Hey there awesome readers :) another addition to the story :P there will be a few changes in the next chapter though, so watch out for them! I feel even more inspired to write now after watching my Hunger Games DVD about 4 times in the last two days so I'll probably be updating more, but I have just got back to college so who knows!
As always, follow, favourite and especially review as I love to hear what you guys think of the story :)
PPeace and Love guys and gals x
Upon our arrival at the remake centre, me and Katniss are quickly split up. I'm just herded down a well lit corridor by three very brightly coloured people, that I can only assume are my prep-team, to a large room with a table like object for me to lie on surrounded by a great multitude of different items all supposedly to make me look more attractive but really just look painful.
"Oh, your going to look just fabulous! Wait until you see what Portia's got for you!" purrs one of the two females in my prep-team, her Capitol twang accenting syllables in the wrong places and ending each sentence slightly higher as if she's asking a question.
"Shush Leporis, we've got a lot of work to do with this one," the only male other than me in the room says in an equally flamboyant and high pitched voice to the woman called Leporis who has very pale leopard print on her skin, mixed with very cat like eyes.
"Oh Flux you're no fun! Anyway, just hop out of those filthy clothes and jump on the table." tweets the other woman as she wanders around to the other side of the room, her azure hair bobbing up and down slightly as she goes.I of course do as Haymitch had suggested and followed the order, removing the Capitol made clothes until I just stood in my briefs and made to get on the table.
"Not so fast honey, those too," Leporis purrs happily with a wide grin.
I just stand there. I don't want to just be naked in front of these people! They don't need to make anything down there look good for me! That is unless this Portia is doing what the stylists did a few years back and just had the tributes naked but covered with black powder.
"Chop, chop! We haven't got all day!" chirps the other woman again.I slowly oblige, throw my briefs aside and lay on my back of the table. They descend immediately hosing me down with extremely powerful jets of water, all the while gossiping about completely irrelevant things, like seeing such and such a body and such and such a body's party wearing such and such a thing. After a good half an our of power washing my body, they move onto this very intrusive gritty foam, scrubbing my skin with it to remove the coal dust from my pores. Fifteen minutes later they move back to hosing me down again, washing away the now grey foam. My skin feels raw but looks like its almost glowing after the attack is finished.
Next they move onto hair. Leporis is now bathing my hair in some form of weird slippy liquid, whilst Flux and the other woman, Althea, begin flattening strips of material onto the tops of my legs. A few seconds later, a searing pain shoots through my legs as what feels like a full layer of skin is ripped off each leg, which results in me jerking up to see whats being done to me. Flux and Althea are just holding a strip of material each, both of which are covered in blonde hairs from my legs.
"Oh calm down, it's not that bad!" whines Althea in her birdsong voice, as they both apply more strips.
"Sorry, it just startled me." I lie, the pain was actually excruciating and unexpected, and I quickly learn that that doesn't change.
After a good half hour of leg, arm, back and chest hair removal, I'm allowed to put on a robe and sit up, both of which I do eagerly. The skin all over my body is tingling and cold from its sudden removal of hair. Leporis now begins styling my hair as Portia must have requested and Althea starts filing my nails down so that they are uniform shapes. Flux just takes a hand full of cream and spreads it all over my jaw, mouth and neck, basically anywhere that there's facial hair and then touches two small metal rods to the cream. I feel the tickle of a small electric current pass through my face.
"There, now you won't have to keep shaving in the arena, or for a while afterwards if you make it through," he squeaks in his piercingly high voice?
"Think yourself lucky, you get to keep some body hair, all of the girls loose theirs," he adds drawing my attention to the fact that I still have armpit hair and pubic hair, but everything else is gone.
They are almost finished, so I can see a good opportunity for some possible sponsors. They can't sponsor but maybe if I can make them like me a bit then they might have friends who can.
"Thank you so much for this, I know it can't be easy dealing with all of us filthy people every year," I say to them in the most genuine tone I can muster, and all of their faces just break into smiles, even Flux who seems to dislike me the most.
"Oh, no dear! You're quite pleasant compared to last years." Althea reassures me.
"And less filthy too!" Leporis juts in, both of them finishing off their jobs, whilst Flux begins to clean up the tools.
"I suppose your not as horrible as I thought you were going to be," he squeaks still smiling from my thanks.
"Right, we're all done here, Portia with be in soon, just take off the robe once we've left," Althea chirps as they wander towards the door, and they're soon gone.
I shed the robe as they'd said and just sit thinking of my prep team. It is so hard to hate them for being from the Capitol, they're too much like little children, so innocent in a sense that they don't seem to understand why they're doing what they do. I'm quickly torn from my thoughts as the door opposite the entrance swings open and a tall graceful woman in a long, elegant, pale silver dress strides through the door. She looks completely unlike any stylist I've ever seen in the games, seemingly unaltered, and not trying to stand out the most. I stand up to greet her with a hand shake, completely forgetting my nudity, and then I just stand for her to examine me. It's a few minutes of wandering around me, examining every aspect of my body before she speaks.
"Okay Peeta, you can put your robe back on now." she says delicately in a barely recognisable Capitol accent, "you'll have to forgive the prep team, I know they can be abit irritating at times." I quickly don my robe and walk over with her to two seats that seem to have appeared out of nowhere.
"So, for the tribute parade, we are to dress you in the clothes of your district trade, or something along those lines. Now in the past as you know, there have been many different variations of the miners clothing and coal, but this year, me and Katniss' stylist Cinna want to do things a bit differently," she says softly, sounding more like a friend than someone suiting me up for the slaughter.
"All I want, is to be memorable," I inform her, in the hope that she won't send us out naked in coal dust. At my comment, her eyes twinkle slightly.
"Peeta, we're going to make it so even if they want to they can't forget you. What do we do with coal Peeta? We burn it. Your a baker aren't you," to which I nod, "so how do you feel about fire?"