A/N: Thanks to anyone who is tagging along with this story. It's an honor to read your reviews, so please consider leaving them if you can :D

Meet Izzy, the first victor from District 9. This is a shorter chapter but I really like how it turned out. I hope you like it as well!

Izzy Mayfleet from District 9
Victor of the Seventeenth Annual Hunger Games

Nobody really knew where Izzy Mayfleet came from. There was something mysterious about her, something that intrigued the entire district. Maybe it was her dreamy personality. Maybe it was the fact she had six fingers on her left hand. But, most likely, it was the way she moved.

She was sixteen years old but slipped through the grain as gracefully as a child, as softly as a spirit. Her ability to move quietly was what kept her alive. She stole and wasn't caught. She took bread from the peaceekepers' houses without leaving a trace behind. She slipped between the wheat fields so secretly that nobody noticed.

The people of District 9 all silently agreed she was born somewhere else. Nobody born in the dusty district of tractors and breweries could have a spirit as free as hers was.

But where else could she have come from? There was District 3 to the east and District 8 to the south. Other than them, the other districts were separated from District 9 by hundreds of miles of dense wilderness.

When Izzy was reaped for the games, she sprinted onto the stage so quietly it seemed like she was walking on air. There it was again; her inexplicable talent for moving silently. No doubt, this would be a huge advantage in the arena.

Her district partner, Barric, wasn't nearly as delicate in his movements. He stumbled onto the stage in tears, each step reverberating around the dead-silent square like thunder.

Izzy made brief eye contact with the boy who was her polar opposite. She felt pressed to say something, something encouraging, but nothing came about. Barric said nothing either; he, too, was fluent in silence.

Now, in the arena, she was absolutely free. She stole supplies from the cornucopia and wasn't beaten as punishment. She slipped between the dark, shadowy recess of the birch forest without being told to return to her post. It was a sensation of absolute liberty she hadn't felt since she was a child.

Speaking of which, Izzy's true home was deepest and most valuable secret. The rumors were true that she was born outside of District 9. One peacekeeper suspected she'd been born amidst a group of refugees inhabiting the wilderness north of District 9. Or maybe she'd been abandoned by her family in a different district and forced to seek refuge wherever he wandering feet took her.

The only thing anyone knew for sure when Izzy Mayfleet appeared in District 9, battered and bloody from her time in the wild, was that she was living proof not all mysteries can be solved.

She thought about Barric as she traipsed through the forest, slipping between the misty birches and crouching into the tall grass when danger was near. Was he still alive? She couldn't be sure until the death recap.

She'd never spoken to Barric in her life, but he nonetheless felt like a friend. In the arena, he was her only connection to her home district. District 9 wasn't a comfortable place, but its people had welcomed her more warmly than she ever could have hoped for. That had to be worth something.

After the bloodbath, there were no cannon shots for the rest of the first day. That was a relief. The careers (Izzy had never bothered to learn their names) were probably resting at the cornucopia, exhausted after such a large bloodbath.

Just because she was free didn't mean she wasn't scared. That night, swarms of vicious mosquitoes swept over the birch forest, loaded with every kind of disease the Capitol's scientists could give them. Fear pounded in her chest as she crouched down in the grass, swatting away the droves of bugs.

She woke the next morning to find a silver parachute in her lap. The silver tray contained a note and a single loaf of bread. But this wasn't Capitol bread. This was the kind from District 9: goat's milk and tesserae grain with a flour dusting. Tears welled up in her eyes as she read the note:

We believe in you, Izzy.

The people of District 9.

Maybe, just maybe, the grain district was her real home. No matter what it was before, it was her home now. Home is a place you are willing to fight to return to. And that was what she did every day in the arena.

The mosquitoes proved to be a threat in the coming days. The symptoms of their diseases included coughing, rashes, and this ugly pox-like itching that was torture to refrain from scratching. Every time a cannon fired, Izzy looked down at her body: the skin that was scratched and scabbed and coated with mosquito bites. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to die. She imagined herself floating away into the sky, slipping between the clouds like a magic sprite.

Barric died a week into the games. It was the biggest personal loss Izzy had ever sustained.

Before long, Izzy was forced to start killing. By a sheer stroke of luck, she'd managed to grab a sickle from the bloodbath. One morning, while the mist was still thick, a small boy wandered into her territory. Izzy crept behind him quietly, her bare feet curiously feeling the grass-laden ground. The boy was dead before he knew what had hit him; with her sickle, Izzy was immediately lethal.

She took a moment to observe his dead body. What district was he from? By the color of his skin, either 8 or 11. It looked like he'd spent his entire life baking in the sun. It suddenly crossed Izzy's mind that she hadn't learned any of the tributes' names other than Barric.

A forest fire several days later drove Izzy close to the cornucopia, where two of the careers were still alive. She cut down one of them with expert stealth, but the other was a bit more trouble. His bronze skin suggested he was from District 4, which was more than just a little confusing. District 4 was making career tributes now? As if two career districts wasn't enough? Horrifying.

Izzy took the last career down eventually, but not without help. Two other tributes, both girls, joined into the fight. They'd been driven toward the cornucopia by the spreading fire, and they were brave (or desperate) enough to help Izzy take down the last career.

"Any other careers left?" Izzy asked. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't spoken a single word since the games began.

The taller of the two girls nodded, her eyes wide with terror. Izzy put two and two together just in time to save her own life. She fell to her knees as the hatchet sailed over her head, landing in the chest of the tall girl. She turned sharply around and saw the boy from District 1 charging at full speed.

He was simply undefeatable. Izzy and the other girl were strong, but they were no match for the highly-trained boy with a lust for their blood. That was, unless they could outsmart him.

The fire was still spreading, and quickly. Izzy sprinted toward the edge of the forest and made eye contact with the other girl. Fortunately, she understood her message, because she nodded gravely. Izzy returned moments later with a flaming branch and a bundle of smoking grass.

The other girl gave the career boy a kick in the groin, sending him spiraling backward. Izzy threw the flaming branches over his body like a blanket, turning his body into a column of flame. A cannon fired moments later.

"What's your name?" the other girl asked.

Izzy shook her head without speaking. Words were not wasted where she came from.

The other girl understood her meaning. Knowing one another's names would just make it harder to kill each other when the time came.

And the time came quickly. Several more deaths occurred in the coming days, either from infection or combat or mosquito-borne illness. It wasn't long before Izzy and her ally were the only remaining tributes.

"Thanks. For… for everything," the girl stammered, evidently unsure whether friendly pleasantries were appropriate at this point in the competition.

Izzy just nodded. Again, words were not wasted where she came from.

It was a long and difficult fight. Izzy had her sickle and the other girl had her hatchet. She used it so well she could be from nowhere except 7. Unlike the finales of some previous years, it was a fair match. Izzy could practically feel all the eyes in Panem watching them as they dueled through the day.

It wasn't until after sunset that Izzy defeated the other girl. They were both bloodied and scratched, with wounds of varying severity littering their bodies. By late evening, they were both hopelessly lying on the ground, groaning with agony as they died slowly. The other girl's cannon fired first, and Izzy was carried out of the arena.

Izzy Mayfleet: the girl who belonged to no one, the girl who moved as quietly as a forest sprite. The girl with six fingers on her left hand who'd won the Hunger Games by saying seven words. The other victors welcomed her with open arms. Her personality was so misty, it was impossible to tell if she was suppressing her trauma or simply unfazed by the whole business.

That was another Izzy-related mystery that could never be solved. She was treated as an object of mystery by the other victors, a woman who could never be fully understood by anybody. But maybe - just maybe - she'd found a permanent home among the other victors, and maybe that was all she needed to live a life filled with freedom.

Two years after Izzy's victory, a highly confidential package was placed on President Cornelius' desk. It was filled with images taken by surveillance cameras all across Panem. There was even a DVD containing grainy footage of refugees in the districts, displaced and scattered by the rebellion.

Before District 13 was bombed, some of its citizens managed to escape into the wilderness. They survived there for over a decade, surviving in abandoned towns and living off of the things nature had to offer. President Cornelius thought they were pretty harmless, so he never violently attacked them. He just left them to die.

The bulk of District 13 was playing dead perfectly well. There was no need to draw attention to the few citizens who had escaped into the wild. But as the president squinted at the footage of the wilderness group, he saw a teenage girl with six fingers on her left hand running west toward District 9.

List of Victors

District 1 (2 Victors): Luxor Dodge (1st), Citrine Whitacre (9th)

District 2 (3 Victors): Tyrell Crowley (3rd), Lancaster Percy (6th), Ajax Mathers (15th)

District 3 (1 Victor): Lumen Orlaith (12th)

District 4 (2 Victors): Mags Flanagan (11th), Ripple Hart (16th)

District 5 (1 Victor): Electra Wilty (4th)

District 6 (1 Victor): Jaguar Stratton (7th)

District 7 (3 Victors): Rowan Dobson (2nd), Willow Merrick (13th), Ebony Merrick (14th)

District 8 (1 Victor): Georgio Bronte (8th)

District 9 (1 Victor): Izzy Mayfleet (17th)

District 10 (0 Victors):

District 11 (1 Victor): Bluebell Singer (5th)

District 12 (1 Victor): Canary Roselock (10th)