I got this done just for you all since I work today until Sunday.


Fleur Laveau- District Eleven female (18)

Strike first. Strike decisively.


Alysanne Audren- District Six female (15)

"I'm gonna go get some water," I said as I stood up. For this Arena the Gamemakers hadn't put water in the Cornucopia, opting instead to leave a water fountain by the elevator.

"Hey, wait," Tulsi said. She sat up and reached out, her fingers just snagging an empty canteen. She held it out toward me. "Bring some back for me?"

"Lazy," I teased as I took the canteen. I walked over to the water fountain and drank some of the cold, clean water, thinking back to middle school when some idiot kid would stick some gum on the mouthpiece and everyone would go around talking about who definitely had herpes now.

I was filling up the canteen when I heard a click. I looked up and saw it was the smoke detector just as it went off.

There's no smoke here-

It was the luckiest moment of my life that I looked down to screw the top onto the canteen. The water hit the back of my neck and I felt a bubbling burning like I'd spilled bleach into a cut. An instant later the pain erupted all over my skin. It was like I was entirely covered in fire. The canteen bounced off my foot as I dropped it. I slammed my hand into the water fountain bar and scooped water over my head. It smeared the burning around but didn't stop it. I screamed as water kept pouring out and dousing me with pain.

It all happened so quickly I barely registered what I was doing as I did it. I looked around for anything, anything that would stop it and my eyes fell on a fire extinguisher. I had no idea what chemicals were on me or what chemicals were in the extinguisher but there was a chance and I took it. In that moment I didn't even care if they made it worse and killed me. Anything to stop the pain.

I tore the extinguisher from the wall and turned the hose on myself, yanking the trigger. A cold sheet of foam enveloped me and like a blanket over a fire the burning stopped. I stood there sobbing and laughing and coughing as I inhaled foam.

I wasn't sure how long after that I registered that I could still hear screaming. I wiped foam out of my eyes and my mouth fell open when I saw Tulsi. She was crawling down the corridor of cubicles opposite me toward the first doorway, trying to reach a desk. Her limbs were covered in open pink streaks. That's so much of her... so much of her insides were nakedly visible, marked out even more by the brown of her skin.

I was frozen. A Career shouldn't freeze but I wasn't a real Career and even one of them would freeze at a time like this. The human in me wanted to run to her and help but the mortal in me could not force my body to move when it might mean the foam keeping me alive would slough off. So I got the worst of both worlds as I watched another human die.


Tulsi Sa- District Four female (17)

I hadn't cried in years. Crying was for children or because something really broke your heart and neither of those applied to me. But I lay on the floor sobbing as my arms started to fail after my legs already had. Not because of the pain or my oncoming death. Because it wasn't fair.

I trained for everything. I was the best. I earned this. And now I was going to die because someone halfway across the Arena, someone I couldn't fight and someone I couldn't even identify, had cheated. This wasn't fair. I couldn't fight something that tore my body apart just by touching it. I was dying and there was no hope I could do anything about it. All I could do was lie down and die. That was what brought me to tears. Salty tears that ran into the weeping trenches carved into my skin and stung all the more.


Dionysus Bacchus- District One male (17)

Charybdis' head was hidden by the ceiling tiles as she searched yet another crawlspace. She lowered herself down and was about to say what she'd found- nothing, obviously, since she hadn't reacted- when the fire alarm by her head clicked.

Is this a fire drill? Flashed through my head.

Charybdis turned to look at the knob hanging down from the ceiling right next to her. "Hey, wh-" she started. She was cut short when water blasted her in the face. She was the opposite of dramatic so I was surprised when she screamed. Then an instant later I was screaming too.

Oh my god what is this what is it

Pressurized water shot all over me and covered me in pure pain. Charybdis fell backwards and knocked into me. Her shoulder caught mine and pushed me back with her as she fell off the desk. She hit the ground first and the impact dazed her. I landed on top of her and was shielded from the floor but took the brunt of the water for the second before I twisted myself onto the stomach and started crawling toward the desk. The water burned a long streak down my back before I could get under it and curl myself in so I was protected from the rain.

Once I was shielded I peeked out from crossed arms at Charybdis. I wished I hadn't. Her face was peeling away from itself. Flesh hung from her. My mind turned away after starting to process that it looked like she had a beard made of skin strips. Vomit rose in my throat and I looked away. My own agony and fear was more than enough to occupy my thoughts.


Charybdis Kincaid- District Two female (18)

There was no reason to live. This time it wasn't my depression clouding my thoughts and cutting me off from the joys life could bring. There actually was no reason to live. Not with this pain and the scars even the Capitol couldn't entirely heal and what I would look like if I lived. And I wouldn't even know what I looked like, since I'd taken the acid straight into my eyes. Blinded, hideous, in constant pain... there was no reason to try to reach the desk. Even if I did I wasn't sure I would live. I might just linger for hours before finally finding an end to the pain. Better to just take it all in a few searing minutes and be done with everything.

Don't let them put my death as suicide, I prayed to I didn't know who as I lay dying. I did not kill myself. I was murdered. I just chose not to draw it out.


Dionysus Bacchus- District One male (17)

I cried when I heard the cannon. Charybdis wasn't hurting anymore and while I was sad she wasn't alive I wasn't really sad she had died after what the alternative would have been. And I knew that alternative firsthand because I was living it. I wasn't getting rained on anymore but the water already on my skin kept boring its way relentlessly into my flesh. Careers had experience with enduring pain but I had no frame of reference for the agony I was in. The only way to prepare for it would have been to inject bleach into my veins. Writhing, pulsating, wriggling agony like acid maggots in my skin made me wish I had died instead of Charybdis. I cried and shuddered on the floor and above all else prayed it didn't get in my eyes.

At some point I noticed my skin felt cooler. I felt almost cold, like the room's temperature had dropped suddenly. I looked at my arm in front of my face and noticed how pale my skin was against the angry red of the chemical burns. I was panting with pain and fatigue but at least the acid hadn't gotten into my mouth or into my lungs. Beads of sweat stood out against my skin. I wondered if they were washing away the acid or if the salt in them just made it worse. I couldn't really tell anymore, since I was starting to dissociate. I knew everything hurt. I was just starting to feel it less.

Why does my chest hurt? Am I having a heart attack, too? Just what I need. I lay curled on my side, drawing in heaving breaths as the world kept getting less important. Charybdis' body lay where she had died, her face still facing me. She started to blur and I prayed I wasn't starting to hallucinate. I couldn't imagine what a crazed mind could do to something already so horrible.

I'm out of the rain. It doesn't hurt anymore. My body is probably just shutting down the nerves to keep me from going insane. I'm just going to stay still and rest awhile so it can start healing.

I shouldn't have volunteered for the Games.


Lacey Weaver- District Eight female (18)

"Is the building on fire?" Jacquard asked. In a stroke of irony we were squished into a washing machine in the building's custodial laundry room and we'd just heard the fire alarm go off.

"I don't think so," I said. I pushed the lid up a tiny crack and peeked out. When I didn't see any Careers I opened it a crack more and stuck my hand out.

"Ouch!" I said, yanking it back in.

"Is it hot?" Jacquard asked.

"No, it's acid, I think," I said, looking at my hand and the angry little red spot where the drop had hit.

"Someone put acid in the fire alarm water?" Jacquard asked.

"Someone put acid in the fire alarm water," I agreed, wondering about it to myself. Whoever it was, they had all of our thanks. Whether or not they'd meant to they'd made the perfect tailored strike against the Careers. All the outliers were hiding and all the Careers were out hunting. In my time working in the textile factories I'd handled a few chemical-heavy substances- lye, some artificial cleaners, certain components of synthetic fibers. In nearly all cases they were much harder on soft organic matter than on prepared artificial substances like refined metals or plastic. Even looking out at the room I could see the proof. There were little spots on the linoleum floor that were discoloring from the water but there were no large holes or scorched marks. All the outliers hiding in or under objects would be largely unscathed. It was only the hunters who would get burned.


Arroyo Cardoso- District Four male (17)

I looked down the air duct that opened out into the roof of the building. Quarla and I had headed upward in the hunt and now we were out on the open rooftop looking through the scant hiding places in case some Tribute was dumb enough to hide up there. There was no one in the vent and I walked toward the edge of the roof to take a break.

I wasn't super scared of heights but it was a little unnerving to be fifty stories up with nothing but a concrete railing stopping me from going all the way down much faster than I'd come up. I peeked over the side and saw the tiny street and the other buildings and even what looked like a few parked cars. I had a feeling they were all just holograms and we were in the only real building. It was still a pretty cool view.

"Anyone down there?" Quarla joked darkly.

"Nah, just some cars and stuff," I said. As I took my arm off the railing to turn around a cannon went off. Quarla and I both turned to look, as if we could see the dead person just by looking at where the sound had come from, and another one went off as we were still turning.

"Someone got lucky," I said.

"And someone else didn't," Quarla said.

"Wonder if they got a pair of allies," I said.

"There aren't really many more places to look up here," Quarla said.

"I'll check that box over there and then I think we're good," I said, pointing at what looked to be an electrical hub that couldn't hide anyone but might theoretically have been hollow. It turned out to not be hollow. I waved at Quarla, who was peeking into the same air vent I'd already looked into, and we headed for the staircase.

Another cannon went off just as I was about to grab the doorknob. Wow, they're really on fire down there.


Okay so in real life it wouldn't be nearly that fast or nearly that severe. It also wouldn't be nearly as good a story so I may have bent a few rules. In my defense those were like SUPER concentrated bottles.

17th place: Tulsi Sa- acid rain

Surprise! Tulsi was actually sent as a red herring. I wouldn't have done this otherwise. I try to give "cool" characters like that a chance to be cool before I kill them because it just seems anticlimactic otherwise even if it is sometimes realistic. But since Tulsi was designed precisely to surprisingly die I got to use her for this! And she DID get a cool moment, I guess, since she fought Vulpes. But now the biggest threat in the Arena is gone just like that. Now the mice will play... anyway thanks PrinceofCorinth for sending in a red herring and paving the way for max drama.

16th place: Charybdis Kincaid- acid rain

I knew I wanted to kill a lot of Careers early so I went through my list and picked all I could bear to get rid of. To be brutally honest Charybdis was at a huge disadvantage with her severe and untreated mental illness and probably wouldn't have won anyway so I did it quick instead of letting her pine away in angst until she eventually died. Even her form noted that was a likely outcome for her. So I did it here because sometimes the system fails people and no one wins, most of all the people they failed. Thanks SparkaLeah for a sad but sometimes morbidly realistic young woman.

15th place: Dionysus Bacchus- acid rain

It was either Dionysus or Arroyo so you can see how that ended up. I liked Dionysus and his realization that he needed to get his head out of his butt. Tragically it came after he'd volunteered for the Games and that's a mistake Panemian culture pressures children into and the children bear all of the consequences. He was on his way up but the Careers aren't the only people who want to live and someone else who'd had their head on right for years was too far ahead of him. Dionysus was a last-minute Tribute whipped up for me super quick to help me out so thanks for that, person I forgot to write down because I started writing his POV so fast.

And just like that the Career alliance is decimated on the first day. I decided to use this story as a whole to take some less conventional paths and explore things that don't usually happen in SYOTs. Hence I killed some people in the Bloodbath I normally wouldn't have and now we have far fewer Careers than we normally would at this point. We shall see what happens next in what I admit will be more of a bizarro episode in my SYOT career.