I did, in fact, mess up the alliances. I have them all written down correctly, I just forgot some people while writing the POVs. There's also six in the main Career alliance and five in the Ones, so they're not even like I had someone say. I forgot about Gloria (she's last on the target list, just because she's small)

Coral's form says she would ally with the Careers, so she might want to join the Career pack? I'm not sure so I'll leave her unless someone tells me different. Also I think Jayden might have been supposed to be in the main Career pack? I'll see if her submitter tells me so.

Coral Tide- District Four female

I couldn't get out of this one by killing everyone. There were just too many people to kill, and a lot of them were trained just like me. I needed a bigger skill portfolio. It seemed counterintuitive, but I needed the dumb skills.

Fishhooks were both mind-numbingly easy and maddeningly hard to make. In theory, it was a lot of busy work- twisting fibers together, bending bits of metal, chipping at rocks. There was also a lot of tiny, delicate movement, though. You could have all the components together, make one false move tying them, and the hook chipped and it was all over. It was a lesson in patience. Zen and the art of fishhooks.

The best thing would be to join the Career pack. There were two of them this year, which was for the best. Too many Careers together was like mixing a random handful of chemicals. I obviously couldn't join the One pack, so that left the other pack. I wasn't sure yet if I wanted to approach them. It might be the best idea, but if I was wrong, it would get me killed. There was only one path that led to me winning, and if I got anything wrong, that was all it took.

It was weird to be a ghost. It was weird to think my siblings had aged. It was weird to think they went through the same thing we did when our parents died. There was so much weird here. I was almost glad for the stress of the Games so I didn't have to think about how weird it all was. If I got home, I was never going to think about it again.

Luna Irika- District Four

There were two Lunas. One Luna was a fun-loving girl who liked being with her friends and loved giving people presents to see their faces when they opened them. The other Luna was her mother's daughter. She liked training in the Academy and being fierce. Being away from my mother finally gave me a choice. I knew which Luna I wanted to be, but I also knew which one I had to be.

Since I hadn't joined an alliance, I needed to be even more aware of my opponents. A chain was only as strong as its weakest link, and they were only as strong as their greatest weakness. Many of them didn't even bother to train, both because they didn't need to and because they knew exactly what people like me were planing. But when they did train, I was ready.

Onyx was the fiercest and coldest. That was actually to my advantage. He was so focused on killing that he had no regard for himself. He would do kamikaze attacks if the thought they had any chance to hurt me. If I just evaded his attacks, he'd get himself killed with little help from me. Cierra was a lesser concern for me. She wasn't to be underestimated, but she didn't really want to kill anyone and would avoid me unless I was a threat. Arielle was to be avoided until she didn't have any allies yet. Dylan and Gloria were lesser threats. Karyssa's weakness, as far as I could tell, was that she partly came into this looking for something other than victory. It didn't matter what it was, but her desire to find whatever it was might distract her.

Somehow, I wasn't as nervous about the One alliance. It wasn't that they were weak, but they seemed more pragmatic. They would prioritize their attacks, and I wouldn't be at the top. I predicted they'd last longer into the Games, and they would be a huge threat at the end.

If I wanted to get out of this, I had to kill people. There was no way around it. I didn't want to kill little kids, even if I was being tough Luna. I'd kill anyone who attacked and I'd kill people who were tough enough to gain me sponsors but not tough enough to endanger me. Some of them might have been my friends if we'd met a different way. That was going to stay with me.

Hal Baxter- District Three male

Since I got resurrected, I'd barely left my room. It would have been fun to see the Games building, but I had a plan. Ever since I was little, I had possessed a unique skill: the ability to be overlooked. Outside of being the sick kid, no one noticed or cared about me. When I wanted to get noticed, I hated it. When I wanted to disappear, there was nothing better. Here, I wanted to disappear, so I was playing it up for all it was worth. I did get out into the Games building, but I did it after dark, when most Tributes were in bed.

With all that time I had in my room, I studied hard. I studied plants, I studied animal tracks, I studied poisons... the works. I found everything I could on Games theory and read all the expert breakdowns on strategy and trends. I read them over and over, until everything I needed was memorized. I wrote it down and said it out loud to get it stuck in there harder. I didn't have much experience, but I had all the book learning.

I even trained with weapons after I got Beetee to get one from the training room. There wasn't much I could learn on my own, and he didn't know much better than I did, but we did our best. I practiced stance, and holding a knife so I wouldn't cut myself, and making a fist so I wouldn't break my thumb. At my level, I wasn't really training to not die. I was just sort of training to maybe be good enough that some people wouldn't want to risk it. It wasn't a very good chance, but what can you do?

Citlali Kenyi- District Nine female

People were treating me like I was human. I didn't know how to react to it at first. I was honestly confused when Chimera saw me trying not to cry one night and asked if I was all right. I didn't know anyone even ITALICS noticed ITALICS, much less cared.

"Did you ever feel like it was hopeless?" I asked Nassor. "No one else from Nine had ever won. Did you think it just wasn't possible?"

"I don't think any of us thought it was possible until it happened, except the Careers," Nassor said. "But you were second last time. You know you can do it."

"That's why I think it's impossible," I said. "I came so close once already. Why should I be able to do something so unlikely twice? I had lightning in a jar once, and I dropped it. I won't be able to do that again."

"Guess you're right," Nassor said. "Better lay down and die." He looked at me expectantly.

"All right, it's not that bad. It just seems so unlikely," I said.

"It is unlikely. Just not impossible. It's not only possible that you'll win, but it's definite that someone will," Nassor said.

"Do you think I can win?" I asked.

"I know you can," he said. He didn't even hesitate, and that made me want to cry all over again. In the orphanage, I was nothing more than a dog to be fed scraps and kicked around. Here, people cared about me. I had value- something I never thought I'd ever have in anyone's eyes. I would get Reaped a thousand times over if it meant someone loved me. I never thought I'd have that again after Atticus died. I thought he was a fluke, but maybe he wasn't. Nassor cared, and Chimera cared. Maybe I wasn't wrong. Maybe it really ITALICS was ITALICS the rest of the world.

Anthra Mine- District Twelve female

The rooftop restaurant was super cool. It all rotated so we got to see all over the city. I was a little nervous at first about being so high. Peach said I should sit on the edge of the table closer to the center of the restaurant, and that helped.

"What is this?" Peach asked, looking at a teensy circle of meat on the plate the waiter just gave her. "A dinner for ITALICS ants? ITALICS It's so tiny."

"Maybe that's why they're all so skinny," Anise said.

"There's a fat guy right over there." Ferrari pointed with her knife.

"That's not nice," Silver said.

"It's not my fault he's fat," Ferrari said.

"He is fat," Alinta conferred.

"These are really pretty flowers," Daisy said, running her fingers along the flowers in the vase on the table.

"Not as pretty as zinnias," Zinnia said.

My allies were really nice, but I didn't like to talk much. Usually when I talked, someone told me to shut up. I didn't want to make my allies say that. They might kick me out.

I reached for my water glass, but it was closer than I thought. I knocked into it awkwardly and it tipped over. It toppled off the table and shattered on the wood floor. There was a huge noise, and the people at the nearby tables looked over.

Oh no, I thought. I'm in big trouble now. They'll beat me for sure.

"Anthra, what's wrong?" Silver asked. I hadn't even noticed I was crying.

"It's okay, it's just a glass," Anise said.

"They're gonna be mad," I whispered. I saw someone walking toward our table and cowered down in my seat.

Smudge jumped out of her chair and stood between me and the man coming toward us. "We all broke it!" she told him, and she tensed up close to me like a wolf, glancing at the knife by my plate.

"I'm so sorry," the waiter said. He bent and picked up the larger shards. "I'll get a new one right away. Be careful not to step on it."

They're not even mad. The waiter wasn't mad, and my allies defended me right away. They weren't going to leave me like I was afraid of. They actually wanted to help me. I hardly understood it.

Xegon Samuel- District Nine male

When I got Reaped, the biggest thing I felt was relief. I'd been trying to leave my life behind for a long time, but I couldn't think of a way. Dying in the Arena was not ideal, but it did get me away from my family. All families have their disagreements. Mine were just... weirder than most. But then, most cults are weird. They're pretty rare in Panem, but you can't outlaw crazy.

My father called the Capitol a den of debauchery. He wasn't wrong. People here wore things that made me want to cover my eyes. Then there was the whole thing where their biggest entertainment was killing kids. They were even weirder than the cult.

"Hey. You're Xegon, right?" The young woman asking me was exactly what my father described when he talked about 'painted sirens". Her skin was an unnatural but weirdly alluring shade of pink, her eyes were purple, and she was wearing a tiny white skirt that barely covered a body part I wasn't even supposed to think about, much less look at. I concentrated everything I had on staring at her eyes, since they were the only safe part of her.

"Yeah, that's me," I said. I was always supposed to be polite to women.

"I've always wanted to sponsor someone," she said. "Maybe you. Would you like that?"

"That would be really nice of you," I said.

"Would you make it up to me?" she asked, leaning forward and staring back at my eyes.

Oh no. I really wasn't supposed to think about that. I could feel someone staring down at me, judging me for how tight my pants suddenly got and the images that popped into my head. He must have been even madder knowing that I did want to make it up to her.

"Y-yeah, I'd send you a thank you card! I gotta go... to the bathroom," I said, and I nearly ran to the nearest restroom. I stayed in almost half an hour, just to make sure she didn't wait. Even though I still sort of believed in the main idea, I thought I was free of all the trash they taught me. I guess old habits die hard.