Chapter 38: Porter Millicent Tripp
Porter Millicent Tripp was the fifth Victor to come out of the arena with a disability. But unlike Dell Fonio and Guernsey Hyde, Savera Inchcape and Leif Sequoia, however, Porter was the only one who didn't have disabilities of any kind going into the arena.
Before she was Reaped for the 38th edition of Panem's yearly death match, Porter Millicent Tripp (yes, she would insist on you using her full name, middle included) turned a lot of heads in her native District 5. She was exotic, with smooth, light-brown, almost olive skin that an ancient histories scholar might have termed almost Arabic. To this day, Hunger Games historians aren't such what ancestral implications stemmed from Porter's luscious skin pigmentation – people with ancient Middle Eastern roots weren't, and still aren't, known to be common within certain districts. Not in the way Aryan peoples almost always hail from One, or how many black folk call District 11 home on account of their deep roots to the ancient American South. Some have speculated that Porter could have carried at least small amounts of District 12 ancestry, as her olive skin tone bore a slight resemblance (though in Porter's case, it was more strongly emphasized) to the exotic beauty of Seam-born Katniss Everdeen – a sophisticated district lady who herself is half-Merchant on her mother's side and who thus has lineage tracing back to the Aryans in One.
After she was Reaped, Porter Millicent Tripp still turned a lot of heads, especially in the Capitol. Fashion houses got into fights over competing bids to act as her stylists (Madame Lucia, of course, won the coveted contract), and even the losers vowed to back her so that she might, as a Victor, model their brand lines later on. A business dealing in commemorative posters ever year for the Games created a roll featuring the bewitching beauty from Five, and they all sold out within hours. Many a Capitol boy would fall asleep masturbating to an image of the statuesque Porter now emblazoned on their bedroom wall.
District 5 certainly wasn't a conventional horse to back – they had only won twice in a span of close to two generations, and their most recent Victor, Edison Watts, and his manner of winning were still controversial. However, once Porter proved herself with a highly respectable Training Score – a 9 – and positively glowed in her interview (highlighted all the more so by the fact that it was Caesar the son, and not Lucky the father, sitting in the prized chair for the first time), the whole city knew it simply had to have her. It must have her live – no other tribute had quite captured the citizenry's imagination so completely before, and it would be some time before another did again. Finnick Odair, for instance. Or the forbidden lovers from Twelve.
The arena itself was a series of tropical archipelagos and volcanic-rocky island chains not seen since Mags' day. The environ itself seem tailored perfectly to another Victor from 4, and probably thinking this, both the kids from the Fishing District gunned for Porter right away.
She killed them both with a set of defibrillators (you know, the kind seen on medical soap operas, where the doctor in charge yells "CLEAR!" right before using). It certainly was the most unique weapon the Games had seen in quite some time.
With the arena consisting of islands, tributes were free to move from one isle to the next if they so wished. Or, they would have, if any of them aside from the now-dead District 4 kids actually knew how to swim. Luckily, Porter had a mentor (Shrimp Pescal) who had been born in Four, and on the train ride, he had taught her the basic mechanics. Naturally, there hadn't been an opportunity to put those basic mechanics into practice – the Training Center didn't feature a swimming pool (someone should get on that). But nonetheless, Porter managed to slip away on that foggy first night, swimming and paddling out the entire mile or three until she dragged herself onto the sand of the next island over. The following morning, she started the process again. The rest of the swim-deficient dozen tributes were more or less marooned on the island from which they'd been launched.
No matter. The four-man team of the Career pack – now unsaddled from having to babysit the District 4 wannabes – spread out and combed through the tropical jungle of their castaway key, hunting and eliminating the others over a period of eight days. The Careers moved fast – too fast, some thought, and a couple of kills got a little messy when the Gamemakers launched jungle cats and other mutts to keep the survivors on their toes. But even in this, everything was jumbled, as deploying artificial weaponry out to a remote location wasn't exactly the easiest trick to pull off, even for professionals in technological wizardry like the Gamemakers. All of this contributed to the fact that, by the morning of the eighth day, the Games were down to just the four Careers… and Porter Millicent Tripp.
The Careers searched their entire island to find her. The leader, Damocles, had been keeping careful count of the cannons, and the hot girl's face had yet to appear in the sky, so she was alive… somewhere. An exhaustive search throughout all of Day 8 turned up empty. Frustrated and wanting to end things, Damocles turned on all his allies and slaughtered them, before finally turning to the horizon. The last Career proceeded on alone to the next island over.
The greatest fear the audience had was that Damocles couldn't swim, and would drown before he got there. Damocles performed strokes all through the night, learning how to stay afloat even as he was doing so. It was like trying to build a hovercraft in mid-flight, and for the District 2 male, was thus all the more impressive. But when Damocles finally dragged himself onto shore the next morning, he couldn't find Porter on this isle either.
Circling the entire perimeter, Damocles spotted the next adjacent island and dove back into the waves. He was already gassed, and by the time sunset neared on the ninth day, he was half-rolling his way out of the low tide and could barely stand up.
It helped, but only just a little, that Porter was waiting for him.
She didn't give Damocles so much as time to catch his breath before she attacked him. A sword versus medical shock absorbers didn't make much of a Top Two showdown, yet the pair still managed to keep it interesting. The crowds stilled when Damocles forced his way past Porter's defenses and sliced his sword all the way up her back from left hip to right shoulder, causing her to collapse in the sand.
Setting his blade aside, Damocles decided to keep it classy as he closed in for the kill that would make him Victor. Bare hands would do the job nicely.
What he didn't see was that Porter's body was lying on top of the defibrillators that she was still gripping.
As Damocles bent over her, Porter Millicent Tripp managed to roll over with the last of her strength and press her weapon into his chest. She sent Damocles into cardiac arrest, dropping him to the surf and knocking him out by way of an induced heart attack. Porter just managed to crawl over to Damocles' discarded sword and then plunge it into his chest to finish the job.
It was a stunning upset.
At her Victory Ceremony and her deliverance to and from Victors' Mercy – all over the city, really – Capitolites hugged, shook hands or even full on kissed Porter on the mouth whenever she appeared. Some shy boys at least had the manners to politely ask for a kiss, which Porter was only too happy to bashfully oblige. When she wowed one lucky fan by kissing him on the lips with a bit of tongue rather than just going for the cheek, the poor lad fainted dead away.
It wouldn't remain entirely happy for Porter Millicent Tripp upon arriving home, now under the support of a neck brace she would need for the rest of her life after her spinal injury. Her boyfriend, whom she had been seeing seriously enough to warrant a discussion of marriage, left her. President Snow placed her on his growing Victor prostitution circuit, where she was to be mentored by colleagues like Amber Fairsmith, Artemis Raidy and Beauty Devereaux. In time, however, Porter would eventually find true love again, marry a district man who loved her - neck brace and all, and live happily ever after, moving her new husband in with her at Victors' Village. The couple eventually had triplet boys together, which drove neighbors Shrimp and Edison up the wall to no end.