Ferrari Benz- District Six female

My parents always hated it when I swore. It was kind of funny since my father was a trucker. My mom said before I was born he used to swear like a sailor. Once I came around he was a different person. He quit his job since Mom made more money and stayed home doing most of the childcare and cleaning. Sometimes when he got really mad he'd swear and if he found out I heard he'd get all embarrassed and apologize. It all seemed silly to me. They're just words.

Except when they weren't. There was a visceral magic to swear words. The word and meaning didn't matter. It was solely the fact that they were taboo. Saying them felt more real than other words. It was more violent and emotional. There was no other word that carried the power and force I needed to express my anger and pain. I didn't know how it worked but I actually felt less tired after saying something profane. I'd started out by just saying one and before I knew it I was almost chanting them like some x-rated mantra. It probably had something to do with how it regulated my breathing and could have been any word. I just chose the dirty ones because I was pissed.

Katrina politely pretended she couldn't hear my whispered blue streak. She was almost hopping by this point on her sore leg but she was still going. Most of us were almost hopping. We kept shifting our stance from one blistered, screaming portion of our feet to another, trying to find a pain-free spot that didn't exist. That was another thing the swearing helped. Happiness is hard to force but anger is easy. I could blot out every other emotion and pour everything into how violently I said an angry word.

I sensed Katrina falling behind me and opened my squinted eyes. She was ten feet behind me, her face white and her hands pressing her sore leg as she tottered toward me like a toddler who didn't know how to walk. She sobbed and fell to her good side as I doubled back.

"What's wrong?" I asked. By the side of the road a Peacekeeper started calling out her third warning.

"I can't," she wailed. "It hurt so much. I think it's broken." She buried her face in her hands and hunched over to wait for death.

I grabbed her arm and pulled upwards. "Come on," I said.

She hung from my arm. "I can't walk," she said.

"But I can."

Elara Angelo- District Twelve female

Looked like Ferrari was about to stay with Katrina just like Fable and Jessie. She ignored her third warning and tugged up on Katrina. She bent over and I was starting to wonder what exactly she was doing when she snaked an arm between Katrina's legs and threw the girl up on her shoulders. She sagged under the weight and took a swaying step forward.

Titian stood up from the lounge chair he'd set up on the roof of one of the tanks, almost knocking his umbrella off the side in his haste. "Hey!" he yelled.

"What?!" Ferrari screamed at him from underneath Katrina's dangling body.

"Shoot her!" Titian screamed, pointing at Katrina.

"Is she going three miles an hour?!" Ferrari's voice cut through the air like a siren. "Fucking IS SHE?!"

Titian swung a fist in the air like the cartoon representation of a tantruming todder. "No interference!" he screamed, his voice thin and reedy.

"Am I slowing her down?!" Ferrari asked. "Am I interfering with her ability to go three miles an hour?!"

Ferrari seemed incapable of fear. I didn't have that handicap and I was afraid for her. I wanted to win and I hoped everyone else around me died but the way Titian looked at Ferrari froze my blood. I saw again what I had seen when he gunned down Alinta. Titian had never been the comically violent maniac Panem had seen him as. Titian was a monster wearing the skin of an entertainer. Serial killer, spree killer, child killer, mass murderer. He'd wormed his way into a society that valued his talents and flashed his homicidal obsession like a VIP pass to the heart of the Hunger Games where he would have free reign. He was a snarling animal bound by human conventions only because by taking advantage of them he had all of Panem at his disposal. Ferrari had no fear of him and that was the only thing he could hate with as much venom as his love for suffering.

Titian settled into himself. His eyes were stormy as he sat back in his chair looking darkly at Ferrari. For the moment the cage held. He contented himself to watch her slowly die.

Short chapter this time since it kind of fit the flow best.