A/N: ATTENTION ATTENTION THIS IS A DOUBLE UPDATE - IF YOU HAVE NOT READ TRAINING II THIS WOULD BE A GOOD TIME TO HEAD BACK AND DO SO

You have been warned. Enjoy!

Triton Clifford, 17
District Four Male

He throws one last trident at the target and watches it bounce to the side, off of the target and onto the floor of the Training Centre. He still hasn't mastered the trident - he's better with knives, despite the fact that every District Four volunteer is proficient with tridents. He likes knives. They're versatile and easy to use in the wild, and they're easy to hide on himself if he doesn't want others to know that he's carrying them.

But no, he's supposed to be the boy from Four. He has to use his trident, he has to know how to win it the way that District Four would want him to.

He can't act like he's from the same district as his sister.

He shoots a glance over at Thetis, who is practicing another round of sparring with one of the instructors. She's strong as well, but after a strong fight she's overpowered by the older woman and forced to concede. His sister doesn't seem like the type to dwell over losing - she's too confident, too cocky to do that, even. But she's nice to be around. He likes her.

He still hasn't told her that he knows that they're twins.

It was a long, long time ago when he had first asked his mother what had happened to his father. She had looked up from the meal that she was preparing, bit her lip, then told him "in Two, with your sister."

A sister! Triton had thrilled over the thought of having a sibling for weeks. He had someone who he could talk to, share all of his secrets, to cry to when he felt like he was at his lowest.

When he had realized that he would never have the chance to speak to her, he had only learned her name, age, and what their father looked like. When he tried to ask more, his mother had dodged the question with side-glances and leaving the room on some pretence. She didn't want to answer anything else, and he respected that.

Even though he had thought about her for years, no one was more surprised than Triton on the Four train to see that a Thetis Clifford of District Two, with the same brown eyes and dirty blonde hair of their father, volunteering as the female tribute for this year's Games.

He looks over his shoulder again to see if she's still sparring with her instructor, but shouts in surprise when he sees that she's right behind her. "You okay, Four?" she asks, amusement sparkling in her brown eyes.

"I'm alright, yep," he manages to reply. "You startled me a bit."

"More than a bit!" Thetis chuckles, shaking her head. "You almost jumped out of your own skin right there, Triton. Don't worry, I don't bite. I just wanted to ask -"

"Ask about my family?" Triton nods, knowing that he's startled Thetis. "With the same last name, I figured you would sooner than later."

"No, I'm probably just being an idiot." Thetis kicks at the ground, blushing a little. "It's just that I've lived in Two with my father and step-mother and step-siblings all my life, and never knew my mother. I've never even met anyone with my last name here - I don't know why, but that's the way it's been. So when I saw your name..." she trails off, staring at the floor.

"I never knew my father," Triton offers. "I asked my mother, though. She said that he lived… he… he lived in… District Two."

On a whim, he pulls out his token - the wedding ring that his mother had given him. "It's my father's. She said that they both have gold bands, he had a large diamond and she had two..."

"I -" Thetis looks like she's about to explode in excitement. "My father has the same wedding ring - it was in his socks drawer - there were two diam -"

"Two diamonds," they say at the same time.

Later, they take a seat in the cafeteria and eat plates of spaghetti while trading stories about their home life. They both end up crying at different points, the other careers looking curiously over at them before returning to their own meal. Thetis and Triton will return eventually.

"So, do you think that Dimitri will return or if he's gone for good?" Triton asks after they're all out of stories, biting down on one more meatball. "If he's not working with us, he's going to be against us - I don't think that's something we want. We'll have to get rid of him early if we want to keep ourselves alive. One of us has to get home."

"I think that I can get him back if I convince him that we aren't all bad." Thetis thinks for a moment, watching the table where Dimitri is sitting by himself. "He's really religious for some reason - he thinks that volunteers are these devilish little beasts that don't deserve to win the Games, and the only reason that he entered the Academy and trained was because it allowed his parents to have extra money if he succeeded. Everyone knew that he was smart, that he was good for the Games - but he would have never volunteered. I think that they rigged it, honestly - he was too good of a tribute to pass up, and the few possible volunteers this year for the boys were too young, too inexperienced, or managed to half-kill themselves. How about Lumara? She's small, and she didn't volunteer either - you think that she'll do well?"

"I don't know her personally, but I've heard that she's one of the rich families in Four. Probably lives in a mansion or something, but Cliff told me that she's a good swimmer. And she should have trained at the Academy as well. She wouldn't hurt us too badly, and is too small to do any serious harm."

"Then I'll try to get Dimitri back, and you'll watch Lumara. Deal?"

"Deal." And they shake hands, finding comfort in the small fact that they have each other.

Even if one of them has to die.

Bayleigh Mountainson, 12
District Ten Female

"I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die. I don't want to die."

She's huddled in her apartment's bathroom yet again, tears streaming down her face as she rocks back and forth.

She's been in here more often than not at this point.

After what feels like a year but must have only been a few minutes, she gets up from the floor and washes off her face. Tearstains have covered her cheeks with wet, shiny lines, so she washes them off with a warm, wet cloth and looks at herself in the mirror.

She looks a like a mess. For a moment, she wants to stay in this room and never leave, so that no one can see her and mock her for looking as bad as this. But she needs to start moving, to do something, or she'll waste the few days that left in her life. Her mentor had tried to get her out of the room before, but she had refused to. She was too upset, too terrified to leave. For the past three days, she's been treating this room as her refuge from the Capitol - a place to retreat to whenever she felt overwhelmed by everything that she had to do.

There's quite a lot to be afraid of, here.

But no, she has to get a grip. If she stays in here, she'll rot away until peacekeepers come get her. Grimacing at the thought, Bayleigh opens the door and steps out into the living room.

Unsurprisingly, given that it's the middle of the day, it's empty.

She takes a seat at the table and asks an avox if she could have some food, who returns promptly with a steaming plate of roasted chicken and mashed potatoes. It's creamy and salty and so… so… oh, it's even better than she could have imagined.

It's her first proper meal since she's came to the Capitol, and she enjoys every bite.

As she sits by the table, she notices the remote and flicks the television on. The large screen, a blue-ish hue on the black background, flicks on and reveals footage of the reapings. There, she watches the different tributes volunteer and be reaped - there's quite a few who react adversely, even crying when they realize that they've been reaped, but none react like she did.

When the screen shifts to herself crying on stage and wailing for her mother to come and get her, Bayleigh turns off the television and stands up from the table.

She doesn't want to think about that.

She has to be strong.

Bayleigh walks out of the room and into the hallway, looking for the elevator that had brought her up to tenth floor. It's at the end of the hallway, and she climbs in before pressing the button for the bottom floor. She's still not totally certain about how to use this, but she watched her mentor press the tenth button to bring them up to their floor and it had worked. The first floor must be the bottom button, right?

The elevator goes down, and down, and down. Bayleigh watches the glass reflect images of the other floors around the space, then gasps. Why is it going past the ground floor? Why is she going into the basement of the building, instead of where she could have asked someone where to find her mentor? Will it be damp and dirty, just like the basement at her own home?

She doesn't like this.

As the light disappears from the elevator and the doors open as it reaches the bottom floor, Bayleigh puts a hand over her face to stop the lights from blinding her. No, she's not in some subterranean basement. This must be the training centre that her district partner had talked about, - Cody, she thinks his name was - where they can all learn skills to keep them alive in the Hunger Games.

When their mentor had given up and disappeared to his room, Cody had tried to teach Bayleigh about the Hunger Games as well. She knows that it's a competition where they're supposed to fight to the death, with the last one standing being the only one to live. She had tried to ask Cody about the youngest kid - tribute, was it? - to win the Games, but he hadn't answered her. Maybe he hadn't heard her question.

She sees Cody at the end of the training centre, and waves to him. Everyone's dressed up in tight-fitting uniforms, and Bayleigh glances down at her own clothing. She's still wearing one of the outfits that she had found on the train, a beautiful blue dress that she loved to twirl in.

Maybe it wasn't the best choice for here, where wearing a uniform would do her best. Then again, she might as well try. She only has so much time until she has to go to the Games, right?

Cody glances up and drops his sword when he sees Bayleigh, walking quickly to come get her. "Oh, Bayleigh, you actually came down here? I thought you were going to stay in the apartment until our escort came to get you for the private sessions - oh, she's going to be worried when she doesn't find you. Oh well, she'll find you eventually. Well, it's good to have you here!"

"Thank… thank you," Bayleigh replies, trying to remember her manners. That offhand comment one of the peacekeepers had tossed out about her being a brat still stings, and she's trying to behave in a way that no one would get annoyed at. She just wants to be liked.

Cody brings her over to the sword station, and she gives it a few experimental swings - almost losing control of the sword, but still holding on - before practicing against a dummy. It's hard, but Bayleigh is determined to learn.

She has to learn.

She has to try.

I hope y'all liked that - we're getting into the private sessions! Huzzah!

Enjoy the chapter and all that - I'm excited to keep going. Until next time, TheAmazingJAJ