As per usual for this section, a lot (but not all) of the dialogue is stolen from Catching Fire. So if you recognise it, Suzanne Collins probably wrote it first.

On a more personal note, don't expect much in the way of quick replies – I've got Finals, and other stuff. I should be able to stick to once a fortnight updates though. But thank you to everyone who does take a little time to review – it always means a lot.

But I digress. On with the fic.


I struggle to my feet, still a little groggy. Bad Johanna. Years of luxury have made me lose the ability to wake up instantaneously. And to think I call myself a morning person.

"What is it?" Finnick asks, much more nicely than I think he should.

"We're all in danger," Everdeen tells us with a surprising lack of melodrama, moving to wake Peeta. "We have to move."

I roll my eyes. "I heard that the first time, Firegirl. Be a dear and be more specific, won't you?"

She sighs impatiently but does slow down her frantic motions to explain whatever's gotten her so bothered.

"Wiress figured it out. It's a clock – I mean, the Arena is. Twelve segments, split up by those banks of sand in the middle. And at a certain hour of the day, in order, something triggers a trap in each of them. Listen."

We do.

"I don't hear anything," Peeta says. I agree with him, but obviously some of the others think otherwise.

"I do," Finnick says softly. "It's raining."

A chill goes down my spine and I look up at the sky. The sun's quite high – it's only an hour or so past noon. Maybe there's something in Everdeen's half baked theory after all. Or maybe not. After all, it is the Girl on Fire we're talking about – she's got to get an award for achievements in ignorance somewhere.

"Exactly," Everdeen says. "It's raining. And about an hour earlier, there were twelve bongs and a lightning strike. And I'd bet almost anything that soon there's going to be fog in that segment over there."

She points at the one directly to the left – to the one directly anticlockwise – of us.

"And then those monkeys here an hour later," whispers Peeta.

Her expression softens as she looks at him. Just for a split second, but it's enough to make me almost start believing those lies of theirs. Almost.

"Right. Only we don't know how far they're willing to go, or how far that fog spreads. We're way too close for my liking."

Peeta nods agreement, and after thinking about it for a few seconds Finnick does too. They all look at me expectantly.

"I think you're as nutty as Nuts," I tell Everdeen flatly. "Why'd the Gamemakers bother making a trap that we can figure out that easily, especially when they're sending in people who've been known to use the Arena against their enemies before? Not when it's much more exiting watching us run around in total cluelessness."

"But what've you got to lose?" Peeta asks me.

"And if she is right then we've just saved our guts," adds Finnick.

So now they're all ganging up on me. Typical. I shrug, sensing the battle's lost and that I still need to stay their ally.

"Ok, fine. But don't come crying to me if we end up walking into another trap."

As Everdeen wakes Nuts up the rest of us unpack the small camp. Neither takes long and all we have left to do is pick up the still semi-catatonic Volts and leave. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to want to comply, struggling and muttering about his wire which leaves poor Peeta think he's talking about Wiress.

I cross over to the two of them and pick up the wire. "Oh, I know what he wants. This worthless thing. It's some kind of wire or something. That's how he got cut. Running up to the Cornucopia to get this." Then, realising that Beetee's attachment to the object, justified as it is, could cause quite a bit of suspicion back in the Capitol, I lie fluently. "I don't know what kind of weapon it's supposed to be. I guess you could pull off a piece and use it as a garrotte or something. But really, can you imagine Beetee garrotting somebody?"

"He won his Games with wire. Setting up that electrical trap. It's the best weapon he could have," Peeta points out.

Interesting. So the Firekids have been studying their potential enemies. Maybe they're not as useless as I thought. Though it was probably Haymitch's idea.

Everdeen narrows her eyes at me. "Seems like you'd have figured that out. Since you nicknamed him Volts and all."

I glare back, suddenly angered again. Can't she take a hint and stay silent? "Yeah, that was really stupid of me, wasn't it? I guess I must have been distracted by keeping your little friends alive. While you were… what, again? Getting Mags killed off?"

She tenses and I notice her hand going to her belt. Internally I allow a little glow of satisfaction. That hit the target. I know I should leave it there, but I can't resist a little extra goading.

"Go ahead. Try it. I don't care if you are knocked up. I'll rip your throat out."

Everdeen looks positively furious. The citizens of the Capitol are only spared the sight of an actual fight by Finnick stepping in.

"Maybe we had all better be careful where we step. There's your wire, Volts. Watch where you plug it."

Beetee grabs the wire and clutches it carefully to his chest. Peeta takes the opportunity to lift up the now unresisting man and asks us where we're headed.

"I'd like to go to the Cornucopia and watch," Finnick says. "Just to make sure we're right about the clock."

So the lot of us make the short walk over the nearest sandbar towards the Cornucopia. Once there, Nuts sets to work cleaning Beetee's wire, singing that song from earlier about the mouse and the clock. I make some comment of annoyance, but no one else pays it any attention.

Suddenly she stands straight and points to the jungle. "Two."

"Yes, look, Wiress is right," Everdeen says. "It's two o'clock and the fog has started."

"Like clockwork. You were very smart to figure that out, Wiress."

Beetee barely reacts visibly to Peeta's patronising tone but irritation tinges his voice. "Oh, she's more than smart. She's intuitive." We all turn to him. "She can sense things before anyone else. Like a canary in one of your coal mines." This last part is obviously addressed to the two from Twelve.

"What's that?" Finnick asks.

The Girl on Fire is the one to reply to him. "It's a bird we take down into the mines to warn us if there's bad air."

"What's it do, die?"

"It stops singing first. That's when you should get out. But if the air's too bad, it dies, yes." Everdeen gives me a look of some annoyance, like I shouldn't be treating the topic so flippantly. "And so do you."

"Good thing you're not in a mine then, eh Johanna," Finnick says, grinning.

"Better for you," I retort. "In the darkness no one would be able to see how pretty you are."

He fakes a shiver of fear. "Oh no. How could my ego cope?"

"I think the more important question is how it could fit into a mine shaft in the first place."

"You wound me, Johanna. You really do."

"Oh, poor wittle Finny…"

He punches me softly in the arm. "Shut up."

I notice that Everdeen's wandered away from us towards the Cornucopia. She does have a point, I realise – I need some proper weapons, badly. Telling Finnick so, I make my own way towards the abandoned pile of weaponry and dig carefully through it till I find some weapons. My search yields two elaborately etched axes, complete with customised holders to let me get hold of them in a hurry. Perfect.

Taking a few steps back from the Cornucopia I strap one on and let the not quite sheath of the other fall to the sand as I take a few experimental swings. The weight feels good. The blade is razor sharp too, I realise, drawing a hair across it and watching how easily it cuts. Now to find out how durable the thing is, and if I can use it for throwing as well as in close combat. The axe leaves my hand and lands blade-first into the Cornucopia. It sticks there, held in place by the softened gold in the noon heat. Sweet. I now have weapons.

As I continue to experiment with my newly acquired weaponry the Firekids talk about some kind of map Peeta's been drawing on a leaf and Finnick decides to go for a swim. I sit on the edge of the almost island with one axe across my lap and my feet cooling in the water and talk to him whenever he comes up for air. It's an almost idyllic scene – well, if you ignore the various weaponry, Nuts' mutterings and Volts trying not to die in a corner.

"Come on, lets go look at what the others are doing," Finnick says, deftly pulling himself up out of the water beside me. I only put up a token protest and follow him.

Turns out Peeta really is drawing a map – of the Arena. He's marked off all the segments he and Everdeen know about and labelled them with those fancy numerals you get on clocks sometimes.

"Did you notice anything unusual in the others?" Everdeen asks Beetee and me.

We shake our heads. Volts, I notice, seems to be recovering.

Firegirl is slightly crestfallen. "I guess they could hold anything."

"I'm going to mark the ones where we know the Gamemakers' weapon follows us out past the jungle, so we'll stay clear of those," Peeta says, businesslike. "Well, it's a lot more than we knew this morning, anyway."

He's barely finished speaking when Katniss spins around, pulling at her bow and releasing a shot. Without any conscious thought I follow suit and fling the axe that was hanging at my side into the chest of the enemy. It's only even after that axe has left my hand and I'm reaching for the second that I even register who and what has happened.

Gloss de Montfort has slit Wiress' throat, and she falls out of his grip as Katniss' arrow hits his head. His sister was the one who now bears my axe instead of a heart. Not that she had one in the first place, mind.

Finnick pushes Peeta out of the way of what would otherwise surely be a direct kill by Brutus' spear but ends up with a knife in the thigh for his troubles, courtesy of Enobaria. As three canon shots fire District Two seem to realise how badly outnumbered they are and flee back down the nearest sandbar.

Axe in hand, I start to give chase, Katniss right next to me and Finnick limping only a pace behind us, adrenaline keeping him going despite the pain he must be experiencing. Just as I turn my head back to yell at Peeta to stay where he is and look after Beetee, the Cornucopia starts to spin.

It's a nauseating sensation. I drop to the ground and spread my body, clinging to the sand with hands and feet and every muscle I posses, the axe somehow staying in my grip. We spin for what feels like forever but can't obviously be that long. Finally it stops and I sit up.

Bad idea. I flop back to the ground and do a quick head count. Me, Finnick, Peeta, Kat – Everdeen.

"Where's Volts?" I ask, feeling a bit more able to sit up stably and doing so.

We all look around. Peeta is the first to point, but I notice he keeps his mouth resolutely shut. The man from Three is out in the water and barely managing to keep afloat even with his belt on. Finnick rolls more than dives into the water and rapidly swims out to grab him.

Without warning, Everdeen snaps something that sounds like "cover me" and leaps into the water, swimming towards Wiress' body.

"What's that idiot doing?" I ask the general vicinity.

Peeta says shakily, "I think she's fetching Volts' wire. Wiress was washing it when…"

He slowly lowers himself onto his back and closes his eyes. "And I'm just going to try and not be sick, if you don't mind."

I climb to my feet and take a few steps away from him, keeping my eyes on Everdeen. She did say to cover her, after all. As the Girl on Fire paddles towards the body the familiar hovercraft appears and slowly lowers itself downwards. They both arrive at about the same time but as Wiress' body is lifted up Everdeen heads towards us. Once slightly further away from the hovercraft she raises her hand triumphantly, letting me as well as a just returned Finnick and Beetee see the metallic glint in her hand.

Between his coughs I hear Beetee give a barely audible sigh of relief. As Everdeen returns to the Cornucopia island he jams his glasses back onto his face and hacks out his last mouthful of water. The wire is returned to his hands and he unravels a bit, running it through his fingers. For the first time I notice how thin the wire is; it resembles human hair more than anything else.

We stay in silence on the island for a bit. The Firekids embrace, Finnick and I sit side by side leaning against the metal of the Cornucopia, and Beetee sits on the edge of the sand a bit away from the rest of us fiddling with his wire and staring into the ocean where Wiress' body was lifted up by hovercraft.

Eventually I can't take any more of this solemn inaction. "Let's get off this stinking island."

As Finnick pulls off his undershirt – to the cheers of people throughout Panem, undoubtedly – and wraps it around his wound, Volts decides that he can probably walk and is helped up by Everdeen.

"Where too?" Peeta asks.

Finnick looks up at the sun. "It's only a few hours past twelve. Let's head to the twelve o'clock beach – we'll have quite a while there before we have to move."

No one has a better suggestion, so I head off down the strip nearest to me. Partway down it I look around to notice that everyone's headed off in different directions.

"Twelve o'clock, right?" says Peeta. "The tail points at twelve."

Finnick shakes his head. "Before they spun us. I was judging by the sun."

"The sun only tells you it's going on four, Finnick," Everdeen tells him.

Beetee nods, and says, "I think Katniss's point is, knowing the time doesn't mean you necessarily know where four is on the clock. You might have a general idea of the direction. Unless you consider that they may have shifted the outer ring of the jungle as well."

Everdeen nods agreement. "Yes, so any one of these paths could lead to twelve o'clock."

We all gather around the Cornucopia and try to come up with another plan.

"Why don't we follow District Two?" I ask. "Get rid of them, while we're at it."

We quickly scan all the spokes, but whatever tracks they left have been blown away. Well, there goes that plan.

"I should never have mentioned the clock," Everdeen says despondently. "Now they've taken that advantage away as well."

"Only temporarily," Beetee points out. "At ten, we'll see the wave again and be back on track."

"Yes, they can't redesign the whole Arena," adds Peeta.

She still doesn't look convinced. Stupid. It doesn't matter about the Gamemakers – we'd be dead if it weren't for her actions, whether or not I like to admit it.

"It doesn't matter. You had to tell us or we never would have moved our camp in the first place, brainless," I snap and change the subject before anyone notices my half-compliment. "Come on, I need water. Anyone have a good gut feeling?"

Finnick points down the closest spoke to him. "This seems as good as any."

"So come on," I say. "Let's go."

We walk down the sandbar and head to where the beach turns into the forest. None of us go in, though; instead we peer in, checking for obvious traps.

At last Peeta says, "Well, it must be monkey hour. And I don't see any of them in there. I'm going to try to tap a tree."

"No, it's my turn," Finnick says.

I can see what he's doing. Everdeen can handle herself, she proved that earlier. Peeta… can't. And Haymitch told us that she's doing everything she can to keep him alive, so if we want her we need him too. So we need to try and keep him out here, without any traps.

"I'll at least watch your back."

"Katniss can do that," I tell him. "We need you to make another map. The other washed away."

I take a leaf off the nearest tree and hand it over as Everdeen reluctantly follows Finnick into the forest. I look over Peeta's shoulder as another map of the Arena begins to take shape and keep alert in case of another attack. Beetee sits down on the sand and continues to fiddle with the wire, withdrawn into his own head.

And then we hear Katniss scream her sister's name.