Chapter Twenty-Six

I awoke the next morning with a wide yawn and cracking my various joints, getting ready for the feast later that day. "Mm, Kaos?" I glanced down and saw Peece looking up at me with sleepy eyes and I smiled at her, leaning down to give my blue-eyed beauty a 'good morning' peck.

"Hello, Darlin'." I murmured, stroking her hair.

Peece moaned softly and sat up slightly. "Why are you up so early?"

"There's a feast tonight and I want to see if any of the tributes meet their end."

Peece looked at me oddly. "But, we're perfectly safe here. With the other tributes so desperate, there's no chance any of them will be coming here."

"Yes, but I want to see if I can kill any of them or if they can kill each other."

"But Kaos, what's the point?" Peece pleaded. "You could get hurt and then what would happen?"

"But if I can get rid of some of the tributes, then we have a better chance of getting home faster."

"But I don't want to go home." Peece whimpered. "I want to stay with you."

This struck me; she would rather spend time with me than go to her own home. I paused, looking at her hard before sighing. "Fine Peece, I'll stay here with you."

She smiled brightly and hugged me tight, dragging me back down to the stone beneath us. I stroked her hair softly as she drifted back to sleep. When I was sure that she was completely oblivious to the world, I wiggled from her grasp and slipped out of the cavern, sliding the large stone back into place before heading into the woods to hunt. It would give me time to think on what I should do. I wanted to see the tributes massacre each other while I sat back and watched, but I didn't want Peece to think that she couldn't trust me not to just leave her. I sighed as I decapitated three rabbits and slung them over my shoulder, heading quickly back to the cavern to find Peece looking around for me. She looked up fearfully when I moved the large rock out of my way, but she relaxed when she found the rabbits over my shoulder.

"Something wrong?" I smirked at her reproachful glare.

"I thought you'd gone to the feast." She mumbled.

"I thought about it, but there were two things in my way."

"What?"

"You." I murmured slowly. "The thought of you thinking I had betrayed you just because I was only thinking of my pleasure." Peece blushed slightly and I snorted. "That, and it's still too early for the feast. It's only about one in the afternoon."

Peece rolled her eyes and scooted closer to me. "Kaos, I will let you go to the feast tonight on one condition." I shivered as her breath hit my neck and my arms fell around her waist.

"W-what's that?" I asked shakily.

Peece chuckled as she straddled my lap and nipped at my shoulder. "I think you know what it is." My eyes rolled as she buried her teeth into my neck and I moaned, letting her overtake me.

I breathed deeply of the air as I rolled the rock into the entrance, enough that the small opening I left for Peece couldn't be seen from outsiders. I tugged my hoodie on over my naked body and took off into the trees, a handmade sheath of knives strapped across my chest and around my waist. I stole through the forest, my footsteps barely making a sound, almost giving off the allusion of being the wind.

I made it back to the Cornucopia within half an hour's time and climbed a tree swiftly, looking around for anything that might look like one of the other tributes. I waited about three minutes before I saw a rustle down near the meadow below. Looking closely, it looked like a boy and a girl. It couldn't have been Gato and Shimmer because the girl didn't have platinum blonde hair. It must have been Briana, the girl from District Eight. Looking at the boy with her, I deduced that it must have been the boy from District Six, Swift. I was just aiming my knives for both of them when a flash of silver caught my eye below and I quickly jumped into a different tree, just in case of attack. Glancing down, I saw Shimmer and Gato crouched in the bushes, poised to attack.

I chuckled silently at their watchful expressions and decided to watch Briana and Swift to see what they would do. Slowly, they stepped into the light, creeping slowly toward the Cornucopia. I smirked as they looked around and seemed to relax. Swift grabbed the backpack with the Six on it, but Briana seemed to be contemplating something as her hand hovered over the table.

"What are you doing?" Swift demanded. "Grab your bag and let's go!"

"But if the other tributes need this stuff, why would we leave it for them?" Briana murmured, making to grab the backpack with the Two on it as well. Swift quickly grabbed her wrist.

"No, there's no reason to grab their bags other than to make extra work for ourselves. Grab your bag so we can get out of here."

Briana shook her head and stared at the backpack with the Three on it too.

"Briana!" Swift hissed, glaring at her angrily.

"Come on, Swift. If we take their supplies, they won't be able to last for the rest of the Games and we'll be victorious. We'll be the winners and we can go home."

I watched in amusement as Swift and Briana fought over which bags to take with them. I wondered if they were going to take each other out and, with a swift glance to the bushes below, I deduced that Shimmer and Gato were wondering the same. The two weren't having a fistfight yet, but they seemed very close to it, Briana's hands curled angrily.

Finally, Swift sighed. "This is getting us nowhere!" he growled. "We need to just grab our bags and go before the other tributes show up if they haven't already."

"But if we take their bags, then they won't get what they need and one of them might contain medicine for a dying tribute."

"But if they don't and it's something we don't even need, we'll just have had extra weight with us while the other tributes were hunting us down. I saw Kaos that day she took on those Careers-."

"What?" Briana asked slowly.

"I've been spying on them the entire time. Kaos is a real threat and I don't doubt that she has amazing tracking skills. If that tribute from District One is dying, then she'll be deadest on coming after us so that she can save the girl. We need to grab our stuff and go."

I snickered silently as Briana's face turned beet red. "So this entire time, when you were supposed to be hunting for food, you could have actually been taking out the Careers and the demon child?"

"Oh, she's much more than the demon child. She's-." Briana didn't wait to hear the rest. Instead, she pulled a knife out of her waistband and, quick as lightning, sliced across Swift's face.

"I've been starving because you wanted to play spy?" she spat hysterically. "I thought you really couldn't hunt, but it turns out that you chose not to."

Swift glared at her and pulled his own knife out. The two stared at each other for a moment before Briana leaped forward with a roar. Swift, true to his name, sliced across her forehead before I could even blink and continued slashing at her until Briana was covered in bloody gashes. She glared up at him from the ground as she coughed up blood. Swift stared down at her in horror and dropped the knife, staring at it, terrified.

Faster than I would have thought possible, Briana shot off the ground and lodged her knife deep in his chest, all the way up to the hilt. Swift's eyes widened in shock as he fell and Briana soon dropped beside him. I chuckled louder now and stood on the branch. "Two more tributes met their bloody demise." I remarked, doing a classic flip out of the tree and landing next to the two bloody bodies. "And that was such an interesting way for it to play out too."

I walked over to the backpacks on the table and sifted through the packpack for Swift. There was extra food and a few water bottles in there. The one for Briana had a very fine collection of knives and explosives. I slung both packs over my back and grabbed the ones for Districts One and Twelve too. I turned to the field and jumped down so that Shimmer and Gato wouldn't be able to keep up on my trail. Going in a wide arc, I watched the two of them cautiously step out of the bushes and snatch their respective packs before darting back into the woods.

I smirked at their obvious fright that I might still be around and went the long way back to the cavern. I glanced around to make sure there was no one around before thrusting the packs in through the entrance one by one before crawling in myself. Peece looked up at me with a bright smile when I entered, but her face fell into a mask of confusion when she saw that I had not two, but four packs with me.

"Briana, the girl from District Eight, and Swift, the boy from District Six, killed each other at the feast and I decided that it wouldn't do much harm to grab whatever their supplies were."

Peece nodded and scooted closer. I opened the pack for District Twelve and found a set of clothing as well as more bandages and ointments. I glanced up to find that Peece had the exact same thing.

"Well, I guess that means no more walking around undone." I chuckled at her slightly crestfallen look and pulled her closer.

"Come on," I cooed. "let's get some sleep before tomorrow. We need to rest up so that we can be prepared for anything Gato, Shimmer, the Gamemakers or the weather might throw at us." Peece nodded and snuggled into me as I laid back on out blankets, stroking her hair as we both drifted into a more peaceful sleep. We're almost home.