ENZO RANGER- Gavin Booth

Enzo had been going places I wasn't sure I could follow. Now that I was away from him, I wasn't unsure anymore. He had a much better chance of getting out of this than I had. I just couldn't be the killer I needed to be to live. He had a better chance, and look where he was now.

ATTICUS SCIPIO- Meenah Turbine

When the cannon sounded, I went back into the tunnel and took his glasses.

Lancia Audren- District Six mentor

I hadn't expected either of them to win. Enzo had been changing my mind, though. Some people would have condemned what he did. That was what separated Tributes from Victors.

District Six

Gasoly's classmates came together over a semester and pooled their spare change and their time to dig a small pond behind the schoolhouse. Stray toads and dragonflies soon populated the memorial to Gasoly and the rest of the lost children. Other enterprising children took over Enzo's delivery routes, but the business soon dwindled without his presence.

Donnatella Brassas-Palassaqua- District Two female

I loved the hunt. For three days, Caio and I had been stalking a Tribute. They were a sneaky one. They were always on the move, and they were too quiet to give themselves away. I loved the quiet work of tracking. I could lose myself in the subtleties of detecting the rare footprints on softer patches of the rocky ground. When the ground was damp, the tracks were easier, and when we reached dry patches, it took all our expertise to trail our quarry. It would be worth the three days of hunting for the moment of killing.

Tracking let me think about what was beneath me and stop looking forward to what came next. After we'd killed the last of the outliers, it would be time to kill our allies. Caio and I felt united against Elissa and Grande likely out resentment for their long-standing and genuine friendship. But if we were successful in defeating them and had no one but each other to face, we would do what came next. Caio was nothing compared to my daughter. On his part, Caio valued his life far too much to throw it away on someone else. It might have been different in another world. At times I wished he or I were a year younger or older so our paths could have crossed in the Capitol after we'd both won.

We hadn't said a word since the day- marked by the Anthem, so really more of the night- had begun. It struck me as part of what might be called the Career spirit. We valued actions over words. We were instead of saying. Sharing in duties, existing near each other and not attacking, that was what a Career friendship was. Two souls, one quiet and cold, the other burning bright enough to illuminate the corridor around us. Before long the space beside me would be empty. It was the most un-Careerlike thing about me to know that I would feel it.

Caio and I stopped at the same moment. Then we started again, like we'd never stopped. We'd both noticed the footsteps before us and the lack of footsteps farther down the cavern. We were looking everywhere else, acting like we hadn't seen it, but we'd seen the monolithic rock almost flush with the cave wall. We'd gone three days without knowing who we were following, but now we knew where they were.

Linden Anderson- District Eight male

Visenya and I didn't love each other. Not really. But in the time since we arrived in the Arena, I'd come to care for her more than I ever thought I would. It wasn't an erotic love of her body or soul that made me want to spend the rest of my life with her. It was a more oddly distant love that I didn't think I'd ever known in my home life. I'd felt valued as a son, and an heir, and a legacy, but never just as a boy. What I felt for Visenya came from nothing she had to offer me. It was simply what she was. It was her kindness- the way she talked about friends and people she'd known and she cared about their wellbeing without it benefiting her at all. She often talked about how cold she felt and how it was hard for her to relate to things she didn't understand. She didn't see that the act of trying, just making that effort to connect and offer aid, was what proved she had love.

Only one of us, at best, would get out of this. There was no future where we were friends or neighbors. If it hadn't been for the Arena, we never would have met. My life without her would have been complete on some other path. I would never say that anything good came out of the Games- to say that anything made them worthwhile was shameful. But since it had happened and there was nothing to be done, I was glad I'd met her.

It was the shift in the air that gave it away. In the contained atmosphere of the cave, sometimes the movement of a large body affected whatever passed for currents in the air. It was how we knew, sometimes, that the mutt was coming. Other times it surprised us. But this time the prickle on the back of our necks drove us to hide behind a rock, peeking out to see if it was the mutt, other Tributes, or something else entirely.

Visenya Lloyd- District Nine female

I yanked my head out of sight when I saw the tip of a spear coming around the corner. The mutt had been stalking us for the last five days. We never had a moment's rest without looking over our shoulders for its twitching legs and antennae. This, though, was even worse. The mutt was unintelligent and we'd always slipped away from it by keeping our heads. We'd even been mapping out some plans for traps. Careers weren't fooled so easily.

Maybe they don't know we're here, transitioning it into almost a prayer halfway through. I dared a peek and saw it was Caio and Donnatella. My heart lurched. That sank the only desperate move we could have made. We could perhaps run from Caio's spear-sword, but not from Donnatella's bow.

Then Linden ran.

Linden Anderson- District Eight male

The only thing we could do was stay still and hope they didn't see us. When I heard the footsteps and sensed the purpose in them, I knew that was it. We were going to die. I took one last look at Visenya. Her terrified face looked past me out where the Careers would be coming. Her eyes shone with tears.

I was going to die. That decision had been taken from me. But I could choose how. After a life of selfishness and never giving others the value I expected for myself, I could do one last thing and I could do it right.

I got up and ran. The Careers knew where we were, but they didn't know how many of us there were. Caio ran after me immediately. I looked over my shoulder and saw Donnatella readying an arrow. At the last moment I dared, I switched directions and started running in a zigzag. Her arrow flew past my ear close enough to draw blood. Before she could aim another, I was around a corner. Caio wasn't far behind me. I heard Donnatella start to run after us.

I didn't have long before they caught up. It was long enough, though. As I rounded another corner, I collided with a thousand pairs of sprinting legs. Three sets of running footsteps made a lot of vibrations.

Donnatella Brassas-Palassaqua- District Two female

Most people would have stopped at the sounds of a sudden brawl, but not a Career. I wasn't about to lose a valuable ally because Linden managed to get in a lucky blow. I sprinted around the corner and almost fell on my backside when I saw Caio embroiled in a fierce battle with a disgusting insect mutt. Linden lay underneath several of the insect's legs, his pinioned body moving like a puppet whenever the mutt shifted.

The thought occurred to me to leave Caio. He was valuable, but it was a risk I wasn't sure was worth it. The mutt answered the question by surging over him and into me.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

As much as I loved a battle, I didn't want to fight mutts. I loved battles because each brought me closer to victory. A mutt was not my competitor. It was just a dangerous threat that could get me killed. I moved closer to end it quick with a forceful thrust into its undercarriage.

My spear bounced off.

For the first time in my life, I was stunned. I'd had no effect. Then the mutt knocked me sideways and I barely avoided its legs. As they pistoned into the ground around me, I saw their deadly points and knew I would have died. I would have died.

At some point Donnatella must have caught up to us. I looked sideways and saw her stabbing the mutt's stomach with a handheld arrow. Like me, she was making no mark.

I got to my feet and recalculated. When the mutt came at me again, I reflexively sidestepped with the flourish I'd always added back in the Academy. I pasted a confident expression on and it started to become authentic as I danced around the mutt and jabbed in with my spear whenever I had a chance. I'd been unable to penetrate its middle, so I switched to sweeping strikes at its legs. The thin things snapped like twigs. Losing a dozen legs had little effect, but even a centipede ran out of legs eventually.

Donnatella screamed. I looked over and my mouth fell open. She lay with her bottom half on the ground and her top half curled up near the mutt's head, held aloft by the leg through her shoulder. She grabbed it barehanded and bent it between two hands until it snapped. In a pool of juices and blood, she landed on the ground.

Donnatella Brassas-Palassaqua- District Two female

Whenever I started to get up, it knocked me back down. Hideous bug parts and beastly skittering legs surrounded me. Before long I abandoned the knife and started snapping legs barehanded. It was while I was snapping one that another one impaled me. The vibrations of the mutt moving reverberated through me as it and I thrashed. Pain bloomed all down my side around the leg embedded inside me. I heard Caio scream. It wasn't a sound I'd ever thought I'd hear.

It was unimaginable how fast a battle could turn. I was on my back with spearlike legs coming at me from every direction. I was fighting just to stay alive. Linden was long forgotten. I next thought of him when his still-pinioned body crashed into me when the mutt struck again.

I couldn't die. I couldn't make my child an orphan. I snapped the leg off close to my shoulder to allow more mobility. I dove at a pair of legs, aiming to slip between them and attack the mutt from the side. I eluded one of them. The other crushed through my hip and into the dirt underneath.

I turned over, twisting my back so I faced up at the mutt. Nothing mattered. Nothing except surviving. I bashed and tore at the legs around me. Blood spurted from the two holes in me. Specks of it painted my face and doused my eyes. I didn't feel any pain anymore as I fought. I fought from the air as I dangled. When a leg punched through my chest and pinned me to the ground, I fought from the ground. In my last moments, I never clearly thought of my daughter- her face or her life without me. In my last moments, my mind was entirely consumed with the struggle to live for her.

11th place: Linden Anderson- Stabbed by mutt

Linden was interesting right away because his form described him as selfish. Few submitters are honest enough to give their Tributes real flaws like that. His form also said if he died it would be sacrificing himself for Visenya. Not out of love, but just human connection. I enjoyed having that non-romantic value of another person. The form also described them being stalked by a mutt, and it all came together with them and the Careers. CarlpoppaLOL is always good for a thought-out Tribute with a good story from start to end, and this was no different.

10th place: Donnatella Brassas-Palassaqua- Killed by mutt

I've had Career mothers before, oddly enough. Donnatella was more than that, like they all are. She made her own choices and put herself first enough to volunteer despite Kallista. She forged a real friendship with Caio that never pandered into insulting notions of throwing away her life for someone she'd barely met. Their relationship was built on respect and honesty, bedrocks for any Career. The reason there were so many deathless chapters was because I was setting things up for a lot of deaths in a certain order because many Tributes, like Donnatella, had a requested placings range. Linden died first, for example, because Donnatella's request was 11th or better. There were no flaws that made me kill her. It was just one happy ending that wasn't the one that got picked. Thanks 66samvr for a Career who valued her family but in the end, lived her own life.