Randy's been a Victor for ONE YEAR and I already forgot to add him.

I got impatient and just did everyone left all at once.


Randy Mills- District Nine mentor

Oh, dear. Oh, dear, Laurel definitely should have won. She's so smart. She'd have smart stuff to say to Visenya and Porter. What am I gonna say, "Hey, you two. If you're gonna do a cat eye, liquid liner is best, but beginners should use a solid pencil?"

"Hey. I guess I should give you some advice. So… If you're gonna do a cat eye…"


Gasoly Wayfarer- District Six female

The little bug hopped around in the cage. It wasn't the main reason for the cage. Really the cage was for a big hairy tarantula. But he was hiding inside his little hollow log. That was disappointing, but the cage was magical without him anyway. I'd never seen a real grasshopper before. There was hardly any grass in Six, and the bits we had were mostly mowed down super short. I'd never seen the cute little bug with his kinky legs and the little bits of spit at his mouth, like the old people I'd sometimes seen chewing tobacco. He was the cutest, most fragile little amazing thing.

"You can eat that one," Arisia, the edible insects instructor said. Since literally no one ever went to her station ever, I'd managed to convince her to take me to the little tiny zoo in the Games building. They called it a "menazree" or something fancy, but it was just a tiny zoo. It had a capuchin monkey and a white alligator and a whole bunch of bugs, so it was educational and she was just doing her job.

I imagined picking the grasshopper up and eating it. I screwed up my face at the thought of the red goop squirting out of its mouth and getting on my lips when I bit down.

It turned out I could eat most bugs. The instructor said pretty much anything with six legs or fewer went. Most of the ones with more legs than that were also edible, but there were enough exceptions to mention them. I already knew about the monarch butterflies, since they were the most famous kind of butterfly. There were some others, like centipedes and puss caterpillars. Others, like this one millipede we found, could cause allergic reactions. I didn't know if I was allergic or not, but it was probably smart to eat some other bug.

"If you're really lucky, the Arena will have honeypot ants," Arisia said. Her eyes lit up and she got the big smile she got when she talked about bugs. "They collect food in their abdomens and swell up so big you can bite their butts off and eat them like juicy berries."

Even though I knew it was probably a little silly to spend time on bugs when I should have been spending it on orientation and stuff like that, I was glad I met Arisia and went to the zoo with her. She was just like me.

"If I win, I want to see if I can be an insects instructor like you," I said, looking up at her.

Arisia looked at me like when you tell your dad you love him out of nowhere and it's like he was afraid you might not have until you said it. "I hope you do win, dear," she said. She pulled out a handkerchief and turned to cough into it.


Porter Crane- District Nine male

The training room was really nice and all, but it wasn't ideal. I couldn't do my thing when everyone else was there staring at me. Every one of the other Tributes thought they were being sneaky trying to spy on everyone else and see their weaknesses. All they saw was other Tributes looking at them trying to see their weaknesses. And truth be told, I had more than enough weaknesses for them to see, especially if I was trying my hardest.

We still had twenty minutes of training time left when I snuck out. I wandered back to the Nine lounge for a few minutes to sit around by myself before I'd have to sit around with Visenya and Randy.

I looked around, just in case anyone might have shown up in the three seconds since I walked in, then jumped over the couch from behind and landed splayed across it. I lay like that for a minute, head resting on the ground and legs hooked over the back of the couch. Then it started to occur to me that I could wreak a lot of havoc in twenty minutes.

Floor is lava, ha ha, I thought as I rearranged the room into my own impromptu obstacle course. Of course in the Arena, the floor might actually be lava. I jumped over the couch and landed on a lampstand, hooking around it like a fireman's pole and clambering across the room on cushions and furniture until I reached the coffee table. That gave me room to take a running leap and grab onto the chandelier. There was a wonderful moment where all my childhood Tarzan dreams came true. Then there was an equally childlike moment of panic as the chandelier arm dropped an inch and tilted as one of the fasteners failed under my weight. I let go and dropped just as the arm snapped off and fell onto the coffee table, shattering the glass.

I don't think I can fix that, I thought, staring at the carnage. Just then, the door opened, and Randy walked in.

"Hey," I said. I pointed at the table. "Someone broke that."


Gavin Booth- District Ten male

The Games center didn't exactly have anything dedicated to sports history, but it did have a sports bar. The "sports bar" in Ten consisted of a rickety shack whose owner had an ancient television set that could pick up Capitol transmissions if they weren't encrypted. We would gather around and watch the grainy games on its cracked screen.

The Capitol bar was a little different. The middle of the room was a fenced-off area where a real-time scale model holographic projection followed two Capitol teams facing off. It was a little funny, since it looked like a bunch of munchkins, but it was also super cool. It was the closest I could possibly get to seeing a live game.

I was of age and all, but I didn't think this was a good time to start drinking. I just got soda and peanuts and a hot dog like you're supposed to get at a baseball game. I snuck Bambi's poodle Labyrinth pieces of hot dog under the table.

At a break between innings, I got up to go to the bathroom. A Capitolite woman moved into my way and leaned against a pillar, blocking me.

"Hey. You look like you might be worth sponsoring," she said. She looked me over in the way I usually tried to ignore. I had some muscles from baseball and just general Ten life, and I knew some people thought of me that way. People thought it was an ego boost, but it could also be gross. If I didn't ask for it, that sort of thing was just unpleasant. Then she reached behind me and grabbed my backside.

I stiffened. My first impulse was to shove her hand away, but I couldn't do that. Then I wanted to say something witty and get her to laugh and go away wanting to sponsor me even more, but I couldn't think of anything. I felt like I couldn't say anything at all. In the end I just smiled and thanked her and fled to the bathroom.

I wiped the seat of my pants off before I sat back down with Bambi. Just wipe her off and move on, I thought. She'd never know how powerful she was or how long it would stick with me, and that made it even worse. But I handled it as best as I could, and if she sent stuff I'd make good use of it despite her not good at all motivation. But most of all, I wouldn't dwell on it. I shoved her from my mind and slowly got my thoughts back on a nice game of baseball.


Apollo Courfeyrac- District Eleven male

I felt like I'd been abducted by aliens and brought to another planet. Everything here was so different I could not imagine it was the same world. Things in Eleven ran on manpower and coal. Things here ran on some magical energy that seemed threaded into the very air. It was one of the science fiction books I saw in our excuse for a library, with needle-nosed spaceships and guns that shot multicolored rays.

Even the people were different. They were another species, as different from me as I was from a caveman. None of them had any scars or ugly spots. They had shiny, glittery hair and painted skin and parts that were changed so they looked more like drawings than people. People in the Capitol could be anything they wanted, and the Capitol had everything they could want.

The Games building looked like it could start up and fly away. It was made of some weird sleek white material with no cracks like the cinder-block building in Eleven. The floor was made of tiles I could see through a little bit, so I could see people moving around in the floors underneath me. And there were more and more and more floors. The tallest building back home was the silo in the center of town. The Games center was four times as tall. It went on forever, all the way into space.

I tried to visit every inch of the Games building. I saw things I never would have imagined, like a room where you could chase other kids around with laser guns, or a cook taking the cover off a dish and fog pouring out. Just being in the building was like a crazy dream, and every second I went further reminded me of how spectacular it all was.

The Capitol had so much more than Eleven I couldn't even wrap my head around it. I wished they'd take just a little and give it to us. If they took just one percent of the Capitol and spread it out between the Districts, everyone in Panem could be rich. I didn't understand why they had to keep all of it for themselves. The people here didn't seem that mean or greedy. They all smiled at me and were always friendly. They didn't seem to have any cares in the world. If I could live here the rest of my life like they did, I probably wouldn't either. But I only got a few days. I only had a few more days, and then the future would be over and it would be back to dirt and trees, and I'd have even less than I started with.


Sundew Keope- District Twelve female

Strong displays of emotion were never my thing. I felt feelings the same as anyone else, but they didn't seem to show on my face that much. Even so, my face absolutely lit up the first time I tried Capitol soda. It was like electricity and a thunderstorm in a glass. It was like fruit boiled down until all the water was gone and it was just FRUIT like a punch in the face, and it slid across your tongue the whole way and tingled all down your throat. If the Capitol would just share that with the Districts, they could stave off rebellion for decades.

A bottle of soda rested on the ground next to me as I knelt by the solar still I'd constructed with the help of the water-finding instructor, Thalassa. She was no-nonsense and had launched right into the lesson without even asking my name. I only knew hers because of the tag on her chest. I liked how I didn't have to pretend to make small talk or be interested in her.

"So that's why there's usually a sheet of plastic in the Bloodbath," she said. "Most Tributes ignore it and everyone watching at home wonders why it's even there. That's why."

Perfect. No one would want a stupid piece of plastic. I could grab that at the Bloodbath and not be in danger, as long as it was close to me and not farther inside the ring of platforms.

So far, I was going it alone. I'd thought about allies and even made a list in my head and almost went to talk to a few of them, but it hadn't happened. In my heart, I knew they wouldn't be allies. They would be assets. I'd use them for what they could do for me and when the time came, I knew I would try to kill them. I couldn't make myself feel guilty about it, but I knew it was wrong. I made sure I wouldn't reach the end of that path by never starting it in the first place. There was only one Victor. Unlike some Tributes, I could never make myself lose sight of that.

It was funny that the worst parts of myself were what gave me the best chance of winning. I wasn't going to be moved by some other Tribute, or hesitate about crossing lines. Victors won because they put themselves first. That was always something that came easy to me.