A/N: So, new chapter? *waves chapter enticingly* Eh? Eh? Of course.

Anyway, in terms of Cleeta or no, B won. No Cleeta. Only by one vote. But that means that I'll be taking down my poll on my profile about what story to do next and will have a Cleeta story after this, no matter what. Katniss and Finnick will have to wait for their love to flourish…

Besides, Cleeta is so much better than Katnick! But not Catoniss. No, that is the best ship in the whole dang world and you shall not question it, alright?

Anyway, check out Blood Dreams by 24 and 24. Very important. Vital. It's as vital as me getting the money for the rest of the Maximum Ride series. I'm dying for them…

Also, Katniss's POV really explains more about why she forgave her mother. I don't know, but it just seems like in Catching Fire she was like, "Uh-huh. Yep. Not really mad at you anymore. La-dee-da-dee-da! I'mma go kiss Cato and Finnick—I mean Gale and Peeta!" Yup, that's my interpretation of what she was like.

I'm not sure how I spit out two pages of Katniss POV, but I did it, and, if I may so myself, it's not horrible. I thought it was going to be utterly boring. But… it isn't.

D2- 17- (Cato Allens). Who freaking else?

A cannon fires suddenly, but there's no time to do anything about it or see who. Someone with me is still on fire, I think. Batting it out. I can see them flailing. But that's about the only thing other than the fire that I see. Spurts of the flaming redness pop out at us constantly. A faint saying in my head breaks its way through the confusion. Do or die.

I realize that if we keep just jumping around here, the die part of that saying is going to happen to us. So I yell out, "Follow me!" as loud as possible and brace myself for the worst. Looking back, I assess those still with me, and realize Katniss isn't one of them. And with all the scorching rage from the fire, I can't tell if both Clove and Marvel still are. Oh, shit, this is really falling apart.

Then the fire just… stops. Very abruptly. Its motives are clear: Kill Katniss. Though I'm angry I didn't get to, I'm glad she's gone. It's obvious it was here. She ran off into the woods and a fireball blew her up. I know that's what happened. It's what had to have happened. I go back to where my allies are. Surely it's both of them. Katniss is dead. Katniss is dead.

For some reason, that brings no relief. I can't put a finger on it, but some part of me doesn't want her to be dead. It's completely absurd. Two people can't leave the arena—only one can. And if two could win, my choice to win with me would not be her. I'm absolutely sure to no exact end that it's because I was dead-set on killing her myself, making her life end myself, closing her eyes, stilling her hands, and turning off her breaths. Myself.

"Clove, Marvel," I call out. "Hello? Situation!"

"Cato," croaks a voice.

"Clove? Where are you?" I search the area, looking for that other brown-haired girl. Emerald green eyes stare up at me. She's way burnt. And her burns look bad, to the best of my knowledge, which might be small in the case of burns, but is alright. "Oh, my god, Clove, what happened?" I know what happened, though. She just looks so horrible right there that it's preposterous that such a well-trained, deadly Career look so horribly hurt like this.

"What do you think happened, smart-aleck?"

"I'm not being smart-alecky, Clove! How the hell did you get so burnt?" I snap.

"The fire hit me, dumbass! Just help me up and let's get to the Cornucopia," she tells me, lifting a hand for me to help her up with and wincing. "There'll be medicine there. And we better hurry. Marvel's either dead or going quick." She looks around. "Where's fire girl?"

"Dunno." I help Clove up. She freezes when she stands up, shakes her head, and then walks to her knives. It's hard to miss the way that she keeps flinching in pain. "Come on, let's find Marvel and get away from here."

"No dip," Clove snarls, sighing. She looks around, walks around, looking for Marvel. I do the same. We call his name. No answer comes. Was it him? I think. Is he the one that died? Soon, the fire will probably come back. We can't waste time to know. I guess I'll have to wait until tonight to find out if it was Katniss or Marvel.

Confusion sweeps through me. I don't know why. But right now, I don't understand or get anything going on. All I know is that the girl on fire is either gone or dead, and Lover Boy's cannon will soon sound either way, because I'm killing him. Clove and I barrel through the woods. She seems very clear of thought, whereas I'm contradicting myself on the matter of girl on fire being dead. It is better that she's dead, honestly. I will admit—she does seem like strong competition. But still, dead? I was supposed to kill her, right? It was almost like my mission or something. And now that she's dead, I have no real competition besides Clove—whose weaknesses I know too well for her to have a chance. And the boy from Eleven, maybe—whose strength will provide him with a reliable fight, but there will be no trickeries that I won't be able to overcome in a battle against him. Ultimately, against the girl on fire, I would have the most fun and the best battle.

And I wanted that battle to be mine.

Once the logical answer is set in my mind, I feel better, less confused, less conflicted. Still, I'm angry about her death. It was no one's but my job to take her down, and now that's… gone.

When I see the woods lessening in thickness, I motion for Clove to come faster, and then start sprinting at top-speed for the golden horn. I tell her to get her knives out and I pull out my sword. Since I can't have girl on fire, and Clove's proven to be a valuable weapon and asset, I decide to settle on letting us both kill Lover Boy. Telling her the plan, I see that she's immediately in on the plan and revel in my good leadership skills and decisions. Later I'll have to put those to good use for finding Marvel's body, alive.

Once we're finally outside the woods, I look back and see a hovercraft over the trees where we just left. Collecting Katniss's body. In the anger of my "mission" failing, I look away and sprint towards Lover Boy. He doesn't notice at first, as he's eating with Glimmer in a lawn chair of sorts, his back to us. I get a good plan and flash a smile to Clove, so she understands. Nodding, she slows down just slightly, letting me take the lead.

When I reach him, I flip his chair back, startling the life out of him. He calls out, yelling, fumbling for his knife. I motion to Clove and stand over him. She joins me in standing over him with a smirk and then I drop, placing my knee against his chest. This knocks the breath out him, to which I smile in the glory of. Clove kneels down, grinning evilly, and we all know that there's nowhere for this District Twelve rat to go.

"Poor you," Clove whispers softly, a soothing tone in her bloodthirsty voice. It shocks me. I look over at her, and, seeing her evil grin-like smirk, look back at Lover Boy. Playing with her prey. Very smart, advisable. "All alone in death. No one you care about is near, Lover Boy. What to do now? Call out for girl on fire, huh?" All kindness has fled from her voice and is replaced with bitter rage, evilness with flickers of the voice from someone who desperately seeks revenge, though I don't know why she would against Lover Boy. But I won't question it.

There are basically two reasons I'm allowing Clove to help in killing this kid. One is that I don't want to endure the no doubt annoyingness that would be what she did in revenge otherwise for me yanking her hood back at the fiery camp in the woods. The other is that she's really good at taunting her prey and making it a show, long and painful for the victim, whereas I can lose my patience and just kill them. That's what she's going to do: torture him. Then when I lose my patience, I'll kill him.

What I really like to do is inflict wounds that hurt and will take days to kill them, incurable ones.

"Go on. She's got that bow," Clove says meanly. "She could kill all of us from the tree line of the woods, right? Call out, Lover Boy. Call out to your precious lover!" Clove holds a voice that would make any prey so angry they'd scream and consider resorting to biting. If they were brave.

He's much stronger than her, though, so when he starts to struggle against her grasp, I shove him down and put my sword on his neck, hard, threatening silently to slit his throat. "Don't. Move," I command roughly.

"Katniss!" he croaks, satisfying Clove, who smiles.

"Oh, that's right," Clove hisses, sounding like she actually just remembered. "She's dead."

D12- 16- (Katniss Everdeen)

The thick foliage has gotten me basically nowhere. I've had to go back to the tree line and sort things out twice an hour, and I haven't slept a wink since last night. Once as I'm heading back into the thickness that's directly across from the Cornucopia, not in the direction I went after the bloodbath, I hear a low, choking "Katniss!" I hesitate, realizing who it is, and then run. If Peeta's seen me and is trying to lure me out, all of them know, and are back. I have to get out of here, now, I think.

I load an arrow, and in my sleepiness, get it on a little less fast than usual. I can run on adrenaline, if I've had enough to eat, and, since I've been with the Careers, have had enough to eat. There's the one good thing that happened because I joined the Careers.

But now I have to find a place to stay and set up the rules for my own Game. I've been playing under Peeta's and the Careers' and the Capitol's Games that they all set up for me for a long enough time that I have no idea where to start in mine. One, I guess, is find water, no matter what. Two, I can't stay anywhere too long. Not when I'm being hunted. Three, no allies from hereon out. It's too risky when they could be in play for the Careers.

Maybe that's my newfound paranoia talking, but in these Games, paranoia can never hurt.

Diving into the thick trees and brush, I turn on my hunting mode senses and take light, near silent steps, moving as fast as possible, ready to pull back my bowstring and shoot in a second's notice. I realize I don't have much to drink, since I got the smallest canteen. That figures, since Cato passed them out. But I have iodine and another canteen in my pack. All I need now is a water source.

Who knows where that could be, though? For a fleeting second, I'm terrified that the lake is the only source. But then the surface of my bow in my hand reassures me that I can take them out from a long ways away. And then the lake can be mine. And, so many others have lasted this long without coming out to the Cornucopia. That means there has to be plenty water sources, since they haven't all killed each other by now.

By now. I wonder what day it is. In my head I count them out. Bloodbath, the day we went out hunting, and today. Day three. Only? I think. I thought it was somewhere around day five. Or maybe day three hundred sixty-five. It feels like it was years and years ago since I volunteered for Prim, or even just saw her at all. And about five years since I saw Haymitch and Cinna and Effie. I'd give anything to just see Effie again, if it got me out of here.

But who I really long to see: Prim and my mother and Gale. I don't know why, but it really just seems that after all this, after losing all three of them for so long, I kind of forgive my mother a little bit more. She loved my father so much. She was in love with him. The way she missed him is like how I miss Gale and Prim and her all in one. I don't know. I guess if I lost all three of them so quickly like we lost him, I'd go into a depression, too.

The running never stops, it seems. There's no time for hunting and barely time to load my canteens when I cross a teeny-tiny stream of running water in a clearer space, where there are few trees and brush and plant life. But there are also traces of a tribute or two residing here from not too long ago. The real giveaway is the blood pool, but other that, it's only things that a hunter would pick up. The clumsy hiding of a bloody leaf bandage. The very faint footprints leading in the direction I'm heading.

I've determined by now, after staying in this little place for a moment, that no one's following me. But someone's near. Very. The pool of blood is too wet to be from even a day ago. More like early this morning. And it's too big for someone so injured to make it far enough away. I'd say that if the wound wasn't on their leg, they got up to two mile and a half to three miles at most. With my pace, I should run into them soon.

I think for a second who it could be. And whoever left this trail of blood might be the person who died earlier, if it wasn't Clove, Cato, or Marvel. Anyway, Thresh is in the field. The Careers are at the Cornucopia, or going back after giving up in their search for me, or somewhere else in the woods but going in the wrong direction to find me. That leaves the male from… Three, I think, Foxface, and little Rue. I actually don't want it to be Rue. She really reminds me of Prim, a lot. If we happen to be the last two, which I think is a practically nonexistent possibility; I don't know how we're going to handle who wins if that happens. Split up and see who survives longest, see who survives the mutts that will come after us?

It's quite surprising that she's actually made it this far, though. Being from District Eleven, I expect her to be good with plants, but she must have had to not only just survive, but escape, too. I think back to her interview with a slight smile as I start back up again. She had said, "I'm fast. And if they can't catch me, they can't kill me." It's remarkable anyway, since I'd assume the weaklings would be some tributes' designed targets. The remarkableness somewhat fades when I remind myself it's only day three again.

At day three, the lifetime of years before we get out of the arena drag on.

A/N: Fast update, huh? Well, review and you might just get another quick update! After all, I'm sucked into this story as if I were reading it and not writing it. It practically writes itself. It's, like, my prized story…

Anyway, look at that freaking new review button! I don't really like it, but you all should! And even if you're like me and prefer the old reviewing system, you should review anyway. You should, yuh-huh. So get to it, would you?