Repetition is the mother of skill.
-Anthony Robbins
Lilywater Brooksfield (26) POV
Head Gamemaker
"Alright everybody!" I call, addressing the other Gamemakers. "The tributes are going to start coming in in about five minutes. I need everyone to remember to pay attention. I don't care how late we're here. I don't care how drunk you get. Everyone deserves attention. Are we clear?"
There's a muttering of agreement, so I take my seat front and center, pull out my pen and paper, and sit poised and ready for the District 1 male to come in.
Right on cue, Julius enters and heads straight for the sword rack and selects a balanced one made of stainless steel. The electronic dummies in the training center have four difficulty settings; easy, medium, hard, and expert. He programs a dummy to the highest difficulty, and takes it out within a couple of minutes, disarming it and then plunging his sword into its chest. Next, he programs another dummy to the same difficulty and uses a spiked wooden club to fend it off before bringing it down hard on its head, "killing" it on impact. Lastly, he throws knives from 20 yards, always careful to hit the heart and forehead, until his timer goes off and I tell him he can leave.
Linda comes in next, and heads for a table set with daggers, and grabs a small one. She sets a dummy to the hard setting, and after some fighting with it, pins it down and slits its throat. She repeats the process with two more dummies before grabbing a slingshot and shooting from about 15 yards at some targets that are programmed to move side to side at a moderate pace.
Christopher is next, and after some consideration, he grabs a handful of spears. He first stands about 15 yards away, programs them to move side to side, and throws the spears at the dummies, hitting each and every one in the center of its chest. When he runs out of spears, he turns the dummies off, grabs one of his weapons off the ground, and programs a single dummy to expert. He spars with this one up close before kicking it in the knees, causing it to fall to the ground and allowing him to sink the spear into the dummy's stomach, leaving it to die. It's not every day that you see a tribute that can use the same weapon both up close and from afar.
Alecto is no less impressive than her District partner. Immediately when she enters, she straps on a belt and slides a dozen tiny butterfly knives into it. She climbs the ropes course until she is squatting in a net thirty feet above the ground and throws each of her knives in rapid succession at different dummies around the room, not only from afar, but from up high. When all of her knives have been thrown, she dismounts gracefully, sets a timer, and sprints a quick lap around the gym.
My shoulders drop when Cyno comes in. It's clear upon his arrival that he's been crying, and he has no clue what to do. After some consideration, he goes to the edible plants station and takes the test, scoring an 80 percent. Pretty good, but that still leaves him with a 20 percent chance of eating something that will kill him. After that, he shakily approaches the knot tying station, and uses a length of rope to demonstrate a couple of basic knots.
Up next is Heather, but she's nowhere to be found. After about five minutes of her not showing up, I begin to get annoyed. Doesn't she realize how important this is? She's wasting a huge chance for her to get sponsors. After another five minutes, my annoyance turns to anger. Not only is she wasting his own time, but she's wasting the time of myself, all of the Gamemakers, and each tribute waiting behind her. I sigh, and just before I'm about to call down to the Peacekeepers to send in the next tribute and give her a one, I see her head poke out from behind the camouflage station thirty yards from the entrance, and my jaw drops. Not only did we not see her hiding, but we didn't even see her come in.
Dustin comes in next, and I smile. We're back to a couple of tributes that I know will know what they're doing. Dustin, like Christopher, grabs a few spears and throws them at moving targets from a distance, hitting with a deadly accuracy. Following this, he grabs a trident, being the first and probably the only one to use such a weapon. He sets a dummy on the expert setting and barely fights with it before, in the blink of an eye, the dummy is laying on its back with a trident sticking up in its chest.
Penny enters, and without hesitation grabs several small axes, then turns on the moving targets. She climbs up the ropes course (not all the way to the top like Alecto did, but still relatively high), and uses her ankles and knees to lock herself in while she throws at the dummies moving from side to side. She's a couple of inches off the mark a few times, but she's also on an unstable platform. When she has two axes left, she finishes the climb to the top of the ropes and throws the last two from there.
Elijah, like Cyno, looks like he's been crying. After a couple of seconds, he shakes it off, pulls himself together, and heads to the fire building section. I'm bored before I realize that he's attempting to build a fire not only with no matches or lighter, but with damp wood. My eyebrows raise when I realize that within the 15 minutes allotted to the tributes for their individual sessions, he's managed to start a fire completely from scratch using damp wood. I'm not usually a fan of tributes showing survival skills, but even I have to admit that that was impressive.
When Clio comes in, I'm surprised to see her head for the table holding throwing knives. She doesn't turn the moving targets on like those that showed weapons did before her, but she does manage to hit the target from several yards away every time. Bulls-eyes were few and far between, but almost all of her shots were fatal. She walks hesitantly to the panel where she can make the targets move, but decides against it.
I'm curious to see what Brian does. From the observations I've made of him during general training, I haven't seen him touch a weapon at all, or even try to put on some muscle. When he comes in, he heads straight for the trap making section. His hands work quickly at making a trap that I recognize as something that could yank a person up by their ankle, and sets it up on a nearby pole with a mannequin in place of a person. After that, he pours a liquid that I can't read the name of in a circle around the trap, then sprinkles salt over it. Lastly, he takes a ten foot length of rope, places one end of it in some of the liquid that he poured, and carries the other end with him as he hides behind a wall. He lights his end of the rope on fire, covers his head, and his trap explodes.
Alayne comes in and immediately runs several laps around the gym. I notice that she's moving pretty fast, but I have to admit that I get bored after a few minutes. She eventually stops running and pauses to catch her breath. She then moves to the edible plants test where she scores perfectly.
Edison walks in more confidently than I would have expected a twelve-year-old from District 7 to be. He goes directly to the knot tying station and ties some intermediate knots, before moving onto shelter building, where he constructs a quick and frail looking lean to. It's nothing special, but a weak shelter is better than no shelter at all.
Lydia is more impressive, albeit more disturbing than her District partner before her. She begins at the weights station, lifting heavy weights above her head and throwing them relatively far. She then finds a model of a pig (I have no idea where she found that), and demonstrates how to perfectly butcher it. It leaves me unsettled, but I have to admit that it would be useful in the arena. A lot of people go hungry because they fail to use every part of the animal.
Surprisingly, when Conn comes in, he grabs a long sword and a metal shield. He goes to the electronic dummies, and for the first time since District 4, he turns one of them on to medium. After a couple of minutes of fighting with the dummy, he does beat it. Confidently, he then sets a dummy to hard, but within minutes, the dummy has him pinned to the floor. Regardless, he gets back up, brushes himself off, and repeats the process again on medium.
Calico takes a more interesting approach to her private session. She takes a single dagger, then turns three dummies onto medium. After that, instead of attacking the dummies with her new weapon, she runs from them. She hides, and when the dummies get close to her, she lets them get just close enough to touch, then sprints to the side and out of their way. One by one, she's able to pin each one down and slit their throats.
Marsellus's display is pretty normal for a tribute from the outer Districts. He warms up by lifting some heavy weights and is able to toss them around with relative ease. After he's pleased with himself, he runs a couple of laps around the gym before scaling the ropes course most of the way to the top. His skills should couple nicely with Conn's, who he formed an alliance with at the end of the day yesterday.
Unlike Heather, Oneka just doesn't show up. I'm half expecting her to be hiding like Heather was, but I know in my heart that she just didn't show up, especially since she had a tendency to walk out of general training. There's no question, that's a one for her.
I'm hopeful for Rowan compared to the other outer District tributes, since he seemed well-fed and focused during training. Upon his arrival, he takes a belt full of throwing knives and stands a few yards away from some still targets. His aim is impressive, which isn't surprising considering it's almost all he did during general training. Following this, he takes the edible plant and edible insect test and scores a 90 percent on each.
Terry comes in and goes for the spears, which would have been surprising had she not spent a good amount of time training there with the tributes from 1, 2, and 4. Like her District partner, she doesn't turn the moving targets on, but she is able to show that she learned a fair amount of spear throwing skills by throwing them from relatively far away and almost always hitting fatal points. What was surprising was afterwards when she chose to lift a few weights, showing off that she is deceptively strong considering her size.
Coy's private session comes as quite a surprise, as none of the tributes so far, not even the ones from District 4, have gone for the pool. To my knowledge, there are no large bodies of water in District 11, so he must have learned to swim completely during training. His swimming is impressive, but it gets repetitive after a while, and in the long run, it isn't going to significantly help him in the arena.
Adelaide, like Coy, starts her private session in the pool, but only shows that she can swim two laps before coming out. I'm relieved. I don't think I could sit through another fifteen minutes of a tribute swimming. When she comes out, she heads for the ropes course. After climbing all the way up, she heads down, and when she's about five feet from the ground, she dismounts with a backflip and lands on her feet.
Adrian becomes the fifth tribute to attempt the ropes course. I know I said that we were supposed to pay equal attention to each tribute, but God, five tributes climbing just gets a bit dull after a while. He does get to the top and is able to get down easily.
Tessa mercifully doesn't go to the ropes, but to the station with medicinal plants. Not only does she get a perfect score on the test, but she proceeds to put together several remedies for things like cuts, burns, and bug bites. I thought she made an error with one combination. She combined two plants which by themselves are edible and have many healing properties, but combined release a noxious gas which, if ingested-
"It's poison." She's the only tribute to speak directly to us.
A couple of hours after the private sessions have ended and the other Gamemakers and myself have had a chance to discuss, it's time for me to go on live television to announce each tribute's score. I double check my notes, then head to the office where they dab some makeup on my face and point the camera at me.
"Good evening, citizens of Panem," I start. "My name is Lilywater Brooksfield, and I'm here tonight with your tributes' final scores. I know you're all as excited as I am, so let's get this show on the road.
"Julius Helios: 10
Linda Hemmings: 8
Christopher Price: 9
Alecto Caraway: 10
Cyno Holding: 3
Heather Frayman: 6
Dustin Zigmund: 10
Penny War: 9
Elijah Stork: 5
Clio Paxton: 7
Brian Spencer: 7
Alayne Suzuki: 5
Edison Burt: 4
Lydia Collins: 6
Conn Rainier: 7
Calico Jones: 6
Marsellus Hopson: 6
Oneka Scalia: 1
Rowan Griffey: 7
Terry Kartcher: 7
Coy Levionne: 5
Adelaide Simon: 6
Adrian Burrow: 5
Tessa Ray: 6
"I'll see everyone tomorrow for the final interviews before our tributes head off into the arena. Happy Hunger Games, everyone, and may the odds be ever in your favor."
I'm sorry I cut out day 3 of training, but I really just had to. I hate post Reaping/pre Games chapters, but I have a special hate in my heart for training chapters, and I didn't want you guys to wait another six months before I updated again. Besides, day 3 is only a half day anyway, so I didn't think it was too big a deal.
For those of you that have characters in the story, I'm sorry if what I had your tribute do for their private sessions didn't match up with what you planned when you sent them in. I saved everyone's tribute forms to a file on my last laptop, but that laptop is no more, and the file wasn't retrievable. It's been a long time, and I can't remember most people's weapons of choice, much less what you wanted them to do in their private sessions and what score you thought they should get. But I tried my best to make it realistic to your character.
We're so close to the actual Games, and I am so excited!
-Chance won't come every single day, so don't throw it away.