As Marie Gagne entered the training room on the second day, she couldn't help but feel like she was already screwed. She had come in with such a good plan the day before, and it was through her own inaction that she'd very likely shot herself in the foot.

See, Marie had figured out very quickly that the colors the tributes were wearing had to have some sort of deeper meaning. The tributes had all been associated with one of four colors – pink, purple, green, or blue – three times already based on the Reaping slot they'd been drawn in. Their names on screen during the Reaping Recaps were in a color rather than the conventional black or white, their chariot outfits were in the same color as their names from the Recaps, and now, each kid was wearing a shirt of, again, the same color. The Gamemakers would not have brought in so many references to those colors if they didn't have another meaning. The question was what exactly they were insinuating.

Marie had narrowed it down to two options. The first was that the tributes would be competing as teams within their slots. In other words, the twelve Quell girls would go up against the twelve Quell boys, the twelve Standard girls, and the twelve Standard boys. It was an interesting idea, but Marie couldn't fully get behind it; why would the Gamemakers team up twelve tributes with the prospect of all twelve surviving? That would in no way satiate the bloodthirst of the Capitolite viewers. No, Marie felt that her second option was more likely: that one kid from each slot would be allowed to win. The colors were a way to hint at that to the tributes, to indicate the various groups from which Victors would come. To Marie, the way forward was clear: put together an alliance of one tribute from each slot so that there was no reason to work against each other in the Arena.

The obvious solution to this was to work together with her district partners. But with her district already fractured thanks to Shine, Marie had elected instead to take her time watching the other tributes, so as to pick the best possible trio of allies. Growing up in Twelve, Marie had a variety of mantras, sayings that she'd picked up over time to guide her in her life in the absence of guardians of her own. Thus far, ideas like "Slow and steady wins the race" and "Debate twice, decide once" had never failed her; she'd learned that it was better to take her time and evaluate a situation than to rush into something and risk running into trouble. But this process had proven to her that maybe those adages were not hard and fast rules.

Marie had chosen to take her time choosing allies, and given how sparse her options now were, it seemed as though that choice was coming back to bite her in the ass.

At least she still had one option in each of the other three slots. Among the standard slot boys, the only remaining possible ally was Evion Viscose from Three; all of the others were either already in alliances with their districts, had found another alliance, or (in the case of Runar Theron) didn't want to ally at all. Evion was probably Marie's last choice – or second-to-last, just in front of young Izan from Nine – but she wanted to make sure she had some protection within every slot, so Evion it had to be. And fortunately, when she approached him just at the end of training the day before, he'd said yes, with one caveat: he refused to ally with any other boys.

Desperate, Marie accepted Evion's condition and had spent the entire night trying to find a way to get her way while still appeasing him. After hours of poring over her notes, she finally found a solution, something that would work for both of them – assuming the other tributes agreed.

If they didn't, Marie had no idea what she would do.

"Marie?"

"Oh, hi, Evion! I didn't notice you come over. Are you ready for the day?"

"As ready as you are," Evion replied, a playful twinkle in his eye. "What's first on the agenda?"

"We're filling out our alliance."

"Oh."

"Don't worry. I figured out a way to have one person from each slot without there being any boys."

"Oh, good." Marie could see the boy relax. She sensed there was something… deeper going on with him, though she couldn't figure out what it was. If it came out, it would come out; there was no need to prod the boy about something that might not even be relevant.

"Do you want to come with me, or would you rather get a jump on training?"

"I'll get started for the day. You bring them over when you're done?"

"Sounds good to me."

Marie turned around, holding her head up high, and walked towards the tributes on whom she had her eye. So what if this wasn't her original – or second or third or twelfth – plan? She couldn't focus on the past; she had to focus on how to work with the tools at her disposal to come out of the Arena alive.

To survive, she didn't have any other choice.

The first day of training hadn't been a complete wash for Ritz Marquette. They'd come out of it with one ally, their district partner, Ryelee, and the two had hit a good number of the survival stations. Now, though, they had to branch out at least a little bit to the weapons stations. After all, nobody could get far in the Games without a weapon.

It was kind of hard to kill without them.

At first, Ritz had suggested working with sickles; they hadn't personally worked in the fields, but they assumed that Ryelee had some such experience. But when Ryelee also revealed that she'd never worked in the fields, they decided to pivot to a smaller, easier to learn weapon: daggers. Sure, many outer district kids went for knives or daggers; they and Ryelee would not stand out because of their weapon choice. But that wasn't a bad thing. For one thing, if a lot of tributes went for daggers, they would be easy to find in the Arena. For another, it wasn't horrible to have a simple weapon that would help them fade into the background a bit.

Ritz was pretty much guaranteed to stand out from their interview alone. And it hadn't even happened yet.

As Ryelee sparred with a trainer, Ritz was standing over a dummy, reviewing all of the places he could cut it up to make it bleed to death. They were doing their best to push the realization that they might have to actually do this to another human to survive out of their head. Swallowing down a bit of bile that threatened to make its way out, Ritz slashed the dummy at its jugular. A stream of a viscous, blood-like substance squirted onto Ritz's shirt, while the rest of it oozed out onto the table.

"Nice cut."

Ritz looked up to see the girl from Twelve standing above him. "Oh, thank you."

"Marie Gagne, Twelve," the girl said, holding her hand out.

"Ritz Marquette, Nine," replied Ritz, breaking out a hint of their missionary persona. It helped him feel a little more confident around others. "And that's Ryelee over there." Ryelee stepped back from the trainer with whom she was sparring and waved, keeping a careful eye on Marie in the process.

"A pleasure to meet you. I've been watching the two of you over the last couple of days. Do you happen to be looking for allies?"

Ritz looked towards Ryelee, who sheathed her dagger and came over. "The two of us are doing well enough together. What's in it for us?" she asked, scanning Marie up and down.

"Protection," replied Marie matter-of-factly. "I think I've figured out the way the Gamemakers have interpreted a part of the Quell twist, and that the composition of our alliance, namely us three and Evion from Three, gives us the best chance of all surviving the Games. And even if not, many other tributes are forming larger alliances this year. Getting caught alone or in a pair will make you an easy kill, but with extra bodies around you, you have a better chance of surviving an encounter. Even with the Careers."

Ryelee and Ritz looked at each other. "What do you think?" Ryelee asked.

Ritz scratched their head awkwardly. "I mean, if someone isn't with us, they're against us. And I'd rather a couple more people be with us."

Ryelee looked up. "You've got yourself a deal."

"Fantastic. I'll go get Evion and we can start talking strategy."

As Marie walked away, Ritz felt… well, they didn't know how they felt. A part of them felt a little anxious about allying with the first person who came up. But being around so many people as a missionary, they thought they were a pretty good judge of who was trustworthy and worth engaging with, and who was not. And something told Ritz that Marie was someone who was worth working with.

So why were they also getting the hunch that someone whom they were working with was not?

Walking towards the sparring ring in the middle of the room, Acacia Andalu couldn't help but feel like she was headed into a blizzard.

This morning was the agreed-upon joint training session between the packs from One and Two. Acacia was still a little iffy about the idea, as she didn't want to reveal her Pack's weaknesses to the other district. (Though Two's weaknesses relative to the One Pack were relatively obvious – their names were Smash and Crash.) And she especially didn't want to be training alongside Shine Scott, whom the Two Pack had just rejected the day before, and who evidently was interested in revenge against those who rejected her. But it was most important to assert dominance over the Outer Districts, so Acacia would put up with the plan for the sake of increasing her own odds.

At least Acacia and Jaesa had come up with a good plan to reveal as little to the other Pack as possible: sparring. Each tribute would spar once, maybe twice, against a tribute from another district, with a weapon that was neither tribute's preferred weapon, with a strict no-injury agreement. Acacia was particularly excited about this plan because, in her view, it actually served to benefit the Twos. If Smash and Crash played up the fact that they were young and intentionally stumbled during their spars, it would only reinforce the perception that they were young and weak, turning both children into secret weapons come the Arena.

Of course, that plan entailed both kids cooperating. And given how long it took to convince either to do anything the other was doing, that would probably be easier said than done.

"Good morning," Jaesa said, a pleasant smile plastered to her face despite her clearly guarded attitude.

"Good morning," Acacia replied, shaking hands firmly with the other girl.

"Ready to go?"

"As ready as we'll ever be."

"Fabulous." Jaesa turned to address the larger group of assembled Careers. "So, who wants to pair up first?"

"I'll go!" Smash exclaimed, just as the Twos had planned, hoping that Smash leading off and losing would reduce the entire Pack's threat level. "Do I get to pick who I spar against?"

"Uh, sure. Who would you like to go against?"

"Shine." Another strategic move. The Twos had a sense of what Shine could do, but they were missing a year or so of her training after she moved to Twelve. If the agreement was that nobody would pick their preferred weapon, and Shine chose a weapon that was her primary weapon back in Two, they might be able to figure out what her new preferred weapon was.

"Let's do this," Shine grinned, immediately picking up a rapier and strutting to the center of the mat. Smash, trying to strike the balance between seeming anxious and confident, walked up to a rack of more size-appropriate rapiers. She took her time choosing a sword that felt comfortable, then took her position on the mat across from Shine.

Maybe a minute later, Smash was down on the mat, the point of Shine's rapier an inch from her throat.

Perfect.

As Tyranny Bomber watched Khada corner young Crash from Two, she couldn't help but feel bad for the Twos. It was such a shame that two of their tributes couldn't hold their own in any one-on-one spar. And losing to Khada, a crossbow user, at hand-to-hand combat just added insult to injury in the eyes of the Ones.

To be fair, it's not like the Twos would know that Khada primarily used crossbows. But Tyranny was choosing to ignore that point. It was much more fun to believe that the Ones had this in the bag.

A whistle blew, signaling that Crash had been defeated. He and Khada shook hands, then retreated back to their teams. Poor Crash look so dejected as he slunk back that it was almost sad; it almost made Tyranny sad that he would most likely die. If he had waited to volunteer for a few years, he really could have been a force to be reckoned with.

"Who's next?"

"I'll go!" Tyranny volunteered. Enough with watching other people spar; she wanted to take a turn for herself. "Against Acacia."

"All right," Acacia said, stepping up to the fighting ring. "Are you good with broadswords?"

"If you'd like to do broadswords, I'm happy to take a round with them. I haven't touched them this week yet."

"Perfect. Take your time in picking; I know weapon choice is important."

"Very kind of you."

"If I win, I want to win honorably. It's the best way to fight."

"Even in the Arena?"

"Why would I stop then?"

Tyranny couldn't help but be confused. Why was Acacia so committed to fighting honorably? The Games were about honor, sure, but bringing honor to your district by winning. It really didn't matter how you won as long as you came out alive, especially for a Quell, and doubly especially for a centennial. Tyranny couldn't help but feel like a commitment so strong to honorable fighting would probably only hurt Acacia's chances of survival.

But for now, Tyranny figured she'd play along. Better to keep Acacia in the dark on her true opinions for as long as possible.

"Fair enough," Tyranny said, picking up a sword from the rack. She passed it back and forth between her hands a few times, enough to feel confident in her ability to wield it. "I feel good about this one."

"Good. I have mine as well. Shall we?"

"We shall."

The two took their positions on opposite sides of the mat, then settled into their fighting stances. A moment later, a whistle blew, and the battle was on.

Immediately, Tyranny went on the offensive. Acacia was not much bigger than she, but the other girl was older, and therefore had more training. In order to have a chance in the battle, she needed to get the edge as quickly as possible. She was surprised to find that Acacia was letting her take the lead in the battle, parrying each of Tyranny's swings but not breaking a sweat as she backed up towards the edge of the ring. Tyranny was somewhat confused but chose to ignore her concern; if she was being given an advantage, she was going to take it.

And then Acacia made her move. In one fluid motion, she switched her sword from her right to her left hand. With a sharp flick of the wrist, she put enough pressure on Tyranny's sword to twist her wrist, pinning the sword against the rope that surrounded the fighting ring. Tyranny thought about reacting, but chose instead to remain still, to see what Acacia would do next. Acacia stepped in towards Tyranny's body, quickly cornering her from both sides. "I believe you're trapped," she said, with the cool confidence of someone who knew she'd won.

"I believe you're right. Good fight," Tyranny said, raising her hands in defeat. "Shall we go again?"

"I'll go two out of three."

As Tyranny returned to her corner, she reviewed in her head everything she'd learned about Acacia from the previous fight. She wasn't quite sure what it meant to fight honorably, but she got the sense that Acacia's tactics didn't quite fit the bill. She could choose to challenge Acacia on that, but it was probably better not to; there was no reason to encourage Acacia to reevaluate or change her tactics before they got into the Arena. By then, Tyranny would know plenty about how Acacia fought, and she could throw any pretenses of honor out the window.

Even if Acacia won today, when the girls met again, the outcome would be rather different.

If there was one thing that Orchid Ursinia had learned thus far in training, it was that training with children was hard. It was taking the two kids from Eleven nearly double the time to learn any one skill that it took their older counterparts. This wasn't Camden or Cyei's fault; the training stations were designed for older kids, not for pre-teens. But it made it very difficult for the older kids, who were trying to set themselves up as best as possible for the Games, to gain the breadth of knowledge they were hoping for.

Fortunately, she and Quiinn had worked together with Rue to come up with a half-decent plan for the day, after seeing how the previous day went. They'd be somewhat splitting up over the course of the day: Orchid would supervise the kids in the morning while Quiinn rotated around to a few survival stations, and then the two would switch in the afternoon. Whoever was on with the kids was responsible for helping them come up with a plan for their half-day of training without their older district partners. Nobody really expected the youngsters to get much out of that half-day, but if they could at least come in with a plan, maybe the two would pick up a single concept.

One concept was better than none, after all.

This morning, Orchid had decided to take the kids to the knife station. Knives were a small, relatively easy to use weapon that could at least inflict wounds relatively easily even if one's technique wasn't really there. Orchid hoped that the kids would never have to use them, but it was better for them to be able to defend themselves in some way just in case they got split up in the Arena.

"Well, now that you've both picked your knives, why don't you just get some practice on the dummy? Don't worry about anything other than feeling what it feels like to stab it," suggested the trainer, who seemed pretty helpless as he tried to explain to a pair of eleven-year-olds how to stab someone. The two youngsters nodded, timidly following the trainer over to an empty space a few yards away. As she followed, a few steps behind, Orchid suddenly caught sight of something out of the corner of her eye.

"Quiinn!" she exclaimed, breaking away from her district partners and storming over to the traps station. "What are you doing?"

"I saw them alone at the traps station and I felt bad," Quiinn replied sheepishly, gesturing to the two little kids from Eight whom he was helping.

"You're supposed to be getting information for us, not helping another district. We have to put ourselves first."

"But…" Quiinn looked towards the younger kids, who were (perhaps thankfully) focused on the trap they were constructing.

"Come on. Finish up what you're doing and go. I have to go back to our actual charges."

As Orchid turned away, she couldn't help but feel her heart hurt a little bit. She knew that Quiinn only meant well, that he only wanted to help the youngsters who couldn't protect themselves. But she also knew that these were the Games; if the Elevens didn't prioritize themselves, they would surely end up dead.

Orchid had to hope that Quiinn would somehow understand that before they all ended up dead.

By mid-morning on the second day, Viktor Wayland was feeling pretty good about his and his sister's chances in the Games. They had spent enough time at the knife station to feel moderately confident in their knife skills, and they'd spent enough time at the survival skill stations that even a half-decent supply cache at the Bloodbath would probably get them through a week. Now, it was time to work on a slightly more difficult skill: hand-to-hand combat. Viktor didn't want to resort to fisticuffs, but if he had to, he wanted to know how to do it.

At first, the two worked with separate trainers, learning some basic combat maneuvers. Once both felt comfortable, the trainers backed off, allowing the siblings to spar with each other. But before they could start, Viktor caught sight of a pair of tributes from Six walking towards him. And from the way his sister was eyeing him, it seemed Rowena saw them too.

"Should we…" Rowena started, a hint of nervousness in her voice.

"I got it," Viktor said, stepping back out of the ring first and then walking over to the pair. "Viktor Wayland, Ten."

"Acadia Nimmo. And this is Leyton. Six."

"Are you two aligned with Maxi?"

"We would like nothing more than to be as far away from her as possible."

"Very good. What's up?"

"We were wondering if the two of you would be interested in allying with us," Acadia proposed. "Those of us with elected district partners are already a little behind because the district unity move is not feasible, so we figured it could be a good move to try to ally with another pair in the same position."

"I can totally understand where you're coming from," Viktor said, not even bothering to consult with Rowena. "But Rowena and I are perfectly fine with working with just each other. It's safest that way."

Leyton nudged Acadia. "Rowena and you? But you…"

Acadia held up her hand. "Totally understandable. Best of luck in the Arena."

"And to you two as well." Viktor turned to return to his sister, but he suddenly turned back around. "I will give you some advice before you go, though," he said, as if motivated by some sort of primal rage.

"Yeah?"

"If you're even considering allying with the others from our district, don't. They won't be able to help you out."

"They're elected tributes. It's too risky. But we appreciate the advice!"

"It's my pleasure."

Viktor returned to the mat and took up his sparring stance again. "Let's go," he said.

"What was that?"

"She was asking to ally with us. I said no."

An incredulous look appeared on Rowena's face. "And you didn't ask me what I thought?"

"Rowena, you know it's better for us to just stick together. Any extra person that we don't one thousand percent know we can trust is fundamentally a liability. We can't risk someone in our alliance getting in the way of us surviving."

"But you don't think someone else will help us by just being with us?"

"I don't want to take the risk."

Rowena put down her fists and stepped closer to Viktor, taking hold of his hands. "Do you really think we can do this on our own?"

"I really do."

"Then I trust you."

Looking into his sister's eyes, Viktor was suddenly struck by just how much he loved and cared for his sister, by how much she had improved his life, by how devastated he would be if he had to see her die. He knew that every decision he made in the pre-Games impacted them both, but this was the moment when that reality finally sunk in. And he was scared to be the one person whom Rowena could lean on, the person who was responsible for helping her survive – but he also trusted nobody else to protect Rowena the way he could.

It had been the Waylands against the world for so long. Were the Games really all that different?

Nerida Nyansas knew that she was not the only tribute who had come into training planning to observe the others. Her strategy was one that she was sure everyone was using in one way or another; after all, training was the best way to observe the competition before the Games began. The trick, really, was to observe the others in such a way that they didn't know they were being observed. The more Nerida could pretend to be working while she sensed the eyes of others on her, the more inconspicuous she hoped she could be in her own observations. And there was quite a lot to observe.

For one thing, Nerida noticed how the Fives hadn't spent any time together in the training room. All four of them seemed to be making a point of staying as far away from each other as possible. Yet none of them seemed to be working with any other allies, and Nerida had seen their standard pair sitting together at lunch the day before. As far as Nerida could think, there was no reason not to work with allies these Games, as multiple people in an alliance could survive. That logic led her to believe that the Fives were all working together, just trying to hide it from the others. And they were probably succeeding at their goal as far as most of the other, less perceptive tributes were concerned.

Although, the older girl from Eight was still on her own, despite the fact that all of her district partners were in alliances. Perhaps there was an advantage to working alone that Nerida didn't understand yet.

There was also something odd going on with the standard kids from Nine. One of the boys from Three had been trailing them for what seemed to be the entirety of training, while Nine's standard girl desperately tried to lead her young partner away from him. Nerida wasn't sure if there was some sort of prior history between the two – though what that history could be, she wasn't sure, as they were from different districts – or if Nine's concerns stemmed from something that had happened after the tributes arrived in the Capitol. Either way, the situation was concerning at best, and Nerida was convinced that her best course of action was to stay far, far away.

And then there were the Quell Sixes. Given that they were the two convicted criminals of the group, Nerida had been keeping her eyes on them for nearly all of training, as they were precisely the people she wanted to ally with. The best way for her to stay safe was to blend in with those who were the most dangerous, who had proven that they could kill and not feel guilty about it, a trait Nerida aspired to have. Not to mention that they could camouflage her just in case she wasn't able to uphold the image she was hoping to.

So why was she so scared to approach them?

There was literally no disadvantage to Nerida asking them to ally. She knew that the Sixes had been going around to basically every tribute to find someone who might work with them. She also knew that every single other ally had rejected them. The odds of them saying yes to her were so high. And even if they did say no, she wouldn't be any worse off than she was now, without protection from the insanity of the Arena.

But she couldn't do it. She just couldn't bring herself to even approach them.

Nerida shook her head. She didn't have to approach them yet. There was still half a day of training to go, and they'd probably get around to asking her for an alliance anyway.

If they didn't, Nerida wasn't sure what she would do.

Howdy everyone! I hope you all enjoyed our third of five training chapters! I really do love this favorite and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

As of writing now, I have the next two chapters stockpiled, and I'm just over halfway done with the private sessions chapter, so I should still be on pace! And I just restructured the last two Pre-Games chapters thanks to me totally forgetting how I wanted to structure an arc - honestly the fact that I never wrote it down is wild. But I like this new structure so I feel good about it!

Also, for both of the last two chapters I've been like "I'm forgetting something in my A/N and I just realized what it was: an alliance list! At this point because things are a little fluid and we still haven't hit a few kids I think I'm just going to hold off until the end of Training Day 3 and 4. And the Private Sessions chapter also will go through the alliances so I think y'all will know exactly what's going on by the time we hit the Arena.

Anyway, I hope y'all enjoyed this chapter! I'll see you next week for the next one!

xoxo, xxxi