Finally, the finale I spent like three hours writing because I kept puttering around procrastinating.

GRANDE ST. LEGER- Caio Sagres

He was destined to be the only worthy Tribute I fought in my time in the Arena, and what a fight it was. Grande left me with mementos I suspected would follow me all my life. He had my sincere thanks for giving me the chance to use all I'd based my life around. I only wished I could fight him again.

Blake Armani- District One mentor

Most of us had been rooting for Grande. Elissa, too, but after she was dead, we were hoping for Grande. He overcame so much and never even spoke of how difficult it was. And Elissa, who carved out a compassionate, driven theology that would have fit perfectly into One. Both of them were singular.

District One

Due to One's connection to the Capitol and family connections of the de Angelos, Elissa's parents were able to obtain a portion of her body for traditional open-air burial. The St. Legers benefited greatly from grief counseling sessions in which they bonded with Dr. Splendor until he was considered a member of the family.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

Bandages I'd scavenged from the last of the Cornucopia supplies swathed my legs. Elissa and Grande had used the last of the antiseptic. I knew if I was here a few more days infection would set in. Clearly I would just have to move things along quickly.

Meenah Turbine- District Five female

It was Caio. Either way was fatal for me, but I'd had the feeling that if it was Grande, it would have gone quicker. Elissa would have been the best for me out of the three. I wouldn't even have seen her coming. Just an arrow in the back of my head. Grande would have made it as easy as possible as well. I didn't think Caio really had in mind to do it any other way, but it was just that for him, I wasn't a factor. Grande and Elissa both thought of me as a person who had to go but still deserved the respect given to another human. Caio thought only of himself. He would kill me the easiest way for him, not for me.

I crouched on the rock that had once pinned Atticus. It hurt to sit on my backside since it was so bony now. I wound up the strips of cloth I'd been tearing. They lay in a coil across my feet. They trailed after me on the laborious climb back up to the platform at the end of the larger tunnel. I crawled out what seemed like a luxurious tunnel to me. My back still hit the ceiling, but I was able to crawl instead of creeping on my stomach. I found a trickle of water and started making mud. I held a handful as I crawled back to my platform. I started to smear it.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

Two days I had searched for Meenah. My leg was stiff underneath me. It hadn't swollen or discolored yet, but it was making itself known. My shoulder still felt loose and watery. As disappointing as it was that Meenah wasn't a physical opponent, in my most secret thoughts I admitted it was fortunate for me. I resented the last wasted days in the Arena. I would find Meenah, there would be a cursory scuffle, and it would be over. Not much for the people at home to watch. I could give them something for their bloodlust, but I wasn't in the business of peddling flesh. Meenah was a last loose end to tie, not something to be tortured for entertainment.

Of all the places, I saw her in broad daylight, to use an out-of-place expression. She was on bent legs by the wall of the cave, holding a bottle to a trickle of water. She saw me and sprang back. She twisted in the air and came down at the mouth of a tunnel.

Meenah Turbine- District Five female

If I stayed hidden and waited for Caio, either I would starve to death or the Gamemakers would force me out. So I got out and crouched by the cave wall. I held out my bottle so I wouldn't look obvious.

Come on come on find me...

Caio Sagres- District Two male

I leaped after Meenah and hit the ground on my bad knee. I winced as I grabbed at her disappearing feet. She slipped out just beyond my grasp and crawled down the tunnel. I started in after her. It was roomy enough to move, but the roof biting into my back slowed me down, while Meenah's smaller form slipped through easily. From my position behind her, I could see she wasn't just small. She was skeletal. It gave me the uncomfortable feeling of chasing a ghost.

I snaked out a hand and grabbed Meenah's foot. I yanked back and she slid on her stomach. She cocked her other foot and kicked me in the face. I didn't let go, but her neck kick hit my elbow. My arm was knocked against the wall and the shards, some of them sharp, that stuck out of it. I hissed and she wriggled free.

Meenah Turbine- District Five female

I hadn't thought about flashbacks. I heard Atticus scrabbling behind me. I couldn't block out the flashing images of his pinioned body lurching after me in the tunnel, illuminated only by my flashlight. Only in my head, he didn't have a face. It was bone eyes spilling over with insects that crawled after me.

Atticus' dead hands gripped my ankle. His dead hands were warm and wrapped in flesh. I kicked him once, then twice. It's Caio, I told myself. Dead men don't move. Only the living things inside them move.

Caio was right behind me. It was Caio that was chasing me, trying to overtake me so he could kill me. I was mere feet ahead of him. The end of the tunnel loomed in front of me. The platform and its end.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

Over Meenah's shoulder I could see the end of the tunnel. I couldn't see what lay beyond it. If she got there, she could spring up and vanish down a corridor while I was still hauling myself free.

With a last burst of speed, Meenah reached the end of the tunnel and clambered to her knees. She shot off to the side as I reached the end. I looked out and saw we were on a platform at the edge of a chasm that went who knows how deep. Meenah was perched on the edge looking for a way out. As my head crested the opening, she locked eyes with me.

Meenah Turbine- District Five female

My life rested on so many things. Timing on something I'd never been able to practice. The way a clump of mud gave under pressure. Knots dimly remembered from a neglected training station. And above all else, the clothes of a dead boy. All of it came to an edge when Caio's head passed the end of the tunnel. That was when I reached down and pulled.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

Meenah reached down and picked something up. A split appeared in the ground traveling toward me. I wondered if she'd somehow triggered a cave-in, but that wasn't it. Instead it was a jarring, crushing pressure around my throat and a force that yanked me against the side of the tunnel. My shoulder, catapulted into the wall, gave way. My arm unwound into tearing pain and lost connection with its muscles.

My head was cocked painfully at an angle that let me see the rope Meenah held, the rope that had been hidden under a trail of mud. I could see the clumps of mud that held the rope in place around the mouth of the cave, and at last I could see that the mud that made the entrance of the tunnel ever so slightly smaller had been placed there by human hands.

Meenah Turbine-District Five

Like a spider. Like the spiders I'd been eating- like the one that spun a web over Atticus' slack jaws. Like a spider I'd spun my line and I'd caught Caio in its grasp. I leaned back on it with all my weight. My spindly arms trembled with the effort of holding on. Caio thrashed in the mouth of the tunnel. He made horrible noises around the rope strangling him. He was trying to reach up or over or any way that would free him, but the pressure holding him sideways and the awkward way he was twisted made it nearly impossible. Foam appeared on his lips.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

I was an animal. A clawing, spitting animal fighting tooth and nail against the slender snare that bit into my neck. Drool and slime coated my mouth. I panted as I rolled onto my side. My dislocated arm, bent underneath me, screamed at the pressure. My other hand, which had been laced under the rope trying to relieve the pressure, slipped out to akwardly reach under myself as far as the cave would let it. I reached for my spear underneath me. A single prick at that taut rope and it would snap. My head pounded at the lack of air and blood, but I could push past it that long. The rope would snap and Meenah's life with it.

Meenah Turbine- District Five female

Caio was reaching for his spear. In a moment he would snap my rope and be on me. The leftover end of rope lay in a coil at my feet. I took the far end of the rope in both hands and jumped.

Caio Sagres- District Two male

For an instant the pressure was gone. For an instant there was breaking pressure unlike anything before. For an instant I saw my entire life. Then eternity.

Meenah Turbine- District Five female

I hung in the air from the braided rope in my hands. But that wasn't true. I hung in the air from Caio's body. I hung below Caio's body and suspended above Atticus'. Two dead things separated by a barely alive thing between them.

I had something to tell Tapey when all of this was over. I'd done it, I realized in the death and the hunger and the decay. I'd done something big. It would never leave my mind. I'd done something big. I was the girl that killed two Careers.

2nd place: Caio Sagres- Hanged by Meenah

Now the secrets can come out. Caio WAS in fact my first pick for Victor. He might have been the one that broke the first-pick curse. I started shifting pretty late in the story, after it became clear that a lot of people thought he was the obvious pick. I heard a lot of comments that he was OP or the center of the story. However, when you look at it, he had like three kills and the same number of POVs. I actually think he wasn't so much the center as he was just a super charismatic individual who stood out by his blinding personality. On my side, I'm actually kicking myself for not giving him more strong opponents to fight. Caio did the platform jump at the Bloodbath, and then he killed small potato opponents until he got his butt kicked by a mutt and finally killed Grande. He talks a big talk but isn't as OP as he thinks, frankly, and I added the mutt specifically to nerf him.

I loved Caio right when I got him. I do really want a Career Victor and thought for sure this was the one. I loved the larger-than-life hedonism and thought it was a great contrast to the usual thinkers who win SYOTs. I liked that he was unabashedly selfish and could show that sometimes it's not a good guy that wins. It took a lot of deliberation to change my mind, and more of that will come in Meenah's blurb. I think what did it in the end was that a lot of his supporters wanted him to win because they wanted more Careers. I also wanted that, but when I looked really close, they didn't necessarily want Caio. They wanted a Career. I wanted a Career Victor really bad, but I wanted it to be the one the readers wanted, so I let this one go. This is one of those times I got two Victors (just like Rhoda and Shane). I much regret they ended up in the same SYOT. Caio was such a character that he burst his bounds and made the story about him even though he didn't really do that much. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place and picked the one that looked infitesimally PrinceofCorinth and this is one of those times it really sucked to write a chapter.

Victor: Meenah Turbine, District Five

Meenah was delightful right when I got her. I thought she was so fun and clever without being "clever", you know? I didn't think she'd last long and was sorry such a delightful character would have to die. My first inkling of something more came in the tunnel. That was a herculean effort of willpower and survival. I started daydreaming about how I would make her win if I could because she just plain deserved it. She earned her happy ending by crawling through a tunnel so tight she had to exhale before scooting. I can't even imagine a situation I would be willing to do that. Then she ate the spiders. Those were cave spiders, by the way. She ate actual cave spiders barehanded. It got to where I couldn't deny her. Like Pray, she hijacked the story and cried out her Victorhood so hard I couldn't ignore it. I wanted Caio, but Meenah made this hers. She is a survivor. Every Tribute thinks they will, but she pushed "doing whatever it takes to survive" to its outer limits. She listened to Atticus beg for days and crawled back to take his glasses and eat the spider crawling on his face. Meenah simply would not die, and so here she stands. I was stymied when someone pointed out her submitter already had a Victor and that's why I did the last-minute poll, but surprisingly, very few people commented on that. People didn't seem to care and those who wrote in were nearly exactly split on who they supported. In the end I went with Meenah because I do want a Career Victor, but I want to do it right. Not because they're a Career, but because I and the readers agree that it's the right Career. Caio would have been a good Victor, but Meenah screamed it. She would not be denied. So good job SparkaLeah on being the first to have two Victors in my universe. It was bound to happen eventually with like 20 SYOTs and lots of repeat submitters so I was never specifically against it, but it takes a lot to have readers support you when you already have one. Good show.

Fun fact the chapter title is this super metal Jack London story I read where this guy crawled like hundreds of miles because he was so determined to survive getting lost in the wilderness. it talked about how he was a shambling thing and it was just so metal.

A few more wrap-up chapters and I'll roll into the next SYOT, which is a normal SYOT.

Also here are some visual aids for two reasons I thought Meenah earned this:

i banana pinimg banana charlie oscar mike leany boi originals leany boi 32 leany boi d8 leany boi 3c leany boi 32d83c162d9dda1950e0ce85e560935b banana juliet papa golf

pixtures banana s3 banana amazonaws banana charlie oscar mike leany boi caving leany boi squeeze banana juliet papa golf

Bananas are periods, leany bois are slashes, and I used the military phonetic system for letter groups that trigger automods.