TEAM 13: DISTRICT 2

Ron : Roman

Night Falls

Eighteen boys and girls from District 2 stood in a line, ramrod straight as eight mentors—eight former victors—paced in front of them.

Other districts, Ron knew, had also decided to intentionally herd all the 'good' teams to one victor. District 2 did not have that choice. Because there were ten of them, all eight of the oldest had only been allowed one team each.

One chance, in other words, to live.

There had been arguments, screaming matches that could be heard throughout the Nut, but in the end it had been decided: Mars would live at all costs.

And he'd chosen Team 18.

Oh, they were still supposed to put up a good fight—that's what this whole rigamarole was all about—but each and every one were supposed to fight a little less, to try a little less hard, every time Team 18 came by.

Ron, along with the rest of them, chanted "Sir, yes Sir!" Ron, like the rest of them, didn't mean a word of it.

Winning in the arena had you and your family set for life. Being able to say you shared blood with a former victor? You'd get the cushiest jobs, the biggest bonuses, the nicest gifts—even if you were a complete slouch yourself.

Every boy and girl around Ron knew that, and every boy and girl around Ron wanted that.

Ron's own motivations were different, but in the immediate they were similar enough that he was having no trouble relating to the tributes he was standing beside who would in a few short days be trying to slit his throat.

"...And are you going to target Team 18?" Mars shouted.

"Sir, no sir!" Shouted Teams 11-17.

"And are you going to stab as many of your own teammates as possible, as quickly as possible, to ensure Team 18's victory?" Mars yelled.

"Sir, yes, sir!" They dutifully yelled back to him.

The funny thing, at least to Ron, was that Mars might not even understand that they weren't telling the truth. He'd won the 54th Games when he was 18. This was game #100, and the man was in his sixties. Beyond that, he might've even forgotten exactly how powerful a motivator survival was. So long as the other kids could not be convinced of a direct benefit to them and their families if they did it, there was no way they would sacrifice their lives just so one 64 year-old man could live.

As she passed, Ron caught the eye of his own mentor: Rosemary, winner of the 76th. Her wife, Atlas Kentwell, who had won three years earlier, was currently stalking near the seventeen year-old, her own key to survival.

Atlas had won her games sans allies, an incredibly unpopular decision which worked very well for her. She was known for being hard to work with, prone to wild mood swings, but cruelly meticulous in spite of them.

Rosemary was just about the opposite.

Her alliance had been one of the largest in Games' history, including both tributes from districts 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 11. They had, in their time in the Capitol, created a hit-list based on the known skills of each and every other competitor by calculating their known skills and likely strategies, then spent the first twelve days in the arena ruthlessly hunting down every last one by starting with the most dangerous and going down the list.

To the surprise of most of the commentators that year, the giant alliance had held strong until eleven of the fourteen tributes outside of it had been killed. Rosemary had apparently been waiting for that, had waited as her own cousin slammed an axe into the girl from District 10's head before whipping around and, in what felt like seconds, killing off the District 1 girl and both District 4 volunteers with a blowgun she had carefully hidden until that very moment.

The resulting skirmish was much more difficult for her, but she managed to escape after poisoning her cousin and killing a member each from Districts 3 and 7 to boot.

In twelve days the arena had gone from having 24 living competitors to six.

The male District 2 was dead within 24 hours, the competitors from District 8 went out in a murder suicide, the girl from 12 had managed to accidently kill herself when she was one of only three left, and through it all Rosemary managed to take out the 3 and 7.

In total the Games lasted 325 hours.

Rosemary had, in that time, developed the reputation as the kindest girl coming from District 2 in decades, and then managed to ruthlessly use that reputation to keep her alliance together and collect information that she later used to hunt and kill them.

Ron took one look in her eyes, and he knew: she wanted to live, and she didn't give a fuck what Mars had to say about that.