Cato was the first to arrive at the wreckage of what had once been the supply dump. Crates and containers scattered about, other items burning or reduced to ashes. Their tents were torn down by the blast wave, and most of the weapons not on their persons were damaged or broken entirely.

He'd ran back hoping they'd killed someone with the mines, but the actual truth was far worse. Someone had done something to get their whole camp messed up bad, no doubt trying to even the odds against a pack of trained killers.

Then it struck him: those mines weren't placed to destroy their camp and supplies, no? They only should've been placed to protect, not destroy as if suicide. Orson must've been planning to blow us up eventually, after we killed the others for him. No surprise there, but he needs to be taught a lesson. He's outlived his usefulness anyways. Cato turned to the boy from 3. "What the fuck just happened?"

"I-I don't know-"

Cato easily batted away the spear in those shaking hands, then grabbed the boy's head and gave it a hard twist in frustration. Just like that, Orson was dead.

But Cato's rage didn't end there. He began taking it out on everything – the empty crates, the broken weapons, even the Cornucopia by throwing debris at it. He was shouting at the top of his lungs, banging a dented hard plastic box into the metal wall of the Cornucopia over and over, as if that would bring the supplies back.

Marvel and Clove ignored it at first, deciding their energy was better spent salvaging anything of use in the wreckage. They managed to find some blankets, maybe two days worth of food at best, two pairs of night goggles, and empty canteens for water. They'd need to go back to the lake and replenish their water supply, assuming the Gamemakers hadn't poisoned it or worse.

"Only one cannon," Marvel mentioned. "I'll bet it was for Orson. That means whoever did this is alive somewhere. Fuck, we were played for fools."

The only fools in this arena have just earned a painful death, thought Clove. And they're not us. Not yet.

Cato was still tearing things apart when Marvel and Clove decided they'd salvaged all they could from the rubble. Clove began to turn towards her district partner, when Marvel shook his head. "That might get you killed right now."

"But you'd want that, no?" Maybe the Career alliance was about to be broken up for good.

"Just saying. I wouldn't touch him with a ten foot spear if I were you. But you know him better than I do." He shook his head again and looked in a burnt box for anything of use.

Clove approached Cato slowly, trying not to give him a reason to keep being angry. "Hey, we need to find what we can in-"

"I fucking knew it!" He was so close to her that his spittle was getting on her face. She had just finished wiping it off when he revealed something in his hand: a silver arrow, one that had once belonged to Glimmer. "Fire Bitch. She's the only one who could've gotten Glimmer's weapons."

"How?" asked Clove. "How'd she blow it up?"

"I don't know. All I know is that she fucking did this somehow and she's going to fucking pay for it!" He picked up another crate and tossed it against the Cornucopia with a roar.

Clove resisted the urge to shake her head. "Look, we'll get her, and make her suffer while doing it. But we need to gather what we can and keep moving. She or Thresh will smell blood in the water if they saw you like this, getting upset over the supplies. To them, it looks pathetic and weak."

"But-"

"Enough buts. We'll get through this and one of us will still win. Let's go find something in the explosion that bitch couldn't take from us, no?"

Cato took a minute to take some deep breaths. In the past few years, the Careers always had the supplies for the whole game. Always. To have it taken away from them just like that – to him, it was so fucking unfair. Why did Katniss Everdeen have to volunteer anyways? She was only delaying the inevitable now.

Eventually, he calmed down and set to seeing if any of the trash still held anything of value. Not for long though. Someone could've planned an ambush.

Later, they set themselves up with the surviving supplies near the lake/river. They needed the water, given how all the water bottles they had had been blown up, and with three of them still alive it was doable for an alternate camping site.

The meager food rations they'd gathered wouldn't last them for long, when counting for three hungry mouths. Marvel volunteered to go out and collect some animals for their supper while Clove and Cato were left at the stream. Cato paced about, looking like he was going to kill someone very soon if something didn't happen.

"Still pissed about the mines?" Clove asked him.

"Of course I'm fucking pissed about that. It was fucking bullshit and it never should've happened." He stomped his foot in the ground hard.

"So am I, Cato. So am I. But what's done is done and all we can do is kill the rest of those bastards." She turned around, her feet dangling off the ledge. "You need to take your mind off of it."

"And how exactly should I do that?"

"Got any tall tales or fun stories?" She knew most of them, having been one of his closest friends at the academy. But recounting that would pass the time more easily than just a regular watch.

He got up and joined her, side by side. "Remember the time that Drusilla thought she had you bested in the hatchet competition a year ago?"

She remembered that one well, and they started talking about it. While Clove's specialty was throwing knives, she also knew how to throw other projectile weapons, and the trainers that year decided she'd enter the semi-casual hatchet competition. It worked largely the same as the yearly knife contests, except she had to throw the small axes as accurately as she would her little blades, on a regular basis.

Thus half the time that year that would've normally been spent on knife practice was instead spent on learning axes and throwing the small ones as bullseyes. She struggled at first, as throwing an ax was entirely different than throwing a dagger. Drusilla, by comparison, had chosen to specialize in hatchets since the age of eleven, and could cut people up with them by the age of thirteen.

The other girl hadn't yet learned to throw them, however, and had taken a crash course in that the same year Clove was. Most of the facility and trainers thought that Drusilla would rank higher than Clove in the competition, given her familiarity with the weapon. It was like comparing Clove and Drusilla at knives.

Clove tried her best however, and could hit reasonably enough targets when the day came, getting a few good targets. She missed a few, however, and didn't have much faith in herself when it was Drusilla's turn to go. She was sure that Drusilla had a much higher score that day – until the scoresheet was released, and both of them were tied for third place.

"How's that possible?" Drusilla had asked, shocked that anyone could come close to besting her in her chosen weapon.

"Must be luck," Clove had replied with a smirk. "Or talent. Who knows these days."

It was only the presence of a few Peacekeeper trainers that kept the two girls from getting into a catfight that day. It was all Clove could talk about with Cato the walk home. Although she didn't win (the winner was a girl named Ricarda going to Peacekeeper officer school after graduation from the academy), she could take pride in proving herself a match for Drusilla, even if she never touched an ax again.

"I don't think there were any hatchets in this year's Cornucopia," Clove said, after the two of them had finished going over the whole tale.

"I don't think there's been a victor that won with hatchets anyways," Cato replied. "Mason from 7 won her games with a regular ax, and only because she played dead for several days-"

The cannon rang, catching them off guard. "Who do you think that one was?" Clove asked.

"No way of knowing till nightfall. With luck, Lover Boy. Maybe his wounds finally got to him."

She nodded, but then a few minutes later a second cannon went off. "Those have got to be connected," she surmised.

Cato shrugged his shoulders and went to setting up their sleeping quarters for the night. Without the tents, they'd be relying on a few blankets and the remains of one of the sleeping bags. A suitable fire location was discovered and created, as they doubted anyone else would ambush them with one person on guard all the time.

Cato thought about the remaining competition. Lover Boy was good as dead. He'd bet anything that at least one of the cannons was for him. Too high a chance, even if there was a second cannon right after the first. Maybe Thresh had gotten to him?

Speaking of Thresh, where was that ox of a boy? He'd not been seen ever since the first day, running towards the only field without trees in the area. Earlier, the Career pack had decided that they could hunt him later, given his reluctance to fight. Maybe Thresh's goal was to outwait everyone else and pick off whoever was left after a week or so.

That was definitely the plan of the girl from 5 as well. She didn't have Thresh's raw strength but a knack for surviving and staying hidden until absolutely necessary. She hadn't been spotted since that one raid, but Cato could've sworn she was digging through the rubbish of the wrecked supplies after the Careers had finished salvaging what they could. He wasn't too worried about her unless she found a weapon, however.

That night, he rationed what was left of their food, trying to make it stretch as long as possible. He'd just finished putting out Marvel's percentage in a pile when the night's fallen tributes showed up in the sky. And sure enough, Marvel was one of them.

"Guess that explains why he never came back this evening," Cato muttered. He and Clove had been wondering where the boy from 1 had gone. Clove almost believed he'd decided to ditch the Careers from 2 and head out on his own, with so few tributes remaining, but the truth was much different.

The second fallen tribute was Rue, the girl from 11 who'd somehow gotten a score of 7. "Think their deaths might be related?"

"Possible," replied Clove. "I'll bet she was working with Katniss. Fire Girl had a soft spot for her during training. Maybe Marvel ran into them and decided he could kill two birds with one stone."

"Or one spear." That earned a laugh from Clove. Did Katniss really have the arrows from Glimmer? Did she know any archery? They hadn't seen her do too much at training, but what they did see were bullseyes. Maybe that was how she got the eleven? No, one skill alone couldn't cut it.

As before, they slept in shifts. Cato went first. Sometimes, when he was sure she was fast asleep, he'd take off the night vision goggles and give her a quick kiss on the forehead or cheek.

The next day was spent hunting, but animals rather than tributes. Even with Marvel's extra rations, they'd be stretching their food by a lot of they didn't have anything else to go with it.

The morning was used for trying their luck in the trees. Between the two of them they found a couple of rabbits and some non-poisonous berries to supplement it. Cato had never eaten rabbit before, but Clove assured him it wasn't deadly, and did most of the work of skinning and chopping up the small animals with her array of knives.

Cato tried fishing instead. That couldn't be too hard using a sword instead of a trident, no? It ended up being harder than it looked, and he got maybe three fish in an hour's worth of standing by the stream and stabbing anything that looked like it was moving.

Much of this looked like it was going to be eaten raw, or at least without any real flavor. The fire they had was kept burning for most of the day to ensure they could cook their newfound meat supply to a degree, but Cato found himself longing for the MREs. He'd hated the times at the academy they gave him and the other students nothing but MRE crap to eat, but now he'd do anything to get one or two for the coming days.

"So it's just us now," he said to Clove that evening, picking out fish bones from his teeth. "We're the only careers left. I wonder which of us goes out first."

"We're not going out on their terms. The only person who gets to kill me would be you."

"I know I told you that earlier, but… it just feels bad, you know. Killing your district partner. Marina said that it was looked down upon by most of the other districts."

"Screw that. If I have to go out, I'd rather it be done by someone who I know and care about rather than that Fire Girl or that Thresh kid. Both of them would probably make it painful for me."

"As if you wouldn't do the same to them?" asked Cato with a grin.

"Maybe." She grinned back at him. "If I could get away with it, sure. Give everyone a good show. The girl from 12 especially, she's been on my nerves. God, I hated those tracker jacker stings."

"Maybe I should let you have her-"

They were interrupted by a loud voice that seemed to encompass the entire arena. Claudius Templesmith was making an announcement to those who were left:

"Attention tributes. Attention. The regulations requiring a single victor has been suspended. From now on, two victors may be crowned if both originate from the same district. This will be the only announcement."

They had to take a moment to take it in. Each of them were thinking the same thing: we can both go home. We can both be Victors.

All the talk about one of them having to put down the other - irrelevant now.

"They did that for 12," Cato said dismissively. "They're trying to raise their hopes up-"

He was interrupted by the feeling of Clove grabbing onto him and making out with a passion he hadn't felt from her in days. He responded in kind, enjoying it before breaking off and yelling, "What was that for?"

"Dummy. One of us doesn't have to die anymore. Both of us will go home as Victors. That's worth celebrating." Her arms were tight around him, gripping suggestively. "Turns out both of us volunteering the same year was a good thing after all."

"We got lucky. Like I said, that rule change was to appease the sponsors for 12."

"And we can still celebrate that it benefits us as well." She eyed something behind her. "That bush. Now."

"Clove, are you sure that'll prevent the Capital clowns from getting a free show?"

"Fuck the Capitol. You're all I want tonight." She got up off of him, and walked to the bush. It was high enough to where they could lay down, and provided semi-privacy. "You coming, meathead?"

He shook his head and smiled. "Oh, alright Clovey. Just for you." Then he picked her up, and threw her into the clearing, him following not far behind.

No idea how much the hatchet competition story sounds when reading it. It's kind of filler and I don't know if it's any good, but I do have plans to use Drusilla (and some of their other classmates from the academy) later down the road.