Disclaimer: I do not own anything. Both The Hunger Games and The Office (US) belong to their respective owners. I also do not own any topical references made in this chapter.

Year 2, Episode 5: Tick Tock, This is a Clock

Peeta is working at his computer when he randomly declares that it needs to reboot again. The familiar sound of a Windows PC starting up chimes. Whistling to himself, Peeta reaches into a Tupperware container on his desk filled with blueberries, and then proceeds to present one to Cato across the desk clump.

"Want a berry, Cato?"

Cato, who is currently on the phone with a client, mocks Peeta's question down to the inflection. Nevertheless, he nods and snatches the berry from Peeta's outstretched palm. The blonde salesman sitting across from his aggressive counterpart looks up from under his shaggy hair and grins at the camera.

This isn't the first instance in which Peeta has offered Cato a berry. The cameras have a roll of footage just like this exchange happening every day for the past few weeks.

"In this college psych class I took we learned about Pavlov's dogs, who were trained to salivate at the sound of a bell by being fed whenever the bell rang. So, over the past few weeks, since work has been slow as usual, I've been conducting my own experiment," Peeta clarifies in private. He cranes his head to look over his shoulder, where Cato sits back, legs spread wide and jugular exposed as if to suggest his domination, and aggressively makes a sale.

He holds up a container of blueberries and shrugs, "It just so happens that Cato likes berries and sits directly across from me."

Rebooting his computer for the third time that afternoon, Peeta has to clap a hand over his mouth to keep from crying out in excitement when Cato sighs and reaches out for a berry without any prompting from him.

"What are you doing?" Peeta asks, playing dumb while calling attention to Cato's hand.

Stunned and confused, Cato draws his palm back to his chest as if he has just been zapped by some invisible shock.

"I…uh…I don't know." Smacking his lips together, Cato appears to be salivating when the camera closes in on his befuddled face. "My mouth tastes so bad…"

When looked to for a comment, Peeta shrugs at the camera like a coyly, impressed with himself beyond the need for words.

Haymitch is in the middle of answering a Buzzfeed quiz titled "Can You Outsmart a Forcefield?" when Katniss knocks on his office door and tells him that President Snow is on line one.

Hastily closing out of the window without receiving his results, Haymitch groans before he begrudgingly takes the call.

"And to what do I owe this esteemed pleasure, Sir?" Haymitch asks after he's exchanged pleasantries with his creepy boss. Although his voice is calm and leveled, the camera pans in on Haymitch's hands as they nervously tap on the desktop.

"I'm going to cut right to the chase, Haymitch."

The regional manager of the District Twelve branch sighs heavily.

"Look, Snow, I know what this is about."

"You do?" Snow inquires, sounding somewhat taken aback.

"Yes, and I don't think it can go unsaid any longer. My tryst with Alma was brief and beautiful, and I feel awful for just sending an arrow through her heart and killing our relationship. But I know, deep down, that there was nothing I could do to help make matters any easier."

"No, Haymitch," Snow interrupts, his low, ominous voice sounding annoyed with and just plain uncaring of the intimate details surrounding Haymitch's recent break-up with the Vice President of Panem over the phone's speaker. "There is a position opening up at Corporate Headquarters, and I am offering you an interview a week from today."

Haymitch looks up into the camera, absolutely stunned.

"Wow. And here I was thinking you hated me. Now you want me to work right alongside you. Wow. I wish I had prepared something to say."

"That is not necessary, Haymitch. I will be contacting all of the branch managers..."

"This is the time to show them everything," Haymitch spews at random, talking over his boss in an attempt to say something profound. "The ol' razzle dazzle."

Snow sighs after a long pause transpires on both ends of the call. "Yes, well, bring your first quarter stats and your recommendation for who would take over the District Twelve branch. I will see you next week."

He hangs up, and Haymitch reaches into the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulls out a large bottle of expensive champagne and a glass flute, undoubtedly kept on the regional manager's reserve for what he would deem a special occasion.

"Here's to my promotion," he declares before popping the cork in celebration and pouring himself a morning drink.

Four days later, Haymitch is prowling around the front of the office, barking demands for his workers to hurry up and get ready for the main event of the day: a hiking and camping trip in the Arrowhead Woods that he announced just two days prior during lunch.

"Alright, party train leaves in a half hour! Who's ready?"

Effie emerges from the break room at this moment, clad in the most stylish-looking camp attire of anyone else in the room. Her monogrammed camouflage backpack still has its tags on it.

"I brought extra bug spray for anyone who needs it. The mosquitos at Arrowhead are simply dreadful this time of year," Effie announces, earning the acknowledgement of some of the more forgetful members of the office.

Haymitch, grumbling a little to himself, awkwardly steps toward her.

"Oh, no. You're not going. Someone has to stay behind and answer calls and do the work today," Haymitch informs the HR rep tactlessly.

Effie simply blinks, looking both bewildered and bothered by the insinuation that she was never invited to the camping trip.

"But it's a group trip," she argues, which prompts Haymitch to fight back an onslaught of laughter at her.

"Not yours."

Effie is stewing. "You're not going to find this very funny if something goes wrong and Corporate tries to take it out on—"

"On who? You'd be filling out the report regardless of whether you're there or not, so I think Corporate's already taking it out on all of us by making you this District's HR rep. Loosen your puffy vest and have a drink, Princess."

Effie blinks into the camera in disbelief, still sputtering as Haymitch saunters away from her into his office.

"My interview is on Monday, and I want today, my last day with these guys, to be a day that they remember fondly after I have passed on," Haymitch explains in the privacy of his own office, arguing for Effie's staying back. "If Effie's there, today will suck."

Throwing her expensive sun hat on the ground in a huff, Effie storms over to the receptionist's desk and offers up her extra bug spray to Katniss.

"Oh, thanks, Effie. I actually know these woods pretty well, but I've been running low on this repellent salve my mom made for me, so this'll come in handy. Sorry you can't come with us..."

Effie simply flashes the young receptionist a saccharine smile and cuts her off with a perfectly manicured hand in her face.

"Darling, please spare me the boring details of your provincial life. Enjoy your day off, Katniss. You've earned it. Only the best for Haymitch's precious Victors…" she laments, turning on the heels of her newly purchased hiking boots.

Once Effie has retreated back to her post in the annex, Haymitch swoops in and volleys for Katniss' attention before she can get back to her work.

"Sweetheart, I have a very important job for you today."

"I thought my job was just to not die in the wilderness, like you said in your memo," Katniss retorts.

"Yeah, that, but I would also like you to take notes. Find out about people's character – their strengths, their flaws, their humor, what their strategies are…just watch and write down everything everyone does all day, and then type it up in a way that is helpful. Basically, we're looking for the indescribable qualities of a winner. Like me."

Katniss' nose crinkles as she reviews this confusing request to herself.

"So you want me to figure out who the most arrogant person in the office is and write down their indefinable qualities?"

"Exactly. See you on the bus in twenty minutes, Sweetheart. Bring a notebook and a couple of pens. You have a very simple, but important task to do today."

Katniss tries to suppress a groan as she packs up her office supplies to go along with her camping supplies.

"I have the most boring job at the office. So, why wouldn't I have the most boring job at the hiking trip?" Katniss sullenly remarks in a private interview.

In the first time since the crew has seen Delly Cartwright in a few weeks, she back to being full of sunshine and exuberance. There is, however, no mistaking the dark circles that have begun to form under her sky blue eyes.

"Peeta and I have had some really good talks since the Mayor's party," Delly informs the cameras with a long, involuntary yawn. She follows it up with an optimistic smile and apologizes for the tiredness.

"They've admittedly all gone pretty late into the night, but he's assured me that there's nothing going on between him and Katniss anymore, and I have to take his word for it."

She pauses, and nervously wrings her hands together in her lap.

"Whenever my father would shine shoes in the little shop he used to own, he'd tell me, 'Delly, there's no rough patch you can't smooth over with a little perseverance'. I think Peeta and I can overcome this rough patch, and we can be stronger than ever."

Delly brushes some of the hair out of her eyes and sits up straighter in her chair when the cameras start to pan over toward where Peeta wavers by reception, holding polite conversation with Katniss.

"And I'm going to start mending that rough patch by trying to clear the air with Katniss. I know I haven't given her much of a chance, given everything that happened before Peeta left Allentown, but she seems really sweet. Maybe we can even be friends. That's a step in the right direction, right?"

"Katniss, hey!"

The sound of Delly's peppy voice causes the raven-haired receptionist to jump, he quarter she had in her hand now rolling on the floor under the vending machine. Katniss comically peers over her shoulder, somehow thinking that she must have misheard Delly, or that the blonde saleswoman has mistaken her for someone else in the otherwise empty break room.

"Sorry, do you need to grab something from the machine?" Katniss asks, stepping aside to make room for Delly by the snacks.

Shaking her head of curls, Delly smiles, as chipper as can be.

"I wanted to talk to you, actually," Delly says, taking a seat and raising her coffee mug to her pink lips.

Katniss' brow furrows, and in her usual blunt fashion, asks, "Why?"

Delly chuckles nervously, downplaying her co-worker's apparent confusion as she looks into the cameras. It's not that the two women do not get along, but they've had next to no interaction in the months since Delly's arrival.

A moment of belabored silence passes between them, and the cameras watch Delly worry her lower lip with her teeth for a moment before she sighs and decides to speak up.

"How are you? I know that at the Mayor's party...things got pretty crazy."

The receptionist visibly stiffens, no doubt remembering every horrific detail of Darius' breakdown which resulted in his firing from Panem Electric.

"Yeah."

"Peeta mentioned that you get panic attacks? I just wanted to make sure you were holding up alright."

Caught between the vending machine and Delly's body blocking the only exit, Katniss gives in to the other woman's friendly check-in.

"Sirens. They remind me of the car accident that killed my father. But I'm sure Peeta told you that, too," Katniss supplies quickly. Although Delly does look genuinely concerned for Katniss' mental health since the incident, Katniss' guard is detectable.

Never a big sharer to anyone other than Peeta or the occasional private interviews, it is clear that the thought of Delly knowing a weakness of hers has made Katniss bristle with annoyance.

On the other side of the break room, blinking back shocked tears, a very sympathetic Delly shakes her head.

"He told me you experienced attacks and nightmares, but never about where they came from," Delly says, voice thick with emotion. "I'm sorry. I can't imagine..."

"Don't, then. You shouldn't get bummed out on camping day," Katniss shuts down the pity party and promptly bows her head. She starts to reach for the quarter she had dropped earlier, giving Delly the perfect opportunity to debate with herself over the next talking point, the one she actually must have wanted to bring up all along.

"He also told me about you guys."

"What do you mean?" Katniss asks, trying to remain nonchalant as she punches in the numbers to get a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos to fall from the top shelf.

Delly's frown deepens just a little more as she reluctantly goes on to say, "That you guys kissed. Before New London. Which, I mean, is totally fine. It's just a kiss, right? You're not still...interested in him?"

Aggressively shoving a Dorito into her mouth, Katniss bobs her head almost immediately before Delly can finish answering the question.

"Oh, yeah."

Delly's light eyebrows shoot up to her hairline. "Really?"

Katniss' gray eyes go wide as she nearly chokes on said Dorito.

"No!" she says, sputtering with her mouth full. With each phrase that tumbles out of her mouth, she digs herself deeper into the hole she subconsciously dug for herself, "I was confused by your phrasing. No, there's nothing going on there. You should go out with Peeta. I mean, you are going out with Peeta. I'm not going out with Peeta. You have been dating him for six months, which is great, because you guys are awesome together."

Delly, giving Katniss the benefit of the doubt, laughs along with Katniss when the receptionist's strained, nervous laughter starts up.

"Okay, just wanted to check in and see if we were all on the same page, so that'd good," Delly says, her sunny demeanor giving Katniss the cue to relax the tension in her shoulders.

"Cool," Katniss says, rather lamely. And then, for good measure and for the sake of everyone in the room, herself included, she blurts out, "I'm not into Peeta...I'm sorry."

Delly's smile fractures, so quickly that it would almost be missed if it were not caught on camera.

"Sorry for what?"

Trapped yet again, Katniss pretends that she is receiving an important message from Haymitch on her phone and bolts from the room, leaving Delly flustered and alone.

Surprisingly, when reached to for a comment, Darius Lavins was willing to speak to the crew at a diner off-site of the office and the warehouse from which he was fired.

"Yeah, I met with Kat a few weeks ago, actually...you know, to apologize. She actually apologized for some things too. We agreed that we both made some bad choices during our relationship, and that it was time to let go of something that was never going to work at the end of the day," Darius explains, staring into his mug of black coffee.

He rubs a ghostly white hand down his freckly face, but overall, he finally appears to be at peace with the verdict of his ended relationship with Katniss Everdeen.

"I asked her if she was gonna start dating Mellark now, and she immediately made the lame excuse that he had a girlfriend. She told me she wasn't even going to try to go out with him, can you believe that? After everything...I couldn't sit back and let her just, I dunno...give up, I guess. I mean, she claims that she broke off our wedding for a lot of reasons, but anyone paying attention could see it was for him."

Darius takes a long, lazy sip of his coffee and stares contemplatively out the diner window.

"I don't get her." Laughing a little to himself, he scratches the top of his messy head of hair and confesses, "I don't think I ever did. Not like he does, at least."

When the cameras find their way to the accountants' desk clump, Caesar is hard at work...not at accounting, but at a wilderness simulation game. He audibly comments on the happenings of the game and his live reactions to them, which causes both Clove and Beetee to glower at him as they attempt to get some actual work done before the trip.

Peering up from under his bushy green eyebrows at the camera, Caesar blushes a bit.

"I must confess, I am not an outdoors person," Caesar candidly tells the crew as his avatar slashes through the vines of what appears to be a jungle, something far off from the Allentown woods. "But this game is teaching me everything I need to know about the wilderness! For example, this tool I have just acquired is a spile."

The camera comes around to look at the screen from over Caesar's shoulder to watch an animated metal spout spin around in a bright red box filled with tools Caesar has acquired over the course of the game. Clove rolls her eyes and looks at the camera with scorn for entertaining the loony man.

"It took me about forty minutes to figure out that it was to collect water from the trees, but I caught it just in time before my player could die of dehydration!" No longer able to contain his excitement, he leans across his desk and shouts at Clove, as if they were at a sporting event, "Who's ready for some caaaaaamping!?"

Clove pops an aspirin and offers one to Beetee as Caesar cheers himself on.

"Of course I'm excited for this trip. Anything to get out of work for a day," Johanna reveals in a private interview. "Am I concerned about dying in the wilderness with this group of people, though? I don't know, Haymitch assures me that we're all safe, but I'm not so sure I believe that."

She smirks, eyeing the camera as if to challenge the crew. "What about you guys? Would you feel 'totally safe' alone with that man?"

After leading the group in a sing-a-long to the radio hit classic Hanging Tree, which consists of Caesar taking it upon himself to be the loudest and most off-pitch one of the bunch, Haymitch scurries to the front of the bus for an important announcement.

"Today is not just a fun day sitting around the campfire and holding hands," Haymitch declares.

Cinna, sunglasses still on, rolls his head back in his seat.

"Mother of God," he grumbles. Beside him, Wiress giggles.

"Today, Cinna," Haymitch continues, like a teacher attempting to scold the coolest kid in the school to appear in control to the rest of the classroom, "is a day filled with mandatory fun activities. Fun-tivities!"

This earns only one whoop, rather than the many he must have anticipated, from the back of the bus.

"Yes, fun-tivities! I knew there had to be more to this day than some stupid hike!" Cato cheers. Looking devotedly into his boss' eyes, he tacks on, "I hope there will be parables about playing the game we call sales."

Haymitch nervously looks at the camera and ducks his head as he wanders back to his seat.

"Okay, your enthusiasm is making everyone uncomfortable. Knock it off."

Before he sits back down, Haymitch scolds Katniss when he learns that she didn't write down anyone's reactions to his "fun-tivities" initiative. He tells her to pretend she's writing musicals, something she's 'interested in', and get back to work. Katniss looks at the camera, and gnaws on the cap of her pen in frustration.

At the top of Arrowhead Mountain, Haymitch proudly beams into one of the cameras. He also comically squints due to his choice to stand directly in line with the sun's rays for this shot.

"I think today will really determine the leaders from the followers. Today is the chance for people to get everyone else to like them. It's almost like a television show…for me at least. Even brought some booze for the occasion. Katniss, are you getting all of this down? Everything I'm saying?"

"Yes, Haymitch."

The camera pans out to reveal Katniss, standing several feet behind Haymitch and furiously writing things down on a notepad. While he cheekily grins and takes a swig from his flask, Katniss holds up the notepad to reveal that "everything" is merely a bunch of scribbles.

Once everyone trudges up to the camp site – many of them sweating and out of breath – Haymitch tells everyone to get comfortable. Madge puts out a pillow and begins to read a tabloid magazine on the nearest stump. Gale checks his phone for cell service. Johanna throws her bag carelessly behind her, nearly knocking Beetee back down the hill, before she starts pitching her tent. Finnick makes a big show of how hot he is and decides to rid himself of his shirt. Cato snarls at him when he catches Clove's visible discomfort at the nudity that even she can't seem to tear her gaze away from. After claiming a space for their tent, Delly and Peeta set up a small blanket to put their picnic lunch on, which Katniss eyes with utter detestation. Cinna creeps up and puts an assuring hand on Katniss' shoulder before he wanders off to seek out and give out shade under a tree.

Once everyone is comfortable, Haymitch immediately tells them to get up and stand in a circle around him.

"Let the games begin! Breathe it all in, folks, because this is sacred ground. Today, we stand on the famous indigenous camp ground of hundreds of warrior tribes."

Peeta shakes his head at the cameras, informing them that this is a purely hyperbolic and very untrue statement that the boss just happened to make up.

"And so it was decreed: One day. Fourteen strangers who work together. The bravest males and females of the District competing in the ultimate fight to the death until there is one survivor."

"What?" Caesar shouts loudly from the back, just as confused as everyone else and the only one brave enough to voice it.

Haymitch shakes his head, conveying that his message was obviously unable to get through to everyone.

"It's just words. Just inspirational words. Read them in a novel or something, it's not important," he tells Caesar. Then, to the cameras: "Thankfully, he's not a contender."

"Contender for what, Haymitch?" Cato asks boisterously, having been hanging on to every word of Haymitch's 'inspirational' speech. The manager rolls his eyes.

"The itinerary for the day is as follows: When the clock strikes noon, we'll meet at this big tree over here and begin. The forest has been divided up into twelve wedges, each wedge containing a different obstacle and you must overcome in the form of a challenge. At midnight, the final challenge will determine the winner with the most points…"

"So, it's a clock, then," Wiress chirps from the middle of the huddle. The cameras immediately train themselves on her. When several heads turn to look at the older woman in befuddlement, she clarifies, "Twelve challenges for twelve hours. It's clockwork. Tick, tock!"

Wiress giggles to herself and starts reciting the nursery rhyme 'Hickory Dickory Dock', but Haymitch isn't laughing.

"Dammit, Wiress! Way to give away the whole thing, you old Nut Job! Four days of work ruined because you can't keep your damn trap shut. Whatever, let's just get on with it, then."

Finnick unsurprisingly speaks up in favor of Haymitch's elaborate clock plan, cheering the boss on so that he may continue on his quest to knock Cato out of his coveted Number Three spot.

"Alright! God Bless America!"

Haymitch's lips quirk in the slightest trace of a smile.

"Katniss, make note that Finnick is patriotic."

"I'm trying to learn a number of things from these challenges. For starters, maybe I can come up with an actual fighter," Haymitch explains. "Obviously, I'm looking to the sales gang first and foremost. Wiress is a basketcase, so she's pretty much already out of the running. Cinna is…well, I'm honestly considering Cinna because he scares me so much. There's Peeta Mellark. Smart, handsome, funny…sound like anyone else you know?"

As Haymitch pats himself on the back, the camera pulls in to watch Peeta mockingly stretch his arms and legs out in order to get Delly to laugh. Her blonde curls shaking on her pale shoulders, Delly slaps Peeta's toned shoulder and races him down the hill.

"But the con is that he's not really a hard worker. I could spend all day on a project he gets done in a half hour. Work ethic issues."

Within the first few hours of the day, it becomes evident that Haymitch is going to have a difficult time picking a successor from his District Twelve lot.

The first game, called Lightening Speed, forces the group to untie themselves from a human knot, and then get into height order lining up behind the big tree that has been serving as their marker. This merely results in Beetee issuing a pragmatic solution to the human mess, Finnick agreeing with him, Johanna openly protesting and leading half of the group out of the knot in the other direction, Cato disagreeing with Johanna and pulling his own troops out of the knot in a completely different direction, and Peeta, Delly, and several other slackers just meandering off.

In the end, the challenge produces four random circles instead of a line.

"There's Cato. The obvious choice, given he's the most qualified for the position of regional manager and wants it more than anyone I know," Haymitch continues to remain optimistic, despite the first challenge's pitfalls. "Downside is that he's a complete moron."

The second challenge, called Blood Rain, requires Katniss to haul ten shopping bags filled with wine coolers up the hill and set up an elaborate speaker system. Arranged in a circle, the first person in the circle, which Cato unsurprisingly volunteers for, must drink until a line of the song "Bad Blood" is finished, and the waterfall pattern must continue until the song is over. Clove refuses to participate, and Katniss is shut down when she offers to take her place. The game goes surprisingly well until Wiress unfortunately gets stuck with the rap section of the song, which Haymitch specifies is longer than a line. She vomits all over Beetee and Johanna, and is drunker than ever before.

Cato makes it a point to finish off sixteen wine coolers just to show that he can. The cameras also catch him vomiting in some bushes several minutes after the challenge.

"Finnick Odair is another top contender. He's a Yale graduate, charming, good with the ladies, very on top of his game. I trust him…" Haymitch pauses and mulls this over. Katniss diligently scribes in the background. "Except I don't really trust him."

Katniss mutters something disdainful to herself, spins her pen around, and crosses everything said about Finnick Odair out.

For the third hour, an obstacle course much like Muttspringen from the Office Olympic Games is set up. Everyone is randomly paired up, one partner is blindfolded, and the other must guide them and the egg that is balanced on their spoon through the course. Chaos ensues, naturally.

Finnick tries with all his might to keep up his cool composure, but it is wavering as Madge, his partner, second guesses his every command. So far, his charm has gotten him through every game, just as it gets him through a regular day at the office. But this challenge is proving to be particularly challenging, even for this strategy.

"I'm gonna trip over that giant tree branch! I know it! You're hot, but trying to trick me! Hot guys are always playing games."

"Stop trying to trick my girl, Odair," Gale, who is blindfolded and currently being ordered to "Mush" by Cato, shouts in the general area he thinks Finnick and his girlfriend may be. He ends up shouting in Cato's face, which eggs the red-faced brute on even more to get Gale to hurry along.

"Madge, you're nowhere near the branch, I promise you," Finnick insists, quickly becoming undone with impatience. The cameras pan to the giant branch in question, about twenty yards behind Madge in the opposite direction. "Just ten more paces, and we're at the finish line."

Madge doesn't believe him, and she whips the blindfold off in search of the branch. They are promptly disqualified. Finnick, muscles in his jaw visibly tensing, simply smiles at his partner and pops a sugar cube into his mouth to keep from screaming at her.

Meanwhile, Gale instantly loses his own patience with Cato. He rips off his blindfold, disqualifying them as well, and squares off with the blonde man.

"Yell at me like a dog again, and I will set fire to your food supply in the middle of the night," Gale threatens. Cato gulps audibly.

Wiress, still quite drunk, giggles to herself and keeps pandering the nursery rhyme until she runs into a tree and smashes the egg. Standing behind her and doing absolutely nothing, Cinna thanks Wiress for her time and puts his sunglasses back on.

Delly is jokingly misled by her partner, Peeta, and ends up with two feet submerged in a small crick. She whips off her blindfold and playfully lobs the egg at her boyfriend. The two are all laughs, and they kick up dirt as they pass by Katniss and her notepad like she is invisible.

Sae, who was a shockingly cooperative partner to Beetee, comes out triumphant. Haymitch grumbles something about kissing Effie Trinket before letting Sae manage this office, and then he stomps off to the next wedge of the clock-shaped arena.

"Nothing like a day out in the woods. The nature, the fresh air, and the scrupulous note-taking," Katniss sarcastically says in an aside.

When Cressida asks who is ahead in the race, she clarifies, "At this point, there's an even tie with Peeta at ten points, Cato with a gold star, and Finnick with a thumbs up…"

Haymitch yells at her for missing things, and she shakes out her tired, cramped hand before getting back to work.

The next game, a glorified version of Simon Says that Haymitch calls "Jabberjays", forces contestants to keep straight faces while repeating ridiculous phrases back to him. Given that everyone is drunk and exhausted at this point, no one takes the game seriously.

"Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," Haymitch growls for what he claims is the hundredth time when in reality it's only the third.

"Peter Pepper?" Clove asks, pretending that she couldn't hear her boss correctly. She managed to be talked into having just one wine cooler by Cato and Johanna, and it has had a major effect on her small, susceptible frame. Madge, standing on the stump beside her, giggles.

"Sorry, Haymitch, it's just so hard to hear you with all the wind in the trees!"

"What?" Sae legitimately hollers next to Madge. "The Barbie girl is cheating, Boss!"

"Dammit, guys, just repeat what I'm saying. It's not that hard! This is supposed to distinguish good listeners, and show initiative. It's very important that someone wins this challenge!" Haymitch interjects.

"Why? What do we win?" Gale asks.

"I don't know," Haymitch says, exasperated and realizing that he's probably said too much. This doesn't stop him from going on, however. "A year's worth of my salary. A pre-paid rental car. The glory of being a victor."

"Can't we just get the first two things instead?" Caesar inquires.

"No, you idiots. Just…repeat after me, okay? It's Peter Piper picked…" Haymitch starts.

"A pipe of peckled pippers!" Johanna leers, sending the rest of the group up into hysterics.

"Who even is Peter Piper, anyway?" Delly asks Peeta. "We don't ever get enough of his story. How did he come to pick pickled peppers for a living? Does he even like being a pickle picker?"

"Honestly, Dell, this is one we're going to have to take up with Mother Goose. Or Wiress, since she has an impressive knack for nursery rhymes."

The cameras pan over to Wiress, who's still chanting, "Hickory Dickory Dock, the mouse went up the clock…" to herself with glee.

"PEOPLE, LISTEN! We need a winner," Haymitch whines. "Just one. That's all I ask."

"Why do you want that so bad?" Beetee pipes up. "We're having enough fun just messing around. You wrote these rules, so can't the rules just be re-written?"

"No, no they can't Beetee!"

"Why not?"

"Because the winner gets my job, okay?" Haymitch finally bursts, quelling the rowdy bunch before him. Cato nearly falls off his tree stump in shock.

"You're…leaving?" he asks, as if he's been stabbed. Haymitch sighs dramatically.

"I didn't want to have to tell you this way – there's a job I'm interviewing for at Corporate. It's a smaller candidate pool than usual, most likely…and I'm the most qualified, so I'll probably get it."

An uncomfortable silence fills the forest. A tree could fall and everyone would be around to hear it.

And suddenly, in a shocking turn of events, Cinna loudly recites the silly rhyme back to Haymitch. He stands tall at attention, and over the rims of his sunglasses, the cameras catch a wild look in his eyes.

"I hate working here, but if I have to keep working for anyone in these woods, it may as well be me," Cinna clarifies his behavior for the cameras in a private interview by the big tree. Although his expression is unchanged from its usual deadpan state, the hungry look in his eyes has not disappeared, telling the camera crew he means every word he says.

Behind Beetee, Finnick and Cato are still shouting over each other, the popping 'p' sound of the Peter Piper line reverberating off of the forest canopy. The game appears to have concluded a while ago for everyone else.

"If the new position goes to either of these gentlemen I will leave this job permanently," he threatens. Laughing a little to himself, he adds, "I don't know what these fools will miss more, me or my mind."

The crew finds Cato's figure stalking through the bushes across from the campsite almost immediately, despite his attempt to be hidden from plain view. They don't, however, manage to see that Clove is with him until they come closer.

"Pookie, I'm sure you know that my winning the position is vital for us both to go home victorious," Cato explains, keeping his voice low and his gaze focused on the horizon ahead. Standing shoulder to shoulder – or shoulder to ear, given the immense height difference between them – Clove nods intently.

"Oh, I know, Sugar Bear. Which is why I went into Haymitch's knapsack and found the draft for the rest of the challenges," Clove tells him, a wicked smile tugging at her taught lips. Without so much as a blink Cato's way, she puts a neatly folded piece of paper into his hands.

The cameras zoom in to a close up on Cato as he scans the paper quickly and grins.

"Other than the last challenge, which I can't really make out, it's all there. Everything you need to give you what you finally deserve."

"It's the perfect sabotage."

"It is indeed," she remarks. When Cato, overcome with joy, grabs her, spins her close to him, and tries to kiss her, however, she smacks him and scurries out of the bushes. Cato's eyes hungrily follow her as she goes.

Across the campsite, the cameras do some more spying on another couple. Although it is difficult to hear them over the running water of the crick, the sound on the camera balances out in just enough time to catch the tail end of Peeta's phone conversation.

"Great. Yeah, I'll see you next week. And here is Delly Cartwright," Peeta says warmly, passing his cell phone over to his bubbly girlfriend.

"Hi, President Snow. Yes, I would like to be considered for the position at Corporate in well—I mean as well."

Peeta catches her slip up just as Delly turns bright red.

"In well? How can a job be in well…wait if this job is in a well, I don't want it," Peeta muses. He boings one of Delly's blonde curls.

Delly rolls her eyes and continually gestures for her boyfriend to pipe down while she wraps up her end of the conversation with the President of Panem, successfully securing the both of them interviews for the position Haymitch claimed to have allegedly in the bag.

At this stage of the competition, everyone has upped their game in order to get the chance to take over as regional manager. Finnick continues to blind the female contestants into letting him win challenges or by forming alliances with him, which gives him an advantage over many of his competitors.

Cinna fights with enough ferocity to scare people away from wanting to play any of the games. During a game called "Man – Gun – Bear", which resembles a human version of the hand game "Rock – Paper – Scissors", his growling that goes along with his bear causes Peeta to claim that he saw his life flash before his eyes in Cinna's expression.

Cato's newfound knowledge proves to be a double-edged sword for him later in the following events of the competition. Although he knows the ins and outs of the challenges, Cato could not have anticipated just how badly he would perform each of them.

The current challenge, which requires an exhibition of contestants' survival skills in order to acquire food in a simulated setting in which they are stranded in the woods, reveals the salesman's anger as it mounts at the knot tying station of the challenge. Instead of focusing on his own work, he continually looks over to Finnick, who knots perfectly with ease and a smug expression sent Cato's way.

"How did I get so good at knot tying? Simple. My father had a sailboat growing up, this beautiful creature we called The Trident, and that provided me with plenty of opportunities to tie some of the toughest knots while I learned how to scale the seas," Finnick explains triumphantly.

Cressida has to clarify, however, that the question was not, 'How did you get so good at knot tying?', but rather, 'How did you get so good at not trying?' Finnick looks slightly embarrassed before shrugging it off with his usual dismissal.

"Oh…that. I feel like the same answer would probably suffice. I haven't dabbled in anything as simple as money in years. No one in Twelve is bragging about their sailboats, haha—I suppose I am susceptible to being a little classier than the folks here."

A facile status player, Finnick changes his tune and shrugs off the smug grin in the blink of an eye and suddenly plays himself off as humble.

"But I am okay if I lose every single contest today. I see these contests as a chance to demonstrate to the people of this office what a good sport I can be. It's not my hubris we have to worry about."

Back at the challenge, Cato's apparent hubris has caused him to incorrectly assemble his tent, despite all of Clove's side coaching.

"Cato!" Clove snarls when the bounty of supplies he's been given comes crumpling down. The cameras can detect how he has gone from simmering to absolutely maddened in a matter of seconds, but Clove is just a second too late to catch up.

"Dammit, Clove! I can't focus with you breathing down my neck like that! Now let me figure out which plants are edible in piece!"

Everyone falls silent, in shock. Katniss, who had been spying on the two of them kissing at the Mayor's party last month, immediately looks into the camera with her jaw hanging open. Clove turns beet red before turning on her heels in the soil and stomping off. Finnick looks like he's fighting back laughter, but plays it off as a cough into his sleeve.

Cato, regretting how his temper got the best of him, immediately goes to follow her.

"Clove, wait…stay with me…" However, remembering the nature of their hushed, secret relationship in the presence of his co-workers, Cato is forced to make the choice to stay behind while he watches his angry girlfriend slip through his fingers.

As the competition winds down, Haymitch checks everyone's final survival product. Gale stands proudly by what appears to be a very impressive snare.

"Katniss isn't the only hunter in the office," Gale reveals in a private interview. His chest puffs out with pride, "That thing could catch a rabbit in under ten minutes."

A thought finally occurs to him at the thought of the snare's success rate, and he frowns. "You'd think I'd be able to apply some of this skill to being a salesman…"

"Survival of the fittest, I get what ol' Boss Man is trying to do here," Sae says in a private interview she insisted for herself. "I know a thing or two about that."

When asked for clarification, she winks and flashes a toothless smile at the camera.

"I was supposed to be born a twin, you see. But when the doctors did an ultrasound on my mother, they discovered that I had absorbed the other fetus. It's what's made me so durable over the years. I should have died years ago, when I got sold on the black market and thrown into the Siene in Paris when I was a young girl. Swam my way out of that bag, changed my name, and now I run the black market."

"The hell is this, Hawthorne? Nice try, but it takes a little more than being the office hunk and making a catapult to be the regional manager in Allentown," Haymitch sneers, obviously having never seen a snare before. Gale merely looks at the cameras in agitation.

Haymitch makes his way over to Cinna's creation, which is essentially just a cape he's fashioned out of a tarp.

"What on Earth…how do you plan to survive in the wilderness with that, Cinna?"

"By doing what you always tell us to do and staying alive," Cinna says, much too perkily to be normal. Haymitch, however, takes this ego-petting in stride and tells Katniss to award Cinna a touchdown. As soon as he walks by, Cinna's big, fake smile resets into his usual grimace.

"You know, I knew going into this that finding a replacement would be difficult, but I didn't realize that it would be impossible," Haymitch laments in private as he takes a giant swig from his flask. "No one has shown any potential all day. Cato's an ass, Finnick cheated his way to the top, Peeta isn't trying, and Cinna's clearly having a stroke."

He smiles as he screws his cap back onto the flask.

"However, I think this last challenge may be able to do the trick."

Once everyone is gathered at the oak tree for the final challenge in the clock, Haymitch begins his biggest speech yet.

"What does a great manager need most of all? Courage. Brass balls. Cajónes."

"How so?" Cinna answers the rhetorical question sarcastically, his impulses disagreeing with the charade he's been playing with the current manager all day. Haymitch shoots him a look, which prompts Cinna to zap back into mock-enthusiasm.

"I mean, sure thing! That sounds smart, Haymitch. I'm here to help you in any way that I can –" The act becomes all too much for the salesman, and he sighs with defeat. "I can't do this anymore. I don't see the point in this."

In true Cinna fashion, he informs the group that he is going to sleep in style, that is on the bus.

"Your loss, Cinna! Meanwhile, the rest of us will be having a blast defeating fear and igniting the flames of hope, which as we know is much stronger than fear!" Haymitch calls down the hill at Cinna's retreating form. "And how, you may ask? By walking through the very thing that runs our company!"

"Idiots?" Johanna ventures, jabbing a thumb in the direction of Caesar, who is chattering with Delly about how his forest green-colored vest compliments her eyes.

"No…no, that's not…no. I mean, literally the thing that runs our company: COAL!"

As he makes this announcement, the giant pile of kindling and coal leading to the giant tree that everyone thought was for a bonfire is lit by two warehouse workers in their white suits.

Peeta, who has been watching everything with utter dismay, flashes his trademark look to the cameras, this time with a twang of shock.

"Who among you has the guts to replace me? Let him walk across these coals."

Not surprisingly, no one is jumping at the bait of this erroneous request. Everyone merely looks at the last challenge with terror.

"C'mon, guys! Man up here!" Haymitch pleads. "Peeta?"

Peeta laughs out loud before answering, "Hard no, Boss. I don't want my feet to get burned. Besides, I have no chance of winning this thing."

"You do not have what it takes to be a regional manager," Haymitch declares, pointing an incriminating finger Peeta's way.

"That's harsh," Peeta remarks to no one in particular.

"Peeta's strong, though," Delly speaks up on behalf of her boyfriend, who is too self-deprecating to admit he would actually be quite a good manager. "He has tons of burn scars from the ovens. And I happen to know for a fact that he can lift a hundred pound sack of flour at the bakery. I've seen him do it."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Curly Q, but I'm not going to manage anyone with a sack of flour. Unless the office turns into a giant cake overnight," Peeta says, blushing with eyes downcast. When he looks up, he nervously meets Haymitch's gaze. "I was, uh, actually referring to the open position down at Corporate. I'm going to interview with President Snow on Thursday."

A beat of silence passes before Haymitch bursts out laughing.

"That's a good one, Mellark. You had me fooled for a second, there."

"He's not joking, Haymitch. I'm also going in for the interview in well–as well–gosh, I keep doing that," Delly informs him, coming to Peeta's side and taking his hand. The cameras, as to be expected, cut to Katniss for a reaction, but she remains listless.

Haymitch visibly swallows this betrayal.

"Oh…so, you really are, then?" Haymitch asks, after another moment of silence drags on. Peeta nods. "Would you…would you want to train together, then? Study up as a team?"

"Yeah, uh, it's probably for the best if I train alone for this one, Haymitch…no hard feelings, but you understand that, right?" Peeta replies, kicking at the soil beneath his feet with the toe of his boot.

"I can't let you do this," Haymitch says, voice wavering just above a whisper.

Peeta shrugs. "You can't stop me."

Haymitch deducts fifty points from Peeta for the sake of smiting him while he still can.

"Are you going to do it?" Caesar grills Clove in a not-so-discreet stage whisper as he looks on at the coals. Clove vehemently shakes her head.

"And make a fool out of myself? I don't think so. It's unsafe," Clove spits back. Narrowing her beady eyes across the coal walk at Cato, she tacks on, "I can think of some people who won't listen to that glaringly obvious fact, however."

"If it grants me the honor I would be able to bring to this District as Regional Manager, I would most certainly walk through fire," Cato announces, his statement directed at both Clove and Haymitch. Turning to the manager who stands at his side, Cato stares intensely at Haymitch and says, in an attempt to perhaps hypnotize Haymitch, "That's the kind of dedication you want in a leader."

"Shut up. That's…you're pathetic. Look, if no one is going to walk through the coals, we have to give the position to Mr. Outside Hire."

"Or Missus Outside Hire," Madge interjects.

Haymitch eyes her with laughter burning on his lips as he sarcastically humors her by saying, "Yeah, okay. So, any volunteers?"

Katniss, who has been strangely eyeing the coals, looks up at the cameras that watch her with a nervous, but excited smile.

"You know what, I'm gonna do it," she says confidently. "And I fully expect to burn, but that's the spirit, right?"

Her hand shoots up. "Haymitch, I volunteer – "

Haymitch quickly silences her with a raised hand of his own. "No, Sweetheart. You need to keep score."

"But I want to try…"

"No, Katniss. I need someone else, anyone else!"

"If you're going to ask people to do it, you should do it yourself," Finnick challenges. And because this rebellious statement came from the mouth of Finnick Odair, at least four or five female voices go up in agreement with him.

Haymitch, never one to back down from a challenge while drunk, eyes Finnick with scorn as he bravely approaches the coals. His bare foot dangles over the crackling, burning trail for about ten seconds before he spits in the direction of the challenge. His saliva sizzles and sends up a pathetic puff of smoke once it makes contact with the coals.

"This is bull. Waste of seventy-five bucks," he grumbles. "You know, there's really no correlation between management and a fire walk. Okay, okay, new challenge! See that big branch, way up in this tree?"

The cameras follow where Haymitch's finger points, to a large branch about twenty five feet above the ground.

"Whoever can climb up to that branch has the stamina, the courage – what it takes to be the victor of this branch," he declares, looking pretty impressed with himself for improvising a new challenge on the spot like this.

"You're kidding. That's even harder than the hell-scape you have for us down here," Gale speaks up on behalf of the flabbergasted group.

"Well, life's a climb, Lumberjack Boy," Haymitch retorts.

"Like Miley Cyrus says," Madge pipes up, ignoring the fact that she's backing up Haymitch and not sticking up for her boyfriend in her quick attempt to sneak a pop culture reference and her two cents into the discussion.

"Haymitch, please, let me try," Katniss begs. "I'm actually a pretty decent climber…"

"Jesus, Everdeen! You really are as stubborn as they come. I need you to stay here and write down that everyone's a coward."

"Why don't you climb it then, since we're all too cowardly for your taste?" Johanna leers at her boss.

Haymitch shakes his head, obvious fear in his eyes. "No…I don't do heights."

"Figures," Beetee grumbles under his breath.

All eyes are on Cato when he suddenly cries out, an intense-sounding battle cry that vaguely resembles something out of Game of Thrones. He rips off his thermal jacket, and then his t-shirt, shoes, and pants, despite everyone's protests, until he is stripped down to his underwear at the base of the tree trunk.

"No. I will do this, Haymitch. I will climb this tree and earn this job," he announces. The group erupts in hysteria, telling him that he is crazy and will undoubtedly hurt himself. Clove simply rolls her eyes and turns away from the scene.

Cato ignores all of the pleas and attempts to climb the tree anyway. It becomes evident that he has both no experience with climbing and that his height and weight put him at a significant disadvantage for the task. He loses his footing, and rather than letting defeat take him down without a fight, Cato wraps his arms and legs around the tree, holding on for dear life.

Gravity has other plans, however, and Cato's body slides the rough bark of the tree. He hollers the whole way down until he collapses in a pile of limbs directly on his butt in the soil below. The fall is a hard one, and many people gasp or let out "oohs" like spectators watching a sporting event.

Haymitch calls everything off, demands Cato put his clothes back on and stop humiliating himself, and redirects everyone back to the campfire for a "barely-deserved" s'mores making session with the extra coal. Cato is left battered, bruised, and groaning on the forest floor, but not before Clove throws all of his clothes at him.

Gale, Finnick, and Beetee set up a fire with the remaining coal that did not go to waste on the failed coalwalk. Haymitch looks on, still sizing people up for potential.

While Johanna is in the middle of a terrifying ghost story and everyone else is around the huddle with one half of the camera crew watching, Cressida and her cameraman Pollux have stayed back at the tree trunk with Katniss.

She stares intently at her target, her determined gray eyes honing in on the branch above. Katniss smiles at the camera, takes a deep breath, and with a leap of faith, she finds her footing. Quickly, nimbly, she makes it to the top of the tree with ease. When she perches herself on the branch, she releases the breath she has been holding and is beaming with accomplishment. Euphoric laughter pours from her lips as the flames from the coals below lick the edge of the camera's frame. She glows like one of the coals as she throws her head back and screams triumphantly into the brisk nighttime air.

In this moment, she is far more than just the pretty girl who sits behind the desk at the office. The receptionist is as radiant as the sun.

Without waiting for the cameras to follow, she swiftly makes her way back down to the ground (far more gracefully than Cato had earlier that night, despite the sounds of her clothes catching on bark here and there) and runs at full speed toward the campfire at the other end of the campsite.

Johanna's scary story is cut off at the climax when Katniss comes bursting into the circle.

"Hey! I want to say something," she announces. Without waiting for permission, Katniss goes on. "I've been trying to get better at saying things, lately. I climbed the tree! Just now, I did it. Haymitch, you couldn't even do that – maybe I should be your boss."

All eyes are on Haymitch, who laughs half-heartedly at Katniss' dig at him.

The girl, now on a roll with her honest punches, keeps swinging.

"None of you came to my recital," she states, moving on from Haymitch to the rest of the circle around the bonfire. "I invited all of you…and none of you showed up. That really sucked. It's like some of you act like I don't exist."

A wave of guilt is visibly passed around the circle, skipping over some of the more hard-to-reach members of the office, before it lands on a certain blonde salesman.

Slowly, with all the courage she can muster in this moment of adrenaline and confidence, Katniss turns and meets his gaze.

"Your favorite color is orange, but muted and soft. Like the sunset. You're a painter. You're a baker. You sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. You always double knot your shoelaces. You're kind, and generous, and people said you loved…I didn't realize how important all of that information was or how much it all meant for me to know all of that until you left for New London – and then I called off my wedding, and now we're not even friends. And things are just weird between us now. You're not even you around me. But I miss you. We were friends, and allies before…and now I keep trying to figure that list of what we are out but I keep coming up short. I shouldn't have been with Darius, and there were a million reasons to cancel my wedding…but the truth is, none of it mattered until I met you."

The cameras cut to Peeta, who watches her, unblinking, unmoving. He merely absorbs everything that is being said to him. And for once in his life, he takes it completely seriously.

Katniss staggers for a moment at Peeta's silence, but she wills herself to go on.

"And now, you're with someone else…and that's fine."

Delly delivers a bewildered and highly offended look to the cameras at this honest statement. But Katniss, still on a roll, isn't so concerned with offending anyone tonight.

"It's—whatever, that's not what I'm trying to say. I think there's a splinter in my butt right now…what I mean to say to you, Peeta—and everyone else in the circle, I guess—is that I miss having fun with you...Just you, actually. Nobody else."

For what feels like the millionth time that day, an eerie silence falls over the group. Only the sounds of Katniss' labored breaths and the crackling fire can be picked up by the microphones.

"Okay," the receptionist says after a long while, "I'm gonna go get all of these splinters out of my pants now."

Smiling to herself before she starts off, Katniss declares that it's been a good day.

"Katniss, that was amazing!" Haymitch calls after her as she disappears to the area by the crick. He shrugs and passes a look into the camera before addressing the rest of the shell-shocked group. "I'm still really looking for someone with sales experience, but damn, that girl is on fire!"

In the middle of the night, the crew wakes to the smell of meat being cooked and follows the billow of smoke to the source—a man-made fire. Greasy Sae is discovered cooking up some ribs.

The old woman cackles upon being found. Raising a finger to her lips, she tells the crew to remain mum.

"Survival of the fittest. I'm cooking the small one. The little uptight accountant girl."

Sae cackles when Cressida gasps and the cameras quickly pan to the campsite, where Clove still sleeps soundly under the stars in her sleeping bag.

"I'm just messin'. This meat is all mine. Did kill that deer over there for it, though. Nothing like a midnight snack cooked au naturale," she says with another giggle.

The image of the deer carcass has to be blurred out for America's sake.

A/N: Hi! Hope everyone is hanging in there! This chapter follows probably my favorite episode of The Office, so it was a lot of fun to put this together with the parallels to the arena from Catching Fire. Now, Katniss' true feelings are out there and someone may be getting promoted! Stay tuned! Only one more "episode" from Year Two! Please review and let me know of your thoughts/predictions!

Till next time,
ILoVeWicked