"All right, are we ready for the next station?" Moss Darya asked, ushering his younger allies out of the cafeteria to ensure that they were always in his sight. He had already lost one of his charges once; Moss wasn't about to let it happen again. If they got lost, they could get hurt, physically or emotionally. And what would happen then?

"I'm ready!" Amber said.

"I guess so," Toby answered.

"Great! Amber, you picked the station this morning, so Toby, why don't you pick?"

"How about we do swords?"

Moss shook his head. "That's too dangerous. We'll have to spar, and then someone might get hurt."

"So how about crossbows in that case?"

"There could be issues when they recoil. It's dangerous."

Toby threw up his hands. "Moss! This is absurd. We need to do some sort of weapon training to have a chance in the Arena. How are we going to win if we can't defend ourselves?"

"Winning doesn't have to be because we got into combat. If we can outlast the others, we could have a chance this year. And I don't want to take the risk of someone getting hurt in training, thereby impeding them in the Arena." And I know you'll go to weapons tomorrow, Moss thought. We can't ignore the survival stations when we're together because you'll ignore them when we're apart.

"Well, what if I want to take that risk? We split up yesterday."

"We can't split up again, Toby. We lost Amber in the process. I don't want to risk losing either of you. I'm sorry, but I want to make sure you're safe." Moss paused, watching Toby's face. He could tell just how frustrated his younger brother was, but there wasn't much Moss would do about it. He needed to make sure that Toby got back to their father safely back in Seven. For that to happen, he couldn't risk letting his younger brother get hurt before the Arena even began.

Deep down, Moss knew that he couldn't protect Toby forever. But for as long as he could, he would keep his brother close. After all, the only way Toby could possibly die was if Moss wasn't there to protect him.

"Fine," Toby gave up. "I don't care. Let's do knot tying."

"Fire making sounds great! Let's head over there now."

Moss saw the way that Toby stormed over to the knot tying station, how he plopped himself down om the floor with about the temperament of a toddler. He knew that Toby felt that he was older than he was, that Moss was just impeding his own ability to survive. But Moss looked at his baby brother and saw a sweet child, someone whom Moss had loved and cared for since birth. All that Moss wanted to do was make sure that that sweet child could always be sweet and protected and safe.

Why couldn't Toby see that Moss was just doing what was best for him?

It was hard for Crash Hatch to believe that training was more than half over; if it were up to him, he'd request at least another week. Crash knew he was not nearly ready enough to enter the Games, no matter what his sister thought about her abilities. Not only that, but he just didn't want to go into the Arena yet. Sure, Crash felt like he was capable of winning. But the Games were never a dream for Crash the way they were for his sister; rather, they were an expectation, a predetermined destiny that he had no way to get out of. But if he was here, forced into the Arena, he was damn well gonna fight for the win.

The alternative didn't seem nearly as fun.

After the joint training session in the morning, the Twos had decided to camp out at the sparring ring again after lunch. The first day was mostly focused on skill drills, trying to review the basics at as many stations as possible. This afternoon was all about putting those skills into action, to find a sparring strategy that would work for all four of the tributes individually as well as for the Careers as a unit. Sure, developing fighting strategies was an element of the pre-Games preparations in Two, but they'd spent less time on it as a group of four this year given that Smash and Crash were far, far behind their older counterparts in many other areas. So this was the perfect opportunity to take the basics that they'd developed in Two and build off of it.

"OK, so I think we should start with the two of you sparring with whatever weapon you want," Acacia instructed. "I'll watch and give some feedback the way I was trained to in a pre-trainer workshop back home. Then we'll work as a unit against trainers with that weapon, rotate weapons, and repeat. Any questions? No? Great. Smash, why don't you pick the weapon first."

"Let's go with knives."

That was fine with Crash. He grabbed a belt of knives from the rack, then took his place in the fighting ring opposite his sister. Crash took a deep breath, then settled into his stance, indicating to the trainer that he was ready to go. Almost instantly, the whistle blue, and the fight was on.

As Crash expected, Smash launched onto the offensive, characteristic for someone who was both so confident in her skills and so desperate to prove herself. It had always frustrated Crash that his sister was so high-and-mighty, that she believed so wholly that she was better than anyone else who tried her and that her Victory was preordained. She was skilled – even Crash couldn't deny that – but not much more than any other kid her age, especially as she hadn't even picked a preferred weapon yet. Somebody needed to put her in her place.

Crash grinned. Why shouldn't that person be him?

As the two fought, Crash kept a careful eye on Smash's movement, trying to find the weak point in her fighting stance. Sure enough, the more he watched her, the clearer her weak point became: she didn't know how to protect her blind side. Her knives usually stayed on one side of her body, which in turn meant that she had her torso twisted all the way in one direction, leaving her other side wide open.

Perfect.

Crash continued to back away from his sister, letting her think she had the leg up. But then, with a quick motion of his feet, he slipped into her blind spot. Crash knew that she'd be so focused on getting him back into view that she wouldn't be able to change strategies. He began to run around her, staying in that blind spot, causing Smash to turn around and around in a desperate attempt to get him back into her field of vision. He got her so turned around that she got dizzy, eventually falling to the ground in a disoriented heap. With a perhaps too evil smirk on his face, Crash stood above Smash and pointed his knife to her throat.

It was about time Smash was knocked down a peg.

"Bellona, no. We are not going to go torment the Elevens," Acestes Adrina insisted, dragging his sister away from the survival stations.

"You said that yesterday!"

"Well, it was true then and it is true now. We need to spend our time training, not causing chaos. Hurting someone else only does so much before we end up screwed because we didn't help ourselves. And we've already wasted so much time today."

"But we have training!" Bellona insisted, stopping sort. Ace tried to pull her along towards the poison dart station, one that they hadn't dabbled in yet. But she just wouldn't budge. Frustrated, Ace turned around to face his sister.

"We do have some training. But not like they do." Ace gestured over towards the fighting rings, where the Twos were fighting, the two younger ones in the ring while the two older ones waited on the side.

"But we've trained in the Academies in Four probably just as long as they have."

"Yes, but we both know the Two academies are much more formal and that they have much more funding."

"But do they have experience outside of the classroom like we have?"

Acestes was getting desperate. "Well, I don't know, but-"

"Shh!" Ona stuck her hand in front of her brother's mouth. "Look at that."

"What?"

"Look at them fight."

Ace watched as the boy began to run literal circles around the girl, getting her spun around and around until she was so dizzy that she fell. Without missing a beat, Crash stood over top his sister and pointed his knife to her throat. At the sound of the whistle, Crash backed away, but it took Smash a moment to stand up and return to her position. The kids exchanged some words that Ace couldn't quite make out, and then the fight began again.

"You really think they're better trained than us?" Ona scoffed.

"Well, it could just be an off day for Smash. We all have them."

"But her knife skills are just so bad! Like, even I know not to turn my body like that. How dumb could she be?"

"Maybe she spent more time preparing with ranged weapons."

"But still. This is fighting 101. How dumb could she be to outright ignore such basic skills?"

Ace was grasping at straws, trying to keep Ona from getting angrier at the situation. He had to keep her from getting any ideas that didn't involve going and training. But as Bellona's face morphed, a massive grin appearing on it, Ace groaned. She had gotten an idea, and her ideas were rarely good.

"Ona?"

"Yes?" Bellona replied, a mischievous tone to her voice.

"What are you thinking?"

"Well, I'm thinking that the younger kids from Two are our biggest competition."

"That's probably true."

"And I'm thinking that our odds will be better if we can find a way to make their odds worse."

"Bellona, we are not going to attack them. We'll get in so much trouble."

"We're not going to physically attack them," she agreed.

"So what are you going to do?"

"Don't you worry about it."

"Come on. Not today," Ace groaned. "We need to spend time this afternoon training."

Bellona looked at her brother. "If I stick with you today, can we do this tomorrow? I really do think it'll up our odds."

Acestes closed his eyes. He had a feeling he was not going to like what Ona was planning to do. But he also had a feeling that, if he said no, she would go do it now, which would only make things worse. So perhaps against his better judgment, but hoping for the best, Ace nodded. "But we have to train well today, OK?"

"Fine." Ona scooted around her brother and went to the throwing stars station. Acestes shook his head and trailed behind her, happy that they were finally getting stuff done.

He could only hope that he hadn't just made a big mistake.

Runar Theron was not the type of kid who felt a need to calm down. He knew enough about himself to know just how high energy he was, and frankly, he didn't care to find a way to calm himself down. If his hyper nature brought a smile to his friends' faces, then that was more than enough for Runar.

But here, it seemed as though the energy he had was working against him rather than for him. There was so much to do and learn that Runar's curious mind couldn't possibly absorb all of it. He found himself bouncing from station to station, trying to avoid his district partners per his mentors' requests, unable to absorb much of anything from anywhere. And because his mind was so stimulated, he couldn't even remember the things he was trying to remember about the other tributes, like who was allying with whom and who to avoid. It was just so frustrating that he couldn't seem to rein his brain in to do anything useful now that his life was on the line. He was just stuck, frozen in the middle of the room, feeling trapped in his own mind and body.

He needed to turn this around. But how?

Runar scanned the room, desperate to find something he was drawn too. Fortunately, something did catch his eye: a treadmill that was enclosed in a glass box. Running had always been a source of comfort for Runar, so to find a place where he could both run and satiate his curiosity felt like a win-win. And maybe doing something with which he was familiar could help him focus more.

Mind finally made up, Runar beelined for the treadmill. When he got there, the trainer fitted him up into a harness and reviewed a few safety measures that Runar barely paid attention to, though he did hear the trainer mention that obstacles might appear above his head or around ankle level. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, they allowed Runar to step onto the treadmill. Runar felt himself jittering; he was itching to finally do something useful.

As the treadmill began to move, Runar understood why the machine was in this glass room. The walls frosted over, then transformed into a thick forest, the likes of which Runar had never seen. He knew that this wasn't real, that they were somehow fabricated or generated, but he really felt like he could reach up and touch the tree branches, like they were truly casting shadows on him as he went.

It just might have been the best thing he'd ever seen.

As he kept running, leaping over the occasional rock or root that appeared below him and ducking down below the branches that came down from above, he was amazed at the way the landscape around him changed. First it was a forest of thick pine trees, then a winter wonderland, then trees dotted all over with gorgeous pink flowers. Each landscape was more breathtaking to Runar than the last. If all of this really existed somewhere, how much was out there, outside of Five, that he had never seen?

After what felt like just no time at all, but what was really over thirty minutes, the treadmill stopped. "Someone else wants a turn," the trainer explained, helping Runar out of his harness.

"Alright," Runar said. He could have spent hours in that room, watching the landscape go by. But it was only fair to give someone else a turn. Besides, Runar finally felt grounded, focused, ready to get back to training and actually learn something. He just needed to not think about the fact that he'd probably never get to see any of those forests in real life.

That, unfortunately, was easier said than done.

After the Wayland siblings rejected her, Lambell Rose hadn't been planning on finding allies. For one thing, Hodge was there to protect her physically; for another, her and Hodge's families' combined wealth had to be enough to sustain them through the Games with sponsor gifts if needed. It was a bit of a gamble to only work in a pair, but it was better in Lambell's eyes to stick with the person she knew she could trust. Anyone outside of her district would be more of a liability than a help.

But then, Lambell noticed that a number of the other tributes had settled into alliances of three or more people; just looking around the lunchroom that day, she counted at least seven groups of tributes sitting together. And she suddenly wasn't as confident in her choice. Sure, she could trust Hodge, but if he died protecting her (which Lambell may or may not have been counting on), she would have no shield, not to mention that a two-person alliance getting into combat with a four-person alliance would put them at a severe disadvantage. Lambell needed more people she could rely on – and that she could hide behind if things got bad.

And that meant that she needed to find more allies.

In an ideal world, Lambell would look for potential allies who weren't already tied to other people, so that she would be their only loyalty. But those didn't seem to exist this year; nearly everyone was already paired up with someone else. And if she only courted the few tributes who didn't seem to have allies, then if they said no, those who were already in pairs might have already found other people to work with by the time Lambell got a chance to approach them. No, in this scenario, Lambell needed to target the strongest possible allies as quickly as possible. After all, her life depended on it.

Hodge's did too. But mostly hers.

Lambell's first instinct for a pair of allies were her district partners, but as they were out of the question, the next best option seemed to be the standard pair from Six. Lambell instructed Hodge to keep working on the trap they were putting together, then held herself as tall as she could and strode over to the pair, who were working at a second trap station on the other side of the training room, this one focused on mechanical parts rather than things like twigs and twine. "Ahem," she said, waiting for one of them to turn around. After nothing happened, she repeated, a little louder, "AHEM."

"Hello there," said the boy, motioning to his partner to keep working as he turned around to face Lambell. "I'm Leyton. What can I do for you?"

"I was wondering if the two of you would be interested in joining up with me and my partner Hodge to form an alliance of four. We can provide extra people to assist in combat against the larger Career alliances, and as the two of us come from wealthy backgrounds, we're sure to have sufficient sponsor funds for whatever may arise during the Arena phase."

The boy scanned Lambell up and down, then turned back around and whispered in his partner's ear. Then he turned back around. "We're good, thank you."

"Are you sure? You're giving up a lot of money."

"I'm sorry, but it really is not in our best interest to work with you. Perhaps if you were a little older or bigger."

"Fine!" Lambell exclaimed. "Be that way." She spun around with a huff and flounced away, back to Hodge who was still working on their trap. Who was he to think that just because Lambell was young that she was incapable? Sure, she'd spent her whole life protected by her family in all ways, and sure, she had zero natural survival skills unlike the rest of Ten, but just because she was only twelve didn't mean that she wasn't a good ally option.

But Lambell would show them. She'd prove that she could survive on her own with Hodge to help her. She'd show them that her money was the best tool to winning the Games.

And most of all, she'd show everyone that she deserved to be a Victor.

Helena Blackwell was not exactly used to spending time with people.

Sure, she grew up with siblings, and she frequently found herself interacting with others as part of her business. But when offered the choice, Helena far preferred to be by herself, engrossed in the worlds she created in her mind. Not many people would assume that someone as aloof and intimidating as Helena had any sort of creativity to her. For Helena, though, the worlds that she brought to life on the page were far superior to anything that happened in her real life.

So when Empra had approached her and asked to ally, Helena had been a little skeptical. She seemed to have put together a strong group of allies, with the exception of the boy from Four, who was probably there because of district loyalty or whatever bullshit, so Helena had been willing to at least consider their offer. What she didn't expect, however, was to spend another day and a half or so of training with them. It didn't matter how strong the others were; this was a lot of time to spend around other people, and Helena wasn't sure how she felt about it.

At least they didn't have to talk all that much while training. Helena had made a point, perhaps too much of a point, of keeping to herself even training with an ally. Whether they were at a survival station or a weapons station, Helena was far more likely to work alone with a trainer than to team up with one of her partners.

"I think training is almost done," Empra asserted, vaguely motioning to the trainers at some of the empty stations who were packing up. "Let's pause what we're doing and prepare a little bit for the training days coming up."eHele

"Good idea," Micah replied, putting down the knife in his hand and stepping away from the target. "Are we looking to be in sync with each other in terms of what skills we've worked on? Or are we looking to specialize a little more?"

"Well, before we do that, we need to make sure we're all in on this alliance." Empra turned to Helena. "You still haven't formally accepted it."

"That is true."

"I don't want to pressure you, but if we want to be able to really talk strategy, you need to make a choice one way or the other. As I'm sure you'll understand, it is an incredibly poor strategy to reveal your plans for a death match to someone whose survival likely will come down to killing you. But we would certainly enjoy having you in our alliance; we are made much stronger by your presence."

Helena took a deep breath. This would all be much easier if she could just be in her own world, with the characters she created, far stronger than any human could ever be, there to support her. But the Games were not the time for other or fictional characters, nor from shying away from others. As much as she hated to admit it, Helena knew that being around others might increase her odds of survival significantly. So while she hadn't planned to go hunting for allies, when an alliance fell into her lap, it was in her best interest to take it.

It doesn't mean you have to talk to them, she reminded herself. You just have to be with them.

"I think I would like to work with you all," Helena said. She was surprised by how naturally it came out, too. It didn't feel like she was forcing out the words, or like she was acting against her will. Against all odds, something in her wanted to stay with these people.

There was a lesson in there, Helena figured. Many times, strength came from trusting yourself. But maybe sometimes strength came from trusting others.

There are some people in this world whom it is dangerous to anger. Such people are prone to act rashly, to throw tantrums and the like, until someone is finally wise enough to give them what they want. It was using this precise tactic that Maximum Acceleration was able to acquire literally anything she wanted in the world. A simple threat of one of her famous breakdowns was usually enough for her father to acquiesce.

Maxi was really trying to not use the same strategy here – at least, not before she got into the Arena, lest she scare away any potential sponsors. But the other tributes were making that really fucking hard.

Maxi could not fathom why nobody wanted to ally with her! She had proven she could kill, she had considerable financial support back home, and her good looks were sure to make her a sponsor magnet. But people couldn't seem to get their heads out of their asses and look past the prison jumpsuit she'd been reaped in. And sure, she had Arnav. But he definitely wasn't enough protection for her. For Maxi's plan to work, she needed at least one other person.

Thankfully for everyone around her, Maxi wasn't out of options just yet; she still had one or two tributes she hadn't approached. But if they said no, everyone would have hell to pay.

Maxi strode confidently towards the poison station, where the standard girl from Three was working on some concoction. "Well, hello there," she said, putting on the most sensual voice she could.

"Hi," the girl replied timidly.

"Maximum Acceleration, Six. But call me Maxi."

"I'm Nerida, from Three."

"I see that you're training alone. Not working with your district?"

"No."

"In that case… are you interested in an alliance?"

Nerida shrugged. "I don't know. It's hard to tell."

Maxi stepped closer. "This is not the Games to go at it alone, Poise. Too many moving pieces. Too much that could be different from a normal year. Having people on your side might just be the one thing you need to stay alive, to give you protection and help keep you safe. I can provide you protection and safety."

"Well…" Nerida wavered.

But before Nerida could answer, a voice called out, "Tributes! Your time in training has concluded for the day. Please exit the training hall and return to your quarters. We will see those of you in standard slots tomorrow."

"Do let me know if you come to a decision. I don't have all day," Maxi scoffed, then turned around and stormed off. She could feel the anger bubbling inside her. The girl's wavering had cost her any shot of conversing with the rest of the tributes! She'd already talked to everyone who she might be able to ally with in the Quell slots; thanks to Nerida, she'd lost any chance of talking to more of the standard slot kids, and therefore any chance of finding another ally.

But as she approached the elevator, she heard footsteps running up behind her. "I'll do it," Nerida whispered breathlessly. "I'll work with you."

A grin formed on Maxi's face. "Excellent," she said, turning back around to face Nerida. "We're so happy to have you!"

Another Sunday, another chapter! We're plugging along towards the Games and I'm getting hyped just thinking about it! As of writing this I just finished the Private Sessions chapter and gosh dang it's a doozy. I'm very proud of it but it's so long, but I'll tell more details about that in the A/N for next chapter.

Anyway, I hope you liked this one! We got our first real peek at Helena here which is fun; like the others who haven't gotten POVs yet (Orchid, Leyton, Lydia, and Crash, though we've seen them all in other POVs), she'll get her full-length one soon. And we've also just got four more chapters and then the bloodbath! Which is hype!

I hope you all have a great week and I'll see you next Sunday!

xoxo, xxxi