Ember Steiner- District Two female
"What do you have to get home for?" I asked Elara. "Other than just not dying."
"You think you're the only one with a family?" Elara asked. She wasn't accusing, just mournful. "My parents watch me die over and over just like yours. And my little brother. But he's not really my little brother anymore."
That was something none of us knew how to recognize. To be a resurrection Games regular was to be outside of time. That wasn't something human comprehension was prepared for. If I'd won my first Hunger Games I would have children almost as old as I currently felt. I still felt like I was eighteen years old and the world hadn't changed around me. Every time I saw my father it was like a bizarre parallel universe. But this was the real world. I was the parallel.
"Do you think they still think of us?" I asked. As children, I meant. As the same children they'd brought into the world.
"I don't think parents ever stop thinking about their children," Elara said. She looked ahead at the road like she was looking somewhere else. "What if I do win eventually but it takes me so long they're both dead? Did they bury me or did I bury them?"
Katrina Moonshadow- District Seven female
I should have told Ferrari to leave me but I didn't have the strength. Not the moral strength- I didn't have the energy left in me to raise my head and speak to her. As soon as Ferrari lifted me off the ground my body packed it in. If I tried to get down and take another step I wouldn't be able to move my legs. People can go as far as they need to if they only keep going. It's restarting once you've stopped that's impossible.
Everything still hurt. It was some unbearable cosmic joke that I was riding on Ferrari's back and my body still hurt. My ribs and stomach were pressed into her shoulder with enough force that breathing was difficult. I bounced with each step and had to brace myself against the small of her back against the feeling that I was going to tumble off. Ferrari's staggering progress under me pitched back and forward so that I could feel her pain in the motion.
It was futility. We couldn't go on this way. The rest of our lives would be measured in minutes, not hours. I'd seen the school football team doing this type of carry as a training exercise. They carried their partners for yards, not miles. Ferrari wasn't trying to stay alive. She was making a statement and she was writing it in her blood.
Elara Angelo- District Twelve
They were going to fall. Every step Ferrari took I watched for her to fall. She inched forward bowed under Katrina's weight like a weathered old crone and still she walked. Somehow she hadn't gotten her third warning. I suspected Titian had told the Peacekeepers not to give it and that she was in fact walking below the speed limit. Ember and I were both keeping pace with them and neither of us had gotten a warning either. Titian made the rules and he apparently felt free to break them.
No one could keep going carrying someone else on their back.
The day didn't matter anymore. Hours didn't matter any more. It was minutes that stood out in stark relief around Ferrari's broken silhouette. I felt seconds slide by one after another. Ten seconds and still she walked. Twenty seconds and she walked. Fifty seconds stretched into sixty. Ferrari had walked for sixty seconds carrying Katrina on her back.
No one could keep going carrying someone else on their back.
When they fell the walk would be cut in half. I would have only Ember to beat. I was certain I would get to that point but it was uncanny how long it took. It couldn't be more than ten minutes this would go on. Ferrari zigzagged sickly down the road, her legs bent under her, her feet striking the ground with such force I could see her knees shake.
No one could keep going carrying someone else on their back. Yet Ferrari was still going fifteen minutes later.
Ferrari Benz- District Six female
Titian stood up and clambered down from the tank he'd been sitting on. He said something to a Peacekeeper and then stalked out into the road.
Well well, seems I've pissed off old Tit-ian Qin, I thought. He walked up beside me with a benign smile.
"Lovely day for a walk, isn't it?" he asked. "Bit slow, though, aren't you?"
"Warning! Third warning number two!" The peacekeeper screamed at what had obviously been his cue.
"Oh, dear. Thirty seconds," Titian said, holding up a wrist to check his watch. "I suppose you'll have to drop her."
I didn't offer a snappy comeback. Truth be told I was in a lot of pain and most of my energy was going toward keeping Katrina aloft. I really didn't have time for Titian or his annoying remarks. It was a struggle to even breathe with so much weight on me. With every step I fantasized about slumping forward and letting us both hit the pavement. But instead I took another.
"Ten seconds," Titian said twenty seconds later. "Don't tell me you're really going to throw your life away. You couldn't be that stupid."
"Joke's on you," I panted. "I am that stupid." Katrina, who was barely conscious at this point, shook a little as she snickered.
Three seconds left, I thought as Titian turned to signal the Peacekeeper. You'll have to find someone else to pick on. Boo-hoo.
"Warning! Fourth warning number two!"
Katrina Moonshadow- District Seven male
It was like being on a ship. I rocked up and down on Ferrari's back, jostling sometimes as she stumbled. The world around me seemed less important with each passing second. My chest heaved as I tried to bring in air against the pressure on Ferrari's shoulders. I was probably dying, I realized. I was so tired and broken-down I was suffocating. I would have told Ferrari if I thought it would make a difference. We were going to get shot before I suffocated anyway.
"Warning! Fourth warning number two!"
Fourth warning? Titian can count, right?
"Looks like we have thirty more seconds," Titian said, his tone low and his back bent so he was at Ferrari's level. "Still want to throw it all away? Just let her fall. Let her fall right here. She'll die just hitting the pavement. And you'll be that much closer. Someone like you could win. She's dead anyway. Just let her fall.
What is even your problem? Titian was acting insanely threatened by a dying little girl. It wasn't enough that he had the power to kill us all and had killed Ferrari more than once already. He couldn't abide that she could even have a shred of empty defiance. He didn't want to kill Ferrari. He wanted to destroy her and he was pissed that was something he couldn't force.
"Fifth warning!" Titian shrieked, waving off the Peacekeeper who was about to raise his weapon. Red dots bloomed in his cheeks as his face twitched with rage. "Drop her! Do you want to die?!"
"You keep saying that like it's the worst thing possible," Ferrari croaked. Her voice wheezed like a ruptured teapot as she went on, her head still bowed and not even turned toward Titian. "I'm just sorry I have to keep looking at your face."
Titian turned and walked off the road.
Elara Angelo- District Twelve female
The peacekeeper raised his weapon after Titian spent a moment whispering to him. He aimed the rifle and shot Katrina in the head. The impact knocked Ferrari onto her side across Katrina's profusely bleeding body. Ferrari untangled herself from the body and got her legs underneath herself. As she stood up the peacekeeper shot her.
In the gut.
Ferrari fell onto her backside as a fist-sized hole exploded in her stomach. She looked down at the blood and pink strips of flesh and an inch of red tentacle-like hose that must have been a bit of intestine.
"Walk in circles!" Titian screamed, jabbing his finger at me and Ember. "I know you've been doing it so walk in circles I want you to see this!" There was a perversely humorous note in his attempt to maintain dignity while saying something so cartoonishly petty. He made a beeline for Ferrari looking every inch the shark he was.
Ferrari Benz- District Six female
The joke was on Titian. There comes a point where a body can't feel any more pain. Titian had piled torture upon torture thinking only that they'd multiply. Eventually they canceled out. It was just like the books said. When I got shot it just felt like a punch. The pain came later, after the shock wore off. But thanks to what Titian had already put me through I wasn't going to live that long.
Titian got to one knee next to me and put out a hand to shove his fingers into my stomach wound. So I spat blood in his face. He reeled back, sputtering and wiping himself.
Woah, he's gonna be really mad now. But oh, no, joke's on you. When humans near the end of their ropes there comes a point where they can choose to let go. It's much easier to access that power when you've already been forced to walk for days and also shot in the gut. So as Titian collected himself and leaned back down to do something no doubt even more terrible, I got the last laugh and died.
4th place: Katrina Moonshadow- Stress fracture
Unfortunately I have direct experience with Katrina's pain. During my hikes with the Marines it was not at all uncommon for more than half of the female Marines to be hiking on stress fractures in their hips or feet. It's a nasty sharp pain that doesn't go away unless you cut out physical activity for weeks. Once Katrina got the stress fracture it was only a matter of time before it progressed to an actual break. Katrina was beloved in her original story for her perseverance and breaking out of a possible Mary Sue origin story. I didn't anticipate this level of support for her this time but I'll file it away for future reference.
3rd place: Ferrari Benz- Died of being a badass
Ferrari has historically been unfairly judged. People disliked her silliness and oftentimes stupidity and didn't accept her for who she was: an unrepentant chaotic stupid. Ferrari knew full well she wasn't the best at strategy or critical thinking but boldly lived her best life as who she was. This time she finally got the love she deserves. as Rahina torments Titian with her life so Ferrari will torment him with her death. Also in full disclosure (spoiler) her death was a reference to Olson in the original novel.
Final two after so long. Elara, the dark horse? Or Ember, the returning icon? Stay tuned and find out.