Training Time with Districts 6 and 12
The Point of View of Victoria Mernet
Its training day and I find myself hanging out with Foy and the District 12 tributes in a massive room. To my horror this room has towering angular walls of plywood onto which thousands of plastic blobs are bolted. This in itself is not overly scary. The scary part is the fact that we are expected to climb up these walls whilst connected to a flimsy little rope. Pixie is all over the walls climbing everything with ease, but I just can't bring myself to do it. I hate doing anything that is new and adventurous. Instead I drag our group into one of the isolated corners where a short old man is running a display on camouflage.
At home I'd love to paint. I would paint what I saw in my dreams, so naturally the camouflage component of our training is my favourite. Foy lets me paint his arm with a brown bark pattern while Julian and Thistle look on.
"What's the point of camouflage anyway?" Julian asks. "You are going to have to come out of hiding at some point otherwise you'll starve!"
"Yeah but if they can't find you they can't kill you," I say defensively.
The truth is I don't like any of the other aspects of the Games. I don't like heights, blood or seeing people in pain. I would rather die than do all these adventurous new activities. Being dead would be peaceful after all. There would be no pain, no responsibility, just peace.
I can tell that Julian and Thistle aren't interested in painting on camouflage, but Foy is nice and allows me to paint his other arm. Thistle has gone and picked up a barbell and is doing some bicep curls with it. She is really quite a strong and muscular woman. She has long white-blond hair which extends to the waist of her big boned, curvy body. She has pale skin and big blue eyes. But the most interesting thing I have found out about the girl from District 12 is that she is bi-polar. She has her usual light side which is friendly and easy going, but I have seen her dark side. When she is in a bad mood, Thistle is not afraid of anyone and would kill you in a second without a moment of thought. On one occasion she had been angry at Julian and had just let him freefall the final three meters of the climbing wall. This scares me, and ever since I have been careful to keep Thistle happy. But now merely ten minutes later, Thistle and Julian are cooperating nicely. Right now Julian is holding up a punching bag for Thistle to hit.
The Point of View of Foy Antrie
Victoria has both my arms painted like tree trunks. I let her do it, but I know we should be doing some real training. I just don't want to hurt her feelings. It's difficult for me. On one hand, having an ally from District 12 would definitely help in the Games. But I get the feeling Victoria isn't even going to make it past the bloodbath. She wouldn't even go rock climbing and she hates anything mildly adventurous. Therefore a free for all killing competition with crude weapons, the epitome of adventure, is not going to suit her. I should be dragging her over to the weapons area with Julian and Thistle. They are the type of people we should be getting friendly with after all. Look at the way Thistle is hitting that bag. She's just so strong.
I grab Victoria's hand and drag her over to a stand holding archery bows. I put a bow into her arms and stand behind her, positioning her body like the instructor had taught me. I show her where to place her fingers, and then insert an arrow aimed directly at the heart of the human outline. I can tell Victoria is nervous, but all the same I help her pull the string back with enough force for the arrow to reach the target. The shot wouldn't have killed anyone, but it would have at least slowed them down a bit. I'm satisfied.
Victoria doesn't appear overly interested in continuing archery practice. Once again I drag Victoria by the hand over to where Julian and Thistle are now talking to a young woman about edible plants. Surely this isn't too adventurous for her!
The Point of View of Julian Storm
I'm at the edible foods stall with Thistle, Sky and Chesta. I can see Foy dragging Victoria over also. Victoria is such a wimp. She is going to get utterly destroyed in the Games. Chesta on the other hand is the man. I just saw him and Tasi taking turns at bench pressing 130 kilograms without even really pushing themselves. I tried it and I couldn't even lift the weights off the bar. The best I could do was 75 kilograms.
Right now the guy is telling us about which berries are poisonous. I should really be listening because statistically every year heaps of people die from being poisoned in the Games. I'm pretty sure the Gamemakers purposely try to trick us into poisoning ourselves. I'd rather be practicing fighting though. I try to listen to the man talk about pine nuts but it's just too boring.
After a minute I follow Thistle over to where Flash, Diamond, Fin and Coral are practicing climbing. At the moment Fin is hanging by his arms from a campus board and using his upper body strength to jump up it at a rate of three rungs at a time.
"We had a much harder campus board at the Academy," Fin gloats.
Not really wanting to associate with the Career tributes, Thistle and I take to the bouldering cave and climb up some large holds on the underside of a steep wall. The training sessions in previous years have never been so climbing orientated. Could this be a hint that knowing how to climb is going to be important in the Games? Perhaps so, but I still do not have a clue as to in what way. Maybe there are heaps of trees with tree huts connected by Tarzan swings, flying foxes and rope walks? It's anyone's guess really, but I am secretly satisfied when an hour later my forearms are completely swollen and I can no longer grip anything. I look down at the skin on my hands which is now red, blistered and throbbing. Now that's what I call a good training session.
The Point of View of Thistle Kellik
From ten meters up at the top of this climb I can see all of the tributes training. I hang on tight to the taut rope that is clipped into my harness, and take a look around. Foy and Victoria are mucking around at the bottom of the climb. Chesta, Jack, Tasi and Sky are in the weight lifting area. The Careers are showing off their knife throwing abilities. Jett, Nero and Pixie are at the medics stall and Kestrel is strolling around by herself as usual. Linden, Barda, Sora and Sakura are at the edible plants stand and Brooklyn and Flint are learning how to camouflage themselves. I can tell that they are going to need all the camouflaging they can get considering the way Fin and Coral are throwing those knives. It's ridiculous really.
"Hey let me down now!" I call out to Julian.
He has been belaying me as I top-rope this climb. It was quite a hard climb so I'm pretty happy. Julian slowly lowers me down as I swing backwards and forwards bouncing off the wall with my feet, swinging between the soft mats and the hard wooden floor. Julian quickly lets me fall the last two meters as I swing over the mats but his timing is off and I fall heavily onto the wooden floor.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry!" he pleads.
I am momentarily in shock. Nothing hurts, but what is Julian playing at? Is he trying to injure me before the Games or something? If so I'll show him! I pretend to be unaffected by the incident and offer to belay him up another climb.