Timorah "Timi" Atari, 14, District Three

Making traps is easier than it ought to be. Just a few knots of rope, some simple motions he's gone through a hundred times before, and the trap is in place. Except this isn't some fantastical machine like the ones he would spend so long at home making. This is meant to kill. Animals or people, what difference does it make? Once he sets the trap it'll be out of his hands, there's no telling what it will do. Something about that felt so cold.

But he has to do something. Some of the other outliers seem like they've already given up. It's nearly halfway through the first day of training, and there's still some that haven't moved from their first station, refusing to budge from the safe stations that stop them from thinking about having to kill. The Careers aren't thinking that way, though. They're over by the weapons, swinging around hammers and axes and swords like they're toothpicks. Knowing which berries are safe to eat won't stop that.

The trainer tosses a small weight down on the loop of my trap and it springs into action, snaring the weight and hoisting it up off the ground with a crack that harshly whips the weight into place, dangling helplessly in the air. The trainer nods and gives him a thumbs up. Apparently, they aren't the only one watching, either.

"Wow, you're really good with these," the girl says. She's smiling super wide as she sits down on the floor next to him.

"Thanks, I did something kinda similar back home," he says, trying to reciprocate the smile as best as he can manage. It's hard to pretend to be all that happy here, though.

"That's so cool! Were you a hunter back home?"

"No!" He exclaims. Her eyes widen and he lowers his voice, taking in a deep breath for good measure. "No, sorry. I'm not. I wasn't, I mean. I don't like to hurt things. I just made, well, they're called Rube Goldberg machines, they're not meant to hurt anybody, it's just for fun."

"I understand," she says, her voice shockingly calm. "I don't like to hurt things either."

"Not a good place for us to be, then," he says, quietly.

"No, I guess not. But you chose to be here right? You volunteered, didn't you?" The way she asks it makes him know that it isn't a question, that she already knows and is just making conversation. He answers anyway.

"I did, yeah. For my friend. I dunno, I wasn't thinking too much when it happened, but I guess I just thought that, well. . . ."

That his family needed him more than mine needed me, he thinks, but he can't bring himself to say that. Knowing the truth and saying it out loud were two very different things. One made it so much more real.

"It's okay," the girl says. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I get it."

"Thanks," he mumbles.

"I guess I haven't really introduced myself yet, have I?" She extends her hand. "Tabitha Ward, but my friends call me Tabby. You can too, if you want."

"Timorah," he says, smiling as he accepts the handshake. "You can call me Timi, though. I'm from District Three, what about you?"

"Six," she says. "Say, Timi, have you thought about being in an alliance?"

His heart flutters. It almost seems too good to be true, this older kid coming right out of the gate and wanting him to be in alliance with her. She doesn't even seem rude or scary. It almost makes him suspicious, but the genuine way she smiles is too kind for those suspicions to build. For whatever reason, he just feels like she's someone that he can trust. And that makes for a good ally, right?

"I want to!" He says, maybe a bit too excitedly. "My district partner isn't really like me at all, though, and I guess most of the other people here seem. . ."

"Scary?" She finishes his thought and he nods. "Yeah, some of them are. That's just more reason for us to stick together, though, right?"

He nods his head ferociously. She smiles even wider.

"Great. Well, I was thinking that we should go and see if there's any more people like us who are looking for some friends. Safety in numbers, right? Would you want to help?"

It's a much more uncertain task than building his traps, but Timi knows that it's an offer he can't turn down. He'll need more than some snares and rope to beat all the Careers, if that's even possible at all. Who knows? Maybe some of the older kids that seem scary aren't so bad after all. If enough of them like the idea of an alliance, they could even form a group bigger than the Careers.

It still isn't enough to make him feel confident, but it's enough for him to hope. And that's much more than he could have hoped to ask for when he first got down to the Training Center this morning.

He nods his head and forces his smile even wider. "Let's do it!"

Ani Quill, 17, District Three

Lunch comes too soon. Ani feels like she was only just starting to get a grip of things. It's almost overwhelming to be standing in the Training Center, there's many potential options. Her mentors told her to stay away from weapons to start, so she followed that advice, but that still left far too many stations to explore. Eventually, she settled on a handful of survival stations, straining to keep all the information held within her memory.

Mostly, though, she spent her time watching. There are twenty-three other tributes that she's competing with, getting to know who they are is the first step to winning. Finding out that means finding if there are any potential allies, what weaknesses her enemies will have, and who she needs to avoid at all costs. It's a lot, but she's always been good at gathering information. This is no different.

She settles into her seat at an empty lunch table and pulls out her notebook, flipping through the pages of analysis she's written on the others. So far her chief concern to pay attention to has been the shifting of alliances.

The Careers are in their usual formation, District One, Two, and Four all together. None of them seem all that attached to the idea of their alliance though. Hardly any of them spent any time speaking to each other. Even now, the six of them sit at the same table but with plenty of distance. Only Kian, the boy from One, is trying to spark conversation. The rest seem like they'd rather be anywhere else. District Four is unique, too. Neither of them seem all that strong, at least not compared to the Ones and Twos. A few of the outliers are much bigger threats than them two pose.

Luckily, most of those threats seem content to ride out the arena by themselves. Gideon, Umber, Solaar, and Crispin are all without allies and seem unlikely to make any. Dawn and Elaro both approached the Careers about joining. Elaro was predictably laughed off while Dawn was politely denied by Akali. It was impossible to miss the flicker of interest in her eyes, though.

That isn't to say there's been no movement on the alliance front. District Nine and Twelve both came into the Training Center firmly as allies, and the latter of those two seemed eager to expand. Already Ellie has joined the Twelves, sitting with the pair at lunch along with the girl from Eight, Gwen, who seems cautiously interested in making the alliance four strong. While they wouldn't be able to hold a candle to the Careers, they would still be the strongest of the outlier alliances by a healthy distance.

The weaker of the two alliances sit at the table just beside Ani. Tabby is the mastermind behind this one, having spent the whole morning approaching each of the youngest and weakest of the tributes and asking them to join their alliance. Ani feels honored to have not been asked. She isn't sure what the girl's game is, but the alliance that she's made won't be good for much more than bloodbath fodder or human shields. Aside from her, she's only managed her district partner and Leona, the twelve-year-old from District Seven that Ani nearly had forgotten about existing. According to current Capitolite odds, those two sit at 24th and 20th in predicted placement. Not a formidable trio.

That leaves a small grouping of tributes still looking for alliances but unsure where to look. Specifically, only myself and two others: Ashani, the thirteen year old from Eleven who looked genuinely offended when Tabby asked her to join their alliance, and Claude, who is sitting halfway between his district partner and the duo from Nine, seeming unsure where to go.

None of her options for allies are too appealing. The group started by Twelve is too large, the group started by Tabby too weak. Careers are out of the option, as is joining the two kids from Nine. Claude wouldn't be much help as an ally and seems to already be torn between two choices as it is. That leaves just one person in need and want of an alliance.

Ani bites down on a spoonful of mashed potatoes and watches Ashani Okoro for a few moments. She's sitting by herself, angrily scooping soup into her mouth and tapping her feet anxiously on the floor. She doesn't seem scared though. It's too early to say for certain whether she'd be worth much as an ally, but that can be discovered with a bit of digging.

She puts away her notebook and turns her full attention to her meal, feeling satisfied with her use of the first morning of training. Running solo or with a thirteen year old outlier, maybe not the best situation to be in if you look at it as bluntly as that. But appearances aren't always everything. There's always more lurking beneath the surface.

And Ani always finds the truth.

Gwendolyn Gingham, 17, District Eight

Gwen feels blissfully at ease. The entire train ride and all the way through until this morning, she had been constantly worried about what was going to happen to her. Back home it didn't matter how hard she tried to make friends, it never worked out. The harder she pushed the harder everyone else seemed to move away. No matter how much Cecelia had tried to convince her otherwise, she had started to think that she was just doomed to go into the arena without any allies.

But here she is, the first day of training coming to close, and she has an entire alliance by her side. Callie laughs at her jokes (even the ones Gwen knows weren't actually funny), Lucian gives her patient advice at every station, and Sondheim is always smiling her way. It's only been one day, but already it feels like they have more than just a stiff, formal alliance of kids trying to survive together. It almost feels like friendship. Not that Gwen would know much about what that feels like.

She told Claude after lunch that he should join them, but he seemed unsure about that. Every once in a while throughout the day he would wander over near their group, but never too close. She couldn't say whether it was shyness or uncertainty or something else. Maybe he just wants to be in a group with kids his own age. Gwen isn't the youngest in their alliance, but while Callie and Sondheim may be a year younger than her, they act far older. Sometimes Gwen feels like she's the baby of the group, so she can't imagine what it might feel like for Claude.

Sondheim and Lucian split off to go practice with knives, so Gwen is left alone with Ellie at the fire-starting station. Gwen can hardly manage to get a fire going even with a lighter and plenty of other perfect conditions. Ellie on the other hand is a pro, her over-tucked sleeves shielding her hands from splinters as she twists a twig over the kindling.

Gwen isn't sure why, but the silence feels too loud. "Hey, Ellie?" she says.

"What's up?" She responds. She doesn't break her focus from the fire one bit.

"Why didn't you go with Lucian and Sondheim to go practice with the knives?"

"Why didn't you?" Ellie shoots back immediately. Gwen tries not to wince. Ellie doesn't mean to be mean, she's just blunt. It took Lucian explaining that to her for Gwen to stop thinking the girl hated her guts.

"I dunno, I guess I just thought that I probably wouldn't be any good at it anyway." She slumps down. "Not that I'm any better at this."

"Why are you still here, then? Plenty of other stations to try."

She bites her lip. "Okay! I mean, sure, I can do that. If you want, that is."

Ellie stops and looks at her. "I'm not telling you to leave. Do whatever you want. No point sticking around at something if you don't think you're gonna get any better at it."

"Sure, right." She pauses and looks around the room. All of the stations seem so intimidating, whether they're empty or full. Rock walls, obstacle courses, and all sorts of other things that Gwen can't imagine herself doing any better than she can start a fire. "Where are you going after this station?"

Ellie sighs, her voice sounding just a bit annoyed as she goes back to trying to focus on her fire. "Back to my floor, probably, since training ends in a few minutes."

"Oh, right," Gwen says awkwardly.

"It isn't too late to go join Twelve, you know. It wouldn't hurt to at least try to learn how to use a knife."

"I know. I'll try." Gwen doesn't get up, though. She can put that off until tomorrow. It isn't like there's any time left to learn today anyway. "You never answered my question, by the way."

"Yeah, that was sorta on purpose." She grumbles.

"Right."

Ellie stops giving her attention to the station again and looks back at Gwen. Her eyebrows are furrowed and it's like she's thinking about something, or maybe whether or not she wants to say it.

"You don't have to act like that, you know," she says awkwardly.

"Like what?" Gwen says, even awkwarder.

"Like I'm gonna hate you if you aren't constantly walking on eggshells, letting yourself get walked over. I'm not gonna be mad at you if you just say what you're really thinking. Heck, I'd like it a lot more than you constantly saying things that you don't mean."

"Sorry, I didn't—"

Gwen stops herself from completing that apology. Ellie raises an eyebrow at her.

"Like that, right." Gwen sighs. "I just. . . want people to like me, that's all."

Ellie snorts. "Why do you care about that? Most people suck, who cares what they think?"

"You mean you don't care, even a little, if people like you?" Gwen wraps her arms around her shoulders.

"I think that people either like you or they don't. Trying to change that is never gonna work. Besides, if somebody doesn't like me for who I really am, then why should I care? They're probably just some asshole."

Gwen cracks a smile. "Yeah, maybe. Or maybe we're just the assholes."

Ellie laughs. "I can live with that." She pauses, then lightly punches Gwen on the shoulder. "And see, you just called me an asshole. And I still like you."

"I think you're different from most people," Gwen says teasingly.

She shrugs. "Like I said, most people suck. So I'm okay with that."

Ellie goes back to work with that, dropping the conversation like it never even happened and leaving Gwen sitting beside her twiddling her thumbs. She hates that it's the end of the day already. For the first time since she was reaped, she feels like she's ready to take this thing on. Maybe she won't be reaching for the swords and axes first things first, but she wants to try something. She wants to throw everything she has into something and see what happens.

The matchbox finds its way back into her hands as she settles in over the pile of twigs and leaves, ready to make sparks fly.

Kian Caelmor, 17, District One

The first day of training was a breeze. The rest of the Career pack is less fun than he had hoped for, but they're also much less competent, and that's a trade-off that he'll gladly take. Ivory and Akali are boring and boringer, Reed and Raya are hardly even Careers, and Kai is the worst of all, always trying to act like he's automatically the pack leader. Nobody else cares enough to steal it from him, but it's still annoying.

Of course, there are a few other suitors out there too. The little runt from Six demanding to be part of the pack was just straight up comedy, especially when he started throwing a tantrum when they obviously said no. Kai found it less funny and promised to kill the kid in the bloodbath for daring to ask. Guy has no chill.

The girl from Ten asking is a bit more interesting. Still a no, obviously, but at least she has something to back it up. Some Peacekeeper training and more muscle than either of the Fours, at the very least. Not like that's saying very much with the noodle arms Reed has.

With how good the food is up here at the District One floor, it's hard for Kian to come up with reasons for why he should waste his time down at training. There's nobody fun to hang out with, he already has plenty of training with weapons, and the lunches down there are bordering on abysmal. Watching television and ordering avoxes around beats that, ten times out of ten.

Ivory doesn't like that, and his mentors are even less enthused, but they can moan all they want, it doesn't mean anything in the end. The three of them are plopped down at the dining table right now, sitting with the escort and blabbing on about strategy, as if there's anything useful for them to tell him. The Hunger Games are simple. You go in, you stay alive, and you kill everyone else. Trying to think any further than that is just asking for a headache that won't do you any good. Augustus, Haven, Finnick, Cashmere, Gloss, none of them won because they spent a few days thinking really hard about the arena. They won because they were better at killing than anybody else. Kian thinks he can manage that.

Until then, Kian just wants to enjoy his freedom. For seventeen years he was stuck under his parents' thumb, the two of them always trying to control him and who he would be. They even arranged that stupid marriage to that air-head Hope, as if he would ever go through with that. He always knew that they wouldn't be able to control him, but it feels good to know that he's free for good. No matter what happens, Kian is uncontrolled.

He flips through a few channels, absentmindedly searching for something that might catch his eye. Sitting on the couch and relaxing with some snacks is fun, but only up to a point. He's in the Capitol. A few days and the Hunger Games will be starting. Kian wants more than relaxation and enjoyment. He wants fun.

If Valentino were here, he'd already have some half-baked plan ready to be pitched. Something ridiculous and stupid but undeniably fun, probably involving windows and rooftops and dangling off the edge. Alas, he's stuck with Ivory, Augustus, and the less fun half of the victor twins. Something tells him that the victors they sent are no accident. He refuses to believe they sent the two most strict and boring victors with him by accident.

He turns off the television after the fifth straight channel of news reporters talking about the Hunger Games. The last few days have been nothing but the Hunger Games, was a bit of a break from them too much to ask?

Probably, according to either of my mentors, he thinks to himself.

He throws another handful of popcorn into his mouth and saunters off from the living room, aimlessly searching the halls for something exciting to distract him for a while. There isn't much. Some empty hallways with a bunch of closets and a few bedrooms to the left, the kitchen with the people he least wants to be near to the right. Ahead of him is the window which has been tinted so dark that he can hardly even tell when it's day or night. For their safety and privacy, they say, like Kian needs protecting from some Capitolite obsessed fans.

He'd love to try his luck in the elevator and just throw himself to some random floor to see what he finds, but the stupid thing is locked, with the key in the firm grasp of their annoying escort. After a few more minutes of wandering, he finally gives up and throws himself back onto the couch. He lets out a loud, long sigh that he hopes the rest of the District One team hears. Then, he grabs the remote, takes another handful of popcorn, and goes back to flipping through the channels.

Freedom is cracking up to be a whole lot less free than he was thinking it would be.

Hi everybody! Sorry for the delay on this update and the shortish chapter, it's been a busy two weeks of exploring my new home! There are a couple more weeks of summer, so hopefully I can finish the pre-games by then! Thank you all for reading and I'll see you next time for the second day of training!

-Avery