Tribute Intros Part VI
Percy, Fabrion, Nirel, Aloe

Percy Allen, 12
District Six

"All right, kid, you remember what you have to do?" Mr. Marinko asked.

Percy nodded enthusiastically. He could already feel the pill starting to kick in. Everything was becoming sharper, more focused. All of the doubts and questions he'd had only moments before were fading. Of course he knew what he had to do.

It was about a week ago now that Mr. Marinko had come to the orphanage looking for a volunteer for a project. It was risky, he'd said, but if the project was successful, the lucky volunteer would have a much better life, a safe place to live, and as many pills as they wanted for the rest of their life.

The pills were the project. They made the subject fast. Incredibly fast. Inhumanly fast. But only for a short time – about thirty minutes, give or take. But that wasn't the best part. When he'd taken the first one, for the first time in his life, he had actually felt happy. Unbelievably, indescribably happy. He would be willing to do anything – volunteer for anything – in order to feel that happy again.

Even volunteer for the Games.

That was what they wanted – a volunteer for the Games, to show off their work. He would volunteer, secretly use the pills to make himself fast enough to win, and then, once he won, reveal to select customers that it was the Quick Fix pills that had given him the edge. It would give the company the boost they needed, and he would never have to go back to the orphanage.

And he would be happy.

He could always be happy.

"I-won't-let-you-down!" Percy assured Mr. Marinko, grinning broadly. He could already feel his speech speeding up, along with the rest of him. "But-how-am-I-supposed-to-get-the-pills-into-the-arena?"

Mr. Marinko nodded and held up a beaded necklace. "Your district token. The beads are pills. There are twenty of them; that should be enough if you use them wisely."

Percy grinned as he reached for the necklace, but Mr. Marinko held it tightly. "After you volunteer," he said sternly. "I'll come give it to you after you volunteer. Wouldn't want you to just run off with it, after all, and not hold up your end of the bargain. Once you volunteer, it's all yours. Clear?"

Percy nodded quickly. Very quickly. Of course he would hold up his end of the bargain. Of course he would volunteer. This was the best deal he'd ever been offered. How could anyone say no to something like this?

Fabrion Morrison, 16
District Eight

Fabrion's face was carefully blank as he slipped a piece of paper into the nearest Peacekeeper's hand. The Peacekeeper's answering nod was barely perceptible, and then both of them continued on their way to the square for the reaping. If there was ever a good day to kiss up to the Peacekeepers, it was the day of the reaping. Most of the information he had passed along was probably meaningless, but if they found any of it useful, they might slip him a little reward later.

That was how it had started. Everyone knew the Peacekeepers would reward anyone who reported certain crimes. Oh, not theft or drug deals or anything; there was plenty of that to go around. But anyone who turned in someone who was speaking or plotting against the Capitol, anything that could be stretched to fit the definition of 'treason' … those informants were rewarded. And the walls of the district tenement buildings were very thin.

Maybe purposefully thin.

In any case, the first time he had ratted out their neighbors for wishing someone would kill President Snow, the Peacekeepers had slipped him a small reward. It wasn't much, but their family had eaten a little better for a few weeks. Since then, the Peacekeepers had learned that they could rely on Fabrion for a little information here and there. Not everything he passed along panned out, but every so often, one of them would slip him something, and he'd know that he'd delivered something particularly useful recently.

Most people would call him a rat if they knew. A snitch. But it wasn't his fault people were so careless with their words. If they were stupid enough to say those sort of things out loud, they could hardly blame him for taking advantage of that. He had taken the opportunity that was in front of him. That was what anyone would do if they were smart enough, wasn't it? And he was helping himself and his family, after all; that was the important thing.

Everyone else … well, they helped themselves. That was how it worked. He wasn't all that different from anyone else in District Eight. Everyone looked out for themselves and the people they cared about. It was just that as far as Fabrion was concerned, that was a very short list.

Nirel Jackson, 17
District Eleven

The crowd in the district square seemed larger every year. Now that Nirel thought about it, it probably was larger every year. Despite the harsh conditions in Eleven – or maybe because of them – large families were pretty common. His four older and four younger siblings wasn't really anything out of the ordinary. People died – from starvation, from disease, from a beating that was a bit too harsh – but more people were born, so no one really seemed to care.

Maybe it was a defense mechanism of sorts. If you had enough kids, then even if one or two of them died off, the family would still go on. The system would still work. Nirel shook his head as he slid into a spot in the middle of the seventeen-year-old section. The system was rough, but he had to admit that it did work. Life in the districts kept chugging along; life in the Capitol was as extravagant as ever. Nothing changed.

Nothing ever would.

Or at least, he hoped nothing ever would. Because as dreary as life in Eleven was, if something did change, it would almost certainly be for the worse. Harsher working conditions. Lower pay. More Peacekeepers. Every time someone tried to change things, the Capitol simply cracked down harder. No, it was better to just live with it. It was hard – maybe even impossible – to change their lives for the better, while it was dreadfully easy for the Capitol to make things much, much worse.

So most of the district, including Nirel, simply went about their lives without much fuss. He worked in the fields. He took the tesserae his family needed to put food on the table. He did his best not to stand out. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was the best he could hope for.

Nirel glanced around at the crowd. There were a few whispered voices, but most of the older teenagers were silent. They all knew how this went. A speech. Two names. Names that would be spoken with hope for about a week or so, and then forgotten not long after the tributes were dead. There were always more where those two children had come from.

And compared to the number who died every year from things just as bad as – albeit less dramatic than – the Games, two more kids just weren't worth making much of a fuss over to anyone except their families. And even the families would move on before long. Was losing a child to the Games really any worse than losing them to hunger or a field accident or the whim of a Peacekeeper? No, death was simply a part of life in Eleven, and it was best to just accept it and move on.

Aloe Brittle, 13
District Twelve

"Shouldn't you be at the reaping?"

Aloe whirled around, startled. The cat she had been following ran back into the house, taking its pretty bow along with it. That was what she'd been after, and she'd almost coaxed the cat into letting her get close enough. Aloe glared up at the figure in front of her. "What'd you do that for? I almost had it!"

The man cocked his head. "What'd you want with the cat?"

"What's it to you?"

"It's my cat."

Oh. Aloe glanced around, suddenly aware of where she was. She'd been so focused on following the cat that she hadn't realized…

"How'd you get in here, anyway?" District Twelve's younger Victor, Prometheus, asked.

Aloe rolled her eyes. "I appeared in a puff of smoke. How do you think? I climbed the fence."

Prometheus nodded. "You still haven't answered my question. What'd you want with my cat?"

"The bow." No point in lying, really.

"Why?"

"Are you always so nosy?" Aloe snapped. The truth was, she was going to trade it. Kids traded things all the time – for trinkets or scraps of food. But damned if she was going to tell him that. Why'd he care so much about his cat's bow, anyway? He could always have gotten her another one.

Prometheus shrugged. "Sometimes pays to be nosy. It's kept me alive more than once."

Aloe said nothing. Tricking people had kept him alive in the Games, and she had to respect that a bit, but that didn't mean she could trust him. "Wait here," Prometheus instructed, and headed towards his house.

As soon as his back was turned, however, Aloe bolted – through the yard and back over the fence. It wasn't even much of a fence, really. If they were trying to keep people out, they weren't doing a very good job of it. Still, it was best not to stick around, and she was supposed to be at the reaping.

Aloe slowed down as she neared the square. Would they even notice if she wasn't? Her own parents barely noticed when she was home and when she wasn't. She and her father sometimes left little trinkets and notes for each other around the house, but that was about it. She'd been able to slip out this morning without anyone noticing; they had probably already arrived at the reaping without her.

Aloe shoved her hands into her pockets as she joined the crowd. The reaping hadn't even started yet. Still, all she had to do was wait maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, and she could get back to doing … well, whatever she wanted, really. No one ever seemed to care enough to stop her.

All right, that's our last batch of tributes! Thanks to all who submitted.

One last quick thing before the reapings: Since we've already got some potentially plot-relevant district tokens floating around (most notably Percy here), I've added some token-related options (losing, finding, stealing...) to the simulator. If you included a district token in your form, I'll be adding those to the tribute page on the website. If you didn't and would like to pick something, let me know; otherwise I'll fill in the gaps myself.