A/N: It's been more than half a year since I disappeared from this website, but when I felt inspired to write this new chapter I decided to post it anyway. I guess I'm holding out hope that someone out there still cares about this story.

If anyone's out there… here's the story of Stitch Elrod, the luckiest and un-luckiest boy in District 8! Enjoy (:

Stitch Elrod from District 8
Victor of the Twenty-Ninth Annual Hunger Games

Despite the Capitol's love for the high-tech muttations brewed up by the gamemakers each year, surprisingly little was known about them. Nobody knew how they were made, or where they went to once the games were finished. These secrets were only known by the highest-ranking scientists of the Capitol, those who had been sworn to secrecy on penalty of death. President Snow himself ensured that confidentiality was kept under all circumstances. If a mutt designer let a secret slip, they would do well to be careful what they ate that evening.

Despite these measures, perfect secrecy was not always kept. The Capitol, despite the claims of President Snow and his team, was not a fool-proof system. Mutts occasionally escaped into the wild, slipping through weak areas in the force field when the cameras were focused on a captivating scuffle between tributes at the other end of the arena.

An escaped mutt, though, was rarely cause for alarm. They usually ran away into the wilderness and died in a matter of days. There was only one known example of a mutt reproducing exponentially in the wild: the Mockingjay, the creature that shouldn't exist. Nobody ever expected it to become such a prevalent species in the wilderness of Panem. Nobody had anticipated its will to survive.

The Mockingjays, though, did not live everywhere. They flourished mostly in the forests of District 7 and the wilderness east of District 12. Eleven of the twelve districts were known to have a sizable Mockingjay population.

The exception was District 8. It was so polluted and such a disgusting place to live that the Mockingjays steered clear of it by instinct. If one of the birds ever entered the smoggy recesses of District 8, it quickly died. Killed in a jet of fire or crushed in a machine or just dead from lack of food. It wasn't a hospitable place for any creature.

Including people. For the human residents of District 8, survival was difficult and disgusting.

The largest city in District 8, which contained the Justice Building and the famously large factory that made peacekeeper uniforms, was also one of the largest food markets in the district. Each evening, those who were determined (or desperate) enough to hunt the scant fauna of the district brought in their kills. Coins were dished out and the meat was sold. Selling meat was a great way to make money in a district where food was so scarce.

One chilly autumn day, when the smog settled in a hazy grey ribbon across the sky, there was quite a commotion in the town square. One young hunter had brought home a very strange animal. Children peered out of their mothers' arms to catch a glance as he dragged the black, wiry creature over the slushy ground.

"Don't buy that thing," an old merchant muttered to a group of younger patrons. "Your mother will lose her arm."

It was a common superstition in District 8 that eating a sinister animal would cause bad luck.

But it didn't matter. Dozens of people were already crowded around the young man and the horrifying creature he'd killed.

"Where'd you find it, Stitch?" asked a stout man with filthy fingernails.

"Far from the river. I followed it for hours. It didn't seem to need food or water. But it didn't put up much of a fight. It was a quick kill."

A young woman ran her fingers over its rough skin. "Horns," she muttered grimly. "Lock your windows tonight, young man."

Everyone knew that killing an animal with horns brought bad luck. Lock your windows. In District 8, the only thing as scary as losing a limb was being robbed.

There was much superstition in District 8. It is easy to be superstitious when you know so little. The stories told by the old men and women of the town square were sometimes the most entertaining part of the evening scuffle. There were stories of dragons and vampires and creatures that would tear out your soul in the night. A story about a girl who turned into a swan during the full moon. A story of a man who died and came back to life.

Every once in a while, a wealthy patron showed up to the town square. They were usually passing through as part of a much longer journey; rarely did anyone who was not dirt poor have reason to buy anything in the town market. There were the occasional stoppers-by, of course. The merchants from the west. The travelling people from the north. And the eccentric buyers who collected the crude trinkets of the townspeople like talismans.

"Where'd you find this?" asked a wild-looking traveler, pointing at the dead animal.

"It was sitting in a field of flowers," the hunter, Stitch, muttered.

He shook his head. "This is a bad sign."

"I don't believe in bad signs." Unlike most people in District 8, Stitch didn't have enough time to think about tales of dragons and charms and mangers.

The man cocked his head lightly. "It's interesting, though. I'll take it. How much?"

The poorer patrons gasped. To them, the idea of buying anything that didn't provide meat was simply incomprehensible.

"How much?" he repeated, the little wooden charms knocking together on his necklaces and bracelets.

"Ten coins."

"It's a deal."

The traveler disappeared without another word, taking the sinewy black creature with him. He disappeared so quietly and so suddenly he might have been only a dream.

"You're a lucky kid. Don't waste it," said one of the bewildered townspeople.

"I don't waste anything," Stitch muttered, his cheeks turning somewhat rosy in the haze of the setting sun.

The square was already clearing. The people were too tired to care about the strange animal anymore and most of them had already hurried home. Stitch stood there long after everyone else had left, his breath pulsating in and out in the heavy, cold night air. He didn't know it, but he had encountered a mutt. It was an unfinished project, having slipped out of a Capitol lab before it could be developed far enough to be used in the Hunger Games.

That wasn't the final mutt Stitch Elrod would ever kill. In fact, he had a strange penchant for killing mutts. They seemed drawn to him like flies to honey. Killing unnatural creatures wasn't just a skill he had. It was part of how his mind worked. It was in his blood.

He didn't know back then that he would eventually enter the Hunger Games. All he cared about was how fantastic it was that he'd gotten ten gold coins. The last thing on his mind was next week's reaping as he pulled his jacket tightly over his neck and stumbled his way home through the cold.

Word spreads quickly in the tightly-packed desks and quarters of District 8. As the next three years came and went, many people heard about the young man named Stitch Elrod with a weird knack for killing mysterious creatures and taking them home to the market. Many people wove strange tales about the boy. By the time he was eighteen, nobody knew which of the stories were real and which were fiction. If you asked Stitch about it, he'd just shrug. He had quick wits and a sharp eye for anything creepy and peculiar. What else could he say?

When Stitch was eight years old, he'd been attacked by a pair of bright pink snakes. His babysitter screamed and beat them to death with a rock. Ten years later, he still had nightmares about scaly fluorescent strands tightening around his abdomen.

At age ten, he'd been tackled by a trio of vicious golden squirrels while playing on a ropes course near the outskirts of District 8. He killed them by scaling the ropes course and throwing them down a fearsome distance to the ground. His parents didn't seem concerned about the strange behavior of the creatures. They were only grateful their son had survived.

At age twelve, a bright pink bird skewered its curved beak through his palm. He was lucky it hadn't hit him in the abdomen, because he probably would have died. Fortunately, he was near enough to home to get help before the bleeding became too intense. The townspeople didn't believe him when he told them it was a bird that had stabbed him. "Nothing made by God," whispered the old healer, "could have done that to you."

At age thirteen, a frog with frankly unnatural speed landed on his skin as he traipsed through the forest. It burned like the entire surface of its skin was covered with poison.

At age fourteen, a rapid dog came racing into the capital town of District 8, saliva dripping wildly from its maw. It slipped in through an open window and tore Stitch's leg open. His screams attracted the attention of his neighbors, who coaxed the dog into an alley, where the nearest peacekeeper killed it with a gun. The dog wasn't a mutt – it was merely a rabid animal – but it still felt like some kind of sign.

That was why no one was surprised when Stitch, age fifteen, dragged the hellish black creature into the market.

To tell the truth, most of the stories people told about him were fake. The squirrel attack hadn't actually happened. Neither had the frog. It was true, though, that escaped mutts were unusually drawn to Stitch Elrod. Nobody knew why.

Being a magnet for bad luck was sure to manifest in other ways sooner than later. When Stitch was reaped for the twenty-ninth annual Hunger Games, nobody was surprised. The more superstitious folk might even have been grateful that the "unluckiest boy in Panem" was finally off of their hands. Maybe this year the smog would be a little bit clearer. Maybe the meat would be more plentiful. The winter a little less biting.

When Woof saw him, sitting cross-armed on the train with a stern glare at the passing terrain, he didn't do anything but stand silently in the doorway. It was a good thing, he had realized, to stay far away for the first few moments a tribute spent on the train. They needed their space to truly accept what had happened to them. What was going to happen to them.

"I can hear you," Stitch murmured. It wasn't accusatory. His tone was perfectly neutral.

Woof took a seat across from him, staring into the fake fire. In seven years, he hadn't gotten any better at this. He got the sudden impression that he was taunting Stitch by sitting so closely to him. Waving the prize of survival before him like meat in front of a starving dog. It seemed cruel, almost.

"Tell you what," Woof said, almost whispering. "Do you want me to talk to you, or no? I can leave if you'd like?"

"Stay."

He nodded. "Have you met your partner?"

Stitch shook his head with almost violent haste. "No. Never heard of her before."

There was something pestering and frantic about the way Stitch formed his words into sentences. Like a cat tugging at a dress.

"Well," Woof said, "She's definitely heard of you."

A grunt escaped Stitch's lips. "Those stories are all fake, you know."

"Listen up. It's a wonderful advantage. These people – the Capitol, you know – they live for tributes with interesting backgrounds."

"There are the careers. I can't kill them."

"This isn't really a survival game! This is a television show. The best character wins. That's how it works."

That brought him to a pause. Stitch's cheeks turned rosy again, like they always did when he was feeling emotional. Something about how he turned his head in the light.

"Pull up your chair, Burton."

"You can call me Woof."

"Woof. What's the story behind that name, anyway?"

It felt like he'd been hit in the chest. He saw a cattail, a boy falling through water…

"I don't really remember," he lied.

"Well, Woof," his lips curled into a light smile. "I think you can stay."

They talked about his upcoming interview. Something Woof noticed was that Stitch always seemed to have a picture of what he was thinking about in front of him. He couldn't help squinting a little, as though the image of Caius Flickerman's stage was a physical model he might catch a glimpse of if he looked hard enough. Stitch's face was hard to read. He looked at the air in front of him like a cat looking at a fishbowl. Woof got the impression he might have jumped up at any moment.

"As long as you can outshine your district partner, you're in a pretty good place," Woof advised. "The Capitol viewers have fresh eyes every other interview."

"My district partner…" he trailed off. "What's her name again?"

"Chantilly Doran. Age sixteen."

Chantilly Doran. He thought back to the reaping. The straight black hair, the soft jawline. Surely she wasn't much of a threat.

"You know what, Stitch?" Woof asked. "Maybe you should think less about what's ahead and more about what's happening right now."

"Not much to do right now, is there?"

"I mean, you should probably think about the training center before you think about your interview. It's good to keep them all in mind, but remember that this always happens in a certain order. You can't be too careful not to lose your mind."

Stitch chewed on that for a few moments. There was silence. An avox set down a pitcher of water. The train lurched to a stop. They were going into District 9 and it was time for the obligatory search.

"Where's Georgio anyway?" Stitch asked. "Both victors are on this train, right?"

"That's right," Woof answered. "He's in the kitchen car with Chantilly. They're talking strategy, last I heard."

"I can hunt." He blurted out those three words so quickly it was almost comedic.

Woof waited a moment and then nodded. "We've heard all about you, you know."

"Yes, I know."

"I still remember the day I dragged that big black mutt into the town square. That was four years ago. I don't think I'll ever forget it. It was so creepy. So… so alive, even though it was dead."

"How'd you kill it?"

He recited the old story. "It was resting in a flower bed far from the river. I shot it with an arrow."

"And the old men in the square. They didn't like you for that, did they?"

"No. They didn't."

"They never liked me either."

He took a deep sip of water and stared out the window. The conversation had drawn to a natural stop and now it was all he could do to savor the moment of silence.

The pre-games festivities passed quickly, without much silence at all. The tribute parade went by with the usual fanfare, the stylists garbling District 8's tributes in big burlap sacks. Fortunately, this year's stylists put at least a tad bit of effort into shaping them nicely, which was a definite plus. Despite his legendary status in District 8, nobody in the Capitol recognized him on sight. He had been expecting this, of course. They really were worlds apart in more ways than one.

It wasn't until training that Stitch got a good look at the careers. This year didn't have the most spectacular pack in Games history, but they were still enough to make his knees knock. The boy from 2, Hector, was matched in strength only by the girl from 4, Tidessa. The pack, by the looks of things, was focusing on the knives rather than the long-range weapons this year. They must have deduced from last year's arena that projectile weapons wouldn't always be an option.

The careers' absence from the archery station left a blank space for Stitch to slide into, casually showing off his impressive aim to the gamemakers. The Capitol's bows were made from high-tech steel; not the supple wood used in District 8. He felt them up and down with the fingers that were known to have killed so many strange and mysterious creatures.

Hector and Tidessa laughed at him more than once. They laughed at everybody. The pair from 1, Shine and Velvet, looked a little more concerned. Still, though, Stitch was nothing to worry about in their eyes. He was unseeming and unproven. Surely he'd be dead in the first few days. Maybe even killed by one of them in the first two minutes.

But Stitch Elrod got the last laugh. What none of them knew was that this year's arena was absolutely overrun by mutts. The moment they rose up into the misty, shadowy meadow, they were greeted with the fearsome howl of a distant wolf mutt. The grass, which was ashy grey, spread out for miles, inhabited by deadly spiders and snakes. There were skeletal bird mutts that could kill any unsuspecting tribute, and the forest that surrounded the meadow (in a similarly terrifying fashion) was equipped with mutts big and small.

Stitch's face turned just as ashen as the grass itself when he saw the arena for the first time. This wasn't a good place to be armed with only a bow. He'd been originally planning (at Woof's request) to simply grab a bow and set of arrows at the first possibly opportunity and then run. But that surely wouldn't be enough. Some sort of close-range weapon was necessary for literally any tribute to feel safe in an area where visibility was so limited.

He eyed the pedestal ring, picking out the strongest competitors. Hector was at the opposite end of the ring, squinting to see the supplies situated in concentric circles around the silver Horn. Tidessa was much nearer, her dark blond hair glinting somewhat in the scant sunlight.

Chantilly was directly to his right. He offered her a sad smile. This was probably the last time they would see one another. They weren't friends, but it was still heartbreaking. The games were designed primarily to make the people of Panem feel separated and weak.

The opening scuffle that year claimed twelve lives. Tidessa's district partner, Mast, was at the head of onrush. Despite being the weakest career, he was the fastest by far. He'd killed two tributes by the time Stitch even reached the horn, knifing down the girl from 3 and the boy from 12 while they tried to run.

There was only one moment he came within an inch of death. He was kneeling on the ground, hurriedly taking inventory of the contents of a little red backpack, when a massive weight crashed into his back, knocking him onto his front. Winded, his mind went blank of even his instincts as Parker from 7 brought down his dagger, nearly slicing open his throat before he shoved himself out of its lethal path.

It was a long and difficult duel. And as they rolled back and forth, fighting for dear life on the unforgiving, crumbling ground, the scene changed before Stitch's eyes. Suddenly, he was back in the forest at age fifteen, watching the odd black creature crouching in the valley. He'd seen it several times before: eyes glinting out of the darkness like owls'. That must have been its permanent home. Maybe a creature designed for a compact arena would never wander far if it escaped into the wild.

By the end of the bloodbath, when Parker sat bleeding in the far reaches of the arena and twelve tributes lay dead in the cornucopia field, Stitch reached a brutal truth. He could only kill if he pretended his victims were animals. He'd killed one of them so far: the girl from 6, who tried to tackle him and grab away his weapon before he could escape into the deep recesses of the dusty meadow.

He didn't want to draw the attention of the careers. He'd only done it to avoid both of them dying. That was what he told himself as he slashed open her throat and upper chest. She was just a deer. Just an animal.

But animals don't scream and flail as they die. Animals don't have names or friends. And animals don't haunt you after you kill them.

It became apparent very quickly that this year's arena was just as terrifying as it looked. The first day hadn't even reached its close before one tribute, the time girl from 12, found herself thrashing helplessly in the web of an enormous spider roughly four miles from the cornucopia. It crept out of the shadows, pincers dripping poison, and there was nothing she could do but scream at the moon as it crushed her with its strong legs.

Dehydration also became quite the concern by the time Day 3 arrived. There was water if you knew how to find it, but not every tribute was clever or creative enough to tap into the trees and the ground where it was hiding. At least two or three tributes were so thirsty by Day 3 they could hardly move. Their sponsors swooped in to help them. However, as the price of sponsor gifts rose exponentially, these tributes would have to start getting creative if they actually wanted to survive.

For Stitch, things were much more comfortable. He was one of the first to reach for the forest, not because he was the fastest but because he spent the least time worrying and the most time actually doing things. His bounty from the bloodbath was large, almost surprisingly so: three knives (one for each hand and one for safekeeping), a bowl of fruit, and enough rope to truss up an entire large mutt.

Remember the rope. It will be important later.

Despite their frightening appearance, the berries borne by the skeletal forest trees were completely edible. Stitch reached this conclusion at the end of the third day by setting a kind of trap. He filled his bowl to the brim with every kind of berry he could find, then set it out in the open. Now it was just a waiting game.

A squirrel the size of a house cat was the first animal to approach. It knelt at the edge of the bowl for a moment, sniffing the juice-stained lip. Its face was weirdly whiskery and human. The squirrel took a big bite of the fruit, cautiously staring off into the distance as though waiting to die or live. But nothing happened. It dashed away and curled up in the leaves mere meters from the place where Stitch was hiding.

He pounced out of the darkness. It was too large to escape fast enough before he gashed it open with two heavy chops. It squeaked once and then fell still.

To the surprise of no one, that was only the beginning of Stitch's endless war against the mutts of the arena. He was traipsing through the outskirts of the meadow on Day 5 when a glistening red snake slithered out of the roots, raising its head over the grass and hissing lightly. He didn't know it, but they were the exact same model of snake mutt accidentally released by the Capitol thirteen years earlier; the ones that had found him at age eight and nearly killed him before his babysitter smashed them to death with a rock.

The snake's first blow was powerful. It caught him off guard, so much so that he might have been bitten if he hadn't been holding a knife in each hand. The sheer force of the serpentine projectile nearly winded him. He lashed out and slashed a deep gash in its glowing scales. It hissed in fury and then gathered its coils into a single straight line, preparing to make a vicious retaliation.

"Never look a snake in the eye," one of the old men had told him in the square many years ago. "Your brother will marry a pig." Pig was an awkward translation of an old word referring to an unfaithful woman.

But he'd already looked it in the eye many times. It seemed incredibly intelligent. The way it looked at him was so smart, so keen, so human.

The serpent was dead within five minutes. He sliced off its head with an awkward swing of the knife's serrated edge. Its coils collapsed in the grass and there was silence once again.

The silence continued for several days, broken only by the periodic cannon shots signaling the deaths of the other tributes. The deaths were caused partly by mutts and partly by the careers. There was a four-member career pack consisting not only of Hector and Tidessa but also the girl from 1 (Velvet) and the boy from 5 who'd been lumped onto the pack after the boy from 1 died. His name was Sparky. Stitch thought that was a rather silly name. Then again, the upper districts rarely gave flattering names to their children.

A forest fire in the northern reaches of the arena killed two tributes on Day 8. The goal of the fire wasn't to kill tributes, though; it was meant to drive them together into more compact spaces. The gamemakers also lifted the fog somewhat. That made the hunters (careers and mutts alike) even more ravenous; they were eager to hunt now that seeing through the grey landscape was so much simpler.

The careers, including Sparky, had to rest before long. They'd been hunting so ferociously that an entire day of rest was needed before they could continue. The others, sensing perhaps a sort of safe haven during that day, moved much more than usual.

Stitch moved back to the forest where the mutts were more plentiful. At this point in the competition, it seemed like there were two Hunger Games going on at the same time: the one between the other players, and the one between Stitch and the mutts. The gamemakers caught on that he had a knack for killing them, and as a result they sent the mutts after him in droves. The Capitol loved watching on their fancy television screens as he beat down the spiders and the snakes and the enormous carnivorous birds that swooped down from trees.

In the front row of Caius Flickerman's stage, where the victors were sitting, Woof allowed himself a smug smile. Stitch wasn't a particularly strong tribute, but he'd made himself the main character. He'd made himself the most interesting tribute, and – as a result – the most interesting potential victor.

But the day wasn't over yet, and Stitch wasn't the only tribute who was moving. Velvet, Tidessa, and Sparky (Hector had died the previous day in a fight with a group of three outliers) completely abandoned the cornucopia in favor of the forest. Tidessa's mentor Makani told her that all the outliers were hiding in the forest, so staying in the meadow just wasn't profitable anymore.

Chantilly Doran (who was miraculously still alive in the Final 8) was still in the meadow, though. She was small enough to stay hidden under the tall grey grass without being seen. Much like her district partner Stitch, she had a knack for killing the spiders. She'd found a weak spot directly beneath the space between their pincers, which would kill the mutt nearly instantly if you could strike it without being struck in return with the arachnids' deadly poison.

The forest had more cover but it also had more mutts. In recent days, the giant wolf mutt they'd heard at the start of the bloodbath finally emerged. It was enormous and deadly and bloodthirsty, and when it emerged in the late night of Day 14 it killed two tributes. The first, the boy from 6 who'd survived thus far by snatching little bits of food from the cornucopia, was gored to death before he even had time to breathe. His screams could be heard across the arena.

At the time, Stitch was hunkering down in a little hut he'd crafted two days earlier. It was nothing fancy, but it did at least something to shield him from the watchful eyes hiding all over the misty forest. He woke in the middle of the night to the high-pitched yet disturbingly throaty scream. It was so, so close; almost directly outside the door.

He scooped up his backpack and took a knife in each hand. This, surely, was the gamemakers' way of drawing him out of hiding. This was the finale.

He burst out into the moonlight just as the girl's cannon sounded. There she was: Chantilly Doran, the only connection Stitch had ever had to District 8 since he entered the arena. They'd only spoken once, having shared a brief meal together in the depths of the forest back on Day 6. Even so, the sight of her mangled corpse made his stomach turn.

The wolf had dropped her on the forest ground, where she rolled through the leaves and came to a battered stop with dirt leaking into her mouth. Of all the dead bodies Stitch had ever seen on television, she was the deadest of them all.

There was silence. Even the crickets were still.

Stitch lunged into combat immediately. He didn't need to worry about the careers attacking him from behind. Surely, the gamemakers would drive them away if they came anywhere close. This fight looked too good to let anyone else get in the way.

It was a long, tough battle. He imagined the wolf as the demented black creature he'd seen in the woods four years ago: dumb, lost, helpless. It didn't help much, but the sudden memory of home brought new strength to his fingers.

He cautioned a glance at the dead girl on the ground.

The wolf, it turned out, wasn't meant to kill him. Only to drive him toward the cornucopia, where the finale of the games nearly always occurred. There were two other tributes still alive, Tidessa and Sparky, and neither of them would go down without a fight. They were well-armed and well-rested and Stitch knew it would take far more than the man power he had to take both of them down.

Twenty minutes later, as he slunk quietly through the overgrowth with the wolf tracking him feverishly, the meadow came into sight. He didn't want to re-enter the realm of enormous spiders and snakes, but he had no choice. This was the finale. It was do or die.

Moments later, the wolf emerged from the trees. Despite its ferocity, it was not terribly smart. It rushed into one of the enormous spider webs almost instantly, entangling itself in the thick, cord-like silk.

Stitch suddenly remembered his rope. His hand reached for his backpack…

Ten minutes later, he'd tied up the mutt with the rope. It was a nerve-wracking process; he had to physically restrain himself from shaking as he wiggled around the spider web, binding the creature's arms and legs. Every moment, there was the risk of getting caught in the web himself, where he'd be easy prey for the spider or for one of the other tributes. The last step was to tie its maw closed.

He was going to win the Hunger Games the smart way.

When Tidessa and Sparky came barreling toward the outer edge of the meadow, alerted to Stitch's position by a note from Sparky's mentor Electra, Stitch reached for his knife. It was time to unleash the wolf.

He picked a bundle of grass as quietly as possible and shoved it against the wolf's nose. It grunted in fury, snot pouring from its nostrils. The careers would certainly have smelled like the grass after spending so long in the meadow. He kept forcing the grass against its nose. It was furious at the scent. It would surely kill the first person it found who carried the smell.

Tidessa and Sparky crested the hill. They glared down into the dark shadow of the valley, where the spider web was affixed to the ground. They might have seen a brief flash of movement. Nothing to worry about.

They didn't have time to breathe before the wolf dashed out of nowhere, ramming them both so suddenly that they were swept onto the ground before they could retaliate. The wolf mauled them to death over the course of several minutes, digging into their flesh with its powerful canine teeth. Stitch stood at the bottom of the hill, motionless, transfixed with horror. He was still holding the knife he'd used to cut the ropes free.

"Stitch Elrod of District 8, you are the victor of the twenty-ninth annual Hunger Games!" Caius Flickerman sang.

He just stared at the ground. He didn't have to lie to himself anymore. Killing people wasn't the same as killing animals. The blood would be on his hands forever.

District 8 welcomed their third victor with open arms. Georgio and Woof were quick to embrace Stitch Elrod, eager to offer support to the freshly traumatized new victor. While he lived in the Victor's Village, he still made frequent visits to the town square where he'd brought his kills ever since he was old enough to hunt.

"Those who have seen death make fast abandon," one of the old marketmen warned.

It was well-known that victors were emotionally distant and unstable.

"Don't cast your pearls before swine."

He was saying that the merchants shouldn't offer their goods to a man as wealthy as Stitch. The irony was that, in the eyes of the Capitol, he was the pearl and they were the swine.

Despite the fanfare of the ensuing victory tour, Stitch was just eager to get back to his life in District 8. He admitted to enjoying the fancy food and parties of the Capitol for many years, but the smoggy streets of District 8 were the places he would always call home.

The people of District 8, in fact, still knew him not as a victor but as the boy who'd dragged home the weird black creature all those years ago.

The very old man, the one who'd warned him four years ago that the creature was a bad sign, was still alive when Stitch won the games. How his body kept going at his age was beyond them. Some thought he would never die.

"I told you it was bad luck," he grunted, "And look what happened to you."

A small smile crossed his face. "They call me the unluckiest man in District 8. But I survived against the odds, didn't I? That's got to count for something."

List of Victors

District 1 (4 Victors): Luxor Dodge (1st), Citrine Whitacre (9th), Peridot Partridge (18th), Vintner Aphelion (23rd)

District 2 (5 Victors): Tyrell Crowley (3rd), Lancaster Percy (6th), Ajax Mathers (15th), Maximus Decimus (21st), Ether Driscoll (28th)

District 3 (2 Victors): Lumen Orlaith (12th), Cobalt Thindrel (19th)

District 4 (3 Victors): Mags Flanagan (11th), Ripple Hart (16th), Makani Lee (26th)

District 5 (2 Victors): Electra Wilty (4th), Fumer Griffin (25th)

District 6 (2 Victors): Jaguar Stratton (7th), Annley Benz (27th)

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

District 8 (3 Victors): Georgio Bronte (8th), Burton Flax (22nd), Stitch Elrod (29th)

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

District 10 (1 Victor): Argus Collymore (24th)

District 11 (2 Victors): Bluebell Singer (5th), Crow Kensington (20th)

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