Chapter 18: Calista Yumi

CLANG!

I can feel the sweat pouring into my eyes as I dance away from Gaul's overhead strike with his broadsword. I retreat towards the ropes at the edge of the ring, leveling my naginata at the imposing 18-year-old. Gaul just bares his teeth at me in a sneer, and presses the advantage again. It's a furious barrage, one I try to hold off as much as I can, but his arms are a blur.

"Keep your blade UP! UP, Calista!" I hear the Headmistress, Hippolyta Anderson shout from the other side of the rope line.

The sharp, screechy voice of the Victor from the 8th Hunger Games grates on my nerves, and Gaul seizes the opening. My naginata is twisted out of my hand and clatters to the gym mat. When I look up, Gaul's blade is kissing my throat. Something THUMPs the wall behind me, and I can imagine Hippolyta nearly kicking a hole through it in frustration.

"Damn it, Calista! You're dead! The most pathetic excuse for a defense I've ever seen! Hit the benches!"

To Gaul's credit, he drops his triumphant grin over winning the bout just long enough to give me a sympathetic look and pat on the shoulder as I pass him to swing out of the center ring. As I approach the benches, I briefly meet the eyes of Maximus Meridius, the first Victor ever. He's in his mid-thirties, but still astonishingly strong; Headmistress Hippolyta invites him often to give guest lectures. At his side, Gunner Trillium, the guy who won four years ago when everyone else was too busy killing themselves, is congratulating Gaul with a handshake. Gunner is responsible for training all the boys in the Institute, while we girls are tutored by the Headmistress herself.

In my five years here (my parents enrolled me when I turned 12, just a couple of weeks before my very first Reaping), I have sometimes wished for the mentorship of Gunner, or even Maximus, compared to the cruel, sometimes abusive, guidance of Hippolyta Anderson. She now stands in the center ring, surveying her female contingent of prospective tributes – a dozen of us in all. The boys' group is slightly bigger, at fourteen.

"Pathethic…" Hippolyta shakes her head at the lot of us. "Pathetic! Who among you is ready for the Choosing Feast?" That's become the traditional way that our Victors and other instructors here at the Institute select who is to volunteer at the Reaping for the coming summer. We watch, heads bowed, as the Headmistress answers her own question. "Not one! Not one of you! And you're my girls! Oh, the shame of it!" Vaulting over the ropes, she lands gracefully before us, but her gait is hard as she stomps back and forth in a reviewing line to inspect us critically. "District 1 came this close last year to tying us and getting their third Victor, until that little whelp from 7, of all places, got in the way! Do any of you want the mortification to have your life sacrificed for the glory of Panem at the hands of a pretty jewel princess or worse, a gutter rat outlier from Three, or Eight, or Twelve?" My girlfriends and I all shyly lift our eyes to steal cowed glances with each other, none of us willing to meet the Headmistress's gaze.

"Calista Yumi, you are perhaps the most competent of this bum crop here, and yet you still managed to cede the bout to Gaul by playing defensively. NEVER allow your opponent to gain ground! You look as sloppy as a tribute from Six when you do! Do you understand me?!"

I bob my head like I'm a marionette on strings. "Yes, Headmistress."

Hippolyta rears back to her full height, her mouth drawn in a thin, bloodless line. "We shall see. I hereby order you to another match. Redeem yourself and prove to me that I will not be mistaken in tapping you for the Choosing Feast three nights hence."

This causes me to lift my head all the way to meet her stare in astonishment. All around me, my fellow females are heatedly whispering, and I catch a few stares of envy. The instructors at the Institute have never before declared who they intend to back for the Choosing Feast beforehand. I'm amazed myself. At 17, I didn't think I would be considered ready. My vision shifts down the row to the muscular girl three down from me. Mabel. Mabel is ready, and a year older; if she's not picked this year, she'll age out and be sent to work in the quarries, before eventually entering marriage and meeting her expectation as a District 2 woman to breed more strapping boys to defend the fatherland. I can feel the heat of Mabel's glower, and I fight not to give away the gulp that roils my throat.

Still dripping with sweat from my last scrimmage, I step back into the center ring, selecting off the rack a seax – short, but sharp. Effective for quick jabs.

"Miss Yumi," Gunner Trillium intones rotely. "Who would you like to call as your challenger?" It is customary for a fighter to select his or her challenger; I selected Gaul for the last bout, which in retrospect was probably unwise.

Scanning the strong builds of the fourteen boys below me, I am about to open my mouth to choose when Hippolyta's voice cuts across me:

"Oh, no, Gunner. I will be choosing her challenger." Except for our other two Victors, nearly everyone in the gymnasium is now staring at the Headmistress with their jaws nearly on the floor. If Hippolyta is fazed, she certainly doesn't show it, as she demures with a smug smirk. Finally, she calls out:

"Aegeus! You're up!"

At nearly 19, Aegeus is nearly as massive as Maximus Meridius is now, hulking as the ropes sag objectionably under his weight while he swings into his corner. My dry throat bobbles, but I hold his stare, even as I feel the sweat on my face start to pour in buckets.

BAM!

All at once, a memory assaults me, of Aegeus's massive hands grabbing my breasts, feeling up my bum, the rock-solid length of his body pressing me oppressively into the brick wall of a back alleyway bordering the Institute. I can once again smell the putrid alcohol on his breath as the brute showers me with slobbery, open-mouthed kisses, his stiff erection rubbing up against the inside of my thighs. I can hear myself crying, then my muffled sounds as Aegeus had clapped a hand over my mouth.

"Ssssh, pretty baby…." He jeered. "I'll make it special…."

The pressure of his other hand is at my windpipe, the weight of it not completely cutting off my air, but enough for it to feel uncomfortable. Enough so that I can't call out for help. The tearing of flesh as I feel my maidenhead viciously breached. Aegeus's pathetic grunts in my ear as he takes me, rutting me into the wall so that the bricks bite into my skin….

I relive it all in horrifying, painful detail in the time it takes Aegeus to select his weapons – a pair of sai, not much longer than the seax I hold, though more curved. When he turns to face me, grinning wickedly, gloatingly, I see red.

This time, I don't wait. I charge in on the attack, the ferociousness of it catching Aegeus off-step. He does a decent job of masking his surprise underneath a wellspring of anger before trying to drive me back with a barrage remarkably similar to the one Gaul used.

The one disadvantage of sai – their curved blades are easier to dodge, but only if you know how. Thankfully, I've been trained in this art, and when Aegeus swipes out, I flit to the side before taking a risk and dashing in past an opening.

My seax meets skin and I push down, causing Aegeus to howl before he tries to entrap me in his strong grip and I have to roll away to get out again. The blades here at the Institute are purposefully dulled, so that they're not enough to break the skin, but they can still pinch.

Aegeus is roaring, slashing out erratically and acting all wild, and I smirk. Perfect. I have him hot under the collar, so he'll get sloppy. I just have to wait a little longer before I make my end moves…

As before with Gaul, I coyly fall back to the ropes at the edge of the ring, only this time, I don't intend to act the coward. Just as I predict, Aegeus takes the bait and follows.

Now.

Leaping back into the ropes, I let the weight of my body drag them back taught only to then spring back, propelling forward and up into space. Performing a somersault in mid-air, I land on Aegeu's back and ram my knees into his spine, forcing him to his knees. Scissor-kicking my thighs open, I straddle him, one leg over his shoulder, and the other squeezing down on the backs of his knees, so that I am astride him diagonally.

My seax burns a kiss into his throat, the tip of it straining up to brush his ear. The ear in which I now sultrily whisper, "Yield, motherfucker!"

He growls, struggles to try and upend me, but he's too well pinned. Another frustrated grunt and he concedes.

All the girls except for Mabel burst into rapturous applause; even half of the boys are clapping, though grudgingly. Glancing up through the sweaty strands of my windswept, dark hair, I catch Hippolyta with the barest hint of a smile and nodding in her version of approval – not so easily granted.

"Very good, Calista Yumi. I think you will handle yourself quite well in the arena. Consider yourself redeemed."

When I'm selected at the Choosing Feast days later for the honor to volunteer as tribute, I resolve to do more than seek redemption. I resolve to seek domination.

I start by shocking the whole of the Capitol when, in the literal minefield that is the arena this year, I take revenge on my rapist by making him my first kill in the Bloodbath. Aegeus suffers the humiliation of becoming the first true Career to die at the Cornucopia in the Games' opening minutes.