her in the training arena, performing various immobilizing wrestling movements with the trainers. What I know for sure is that this girl is a career tribute, someone who's been practicing for the Hunger Games all her life. It also dawns on me that I have never before been in a fight with a girl, and that If I loose this fight, I'm dead.

We run towards each other.

I go in to punch her, but she's quicker than me, sidestepping and getting inside my personal space, too close for me to do anything to her, and in one movement she has me off balance and falling to the ground. I grab her by the arm and pull her down with me.

This is what she's good at, this is what I've seen her practicing. I try to keep my arms free and my neck protected from her as we roll around, grappling for control- yet still she manages to lock both of my legs under her own, twisting her things together and pinning me down momentarily.

Still, my arms are much longer than hers, and so even as I'm semi immobile bellow her, I wave at her head, smacking and punching at her with both hands. As much as she blocks with her forearms I already see bruises blooming on her skin, and hear the hisses of pain each time I connect, which encourages me to keep at it, and her to re-evaluate her strategy. The next punch I throw at her, she releases my legs and slithers to the side, twisting and kicking me- very powerfully- on my side.

I shout out in pain- my ribs screaming, and continue struggling with her, trying to pin her down, or at the very least get her out of her comfort zone and failing.

And then with a movement, in a fraction of a second, she has the upper hand.

She's maneuvered herself to be behind me, twisted one of my arms behind me as well in an uncomfortable position, and my legs are once more uselessly pinned beneath our combined weight. I can barely move, all my muscles straining for release. We lay on the ground, twitching, me trying to move, her keeping me in place, and around us chaos reigns.

The girl I'm fighting with is strong and relatively tall for a girl, but her fighting style has nothing to do with size, its all about skill. It was foolish of me to even engage her in hand to hand combat. This is her life, and all I've got is a few days in the training sessions and a few fights with drunks, or boys, or drunk boys. This is pathetic, and I need to get away before she thinks of a way to permanently disable me by dislocating my arm, or worse, by breaking my neck.

That opportunity arises when we hear a distinct scream, louder than the rest of the yells and shouts and fighting around us. It's an agonized, death scream. Torn from the throat of a young boy, not yet matured into adulthood, and it makes my opponent twitch in surprise and me to double the adrenaline pouring through my veins. I relax in her grip marginally, and before she can tighten her grip on me I smash my head backwards, towards her.

I think I hit her collarbone, and I'm pretty sure the blow hurts me almost as much as it hurt her, but I was expecting it, and so during her moment of confusion I roll away from her, and see the knife, glinting on the grass tauntingly.

She sees it not even a second after me, but our grappling on the floor has reversed our original positions, and now I'm closer to the knife than she is. I crawl towards it, using my elbows and knees to move faster, and I see her dive sideways, reach for something else in the grass a bit farther away. I grab the knife, get to my feet, staying low and swerve around to face the girl, advancing on her, quick and low.

She reaches whatever it was that she's seen in the grass, grabs it and backflips into a crouching position to turn in my direction.

Its a move designed to demonstrate her agility and grace, not the most efficient, but the most showy, and I am reminded again that this is all for the cameras, she's focusing on them and her future sponsors as much as on me. Her movement causes her hair tie to snap audibly, and break, signifying its poor quality. Her hair falls out of the ponytail she had it in, and the momentum of her curve makes it so her hair fall in front of her face, blinding her for only a second.

I don't waste it. With all my strength, and all my experience with hunting, all the velocity I can muster, I slash forwards with the knife towards the most vulnerable spot she has- her neck.

In her hand is the weapon she had been reaching for.

Some sort of whip with a pointed, metallic tip. Her hair falls softly back in place by either side of her head, and I see her eyes- blue eyes- widen. No pain registers in her expression, her mouth is open in a small, surprised 'O', and then I notice the blood start to fall in a straight line and flow down her uniform, getting lost in the blackness of her coat.

I've cut deep, and I've cut true, making sure to open up the jugular vein on either side of her neck. Her sunburnt face looses all color, her eyelids shut slowly, and she falls, gracelessly, limply, to the ground, unconscious, soon to be dead.

I stare at her body, and it occurs to me that I've won, and consciously decide not to dwell on that- or at the very least, not to think about it this very second.

I stand up straight and look around.

My immediate surroundings are controlled chaos. There are fights all around me, tributes running and screaming. I'm temporarily disoriented as I see something come flying towards me, and duck.

A tribute - the boy from district 6 - runs past me, shielding himself against anything that comes from behind him with a slab of plastic. I grip my blood coated knife in my hand with no intention of throwing it away.

I run towards the Cornucopia, trying to find the shiny metal of my bow. As soon as I have that, I'm done, I'm gone.

But with mounting despair, I realize it's not where I'd seen it before. I look around to the fighting tributes, trying to locate it, and can't. I start to panic.

My vision blurs, then sharpens, and I look straight ahead at the Cornucopia, and notice that it and the field around it are no longer as crowded as it seemed mere seconds ago. There are bodies lying still on the ground.

And there are other bodies leaving, running away in different directions. Some are already far off. I can barely make out the boy from 11, his huge shape a spot to my left.

I notice the District 2 boy, standing at the mouth of the Cornucopia, a sword in his hand and the body of the District 4 male tribute lying on the ground in front of him. He no longer seems to be paying much attention to the fighting, instead simply letting his eyes wander to the various objects inside the metallic structure, his simple presence discouraging anyone from trying to venture in.

The D1 male is finishing someone off in the grass close to the Cornucopia, and farther off, I can see the District 2 girl throwing knives in the direction tributes are running in. I realize she's not actually trying to hit them, considering how far away they've gotten from her, she's simply keeping track of which direction they are running in for later.

The District 1 girl is close to her - closer than the running tributes, so they must have in fact made an alliance as I suspected, and in her hands I see-

My bow.

As soon as I see it, I seem to notice the danger I am in.

None of the career tributes are concentrating on me directly, but as soon as they do, no doubt they'll join together to take me down. I look towards the woods, and with a sinking feeling realize that they are too far away, and that there is no longer enough confusion to distract from me just sprinting towards them. If I leave now, I will still be the closest to them, and they'll catch up to me and take me down, no doubt in my mind.

I need a plan, and fast, or I¡m already dead.

Discreetly, I crouch low as I breathe slowly to lower my heartbeat and take in my surroundings, whilst at the same time thinking as fast as I possibly Cornucopia looms ahead of me, distracting and imposing. This metal behemoth of usefulness and opportunity - my brain clicks with a plan as I stare up at it.

It's not the best plan, but Mother always said, stick to the plan you got and don't hesitate- that's better than the best plan in the world if you take too long to execute it.

Slowly, keeping my eyes on the D2 male, the closest one to me, and keeping my center of gravity low, I edge sideways towards the back of the Cornucopia. I pick up a wooden plank along the way with a leather strap, a shield of sorts, and continue to inch closer to the center one step forward, one step sideways, at an even pace, my muscles tight, my knife still in my hand.

I finally get to the golden Cornucopia and can stand straight, the metal wall protecting me from the eyes of my enemies. It's cold to the touch, thick and with many handholds. I breathe in and out, trying to remain calm and climb.

Little by little, slowly, making sure I'm low, I try to reach the top without drawing attention, now concentrating on the female careers, who are the ones most likely to notice me. I reach the apex of the metal structure, finally, after what seems like a million years.

It's a flat surface, wide enough to allow maybe 3 people to lay one besides the other on top of it. There I go down to one knee, resting and assessing my surroundings as I would back home in the woods.

Bellow me, the aftermath of the bloodbath seems calm. The District 1 boy heads into the structure bellow me and I hear as he and the blond from 2 begin to talk. I can hear their voices, yet the metal muffles the exact words they speak.

I catch sight the mangled body of the District 4 girl where I left her. Her head is facing away from me, her unbound, hazel colored hair lays all around her. I feel a pang in my chest, but force it out of my mind, I can't think of what just happened, not yet, so I look away.

The view from this height also allows me a better look at the arena. There's a lake not too far off, and fields and mountains, and woods. I stare at them longingly, knowing I missed my chance to use them to my advantage the second I went for the knife.

I wonder what Haymitch thinks of this situation I've gotten myself in.

It's the District 1 female who notices me. She and the D2 girl are both walking to meet up with their other allies, and she glances up, and sees me. Her eyes widen in surprise, and with a jerk she stops walking and points at me with the hand she has the bow in as she yells,

"Marvel! Cato! 12's on top of the Cornucopia!"

The aftermath of the bloodbath had seemed almost calm a second ago, because my heartbeat has slowed, because my tension had ebbed away.

The blond girl's shout brings me back to reality, and once more, my adrenaline skyrockets with anticipation. I clutch my knife with a white hand, and stand up as the male career tributes leave the interior of the Cornucopia to stand besides the girls and look up at me. D1 comes out with a spear in each hand, D1 with a spear in his left and a sword in his right. The female tributes run closer to meet the boys, and the smaller one, the dark haired District 2 girl looks around.

"Where's Umi?" she says.

That's my queue to speak.

"I'm assuming you mean your friend from District 4? The girl, I saw your partner from 2 take out the boy, so I doubt he was in your little alliance long term."

She reacts by taking aim at me and throwing a knife. I put up my wooden shield just in time, and it thunks on it uselessly.

"Hey, thanks, I needed another knife." I say, is all a show I think, act like it.

I pull out the knife, and duck, fall flat to my stomach as the D2 boy throws his spear at me. I think my heart stops, as I hear the air above me literally split with the strength of the throw. I close my eyes and breathe. Then I crouch up to one knee again, and look down.

Shit.

If I'm going to do this, it has to be now, before they get really serious.

"About 4. Umi, I mean. She's dead, I killed her."

I've killed her.

She's dead.

I made that happen. I slashed her throat open with a knife, and now she's dead.

But no, I already decided not to think about that unless I want to die as well. I can't get distracted now, this moment is the most important moment of my life, and the thought of it makes my voice tremble slightly. I hope they don't notice.

"Anyways. Since she's dead, a spot has become available in your little alliance, so I'm submitting my application for team career tributes." I smile at them. Big, fake, a little mocking. But more importantly, I smile at the cameras.

For a moment there's silence, then the blond girl with the bow laughs. She says,

"Or we could just kill you. Really, you've made our job easier, we don't have to go out and look for you now!"

As she says it she notches an arrow, and I'm suddenly intensely grateful for my years spent with Katniss. I've seen an expert handle and notch an arrow before, so it makes it pretty easy to identify a novice. When she shoots, I don't even move, and the arrow still sails above me and to my left. It's a gamble of course, but one with good odds.

The girl blushes a little, and instinct more than anything saves my life as I notice how the career boy from 2 murmurs something to 1.

A second later, I'm rolling to my right, as Marvel or Cato, whichever one D1 is, launches his first spear with more accuracy than even 2 had when he threw his spear to the spot where I was seconds ago, much lower, so that if I'd gone down instead of sideways again I'd have caught a spear straight to the brain.

This is very real.

I am seconds away from death.

"Hear me out," I say, "You've already shot 4 weapons at me. I have this great thing to my advantage, it's called higher ground, but I'm sure eventually you will get lucky and hit me with something. But listen, I'm useful. We could be useful to one another."

In my head, I finish that sentence with a for a while, but you don't say that when you're looking for an alliance. I know, I've been watching the games all my life. There's a code to how you say things while in the arena. It used to seem cowardly to me, when I was back home, safe and comfortable. But now, Here in the arena… here any code, any gesture however fake it is can save my life.

The boy from 2 looks up at me in interest, and I focus on him, even as the girl with my bow starts to say something else.

"Useful how" He says.

Inwardly, my mouth is hanging open, half of me can't believe that he's taking me seriously enough to even consider what I am proposing and not just finding some better way to kill me right now. On the other hand, this is my chance.

I stand up strait, though I remain tense and alert, looking at the boy from 2 directly, but not ignoring any moves any of the others might make towards me.

"You might have noticed I'm not as useless as the usual District 12 tribute" I say, internally hating myself for saying it, hating the games for making my only chance of survival saying that.

"There are woods around District 12, I learned how to hunt in them when I was pretty young. I know how to track animals, so I know how to track down the other tributes. I could help you find them faster. I know how to make traps, how to get food, and I know how to fight." I'm stretching the truth there, a little, but he doesn't have to know that.

"Cato, what are you doing?" says the female tribute from 2. So this one is Cato.

He crosses his arms as he looks up at me, the sword hanging limply from his hand, looking completely relaxed. He speaks.

"We don't need your hunting to get food, the Cornucopia has plenty. We don't actually need another fighter, 4 against whoever we come across is good enough odds for me, and I'm sure we'll find the other tributes with or without you, either way. You are doing a poor job of convincing me 12, try again."

Good points, all of them. But I'm good at arguing back and thinking on my feet.

"I'm sure you would find the other tributes eventually," I say, "But you don't know how big the arena is, you don't know how long the food supply is going to last. If you don't find all the tributes before the food is gone, you're all in trouble. In which case having me would be useful. And if I helped you find the other tributes before the food runs out, that means there's more to go around for everyone. If you take me out now, I promise I'll take at least one of you with me, maybe even two. I'm pretty sure I'd injure the ones who are left. What odds sounds better to you? An alliance of 2 injured members, or a healthy 5?"

May the odds be ever in your favor says Effie Trinket's voice in my head.

Cato raises his eyebrows at me and nods, then looks back at his other companions, to see their reactions. Marvel, the other boy, shrugs and nods offhandedly, as if he doesn't care either way but sees the reason behind my proposal, so that's a yes. The girl from 1 narrows her eyes and thins her lips, and shakes her head in a no. All eyes turn to the girl from 2, and we all know that it all depends on her. If she says no, they kill me. But if she says yes…

She looks up at me calculatingly, and I stare right back down at her, keeping my face blank, clear of emotions. Her eyes are slightly slanted, dark, like the color of her hair. She's got pale skin and freckles.

"Hey," she calls up, "How come you didn't ally with your other district partner? You seemed pretty cozy with her in the training arena. Or is this some trick you both planned. Is she hidden somewhere up in the trees, waiting for nightfall or something?"

I snort, and put a look of contempt on my face, faking it for all I'm worth. Caesar Flickerman couldn't get a performance out of me like the one I'm putting on right now if he paid me.

"That girl? I felt sorry for her, so I helped her." I say

2 flips a dagger she has in her hand up in the air. It spins twice and falls back into her palm, and she doesn't even look at it.

"So what if we run into her, are you going to feel too sorry to kill her? Because we don't need any weaklings here."

Wow, thanks for verbalizing one of my biggest fears I think, but I can't show that her words got to me.

Instead I shrug, and say: "I don't feel sorry for anyone now that we are in the arena." I wish it where true. 2 looks like she's into this interrogation, because she keeps firing off questions.

"You got a 10 in the scores" she says.

"Yes" I respond.

"How?" she asks

I shrug again, wave my hands a little.

"I made some traps, shot some arrows, showed some impressive climbing skills and convinced the Game-makers that I was dangerous." I say, looking straight at her, tense and beginning to tire of this standstill. I guess she gets bored with the exchange as well.

"You know what 12," She says,

"Sure, why not. You killed Umi, so we do have an empty spot in our ranks. But 10 or no 10, I assure you, I am more dangerous than you."

And just like that, its done.

Cato and Marvel return inside the Cornucopia, the girl from District 1 grumbles and starts checking on the tributes lying on the ground, stabbing them with an axe through the chest to make sure they are all dead.

The dark haired girl waits for me as I come down.

Warily, anxious to give her my back even for a second, and yet knowing that I have to, I climb down the Cornucopia and walk towards her. The knife I fought Umi for is in my one hand, the one she shot at me is in the other.

She extends her hand out to me, smirking. I give her the knife back, all my hunter instincts telling me I shouldn't and yet I do. It's the alliance code I took advantage of before, and now she is returning the favor. She pockets the knife swiftly, the other one she had in her hand disappears up her sleeve.

"I'm Clove." She says. "That in there is Cato, Marvel, and Glimmer." she says, pointing to each of them accordingly.

"I'm Gale," I say.

Clove rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, whatever. You're 12 to me. Anyways, the rules are simple. If you want some weapon of object specifically, you claim it. Say mine or something, just make sure everybody knows its yours in some way. No fights, no disputes. If something is yours, its yours. Food belongs to everyone, but everything else is up for grabs."

I look at the bow in Glimmer's hand and realize with a heavy heart that it's a lost cause.

I join Clove and walk into the Cornucopia. Cato doesn't even spare me a glance. Now that I am no longer an enemy, I'm inconsequential. Marvel looks at me, studies me. Glimmer follows Clove and I as well, and we all gather around a table with fruit on it.

"Right," says Cato, "We have to make base somewhere. I'd suggest we stay here, but even though there are a couple of water bottles, we need more than that for somewhere more permanent. I suggest we all take what we need, grab up some food and go look for a river or a lake or something. We burn everything else, so no one can come back and use the stuff."

Before I can think about it too much, I step up.

"I saw a lake, maybe 30 minutes away from here."

My plan is to stick with them until we enter the woods, then find some way to get away. Hopefully I can take out Glimmer, steal the bow, and then scram. And yet… They all look at me again, and I clear my face of emotions. Cato smirks, Clove says, "You're trying too hard 12", Marvel laughs and I realize suddenly that I'm not in danger anymore. I'm in the group, I'm one of them. I realize that it would be bad TV for them to turn on me now after making the alliance, so I'm relatively safe for the moment. Of course, we are in the Hunger Games, and Career Tributes or not, there are no safety nets here.

We make preparations to leave.

It takes a while until everything in the Cornucopia is accounted for and an inventory is made. There are enough packs for everyone, a lot of incredibly useful stuff. I claim most of the medical stuff, and we have to choose what to take and what to leave.

The kid from District 3 appears in the doorway of the Cornucopia as we all prepare to head out, covered in dirt and with a contraption in his hand that I realize with dread must be the bomb underneath one of the platforms.

The rest of the group realizes what it is too.

We're in a closed space right now; we've all seen what one of those things can do before.

"I want to make a deal, too" says the boy from 3, "Or we all die right now".


A.N:

Quote if from the poem Howl, by Allen Ginsberg. It's about drugs, but its very Cornucopia.

That's the Bloodbath.

Umi is named that way because I was listening to Mos Def (now called Yasiin Bey). He's got a song called 'Umi says', its pretty neat, and for Umi, tomorrow may never come. Doesn't have much to do with the story, but I love names.

Also worth noting, I'm trying to make this more like the book than the movies, but some of the stuff going on here (like Thresh fighting another tribute for a bag) comes from the Lionsgate films.

Also, in my mind, Clove is ethnically asian. Why? I don't know, as I wrote this she kind of became that. I kept the freckles though, I like freckles.