TEAM 13 : DAY 1

The Arena

Mayhem

When the gong struck every tribute burst into action. That was typical—it had been years, decades, so long that the Games reruns had gone off the air, since they'd done anything different.

Everything else, however, was different.

Team 11, for instance, spent no time turning on their District 1 and 2 teammates. Teams 12 and 14 were similarly quick to jump at those exact same members.

"If you have to kill them, do." Team 13 had explained to them, had indicated in whispers and unrelated words and grins. "We prefer prisoners, though." In truth they preferred no deaths. In truth they were too used to the bodies of dead children to expect anything different.

As the other three youngest teams were busy fully committing themselves to the Alliance, Teams 16, 17, and 18 went a different route.

They went on the attack.

This, ostensibly, made sense. Of course, it probably would have made a hell of a lot more sense if they'd chosen a specific team to target. Instead the twenty-four split up, charging after just about everyone younger than 16 without any visible plan in mind. (This might have been a little bit of an unfair characterization, given that they were under the impression that their opponents would be doing the same and they'd be winning by might alone, but still.) The largest portion of each Team went after what they seemed to see as the largest targets, though—Team 13. After several seconds, several heartbeats running in every direction and noticing that that was not, in fact, how the younger teams were behaving, the rest of the older Teams realized the brilliance of such an action and turned on the leaders of the Alliance too.

Meanwhile Team 15 did what probably seemed to be the smartest move of them all—they ran into their personal cornucopia to collect weapons.

Team 13 didn't do that.

Of course, Team 13 didn't need to do that.

Because, after all, not every member of Teams 16, 17, and 18 were trying to attack them.

As Teams 11, 12, and 14 did little to pretend they were doing anything other than infighting, Hermione, Angelina, and Ron had decided on a different tactic for the older Alliance tributes:

The first of Team 18 had only just arrived in front of Team 13 (Calvus, District 12's Team 18 member) when District 4's Herve tackled him from behind.

Organza—T18D1—barely had time to react when Inis and Udela, from 12 and 8 respectively, did the same to her.

Around them something similar happened with the other older Teams.

But that was only step one.

Behind the battle centered around Team 13 were the youngest teams, who had already pinned down their non-Alliance members (with only one cannon, too—in itself odd as typically cannons were held back until fighting in the clearing stopped) and then begun sprinting into the other cornucopias, shoving everything into Team 11's.

Team 15, on the other hand, had taken off entirely, fleeing into the surrounding rainforest after cleaning out their own cornucopia.

No team—not 11, 12, 14, or 15, held any weapons. Team 13 noticed that out of the corner of their eyes, but that was to be expected; Draco had been quite thorough in his notes.

So, thankfully, for about half of the tributes the fighting seemed to have stopped, at least for a little while.

Except for Team 13. Except for Team 16, 17, and 18. For them the battle wasn't yet over.

Organza snarled, throwing off Inis and Udela only to run straight into Team 17's Aart and, more specifically, his fist.

Roman dove into the fray too, single-handedly keeping the attention of Julius as every other opponent had at least two alliance members on them.

Between them all the Gryffindor chasers darted around. They didn't so much straight-forwardly attack anyone as keep them of balance, targeting legs and shoving punches out of the way and disappearing into the rest of the battle before any true retaliation could be put into action.

Ginny, far to the right of her youngest brother, understood her role as the central target of Organza and Marvel, and she stood between the two of them, keeping their attention as much of the rest of their Team swarmed around them and kept them just too far to do any damage to the girl they couldn't take their eyes off of, that they'd become maddened with rage against.

Neville, Fred, and Oliver went straight for fighting. They really were some of the most athletic Team 13 had to offer, and there was no reason not to use it. Besides that, two of them had had rather a penchant for physical violence during the war—Neville had gotten a sword, some months into the conflict, which was shockingly effective against very specific targets, while Oliver had spent years hovering between goals and catching whizzing leather balls with only his own strength as support; if there was close combat to be done, he was the one doing it.

Fred… not so much.

But Fred hadn't exactly spent the past 13 years doing nothing.

Fred (and George beside him) had spent the past 13 years volunteering for every kind of work imaginable, hunting all the game they could find, wrestling with themselves and other boys…

In a world ruled by the Games they'd known they needed to be prepared, and now Fred was using that preparation, as he tried to ignore his girlfriend grinning savagely at a victim out of the corner of his eye.

That said, not every member had the physical might for it to make sense to put them in the fight. Percy, Hermione, and Luna wasted no time in shifting to the Team 11 cornucopia; while the latter assessed resources (Draco hadn't been particularly specific about what they would have access to), Hermione addressed battle wounds—she'd developed an 'interest' in triage medicine two years before—and Luna resecured prisoners, knowing all too well the inherent torture in being so helpless and not wanting to unnecessarily add to it.

Above it all, literally, was Harry.

Harry had spent the most time of all of them with the younger members. He'd been good at that, in his past life. It had taken practice—initially he considered himself rather bunk at the role—but he knew best what his fellow classmates would be up against, and so he'd trained them as Dumbledore's Army and then he'd trained them as Britain's Army.

And then he'd trained children—children so young that in the past war they would have only been trained, would have been kept as far from the frontlines as possible—in how to deal with blood splattering across your face, with wounds cutting deep into your thigh, with adrenaline coursing through your system and enemies on every sign.

Now, finally in the arena, he perched above the conflict, desperately wanting to interfere but perfectly aware of the danger of overplaying his hand, and shouted out brief words instead—affirmations, encouragements, reminders, and anything else that seemed necessary; sometimes all the fighter wanted to know was that they were still fighting, still winning.

(That was a part of it, too, his position; he had a reputation for being the weakest, and so if he fought it would seem as if all was over. That he could be easily seen, then, was a sign to both sides: The Alliance had nothing to worry about.)

The first half hour of the arena was hard.

The worst of it, each and every Team 13 member thought, was that they couldn't even go all out—they didn't want to win, they wanted the older Careers to flee.

It was a difficult thing, getting your opposition to do what you wanted them too. A constant play of too obvious versus too inconspicuous, too blatant versus too unnoticeable.

It was a breath of fresh air for all involved when the eleven not in the Alliance finally broke, finally turned the other way and disappeared into the surrounding rainforest.

Much of Team 13 and the turncoats from 16, 17, and 18 followed them for some time, making sure they really were leaving, before circling back to the camp.

And then Ron, as Roman, stepped forward.

"We have survived the first minutes!" He shouted, gazing about at the 63 Alliance members and five prisoners who surrounded him. "We have survived! Only two deaths—Marcia, the fourteen-year-old from my own District and a non-alliance member, and Tahki, our eighteen-year-old from District 10 who will be dearly missed!

But the fight is not over yet! Out there—in the rest of the arena—remain the entirety of Team 15! Out there lie our greatest threats, Team 18's Organza, Calvius, Jago, Gerald, Maryse, and Derian, from 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7, as well as Team 17's Marvel, Julius, Adelita, Amara, and Tayte, from 1, 2, 3, 5, and 7 and Team 16's Phenom, Jovian, and Heidi, from 1, 2, and 5.

Technically, they are bigger, stronger, and faster than us. Not only that, but I've just been informed that no weapons were provided—we will have to rely wholly on sponsor gifts and our bare hands, and Districts 1 and 2—none of which are part of this Alliance, besides myself and Tourmaline—have always been Capitol favorites.

But we—we 63—we have the advantage of numbers, of planning, of what few tools the Gamekeepers have gifted us! We have the advantage!"

The crowd around him cheered back.

In truth, none of what he said was particularly accurate.

The largest fib was that about their greatest threat to their immediate survival, which was not in the arena at all.

Over the next ten days they needed to keep the games interesting enough, fascinating enough, that the Capitol did not force deaths to occur. They needed to make the Games—the Centennial Censure—enough of a spectacle to be entertaining without them.

Despite less than an hour having passed since their entrance, they hadn't been idle.

Their first gift—if one wanted to call it that—was Draco's message: the Games were meant to be long.

With two days per biome and eight biomes to cycle through, the Gamekeepers clearly wanted enough entertainment to last at least the next two weeks—which meant as many tributes alive as possible.

For the next several days, at least, they would likely be allowed to plan in relative peace.

That wasn't enough, but when combined with their other entertainments—the hidden turncoats within Team 15, the romance between Fred and Alicia, the prisoners and their possible purpose, as well as just doing things never seen in an arena before—when combined, ideally, they'd make it through with every single one of the now ninety-four children in the arena alive.

Or, at least, as close to that number as possible.

For now, however, it was time to be boring and hope the actions of those outside the clearing were enough.

And then the Alliance turned to what was provided.

Ron was right; the Capitol was clearly intending this to be the year for sponsors and, as such, next to nothing was actually put in any of the cornucopias. There were a few masks, some water bottles with filters, and a couple other similarly helpful items, but nothing in sufficient quantities to even supply one Team and nothing remotely offensive.

Another cannon was heard, ricocheting across the sky, and as one the Alliance tributes paused.

No cannons followed.

Three tributes dead.

Ninety-three alive.

Ten days.

And, of course, their two hopes outside the arena: Draco and George.

Ten days.