"Good evening, Capitol! And welcome to your nightly recap of the Second Inter-District Inter-Disciplinary Events. I'm Harli Saleman."
"And I'm Dorian Muir. These Events are really picking up, aren't they?"
"They are! We're really starting to see lines drawn in the sand between our two alliances of competitors."
"That is true. And it seems like the momentum is ever so slightly in favor of the Careers. They finally got their second challenge win today, placing them one ahead of Sigmund's Outer District alliance."
"Which is, at this point, basically just Sigmund and Ella. After a hard-fought battle, the pair from Eight was defeated by the pair from Six in today's elimination challenge."
"But even though they're down, they might not be out just yet," Dorian pointed out. "With two chances to choose a team to eliminate today, Mettius and Titania chose both times to send in a team other than Sigmund and Ella."
"Well, I think it would be more accurate to say that Mack and Noel – well, really Noel chose who to send in."
"That's probably right. But we're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. Not everybody has watched the live streams of the Events today, so let's go back to this morning and the immunity challenge."
The screen behind Harli and Dorian switched to an overhead view of the Arena, which had been transformed overnight into a dense forest. The competitors' houses had been moved from their original position in a circle around the center courtyard and were now all positioned around the exterior perimeter of the Arena instead. "Today's challenges honored our country's crown jewel, the Capitol, and their value of leadership. It is thanks to our president and government that our country runs as well as it does, and of course, the seat of our government is in Panem.
"The aim of the morning's competition was simple. Each pair of competitors were given a compass and a map and were tasked with leading a small group of people from the Arena's edge back to the center courtyard without losing anybody. As you might expect, some teams excelled while others were crushed by the pressure of the challenge."
"And we're sure some of you can guess which teams did poorly."
As Harli began to recapitulate the finish order of the challenge, a highlight reel began to play, showcasing both the teams in their wilderness gear trekking through the forest as well as drawn maps of the routes each team took through the forest. "As you might expect, the team from One came in last place. Pax Imperioli proved to be a rather skilled leader, keeping the entire rest of her adventuring party safe. Unfortunately for her, she was so focused on getting the party through the challenge that she forgot about her district partner. Ms. Imperioli managed to lose Pax Altomare, who got distracted seven minutes into the challenge by a butterfly and returned to the courtyard last out of any single individual.
"Placing just above the team from One was the team from Eleven. While they were more or less able to work together well, neither Xayah nor April is a particularly strong leader, and so they struggled to actually lead their party members anywhere. They kept their party intact well, but it was not quite enough for them to land any higher than eighth."
Dorian picked up, "The next lowest-placing team was the pair from Two. While each individually might be a good enough leader, Mack and Noel were simply incapable of working together; the two stalled their team multiple times by arguing about which direction to go and should feel very glad that a team from their alliance still won. Incidentally, the next team up on the leaderboard was the team from Six, who spent so much time at the beginning of the challenge trying to calculate the best direction to take that they neglected to consider that perhaps actually starting to move in literally any direction was a good idea."
"Every team above this point did rather well, all things considered. It was really just a matter of small decisions that they made that affected their final placing, rather than giant glaring errors.
"Fifth place went to the team from Eight, who performed well but were held up a bit when one of their party members tripped over a root. Really, they arrived back after the team from Six, but the Gamemaking team decided to give them a higher placement because they so effectively took care of the young woman and made sure to leave her behind. Fourth and third were a tossup between Twelve and Nine, given that the two teams arrived at exactly the same time. It turns out that the two teams ran into each other on their journey through the wilderness and decided to work together to get their parties back to the courtyard. There was no rule against it, so it was perfectly legal, but Twelve was given the lower placement because Mina, seemingly intentionally, waited to cross the barrier of the courtyard until everyone else from both groups crossed the plane."
"That leaves the teams from Four and the Capitol. This was also rather close, as all four competitors were exceptional in keeping their parties together and keeping spirits up. But in the end, by a matter of moments, the team from the Capitol came out on top, earning them their first challenge win as well as the Medallion of Leadership."
"Now, this is where it gets interesting," Harli said, a smile spreading across her face. "By the time that the teams had returned to the courtyard, their houses had also magically reappeared there. So as soon as the pair from Two returned, Noel went straight to the houses of their alliance-mates to see if they'd returned. And when they found that the Capitol team was back, this happened."
~.~.~
Noel knocked on the door of the Capitol team's house. "You guys back yet?"
"Yeah," Titania replied, opening the door for them. "How was the challenge for you two?"
"Not bad," Noel said. "Do you have a sense of where you placed?"
"Not sure yet," she admitted. "We heard at least two teams come in after us, the ones from Nine and Twelve. There might have been another but I'm not sure. And I don't know if we'll find out who won until the elimination challenge."
"Well, if you did win: you gotta send in the pair from Twelve."
"Oh? Why them?"
"They chose to send Mack and me into the elimination challenge yesterday."
"You don't think you guys went in on popularity?"
"No shot. We're Careers. I'm 100% confident that they sent us in. If we don't get rid of them now, those girls will target our whole alliance."
Titania considered for a moment. "They did go for some big threats right off the bat. You make a good point."
"I know I do. Now, you're also gonna have to pick a second-choice team, just in case something happens I don't know. Do the pair from Eight."
"But that alliance is already near-decimated. What's the point?"
"Pair. From. Eight."
"Fine. I doubt we'll need it anyway so it won't matter."
~.~.~
"It turns out," Harli continued, "that they did need the backup team. As some of you might remember, the team from Twelve was awarded the second Medallion of Power yesterday morning. Knowing that the value of the day was Heart, which they correctly expected to be good at, they chose to save the medallion for a later day. That turned out to be precisely the right move. Mina and Cam used their Medallion of Power today to save themselves from the elimination challenge, sending Paisley and Jacobus from Eight in in their place. The other team to go up for elimination, Sigmund and Ella, were sent in based on popularity."
"We're not going to go over the elimination challenge in detail because it was the longest challenge of the entire Events so far, and by a wide margin. Based on an ancient board game called Risk, the two teams were tasked with controlling mock armies to take over a fictional country. It is honestly a good thing in retrospect that they were the two teams to compete because nobody else would have understood the instructions. After – and I am not exaggerating here – four hours of back and forth gameplay, Sigmund and Ella eked out the win, earning their right to stay in the Events. Unsurprisingly, Jacobus and Paisley chose to will their Medallion of Trust to Sigmund and Ella, who are now the last remaining members of that alliance."
"As always, we'll end our recap by going over our medallion tracker." The camera shot switched to just Harli, and a graphic appeared on the screen which displayed the image of a medallion on the left side of a table and the district that held it on the right.
"We now have two teams that have two medallions each: the pair from Six, who has the medallions of Teamwork and Trust, and the pair from Capitol, who added the Medallion of Leadership today to the Medallion of Perseverance which the team from Thirteen willed to them at the end of Day Three. The other medallions remain the same: Two has the Medallion of Discipline, Nine has the Medallion of Friendship, and Twelve has the Medallion of Heart."
The screen shifted back to the image of Harli and Dorian. "So what did you think of today, Dorian?"
"Well, it was not the most exciting day of competitions by any stretch of the word."
"That's true; watching the competitors navigate through the woods was far from scintillating, and I bet not even the Gamemakers thought the elimination challenge would go that long."
"That being said, the dynamic between the competitors is getting far more interesting. I'm fascinated by the way that Noel is so determined to eliminate big threats, yet he refuses to take out Sigmund and Ella. They might seem unassuming, but I think those two are more intelligent than they let on."
"And especially with the Eight and Six challenges still to come, which I assume will both require some intelligence, I'm shocked that Noel is not lobbying to send those two out sooner."
"The other thing I'm curious about is how long Noel will hold control of their alliance," Dorian added. "We've only seen one Career team go into any elimination challenge thus far, a trend that cannot possibly last, given that the challenges for Four and Two are also coming up. Out of the eight remaining teams, four are Careers; if the outer district tributes don't do something soon, they will be outnumbered."
"Much to think about. After the break, we'll continue our analysis of today's events, and give you a sneak peek of tomorrow's challenge. We'll be right back."
Paisley Burrell:
Paisley! What a fun character to work with, especially given my world building. It's pretty much a given that there'll be rebels in every verse, but being that, in mine, the rebels are lowkey wrong, I really enjoyed getting to explore what a daughter of the rebels thinks about what the Capitol is doing. And it was especially impressive that I got her in given the statutes system! This is another character I might have liked to do more with in another timeline, but she has sequel potential for sure. Thank you so much to later . glader for Paisley!
Jacobus Tailleur:
Jack was somehow the perfect intersection between a normal character and a fascinating backstory. I enjoyed getting to build his relationships with the rest of his alliance, as without his idea of a plurality, his alliance of five teams wouldn't have had the leg up on the Careers! Sure he was a little bit of a plot driver more than anything else, but he was a fun plot driver nonetheless. Thank you so much to TheAmazingJAJ for Jacobus!
~.~.~
Well there's another day of competition for you, and our second different format! I hope you enjoyed this one because I for sure had fun writing it. Credits to Ali for giving me the idea that led to this format… sorta. Her idea was a bit more comic but I kinda tweaked it to make it fit the story a bit better. Anyway, what did you think of this challenge? I think the afternoon challenge kind of explains why I decided to shift away from describing the challenges themselves lol – Risk is not the most fun game to explain. I don't have a ton of questions, so I guess I just want to hear your thoughts!
I'll see you all next week with the next chapter!
-goldie031