Luna Powell, 18
District Five Female

"How's it going, Kitt?" Luna asked the Ten boy as the competitors milled around the courtyard after breakfast.

"It's going well, thanks. I feel like I haven't seen you at all these Games!"

"I know! Things have just been crazy thus far."

"How have you been feeling about the competitions?"

"Fine," Kitt shrugged. "I don't think I've been doing phenomenally well, but I doubt I've done poorly. You?"

"I don't know," Luna shrugged. "I feel pretty good. I just wish we knew our standings."

"Is it a for sure thing that we'll never be told where we place?"

Luna thought. "I don't remember. Maybe they said something about in that meeting we had after the chariot rides?"

"Maybe."

The two fell silent again.

Luna sized up the Ten boy. She was quite impressed with his tenacity, all things considered. Kitt had had no luck in finding a female significant other, and nobody was really interested in being that for him, but he still kept trying. And she hadn't thought that she and her crew of girls were giving off such strong "we want to date you" vibes that would make him so attached to them. There hadn't been a moment thus far at which he had not been attached to some female competitor, and while nobody had hit him like Sharen did, he was getting on some girls' nerves.

"What's your call for today?" asked Luna.

"As in what district?"

"Yeah."

"I dunno. Our outfits are pretty similar to yesterday's except that your outfit is more professional and less schoolgirl, if you know what I mean."

Luna looked down at her bright pink dress shirt and orange slacks. Apart from the fact that she had chosen the most hideous color combination possible, she could understand how this would seem professional for Nell, or really anyone who had chosen a better combination of colors than she had. Even Kitt's pink dress shirt and green slacks looked a little better. She made a mental note to advise anyone who came after her to choose their color carefully; that being said, the fact that Five's district color was orange didn't bode well for finding something that worked OK with it.

"I also don't understand why we were all provided these square glasses," Kitt piped up again. "They make us look kinda nerdy."

"Yeah, I know. I'm sure it'll all become clear in a moment."

"Good morning, competitors!" called Violet. "We are about to begin today's morning competition. Please make your way to Competition Zone 4 for the challenge today. Note that you may not be in the same seat as you were yesterday morning."

"Can I walk you over?" Kitt asked chivalrously. "I was in Zone 4 yesterday afternoon, after all."

"We can walk over together, thank you." Confidently, Luna strode towards the competition zone, leaving Kitt rushing after her. When she got to the zone, she found, to her chagrin, that she had been placed across from Kitt for the challenge. Well, chagrin was the wrong word. Kitt would probably be distracted because he was across from her, which only meant that there was one less obstacle in her way to winning.

Looking down at her table, Luna had a feeling that this would be a challenging competition because of the sheer number of nuts and bolts and wires and whatnot strewn all over her table. Clearly, she was expected to do something with technology. What district could that possibly be?

"Good morning, competitors, and welcome to District Three! Three's primary industry is electronics and technology, producing all of the devices that help our students learn in revolutionary ways, make our censuses much more effective, and a bunch of other stuff that I can't quite tell you what it is! But let me tell you, it's really cool.

"One of the most popular products coming out of Three right now is a geocaching device. Geocaching is kind of like a big treasure hunt where you put a sensor in a container and hide it in a little hole underground, or in a grate, or something like that. I don't have time to do it," admitted Violet, "but I've heard cool things about it. Then, you record where you put it in your geocacher. You can then use your device to find other people's geocaches. This geocaching trend has taken off so quickly in the past few months that we need your help to put together some geocachers to sell! You each have all of the parts you need to complete the challenge, plus a manual to help you out. The challenge will begin with the sound of the bell."

Luna wasn't amazing with technology, but she had worked in a power plant before, where a device similar to a geocacher was used to check on the status of the various generators. So while she'd never put together a geocacher, this didn't seem that it would be that different, so she'd at least have an idea of what connected to what.

But this was certainly going to be a tough challenge for some of the competitors.

Alexei Roth, 13
District Three Male

As Alexei made his way towards the competition zone, he found himself deep in thought about how he'd performed in the Events thus far. He knew that his placement in the District Thirteen afternoon challenge hadn't been great, but he had a good feeling about the previous day's afternoon challenge. But the trivia challenge…

Alexei still couldn't decide whether his decision to yield to Sinsya was the right call. She was right that the odds of Three winning the challenge were better if one of them threw it to the other. But why hadn't he argued a bit more about throwing it to him? For all he knew, she could have done horrendously in the previous challenges, in which case doing well in that one wouldn't necessarily do anyone any good.

This was all really hard to figure out. Alexei figured that was the Capitol's intention; after all, it would probably not make for the best TV if the tributes all knew exactly how they were doing all the time. But at least this early on, when there were still so many points to be gained, it would make Alexei feel a lot better.

Alexei snapped himself out of his thoughts. He needed to focus on this challenge. This was his to win! As a computer science major, while he didn't physically build things as much, he still had to know how things connected to each other so that he could fix it if something went wrong.

When he got to the competition zone, Alexei noticed that someone was already in his seat. "Aviel, I think you're in the wrong place."

Aviel jerked his head up. "Oh, oops! I just automatically went to my seat from last time. My bad."

Alexei was pretty sure that Violet had explicitly said that the seats would be different this time around. He figured that Aviel had just forgotten, and so decided not to think anything of it at this moment, instead taking his seat.

When he heard the instructions for the challenge, Alexei instantly had a feeling that there was something deeper going on. He knew from living in Three that it did take a while to make some of the smaller devices, like these geocachers. Because machines were not trusted enough to be delicate with all of the wires and such, human beings had to do it themselves, which increased the time it took to manufacture everything. If a product became incredibly popular, students in his program who were on scholarship or had financial aid were often called upon to help with assembling the products. As Alexei had not been asked to help with the geocachers before he left, he could only assume that there was some other reason why this in particular was the morning challenge, especially because a lot of the casing pieces were in his specific shade of orange. Unless it was so recent of a trend that it had only sprouted up after he left. That was certainly possible.

The bell rang indicating the start of the challenge. Alexei began to put together the geocacher mostly by instinct; he'd taken a hardware class or two since he got to school in Three, so some of this was just basic circuitry knowledge that he'd obtained. For the most part, it seemed to be working well. But, when he put it together and tried to turn it on, it didn't work.

That was weird.

Carefully, Alexei went through his manual to try to retrace his steps and see if he did right. He noticed that he had made a few mistakes, so he disassembled his geocacher and began to put it together again based on the manual's instructions. He was pleased to learn that his instincts had been correct up to the point where things stopped working.

But then, he came to a point where he was out of wires. And he still needed one wire. But no matter where he looked, he didn't see one.

Frustrated, Alexei decided to disassemble the geocacher again and see if he had gotten something caught somewhere. But when he took it apart and put it back together again, he found that nothing had changed. He was still missing a wire.

Alexei decided to keep on going, putting together the rest of the geocacher to see if there was a real need for the wire. But sure enough, when he finished putting things together and turned it on, it still didn't work.

Alexei placed the geocacher down and got out of his chair, scouring the ground around his chair to see if he'd dropped it. But he still couldn't find it.

Was it possible that he was missing a piece?

Silas Rune, 17
Capitol "Male"

This was not going to be Silas's challenge. But then again, had any of the challenges so far been Silas's challenge? Silas, a trained Career, had spent years working with long-range and short-range weapons, building their stamina and their muscle strength, learning fighting tactics, and just generally becoming the strongest physical competitor they could be. Yet, every single competition thus far had either required technology knowledge, intelligence, or luck, things that Silas didn't spend as much time training in back home. While it was still early in the Events, this was a huge advantage for the tributes who were more known for their intelligence. Sinsya was probably blowing the competition out of the water.

Then again, the districts that they'd covered so far were all fairly technical districts. It was natural that Six, being a district based around higher education, would have challenges centered around knowledge. And it made sense that Three would be technology things. Maybe the gun was overkill for Thirteen, but if that really was such an integral part of their basic training, that was OK with Silas. It was just annoying that it all happened consecutively. Hopefully, if they switched over to more physical challenges, they would start doing better.

Silas decided that their best strategy for finishing this challenge would be to work incredibly slowly, going through every step on the manual one by one and not trying to jump around. Even though some of the steps seemed intuitive, specifically with the casing, Silas preferred not to chance it, lest they accidentally mess something up and set themself further back.

The biggest challenge for Silas was handling the delicate pieces. Being a trained Career who had done a lot of work with weights and stuff over his life, they were probably strong enough to rip apart some of these wires if they pulled them too hard, or totally crush the screen that would go on the device eventually. Assembling electronics required much more delicate fingers than they had. They couldn't even put some of the pieces together because their fingers were so big.

What they really needed was a set of tweezers. That would be helpful.

Silas looked up for a moment to see his partner, Lyric, across the way. She didn't seem to be doing all that much better than they, which was interesting considering that the two were from two completely different backgrounds and had very different strengths. Silas expected her to be doing a bit better; she'd spent a lot of time working with instruments, after all, which did require delicate fingers, and didn't have nearly the training that Silas did, so she wasn't quite as strong. Now, Silas had never trained in Two, the district well-known for training ruthless beasts in the Games. But One was a close second, though its reputation frequently preceded it as a much more ditzy district than Two. Silas and their peers certainly did not have a well-rounded training experience; they could not think of a single person they knew who was trained in electronics like the Three tributes all seemed to be, even if they didn't have formal training.

"Shoot," Silas whispered. "What step am I on?" Silas skimmed the picture of the step that they thought they were up to, but one of the wires in the picture wasn't connected. Silas attempted to backtrack, but they couldn't figure out where they needed to backtrack to. Frustrated, Silas elected to disassemble the geocacher and totally reassemble it from the beginning, hopefully in a more focused way this time.

Silas could not comprehend how putting together what seemed like a simple geocacher could be this complex. They made it a little further each time, but they would consistently hit a point where something ceased to make sense: maybe they'd put a washer in wrong, or they'd been off by one link, or something. Either way, it was unbearably frustrating. And while Silas tried not to let their mind wander there, they kept blaming it on the way in which they'd been trained. Academies were meant to improve the chances of those competitors at winning the Games. How could Careers ever be expected to win in Arenas where brute strength was not the only factor? The 130th Games were in an Arena so based on technology that it was natural that the pair of techie tributes was able to win, and that the one from Three was the mastermind.

As Silas continued to mull over the concept of academies, they remembered that there were more Academies now than just in One and Two. They weren't used as much, but Ivey from 132 clearly proved that they had potential for success. They thought there was a trained tribute from Three in 134 who was good with electronics, too, and who only volunteered because he saw Ivey's success. But they, too, had their flaws. Not that it was possible to be a completely well-rounded competitor, as there was too much to learn for that to be possible, but Silas was learning what they had already suspected: that only knowing how to use weapons was a bad idea.

Something had to be done about the way that training was approached in the districts. Training was still important, as it created volunteers who were willing to enter the Games, saving the lives of other children who weren't. The question was whether there was a better way to do it, so that there were well-rounded people ready to enter the Events.

It suddenly occurred to Silas that they now had the platform to do just that.

Sage Davidson, 17
District Eight Male

Sage looked confusedly at the mass of parts sitting in front of him. After spending most of his life in Eleven, and then eventually moving to Eight, this was most likely not supposed to be his challenge. But there was something about the casing that looked incredibly familiar to him, though he could not put his finger on what. It was almost as if he was supposed to know how to put this thing together.

When the challenge started, Sage opened the manual for how to assemble this geocacher. He figured that the best course of action to take was to read through the manual to see all the steps, and then begin to put it together step by step. As he read through it, however, he was comforted by the fact that he really did seem to know this already! Every step made sense to him in his mind. He was easily able to understand the purpose of all of the different wires and nuts and bolts. It was almost as though he didn't need the manual.

Swiftly, Sage began to work through the assembly process of the geocacher. He was so consumed by putting together the geocacher that he didn't realize how strange it was that this boy who really hadn't lived in Eight for all that long was able to put together an object that was barely native to Eight. But there Sage was, ripping through this challenge. Before he knew it, or could think about what he was doing, Sage was done with assembling the geocacher. Carefully, Sage switched it on. To his delight, the screen flickered on, and a message appeared. "Congratulations on completing the challenge, Sage!" it read. "Please place the geocacher in the box under the table. You may leave through the door in the back of your section."

It was only when Sage returned to his house after the challenge that he realized the flaw in the way he'd approached the challenge. He was from Eleven, then Eight. Even a competitor who got incredibly lucky shouldn't have finished it as quickly as he did. The only way that someone from one of those places would know how to put that geocacher together would be entering into a Games with a technology-based Arena, like the 130th Games. He supposed that going to Three for school would be a way to learn how to put something like this together, but then those kids would represent Three like Alexei did, so that wouldn't help his case.

He could use the excuse to his spy group about having learned how to do it from one of their trainings. No, that wouldn't work. He couldn't tell the public that he was a spy because that would blow his cover as the true undercover agent here, and he couldn't tell his spy group an outright lie because they'd run all of his training. So that wouldn't work.

Did he even need to have an excuse? Sage reasoned that he could say that it was just a clever mind and pure luck. No, that wouldn't make sense either. Sage had done fairly poorly for the challenge where he had to put together a gun. But that was different, he reasoned. This had more parts and was more electronic. It kind of used a different part of the brain.

So then why would he logically do better here?

Sage thought back to some of the challenges he'd done the previous day. There were a couple in the escape room that had to do with this kind of technological assembly. Sage had looked at them a little bit, and even worked on one of them and solved it, but he didn't know if that was an approach he could take to solving this particular problem. His lie probably wouldn't be strong enough, not to mention that it would be incredibly difficult to gain knowledge of how to put something this complicated together from those two puzzles.

OK, so how could he get out of this one?

Suddenly, Sage had an idea. It wouldn't fly for the spy group, but it would get him out of any potential problems with the public. Sage could claim that the geocacher was similar to some tracking devices used in a warehouse he worked in in Eight to find particular packages. (He'd never actually worked in a warehouse, but he hadn't said that he didn't work in a warehouse in his interview.) So he was familiar with how it was supposed to look, and he'd fixed it a few times, so he knew the wiring. That knowledge, combined with the help from the manual, made it fairly easy for him. He knew that the spy group would know that this was a lie, so Sage would probably get in trouble internally, but at least it would save him from public scrutiny, if he were to face any of it.

Crisis averted.

So, what did you think about this chapter? Have you figured anything out about Sage yet? What happened to Alexei? Will Silas's plan work?

A quick reminder that I have a discord server now! If you'd like to join, please send me a PM and I'll send you the link. The blog post will be up tomorrow at some point!

Also, time for another check-in! If you have any questions about how to do that, feel free to shoot me a PM. The secret word for the check-in will be humor.

I think that's all for this chapter. Feel free to shoot me a PM with any questions. I'm hoping to have the next chapter out a bit faster as my semester is basically done!

-goldie031