A/N- Although I would love to spend a lot more time on these Games, especially since I love Johanna, I figure that I should finish them this chapter. This is Finnick's story, after all, and his future friendship with Johanna is more important than her Games. So, I am sorry for hustling through this part, but I need to move the story along. Thank you for reading, and please review.

Things slow down after that, to say the least. Adair, who before was just hiding out, sets to work pretty quickly after the blizzard stops. With a sword in his hand, and a set of some pretty gruesome looking knives in his pocket, he sets out to search for lone tributes to kill.

So there he is, walking around, looking to kill.

Then there's Johanna, who's positioned herself in another homemade snow den right beside the cornucopia, her axe by her side. She's especially dangerous, because there isn't a single tribute that's still alive with any idea about her.

Lastly, there's the remaining three Careers, who return to the Cornucopia to regroup after seeing the faces of the other two in the sky. After they get everything straightened out and roles are reassigned, they once again set out.

There are ten tributes left. Half of them are ready to kill. So don't you think that'd mean that the other five are going to be killed?

Well, if you do, you're disappointed. Johanna falls asleep after an hour or so of waiting, not like it's a big deal. She jerks awake whenever so much as a snowflake falls on her face. Adair searches for a couple hours, before he sees a nice little cave nestled in some rock, and heads in there to warm up. The Careers, who hardly got any sleep at night, eventually decide to return to the cornucopia. They set up camp and take shifts guarding the others.

The other five tributes are basically doing nothing. The two from Ten are nestled together, trying to stay warm. The surviving boy from Eleven is cleaning some fluffy white bird that he managed to kill. A starving girl from Twelve forages for plants through the snow, unsuccessfully. The last one from Three is perched in a tree, watching everything go by below.

Slow and boring would be two perfect words to describe these Games at the moment. I know the Capitol can't be very happy. Hell, I'm not very happy. I don't want to see blood like they do, but I at least want things to start moving along so I can see Annie again.

Well, I guess the Gamemakers finally realize that the audience has to be getting bored, because they send a pack of nice, friendly wolves out to attack Johanna Mason. I find myself getting pissed at them, going after one of the only tributes that's actually shown she deserves to be in these Games. I guess I'm not mad for long, though. She hears the howling before they're within a hundred feet of her, and she's up in a second, scampering up a tree, her supplies on her back.

The Careers had set up camp just a little way away from this scene, so the one who's on watch duty jogs over to see what's going on. With wide eyes, he takes in Johanna sitting in the tree, and the dozen or so wolves that are snapping and yowling at her.

Johanna, never ceasing to amaze me, catches a glimpse of the boy and starts crying hysterically, even getting actual tears to roll down her cheeks. I don't know what's going through the boys mind, but I think the reason that he takes out his arrows and starts shooting has more to do with the fact that some of the wolves have noticed him than Johanna's tears.

He snipes down about five of them before the pack decides to get a hold of the threat, and turns from Johanna to him. The boy then forces himself up another tree, while yelling for the help of the other two Careers.

The girl from One, Titania, hears him first, snatching up a sword and hustling over to where she hears him, calling Regan, the girl from Two, as she goes.

Titania sees the wolves, takes a step back, then rushes forward after a second of deliberation. She mows down two more before one jumps on her, getting ready to sink its teeth into her throat. The boy, I don't even know his name, shoots it with an arrow a second before the wolf's fangs pierce the skin. Regan gets over there a second later, swinging a mace into the side of another wolf, sending it flying, and Titania hops up and finishes that one off as the boy picks off two more, and Regan bashes the head of the last one in with her mace.

The three Careers stay there for a moment, panting, just holding their bloodstained weapons. Then the boy seems to remember Johanna, and looks over at the tree. She's long gone though, darting through the forest, away from the three Careers. No matter how good she is, three on one is a death sentence, especially if they had her treed.

I look at the main screen one more time, unable to believe that everyone survived that. I mean, seriously? These Games are already dragging out, and it hasn't even been a week. I'm actually debating if I should be rooting for Adair to die, so that I can go hang out with Haymitch over in his room. I doubt that that's a possibility, though. Adair is too well off right now to die, and Haymitch's girl is on the brink of death. I guess that the boy from Eleven is a little better off, and Chastity and Chaff would add some excitement to everything... but I don't want that kid to win. He's a tall, skinny punk, and just from his interviews he seems like he'd act like a snotty girl. He bugs me, I guess.

"One hundred bottles of beer on the wall…" I mumble to myself. Mags shoots me a funny look. I shrug. "Haymitch taught it to me."

"Finnick, take a nap." Gees, that makes me feel like a little kid again. Well, I'm not going to say that I'm not acting like one. I'm bored out of my mind, and I'm starting to go crazy.

"I don't need to sleep. I've moved like two inches the last five days." Okay, that's an exaggeration, since the showers are actually two floors above us, but you get what I mean. Sitting in one little room almost all day really tests your patience.

I settle for pacing, and when that gets boring, I do pushups and crunches. The figures on the tv seem to be doing nothing. The five pathetic tributes stay in their own little world. Adair sleeps. The Careers are sleeping. Johanna is sleeping. Their timing must be messed up or something, probably because the arena is so cloudy that it's hard to tell day from night. That's the only reason I can come up with that they'd all be asleep at six p.m.

I'm just starting to call an Avox to escort me to the showers (we can't go along, incase we want to sabotage someone else's mentoring), when Johanna wakes up and starts hunting around again.

I watch for a little white, doubting that she's going to find anyone, when she stumbles across the tribute from Eleven. The boy jumps up, taking a knife in his hand and pointing it at her. Johanna, the best actor I have ever seen, stumbles backwards, her eyes wide.

"I-I-I'm sorry," she blubbers, tears welling up in her eyes. "Please don't hurt me. I swear, I'll leave you alone."

The boy, doing what anyone would do, hesitates. He still has his knife pointed at her, but he isn't really paying attention. Why would he? The poor girl is so frightened that she can hardly move, let alone grab that malicious looking axe that's sticking out of her bag.

Of course, that's exactly what she does. When the boy hesitates for that one second, she grabs her axe, and in one fluid motion, she cuts his head clean off. I mean, the thing doesn't even get stuck. It's like one second his head is on his body, and the next, it's lying at his feet. I suddenly feel really sick, remembering what happened to Annie. She saw something like that, except she was right next to it.

"She didn't have to cut it off," I mumble, still amazed by the sight of that tiny girl waving that axe around like a magic fairy wand. I guess to her, it is, at least in a way. When she uses it, it magically moves her one step closer to freedom.

"It's instinct," Mags reminds me. "If you would've been using an axe in your Games, what do you think would've happened?"

"There'd be a lot more missing than just their heads," I mutter. I'm not proud of it, but it is true. I was a crazy psychopathic madman.

There aren't any kills after that for the next day. I sit around, pacing back and forth, and asking for showers every four hours for something to do. Chastity drops by for a little while, since her District's tributes are dead, but like most of the other mentors, she's basically pulling for Johanna.

"Does it always go by this slowly?" I ask her. She shakes her head.

"Not usually. The tributes this year are very idle, and the arena slows them down a lot." Then she closes her eyes, which means that she's done with conversation. I sit there and play with her hair, partly for the act, but really because there's nothing else to do.

After a few more minutes, she leaves to go watch with everyone who's supporting Johanna, over in District Seven's room. I feel very left out. I can't see anyone winning except for Johanna, especially since everyone else wants her to win, so I don't know why they don't just end the stupid Games now. Send some of those wolves after the tributes who won't actually be able to fight them off. Seriously? Why would those morons send them to the place where Johanna and the Careers are? The people of the Capitol want to see people getting killed, not animals.

Again, I'm not trying to sound callous. It's just that if people are going to die no matter what, they should just all die now. That not only makes it easier on the people who are forced to watch those people die, but it also makes it easier on the people who are forced to fight to the death. Getting it over with quickly means that they don't have all this fear and hunger and all of that crap longer than they need to.

I guess I shouldn't complain. These games haven't gone a week yet, and there aren't many tributes left. I remember the year before mine, when there were still like sixteen tributes left. Those Games lasted nearly a month. These ones will finish before that, I'm sure of it. Hell, I'm pretty sure that Johanna is going to make sure of it whether the Capitol wants them to be done or not.


And I think that Johanna does just that. There no more snowstorms. The temperatures don't drop too badly. No more wolves either. I'm guessing that the people of the Capitol like these Games, so the Gamemakers do their best to keep them going.

Johanna Mason has other plans. I guess Adair helps her, some. Those two finish off the last seven tributes without any outside help. Adair sneaks up behind one of them, stabbing him to death. His other kill, though, is going to haunt me for quite a while.

The girl from Twelve was sleeping by a fire that she made in a little cave. I can't even get mad at her for making it, because the cave was so secluded and well hidden, and the air was so hazy that no one could see the smoke. Adair, however, wandered close enough to smell it, by complete chance. So he sneaks into this cave, expecting the girl to be asleep or something. She isn't. She's sitting there with her knife raised, ready to fight.

It really isn't a fair fight. Even though she starts with the knife, it eventually clangs to the back of the little cave, leaving her with a huge disadvantage. The only problem is that Adair doesn't have any weapons out. I'm not sure if what happened next was accidental or not. It would make sense, for Adair to get her into the fire, since he didn't have any other way to kill her, not without digging through his pack. Yet, the sheer horror on his face when he saw her burning indicates that he wasn't expecting it.

After he'd gotten the girl in a headlock, he roughly threw her to the ground. Just a little bit of her coat swept through her fire. She didn't notice, not until it'd spread too far. She rolled across the floor of the cave, desperately trying to get it out, but it was too late. For the longest time, Adair stood there, just staring. Then his brain turned on, he grabbed a knife from his pack, and he stuck it in her heart. He should've done it right away. She was still alive when that knife went through her heart, her charred body still on fire. Her screams must've echoed throughout the entire arena.

Yeah, I know that I wanted people to die, that I was getting really impatient for the Games just to end. But no one, let alone a sixteen year old girl, should have to go through that.

Thankfully, Johanna's kills were much cleaner. Every single kill was made with that same axe, cleanly swiping it through the neck, or maybe their head, but some place where they would die right away. She didn't taunt, didn't play games. Her kills were quick and efficient. She never smiled, but she never cried. It was like watching a machine operate instead of an actual person. Really, I was almost jealous that she could keep it together so well, when I was so psychotic by this point in my Games.

Even after Johanna and Adair had spent two days looking for each other, Johanna never tricked him into finding her, like I'd done. She waited, knowing the Gamemakers would get them together. When the thunderstorm came that hit all but a small portion of the arena, the fight was quick.

Adair saw Johanna first, but he had no benefit of surprise. A nanosecond later, she spun around, giving him her best big eyed look. He knew she must've been acting through the opening ceremonies, he had to have known. There was no other way that she would've gotten to that point. Yet, he faltered when he saw that face, those sparkling brown eyes that had welled up with tears when she talked about her mother, her sickly childhood.

That brief hesitation was all that Johanna needed to get the axe across his neck. I can't blame Adair. He did nothing wrong. I'm actually a little pissed at Johanna for killing the District 4 tribute like that. It just seems underhanded. I didn't care with the other tributes, but I liked Adair. In a fair fight, he would've had a good chance of winning. But she tricked him, tricked all of us, and that's how she won.

Two weeks and three days after twenty four tributes ascended into that arena, Johanna Mason was crowned the victor of the 71st Hunger Games.

She went from a sweet little crybaby, to a fierce killer, and then finally to a Victor. I can't be truly happy for her. With her face, it'll just be a matter of months before she goes from Victor to prostitute. Then, since her District has one other Victor, she'll get a taste of mentoring too.

But that's the future, and this is now. For now, I can force a little smile, because seeing the look on someone's face when they're sane enough to realize that they're leaving the arena, well, it makes you realize that everything has a golden lining, no matter how thin.