Chapter 60: Polonius Ryker
Polonius pauses the tape on the really pretty girl in the blue dress from Twelve taking the stage and turns back from the screen to face his tributes.
"All right, kiddies, what have we learned from this?"
Next to him, as his second for mentoring Cato, their boy, Brutus Barsetti smirks. His former tribute has his own style for teaching the kids how to become killers and capture the Crown – firm like a drill sergeant, but with a dash of smart-aleck humor thrown in. The easy wit, however, should not serve as an invitation for a hotheaded tribute to cross him.
As stupid Cato seems to be doing right now while smirking at the brunette babe frozen on the screen. "That Twelve's bitch is a hot piece of ass?"
THWAP! Polonius is not afraid to smack Cato upside the head and Brutus stiffens nervously when it looks like Cato is actively considering starting to a fight right there on the train in retaliation. "Shut. Up. You don't know anything about that girl, except that she just volunteered to save her sister."
"So, she has a weakness: the little pixie. Is that such a bad thing?" Cato shrugs.
No, actually it isn't – weaknesses can always be exploited in the arena, after all, but right now, that's beside the point because Cato isn't listening to him.
"You talking to me?" Clove glares at Cato, and Polonius nearly throws up his hands. Why they allowed the Reaping of a fifteen-year-old to stand for the first time in eons, he will never know. It's not that Clove isn't fierce – right now, she's using a curved blade she somehow smuggled past the Peacekeepers onto the train as a toothpick, cleaning out her gums. Polonius ignores the rabid little attack dog in favor of keeping Cato on topic, but he can't resist sending a glower in Enobaria's direction. The Victor of the Sixty-Second just shrugs.
"Don't blame me…"
"Oh, I blame you!" Polonius draws forth in a deadly whisper that to their kids must come off as more funny than anything else, because both suddenly start to laugh. Polonius sweeps his eyes back to them and Cato and Clove snap their jaws shut, the laughter quickly dying out.
"This Katniss Everdeen could be hiding something that we don't know about. Actually, a Twelve willingly volunteering for the Games? She's definitely hiding something. Or else must be pretty confident to stand in her sister's place." He sighs. They need to take this seriously, or another outlier might steal away the Crown. Unfortunately, he sometimes still can't help but wonder if, with him as the mentor, Cato will ever be able to take this – or him – seriously.
The Sixtieth Hunger Games were the fourth and last to take place in an entirely enclosed space. The Gamemakers had gone all out that year, trapping the tributes in a giant hourglass that made Polonius and the others look as tiny as the grains of sand at their feet. Thirteen died in the Bloodbath, including his good friend and district partner, Narissa, but that had been an accident. Some crazed outlier landed a hit.
Over the course of the next three weeks, the field was whittled down, mostly by the Gamemakers messing with the tributes' sense of vertigo when they would periodically invert the hourglass upside-down and back again. Many of Polonius's enemies and two of his allies met their ends when they were buried in the sands of time.
What had helped Polonius win, however, was that he adapted to learning the signs for when the hourglass was about to invert. He always made sure to stay guard near the Cornucopia in case the moment arrived that the hourglass would tip, hustling inside the horn and thus being relatively well-protected while outside, the arena in its entirety was reoriented. The bottom became the top, before returning back to being the bottom. It was like flipping your partner during sex, except there was no pretty partner there. Everything along with Polonius's blood would start rushing to his head and he would vomit and bellow. But, after three exhausting weeks, he was the only one left.
Except for his fellow Twos, the other Career Victors didn't appreciate how Polonius had played the Games smart, not bloody, and been rewarded for it. They didn't think he was aware of how they often called him 'Baloney-us' behind his back, but he was.
Back in the present, Polonius resumes his lecture. "Let's start this quiz again, shall we? Of the outliers, who are the contenders?"
Clove is ready with an answer. "The slut from 5 looks shifty. I don't like the look of her. The boy from 11…."
"… and the girl," Polonius corrected her.
Clove blinks. "Excuse me?" Across from her, Enobaria bristles but keeps quiet, incensed that Polonius is presuming to lecture her tribute.
"Little twelve-year-olds should never be counted out, even if a twelve-year-old has never won," Polonius opines. There had been a preteen in his arena who had managed to place in the Top Three – the farthest anyone of that age had ever gone. "And that little girl is one who could climb and dart away and lead you on a wild mutt chase that will expend all that energy you'll need later. Watch her."
"The pretty young thing from Twelve," Cato rumbles, still eyeing Katniss Everdeen's breasts like they are mangoes.
"… and her partner too. He has the build for it. If he wasn't a wrestler in school, then I'm President Snow." He leans forward, looking Cato directly in the eyes. "When the gong sounds, kill them. Kill them both."
He would always regret how Cato didn't listen to him. When the blonde, perfect soldier fell to the mutts off the side of the horn and guaranteed a Victor for District 12, a district-partner Top Two for the Star-Crossed Lovers, Polonius would curse his tribute, curse the Gamemakers, curse the mainstream and biased media, curse himself. He would have cursed the idiots who thought to rename the reconstructed District 2 partially after him when it applied for statehood, accepted into the renewed nation as the State of Rykers.
The only person who seemed to take the heartbreaker of a loss more personally was his second, Brutus Barsetti.