A/N: This was actually meant to be two chapters, but they were short so I combined them.
We set up camp in a small—and by small, I mean small—clearing, surrounded by berry bushes and pine trees. It's hard to tell what type of berry it is, but until we find a source of light, no one has the guts to eat them.
Aiden had organized all of the food into five black bags while I was off with Delta. Originally, there was six bags of food, but Alena doesn't need one anymore. We split up the sixth bag evenly.
As for the weapons? They sit in front of us right now. Stefanya, Rye, Acanthus, Aiden and I are all sitting in a pentagon-shaped circle. We don't know what to do with the weapons. Split them up, or share them. We have no idea, whatsoever. There was something missing that the other games have, but I can't quite place it. I'm obviously paranoid, no doubt.
"Well... We might aswell say what we're good at, and what we want to take," Stefanya says, sitting to my left.
"It's pretty obvious that I want spears," I say, giving up all hope at trying to hide that I'm trained in them.
"Aiden? Do you handle spears as well?" Stefanya asks, once again supplying the sparce conversation. She is like a dulled down, less annoying—and less neon, I must add—version of Sohalia.
Aiden, barely heard, mumbles, "No. I'll be fine with just a knife."
"I want the hatchet, the mace, and the sword!" Acanthus adds loudly. Of course he does, with arms like his.
"Rye?" Stefanya says, "What do you want to use?"
Rye shrugs. "Anything. A knife, an axe. Whatever is good."
"Good. I'll take the bow and arrows." Stefanya says, picking up the light-coloured bow. I know this wood. It's oak. Oak is common is Distict 4. We make canoes and small boats out of it.
I look at them with hidden digust. What are they trying to do? Play house? We all sit and talk here like normal human beings, but it's obvious that we all want to rip eachother's throats out. Nonetheless, I don't attack. There's no way I can kill Acanthus or Rye. I'll have to get them while they're sleeping. Or, let them battle it out themselves. I smirk. I'd enjoy seeing that.
I can't enjoy it any longer though, because a massive boom erupts in the arena. The cannons. We all count, silently to ourselves. One... Two... Three... It goes on for a few more seconds. Six. I count six. That's one fourth of the tributes, already dead, and today hasn't even began to start yet.
Stefanya brings me back to reality with her strategious voice. "So, what do you think of the arena?" she asks to no one in particular.
"It's getting darker..." I say slowly. "It probably gets even darker at night, like now. In the beginning, it was like a one-hour-to-midnight dark, but now it's pitch black."
"Damn, it's a good thing we found those heat-seekin' thing. We'd be in trouble if we didn't," Acanthus drawls.
"Speaking of the goggles," I start. "How many pairs were there?"
"About six that we know of. It could be more, like one per tribute, but I have got no clue," supplies Stefanya. Damn.
Acanthus, bored of the non-killing talk, changes the subject. "I say we go out hunting for tributes," he says nonchalantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Maybe he's doing it for the viewers, maybe for the sponsors. Maybe he's just a messed up person inside. I don't know. I don't want to know.
Aiden speaks up. "We should go in pairs. It would be best that way, because then we would have someone to watch your back, along with one person staying here and guarding these."
"So, who gets stuck with gaurding duty?" Acanthus says, thinking it as a bad thing.
Aiden, quickly, takes the posisition. "I'll do it," he says, probably the quickest I've heard him answer.
"Fine by me," Stefanya says. "As for partners..."
"I want to be with Rye!" Acanthus practically screams. "We're both strong enough to take down the bigger tributes."
"Fair enough," Stefanya says, then turns to me and adds, "I guess I'm with you then, Marina. we'll meet back in a couple hours. Not too long, alright?"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. Now, lets go hunting!" Acanthus, once again, yells.
"Tributes," Stefanya whispers, pointing to a bush behind me, I turn my head, trying not to crack the branch that I'm currently residing on. We're perched up on the lower arms of a small spruce tree, watching for tributes. This is our first encounter, and we've been waiting for an hour.
We watch them as they set up camp a few trees away from us, wanting them to sit down soon so we can get a slight headstart.
They speak, as they set up. This only makes it harder to watch, but slightly more... enjoyable. They get to talk before they die. Little do they know that these will be their parting words. They lay down, a fair distance apart from eachother. They're allies, but not friends. Typical.
It's tough to see them, but the goggles make it easier. I can make out a smaller figure, and a slightly larger one. Nothing dangerous.
The smaller one, obviously feminine, speaks. "I'm scared, Andre," she says in a slight voice. She doesn't know that anyone is around.
"Well thoughen up, Zo," says the larger one, now revealed by his voice to be a boy. "We're in the Hunger Games now. We need to be strong and win, for District seven's sake."
District 7... They didn't stick out. The girl was twelve, the boy was fifteen. Not scrawny, but definetly not anything close to Rye or Acanthus.
Stefanya gently nudges me on the shoulder, trying not to startle me. "I'm going in," she whispers. "Stay here... I'll take them out."Even in the dark, eyes masked by goggles, I can see her grim, white grin. A ploy for the sponsors, no doubt.
"Be careful," I mumble to her as she prepares to hop off our low branch. We're far enough away that we can hop down quietly and not be heard.
Slowly, she whispers back, "I'm going to sneak up on them... Not right away. I'll spend about half an hour on the ground, waiting for them to get drowsy, then I'll get them with a knife."
"Good plan," I say as she finally takes the slight leap off the tree. She lands swiftly, not alerting our prey.
Half an hour... That'll be a thing to wait out, especially in silence.
My mind wanders, on everything from home to here. Home... So many thing I need to know before I die, not that I plan to. But really... it's not going to hurt if I think about what would happen if I lose.
A stray thought pops into my head. The baskets. I'd completely forgotten about the little wicker baskets with money in them that had been delivered to my house. Now that I've seen the true course of Cora's death, it's obvious that Wyatt sent them.
Wyatt. The jerk. Still, it was nice of him to answer her last wishes. I hope he continues to even if something happens and I don't return home. I can't believe I used to have feelings for him. Nothing major, of course. Only small rushes of excitement when we talked. That was all, but that all went away once he came home.
Stop, I tell myself. That was the past, this is now. I need to pay attention. I put on my goggles once again and look to the three redded figures. Stefanya is slowly creeping up to them, her arm reaching into her belt for her knife.
She'll do the girl first, since she's closer. She's almost to her now... just a few more steps. She leans down over the sleeping girl, as if not to wake her, but she does.
"Ahhhh!" she squeals, earning a grunt from the boy.
Stefanya quickly sticks the knife in her, all of her protests snuffed out like a flame. Her cannon, loudly, fires. The boy, now sitting up, is reaching inside a bag for something. A knife, most likely. Stefanya can handle herself.
But then it hits me... District 7. Lumber. Chopping down wood, with axes.
If I come back with no Stefanya, my group will think that I killed her. I can't have that. I'm on the ground before I can scream my protests.
"Stefanya!" I scream, sprinting for her little clearing. She doesn't pay attention to me. She keeps heading towards the frantic boy.
"District Seven!" I yell to her. Still no response. "He can use an axe!"
That, however, catches her attention. Sadly, it rips her gaze away from the boy crawling with an axe. He barely catches her in the thigh with a disgusting thwack.
I had to brains to bring my spear from the tree, and I throw it in his direction. My spears barely hits his hand. It was meant to hit his abdomen, but his palm was in the way.
He switches his axe to the other hand, ripping the spear out in the process. I'm weaponless and shocked as he rears up and heads for me. I quickly try to dodge backwards, but his axe still gets my left forearm, making me scream and fall down.
The pain is unbareable. If I thought the prep team was bad, then I'm completely wrong. This is one hundred times that.
I'm on my knees, my head bowed. I rip my head from the sight of my blood stained jacket to look for where the next attack might come from.
There's no attack. Stefanya has gotten up from her slump, unlike me. She's already stabbed him in the gut, but his cannon hasn't fired.
"I'm going to make him pay for this," she says through gritted teeth. Her thigh is bleeding, but not much. As I said, the axe only just barely caught her leg. Still, it must hurt.
Through the pain, I manage to stand up. She is leaning over the boy, who has fallen to the ground. Her knife is on his face, teasing his skin.
"If you're going to kill him, hurry up with it," I say, trying to act nonchalantly. I hope it works, but I know some of the bravado shows through. He's crying for his life now, bargaining for his life like a gambling chip.
"You're right," she says, and then turns to the boy and adds, "you're not worth it." She drags the knife across his neck, blood following wherever her knife touches. It spreads into his shirt like a wildfire. His cannon sounds less than a second after he hits the ground.
"Let's get back," I mumble, clutching my arm. The cut isn't deep, but it's not shallow either. It hurts like mad.
"No. I need to tend to my leg," she says, then looks at me. "A little help here?"
"Oh," I say, "right." I walked over to her and put my right arm—my good arm—around her back to support her. We walk, slowly, away from the bodies and sit on a fallen log. She immeadiately heaves her leg up on the log.
"Check for tributes," she breathes. Another thing I forgot. My goggles are hanging around my neck, and I hastily put them on, turning my head side to side as I survey the area. No splotches of red I can see.
"All clear," I say.
"Good. Ah, this hurts so badly. Hey, do you have any bandages?" she asks. And then it hits me.
Bandages! That's what was missing from the cornucopia. There wasn't a signle first aid kit in the entire stash. No disinfectant, no nothing. Not even a band-aid.
"There was no healing supplies in the cornucopia," I say to her, but she's not looking at me. She's looking to the sky, and that can only mean one thing.
"Well it's about time we got a gift," she says as the silver parachute lands between us. I let her take it first, still gaping at what the parachute held.
A little wicker basket, the kind I know so well. I know, without a doubt, who sent this, but I don't dare to tell Stefanya that.
She pulls out a roll of tan strips, obviously bandages, and another thing. A small, piece of neon white paper. She reads it, and, in spite of herself, laughs. Once she has collected herself, she hands it to me.
"It looks like we've got fans," she says with another one of her smiles.
I read it, but I don't laugh like Stefanya. This isn't something good. A couple years ago, I would have loved news like this. Now? I never want to think about it. Because deep in my mind, I know that when I return home, this will come haunt me, and someday, I'll have to face it. Whether it really was from a fan, or if it was from him, I can't stop thinking about those little words written on a scrap of paper.
I'll keep you alive.
A/N: So, I know that may seem lame, but it's important in later chapters (as in, REALLY important. I've got the entire story mapped out on paper). It was either that, or 'I love you,' and I really don't like writing romance in the Hunger Games. Besides, this is strictly a non-romance games.