49th Hunger Games: Brutus Mannox, District 2, age 18


He always enjoyed fighting. That moment of victory where his opponent conceded defeat, sometimes in words, sometimes just by the slump of their body, giving up the fight and letting him win made him feel good like nothing else ever could.

He practically grew up in the Training School, taken from the Community Home at the age of seven with his older sister's blessing. Brought up by warriors and victors, he was raised in the mindset that winning isn't just about being the last one standing, but about actively working to get there yourself. Every year watching the Games, he (and many others in the School) would only cheer for the winner if they actually made the final kill in one-on-one combat. Anyone else isn't, in their minds, a proper victor.

When it comes time for his turn he is ready to show the world what a proper victor looks like. The Games start well enough, the wide, empty plains leaving plenty of room for the fodder to scatter. He prefers hunting them down one at a time, and they slowly whittle the numbers over the first few days. He quickly comes to hate his 'allies,' who talk themselves up but are scared of a proper fight and always try to worm their way out of it to the point the Gamemakers start sending mutts at them as punishment for inactivity.

After a few days of scattered kills and continuous arguments he decides he's had enough. When they hunt down the boy from Three, and the resulting fight ends up with Jonah dying too, he grabs up his former ally's knife from the ground and sticks whiney Halga, who wasn't even a volunteer, in the chest.

This starts the proper melee, and he finds that when threatened his new foes can actually fight. Just not as well as he can. Malachite slices him down the side of the leg as he takes a swing at Zirconia's head, and then flees. He debates chasing until he turns and sees Zia put her sword into Flora's gut.

District honor says if his district partner goes down it's his duty to kill the one that did it before all else, so he chases her for two and a half days until he corners her against a water hole and turns her black and blue before finally killing her in the same way she killed Flora.

Of course the chase leads him nearly to the edge of the arena, and the slow journey back (made slower by the wound in his leg that he keeps re-opening by running despite the sponsor's medicine) means he hears the cannons fire but doesn't see the action. He's nearly back to the area around the Cornucopia when the small pack of rock wolves comes after him. Not to kill, he knows but to herd towards his final fight and that moment he has been training for for so many years.

He spots the moving figures, tiny specks against the horizon and starts to run as they both fall over. The cannons both sound before he's even half-way and he yells at the trumpets overhead for mocking him and denying him his proper victory.

~xXx~

For twenty-six years he has felt them mocking him for not being a proper victor. Now, finally he has a chance to fix it. He's not as fit as he once was, but that doesn't matter. He's still plenty strong enough to deal with the opposition out there (at least half of them not proper victors themselves).

They have the real volunteer pack (he never much liked the kids from Four, who were usually poorly trained and a bit messed up in the head) and Eno is enough about district honor that he knows she won't stab him in the back. The rest are just there to be taught a lesson in how the Games should be played, and he is ready to properly school them. As he rises into the arena he feels a surge in his blood, an adrenaline kick like no other and he knows this is where he belongs.

The killing feels just as good as it did all those years ago, and when he finally gets another chance at little Peeta, who of all the people in the arena deserves to be called a victor the least, he takes it. He doesn't count on the oaf from Eleven getting in the way and while he is able to kill Chaff, the Mellark boy knifes him from behind and he spends his final minutes bleeding out wondering how such a pathetic excuse for a victor could beat him.