Steve had made himself scarce today, in a complete contrast to his behavior yesterday. Where we couldn't get rid of him the day before, we didn't see hide or tail of him today. He was an odd character, and that alone was cause for anxiety in this kind of situation.

Then, there was Jon who had been deep in thought ever since our last encounter with Steve. I could tell he was trying to puzzle something out, but he didn't tell us what. That too was cause for alarm; if Jon didn't have an answer for something, we really were on our own with whatever it was.

And to top it all off, we still didn't have a clue how the hell we were getting out of the Games alive. I had an idea that might get us of out here, but I knew I wouldn't be able to pull it off with this many people. I was pretty sure they had used two different shields to keep both my human and ghost halves inside the arena, and the odds were that there was some kind of gap between the two shields. If I planned it right, it's possible that I might be able to slip between them and change forms depending on which I'm trying to get through.

The issue was not in finding some way of testing my theory before making the attempt, but in trying to figure out how to get the others out as well. I wasn't sure I'd be able to carry all of us and still pull off a transformation between the shields. If there were two less people, maybe I could pull it off, but it just wasn't going to happen with the current number. And here emerged the real dilemma. I couldn't carry everyone, but I also could not leave one or two of my group here to die. Maybe there's something I'm missing here that will make everything make sense and provide a solution, but I hardly have the time to think about that between keeping us all alive and trying to keep up with everything else going on in the arena.

So, for now, here I was, sitting around tonight's fire hoping and praying I can find some form of solution pretty damn soon or we're screwed.

Right as I managed to get my mind off the death that had and still would take place around me, the national anthem filled the air to ruin my few short moments of peace. I remembered the unclaimed canon shot from earlier and looked to the sky in time to see the face of the brown haired, brown eyed, girl from District 8, Alyssa, have her face fill the artificial night sky. One more death and not a damned thing I could do about it. Worse still, the many deaths to come that I couldn't stop.

Have I mentioned that life sucks right now?

Even from the dying T.V. screen, I could see the effect this whole ordeal was having on Danny. He was blaming himself for things he couldn't stop, no matter how hard he tried and slowly losing hope that things might just get better. My baby brother was breaking, and I couldn't be there to help him. I couldn't be there to knock some sense into him with the psychology he so dearly hated. All I could do was watch and search for that amazing plan that would make everything okay again. Search for the answer no one could really find.

I had seen him making plans of his own; several times I saw the same expression that came when he figured out how to win a fight cross over his features for a moment before it disappeared again. Either he'd realized there was a flaw to his plan or he knew it wouldn't let him save as many people as he wanted to. He wasn't willing to make any human sacrifices just to save his own hide, no matter how desperate he was to get out of there.

This is why I have to find some way of helping him. I had to find that one flaw in the making if these Games that would get them all out of that damned arena. I needed to help District 13 get into that arena. These people are trying, they really are, but they're getting nowhere. They can't find the weakness I just knew the shields around the arena had to have. I'll admit that it won't be any easy task to find the hole, but if anyone could do it, it was Dani and I.

Said ghost-girl walked in as her break started and the end of today's Hunger Games played out. "Any luck?" I knew she'd say that before she did, it was the same thing every day, but this time there was a new tone in her voice I couldn't quite identify. It took me a moment to realize she'd found the loophole we'd been searching for.

"No, but you have a plan anyway, so it doesn't matter much. What do you have?"

"Did your parents ever fix the ghost shield so that it would work on both Danny's human half and ghost half?" I thought I knew where this was going, I wouldn't say anything until I was sure.

"No, they never could figure out how to. As soon as they managed to trap his human half, he'd be able to escape with his human one."

Dani smirked. This was going exactly where I thought it was. "Well, if your parents couldn't figure it out, then there's no way those bozos in the Capitol did. The only way they could be sure to keep both halves in would be to use two completely different shields." I cut in.

"And with two different shields, there's a chance there might be a big enough gap between the two that he could possible change forms between the shields. He can get out."

Dani was silent for a moment. "He's had to have thought of that by now, so why hasn't he tried it?"

The answer hit me like a ton of bricks. "It's his damn hero complex. He probably knows he isn't strong enough to carry them all through the shields, so he's looking for another way. He refuses to let someone die just to save his own skin."

"Then we're just going to have to get him ourselves." She was right, but to do that, we'd have to find the arena, and god only knows how hard that was going to be.

Have the update I somehow managed to get out while sick... I'm going to go curl up in a little ball and die now...

Comments and feedback are as welcome as always! :D

Invisible One