25th Games/The Quell: Dyon Demmel, District 5, age 15
He has no doubt why they decide to hold a special anniversary games. He'd always heard muttering about doing what peoples' parents should have done when they had the chance, but in the last few years they stopped just talking and started acting.
Power outages during mandatory viewing, vandalism on walls and roads, three Peacekeepers dead, all victims of accidental falls from the high cliffs to the rocks below. And not just here either. Whispers from the traders, passed on from District Six tell of broken rails and shipments deliberately delayed. Toovey, who sells herself to the male Peacekeepers to make a bit extra brings snippets about increased troop movements and burning factories in Three, Eight and Nine. The coal fire stations are forced to shut down for two weeks when nothing comes through on the train from Twelve. Once, while out on the cliffs they see a sailboat being harried by a hovercraft.
The word is passed, in the shops, at lunch at school, by Nio Krauss himself, their victor, who walks the streets giving away food and blankets during the long, cold winter. The riots begin with the spring. Men and women, faces wrapped in scarves take to the streets at night, setting fires, making noise. It's perfect for him. All out of their houses, no-one notices him sneaking in and helping himself to their belongings.
He's not caught until the night the Capitol reinforcements arrive. They drag him out and beat him bloody, and if he'd just stolen from the Capitol people it would have been fine. But the Peacekeeper who bundles him semi-conscious into the stocks tells the crowd that he was taking from all of them too. He's barely recovered from the cuts and broken bones by Reaping Day, and is not at all surprised to find himself voted in, though he has a little laugh about his district partner, whose mother ratted out several conspirators to the Capitol.
Through the two days of training and interviews, he quickly discovers that most of his fellow tributes are very much unwanted. Another thief from Ten, a rapist from Six and a Peacekeeper's bastard from Four. Three, Eight and Twelve, sickly and helpless. The boy from Four, crippled in both legs. The girl from Seven, one arm ending in a stump. From their talk he figures four more are like Jance, the children of Capitol sneaks, and of course the volunteers.
The unwanted pickings of the Districts. Probably not what President Yates had in mind. He loves it.
He loves the Arena even more, an old abandoned city, with pathways along the rooftops, and through the basements. He's spent years climbing in and out of buildings without people noticing, and with the ruined walls it's easy enough to set all sorts of traps.
He collapses a roof on two of the volunteers. Another girl he gets with a trip-line across a doorway. She falls badly and breaks her own neck, saving him the bother. He gets the last one from below, just like his mentor did, only he's fast enough to duck the wild knife-swing.
The worst injury they repair before announcing him a most disliked victor is the improperly healed broken arm from his beating.