Chapter 59: Ariel Angler
Mags does not want to hear your opinions about how if you happened to be a Career tribute in the 40s, everything sucked.
Well, duh. Of course it sucked, because with the exception of two boys, if you were a Career tribute of that decade, you ended up dead. Mags has neither the time, nor the patience, nor even the inclination to get down into the weeds with you about that.
Even at the close of the 50s, Brutus and Hero and most of the other Career mentors are still licking their wounds about the string of losses in the 40s, something that more than a few of them are jokingly calling 'The Dark Days,' or alternatively so as not to offend the President, 'The Patriots' Dark Days.' Eight almost consecutive arenas, all of which ended about as badly as the Fifty-Fifth, that Games which shall live in infamy.
Mags will only glare at Brutus and the others when they get too drunk and dramatically bemoan this water under the bridge, silencing them with a look that all but screeches Shut Yo Damn Mouth. They think eight or nine or ten Fifty-Fifths in a row (and praise the State that they haven't actually seen that) is bad? Try twenty-three Fifty-Fifths, back to back to fucking back, and then we can talk about how you think we Careers had it so shitty in the 40s.
District 4 had not won a Games since Cerulea Larson in the Thirty-Sixth. From a pretty-much Career district with tributes deployed who had extensive amphibious training, this was motherfucking unacceptable. They were tied with fucking District 10, of all places, for total wins, and District 7 had surpassed them already with, appropriately, seven. The Lumber district had better reason and evidence to make a bid for Career status than Four did. Mags and her quartet of fellow Four Victors thought it an absolute disgrace that deserved to bring on them district shame. Year after year, watching their kids get slaughtered by Twos and Ones and desperate, untrained outliers, Poseidon handled it stoically. Marina would pop pills like they were fruit snacks to numb the pain. Rusher always dealt out the free bear hugs he was known for. Cerula would always sigh, but secretly be pleased that she would go for another year as Four's reigning champ.
And Mags? Mags wept. The Fifties were closing down, and the Victor of the 11th Hunger Games was starting to despair that they would never see another Four Victor.
But then along came Ariel Angler.
Ariel grew up on a skiff, one of the twin daughters of a shrimping boat captain. They caught and made all kinds of shrimp: shrimp kabobs, shrimp creole, shrimp gumbo, pineapple shrimp, lemon shrimp, coconut shrimp, pepper shrimp, shrimp soup, shrimp stew, shrimp salad, shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich, pan-fried, deep-fried, stir-fried… You can broil it, bake it, sauté it…
OK, that's enough, Ariel. Mags also does not want to hear about all the things you can do with f'ing shrimp.
Ariel volunteered for her twin sister, Angelica, who was sadly confined to a wheelchair. Mags praised her on her bravey and poured her heart and soul into mentoring the kid. From the Parade on, everything seemed to break Ariel's way:
She shone at the chariot parade. She shone at her interview. She got a Training Score of 10 and was appointed Career pack leader before they'd even set foot in the arena. Brutus and his boy weren't happy about that, and Mags told them to get over themselves.
When Ariel and her competition were launched, all of the mentors in Control Central gasped. Many swore until their faces turned blue.
The arena was set inside a fucking energy reactor – only the third interior arena the Games had ever seen, after Hunger Games-met-Brick Mansions in the Twenty-Fourth and Hunger-Games-met-Sleepless-in-Seattle with an airport terminal in Chaff's year, the Forty-Fifth.
The Gamemakers had jerry-rigged light pods to shoot lasers of golden light at the tributes as they lunged for the Cornucopia. If light hit a tribute, they didn't just die. They disintegrated – into little pixels like something out of Tron: Legacy. That's how the boy from 1 met his end ten minutes in.
Nine souls got away from the opening melee, Ariel and her four surviving Careers slaughtering the rest. Except Ariel didn't stop there. She then crazily turned on her own partners, taking on and beating all five of them until they were dead. Several, she would push, and the Gamemakers would take their cue and fire a pulsing light pod in that direction. Seneca and his crowd seemed to think it was funny. Brutus and Hero and the other Career mentors didn't, but Mags thought it was downright hilarious.
The Games slowed down after that, and it wasn't until high noon on the fourth day that another cannon sounded, locking in the Final Eight. Ariel prowled through the rest of the energy reactor arena – which she would discover wasn't very wide – to hunt down the rest. The light pods helped in that they did some of the work for her, and after a solid week, preceded by a twenty-three-year drought, District 4 was no longer in danger of surpassing District 12's four-decade gap as the longest between wins.
Ariel returned home and took over her father's shrimping business. She never gave a thought to standing with anyone under the golden net, or having children, opting instead to take care of her twin. She would later become like a big sister to Finnick Odair and Annie Cresta; she was the one who would first walk in on them kissing in Finnick's mansion, but with a twinkle in her eye and her blessing given, she promised not to tell.
Later, when Finnick and Annie got married in Thirteen, Annie would weep because her best girlfriend wasn't there to be her Maid of Honor. Johanna Mason stepped up to do it instead, one Gale Hawthorne studying the hot-blooded female lumberjack with interest as she glided down the aisle, an actually decent smile on her face.