Meenah Turbine- District Five female

"Hey, Tapey. I'm going to pretend you're real, okay? I know you're not. You're just a tape recorder. I just..." My voice caught on the whisper. I tapped Tapey on my cheek and reeled the emotions back in as they tried to seep out of me. "I really want someone to talk to. I want something to be normal again."

"I don't even know what I am anymore. I don't know how long I've been down here. I just know everything is dark and hard and wrong. I'm still alive. I've done so much to stay alive. Oh gosh, when I think about it, it can't be real. People don't live like this. I've lived for weeks crawling on my hands and knees through tunnels like a worm burrowing in and out of a body. I don't feel human. Everything is just a series of what horrible thing I'll have to do next if I want to survive another few hours. I eat bugs. I eat bugs off a dead person's face. How much of Atticus' face have I eaten through them? Sobs started to break through my words. This isn't living."

"I used to think about my future. What I wanted to do when I grew up. I wanted to do something big. I never even thought about what that was, exactly. It was this big, wide possibility stretching out before me, because that's how kids think. The future is open. The future is big. Now I don't think about the future. The world is as small as the tunnel around me scraping the back of my head. All I think about is the next time I'll need to go back to Atticus to eat. About how I'll hide myself for the next few minutes and whether the area around me is free of Careers. People think about the future. Animals think about the present."

"Tell me it's okay, Tapey. All the things I did. The way I'm living. That it's going to be better someday. Sometimes it feels like I can't even think. I try to picture something like the sun and my mind goes all floppy. I'm losing my mind. It's dripping away, like a bucket with a little crack, just a little crack but still a crack. My skin looks green through the glasses. I think if I ever saw it again in a mirror, I wouldn't recognize me. Tell me it's okay."

I pressed the rewind button on Tapey. I refined the motion until I reached the point I wanted. I hit play.

"It's okay."

Rewind.

"It's okay."

"Tell me I'll do something big someday."

Caio Sagres- District Two male

I am unbroken.

I stood leaned to one side. One leg was bent, sparing it from the weight that would pain the still-healing hole where the mutt punched through me. But I stood. I was not nor would I ever be defeated.

I had lost a battle. Many great men had. And a great man learned from it and came back better. As a sword was forged by layers and layers of steel hammered flat, ironing out impurities and forging the blade from the assimilation of each of them, I was refined by my mistakes. The very Arena around me was powerful. I would do better to learn from it.

Gavin and Meenah were the two non-volunteers left. They had found something or learned something about their surroundings and were using them as a weapon I had until now lacked. Throughout history, the greatest enemy of the warlords I aspired to join had been the guerrille fighter. Even a lion can be killed by the viper that strikes in the darkness. Where the warlord bends his environment to his will, the guerrilla bends to his environment. How much greater a fighter I could be with the training of a warlord and the cunning of a guerrilla.

It had been two days since Grande and Elissa returned from their battle with Jezzebell and Paloma. They licked their wounds as I licked mine. They left to hunt, Elissa limping as I limped and Grande still moving stiffly as his newly-formed skin stretched tight. I could not say for sure, but if the scars looked the same as they did in the darkness, he would have a warrior's tale to tell his women. I left while they were gone. I would not be returning. Let those of us who died before we met again simplify things and let those who lived give their best.

My steps grew in strength as I hunted. Medicine and splints were valuable, but nothing was better to heal than to get the blood flowing and show your body that your will held dominion. And when I saw the tunnels and it all clicked together, I felt like a new man. They were tiny things. I would have to crawl on my belly to scrape into them. They were no place for a proud Career. But they were the very place for an outlier.

The worries and lack of confidence that plagued me after the battle with the mutt wicked away as I crawled down the first of the tunnels. I was coming for all who remained. I was not finished. There was too much life I had left to experience. There were parades to be held in my honor and women to excite with my exploits and skills. I would endure the mud smearing at my shirt and the confines of a coffinnish tunnel for what lay at the other side. Forever I would be unbroken.

Gavin Booth- District Ten male

What a cruel mercy on the part of the Gamemakers to make the walls of the caves always damp with tiny trickling streams. They gave us water because to cut us off would deny them their bloodshed. It wasn't enough for them to watch children convulsing on the ground as lack of water starved their cells. They needed to see the blood spilled.

Back when I played in Ten, all the super-athletic kids, the ones aiming for one of maybe three spots nationwide for vacancies in Capitolite sports teams, always harped about hydration. "Half your body weight in ounces!" they'd say. "Two gallons daily!" others insisted. I sometimes tried to live up to it and ended up forcing myself to drink constantly. Even then I would barely scrape the minimum of what they were saying. Here I drank a few of my bottles a day. Sometimes only two. I didn't seem to have any ill effects from it. Or maybe I just wasn't noticing them.

As I walked around a bend in the tunnel, screwing on the cap to my bottle, I bumped into someone. We both jumped back, and I caught a glimpse of an arrow blurring with movement. My body reacted quicker than my brain could think. Can't hit me with an arrow, it decided, if I'm too close for you to shoot it. I tackled her. The arrow pricked into me as we fell but lacked the velocity to be more than a scratch. She screamed as we hit the ground. It was then I realized that I had a tiger in a bear hug.

I might have been on top, but Elissa was the better fighter. She shoved the heel of her palm into my chin. I bit my tongue so hard I felt a chunk fly off. What Elissa had in training I tried to match in strength. I punched her in the nose. She gasped and shook tears out of her eyes. She hooked her leg around mine and did a flip move I couldn't follow. She followed it up with a crotch shot that left me feeling like I'd been electrocuted. She tried to go in for a choke hold and I only got out of it, I was sure, because I moved so unpredictably I didn't do the counter move she had to have been expecting. I head-butted her and shoved her shoulder in one movement. She fell off me sideways. I jumped on top of her. I didn't know if it would work, but my plan was to get an elbow across her neck and put all my weight on it.

Blood sprayed across her chest and neck. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I hadn't felt the sword going in. I only felt it as it tore back out. I hadn't even heard Grande's footsteps.

My breaths came shallow and odd, like my lungs were inflating sideways. I lay panting on the ground as Grande helped Elissa up. I hadn't thought I'd win. It wasn't a fair fight between me and someone with Elissa's training. But I'd tried. I hadn't laid down and died. It wasn't fair this happened. I wouldn't have hurt anyone. They could have just let me live. Such a fragile government if they think a boy is dangerous.

5th place: Gavin Booth- Stabbed by Grande

Gavin was a funny case that happens sometimes in my stories. I noticed a while ago that he was the only outlier male left and there were a lot of girls. I didn't set out for that to happen, but once I noticed it I felt unbalanced killing him, so he lived a lot longer than he might have. I never had any big plans for him to last a long time. I just thought he'd die along the way eventually. Now that we're in the top five I felt fair killing him. Even though it was by accident, Gavin grew a lot in the time I had to keep him. He changed more than most of the Tributes and was more self-aware than a lot of them. He was the moral center of the story sometimes. He cared about the others and thought about what was right and not just what was good for his survival. So thanks submitter for a Tribute who showed athletes aren't just jocks. They're people as deep as anyone.

Top four wooooo.