"Hell I Need"

A/N: Woah an update that took less then a month? Wow not to flex or anything but that's pretty nutty. Anyways here's part one of training, there was supposed to be a mentor POV in this chapter according to the blog but I couldn't for the life of me remember what that was there for so I just cut it instead of writing a couple thousand words of nothing.

~Baby I'm the bad guy, and it's a game

You can tell me why I'll never change

Oh take it from me, never believe

Anything I say to you~

Ethan Faber

Breakfast is quiet and awkward, but that's hardly a surprise anymore. Riven is good for some laughs, even if it's in a twisted and unstable sort of way, but with her gone for the morning it leaves me with just a stuffy, snobby escort and the two quietest, most intense people I've ever met. Lana's lack of friendliness isn't surprising, she's a thirteen-year-old who's halfway a robotic killing machine and hardly the talkative type. But Everly being so tense and detached makes things a lot less fun than they ought to be. Of course, District One seems to swing the opposite direction, so maybe it'll all balance out and the pack will be a nice, friendly place where we all can be friends for at least a little while.

That's a hard lie to get myself to believe in.

Breakfast finished, appearance double-checked in the mirror, and bright white training outfit slipped on, Everly and I are in the elevator and headed down with plenty of time to spare. We get down to the training center first, and it's a few minutes before even the head trainer appears. If she's surprised to see us already there, she doesn't show it. If anything, she looks exasperated, shaking her head and sighing as she tiredly takes a seat and waits for the room to fill up.

District Four are the next to arrive, Ainsley focused, serious, and full of energy while her district partner lets out a groggy yawn and shuffles after her, a hand running through his messy hair.

"Mornin' Two," Arno says through another yawn. "Early risers too, huh?"

I shrug. "Didn't get chosen as the volunteer by oversleeping training."

He nods his head, eyes barely hanging open. "Yeah, 'course. Couldn't be doing that."

"So," Ainsley says in a low, eager voice. Arno seems to know what she's about to say, and suddenly looks even more tired. "Are you two really okay with District One taking over the pack? I mean, the guy's an idiot, and the girl is probably too worried about chipping a nail to even train."

Surprisingly, Everly is the first to respond, her voice calm and monotone yet still somehow having a sharp edge to it. "Pack leaders never win. If they want it so bad, let them have it. Their funeral."

"Yes, but who the pack leader is also usually decides whether or not any Career wins or not," Ainsley urges.

"I think how much backstabbing and throat slitting happens between us usually decides that," I say. "So can we not jump right to the factions and secret alliances before training even starts? Maybe just try being friends and watching each other's backs until it's just us left?"

"Think like that," Ainsley says. "And you'll be the one getting stabbed in the back."

"I don't know," Arno chips in, "One seems a bit too theatrical to do their stabbing from the backside."

Ainsley clearly has more to say to that, but that conversation comes to an abrupt end as the elevator opens and the last of the Career pack filters into the training center. Ariya leads the way, half-skipping her way over to our semi-circle with a giddy smile. May and Pierre play it a bit more cool, but their excitement is just as clear.

"How's it going, besties?" Ariya says in a cheery tone that I still can't decipher as genuine, sarcastic, or maybe a little bit of both? "Doing any early morning scheming?" She teases.

"Ooh, can I guess who you're planning to backstab first?" May jokes. "Is it Pierre? It's Pierre, isn't it. It's always the tall guy that catches the sword to the spine."

"Is this all just a joke to you?" Ainsley asks, unamused. The mood turns ice cold for a moment, but May just cracks a smile and laughs.

"Naw, just most of it," she says.

The elevator saves us again, the first of the outliers stepping into the training center now. A wordless agreement runs through all of us, and any animosity or jokes are morphed into an intimidating outward appearance. Without the big laughs and smiles, Pierre looks properly terrifying with his size, and I'm reminded of why everyone here was chosen as a volunteer in an instant. May is the only one that doesn't exactly pull off scary (and maybe Arno too, but that's mostly because he still looks like he just rolled out of bed a minute ago), but even then I doubt the scrawny outliers see an easy target in her, particularly with her dad's reputation.

The outliers are smaller than I was ready for them to be, even after watching the recaps, and I try to bury any hesitancy or bad feelings and replace them with confidence. This year is an easy career victory, no outliers just makes my path all that easier. District Two prepares its students for all parts of the games, and "villain syndrome" is a part of it. But I'm not the bad guy, I know that. Somebody has to win, and only one person. There's nothing evil about wanting that to be me- about doing everything in my power to make sure that person is me. Just because I cross my arms over my shoulders and give a few mean looks to some twelve year olds doesn't suddenly mean I'm a bad person. It's just part of the game.

"Fuck, they're tiny, aren't they?" Ariya murmurs. Half the outliers are here now, and most of them are quietly chatting to their district partner, their legs bouncing up and down nervously, their eyes doing everything they can to avoid our path.

"Kill the two from Ten and we can put on some blindfolds and play 'pin the knife in the malnourished outlier' for the rest," Pierre mutters.

"Don't underestimate them," Ainsley whispers sharply. "Unlikelier kids have won. I'm sure none of the careers from the ninety-eighth looked at Audra Lee and thought the tiny little thirteen-year-old would be the victor that year."

"I feel like this is a good time to tie back to the idea of let's just not kill each other as a good strategy, no?" I whisper back.

"Tributes!" The trainer's voice booms over the room, and it instantly falls silent as everyone's attention switches to her. We all make an effort to pay attention, even though her speech is one each of us has heard a thousand times before. Most of it is lies, but lies that are told for a reason. "Most tributes die from dehydration or exposure," she says, and it's technically true. But missing is the context, that the only reason they're thirsty and freezing is because they didn't brave the cornucopia since they had no weapon skills, got no sponsor gifts to save them for that same reason, and gave no reason for the Gamemakers to keep them alive by leading them csomewhere of importance for yet again that same reason. There's a reason the outliers that make it the furthest every year are the same exact prototype. It's just good entertainment.

Looking around the room, the District Ten callout is probably the right one for who'll fill that role this year. Both of them look strong and healthy and willing to hold a sword. It's hard to ignore the District Eleven duo though, and I can't help but notice the older of the two girls from Eight, Basila, is the only one that meets my gaze instead of averting their eyes away. She looks just as scared as the rest of them, but still, it's something.

The trainer finally wraps up her speech, and as soon as she announces the training stations are open, Pierre takes a step forward and turns towards the outlier. "Here's your only warning wimps. If I see any of you at a weapons station, you die first, and you die slow, got it?"

His question is met with silence, and he smiles almost pleasantly. "Good," he says, his smile only growing as he turns to the rest of the pack.

"That's diabolical." Ariya giggles. "I think half the outliers might already be headed to the elevators soon to go change their pants."

"Do you really think that was necessary?" Arno asks, slightly uncomfortably.

Pierre snorts. "Of course not, but it's funny to watch them squirm."

"You're such an asshole," May says, rolling her eyes, but even then a smile cracks at her lips.

Everly and Ainsley are unreadable, and I decide against sharing my agreement with Arno. I shouldn't feel uncomfortable by it. It's a strategic advantage, really. We keep the outliers from learning any weapons skills, and besides, we'd be targeting anybody who was any good with weapons anyways, so that doesn't change anything. And as for the torture threat, well, that was probably just a threat. Sure, most of the pack are more like the other cadets from Two than they're like friends or a found family, but maybe they're just rough around the edges, with something more beneath the surface.

And even if there isn't, and they're just monsters all the way down, that only makes it easier for me to kill them. I want nothing more than to get to be that hero, and well, if I'm surrounded by villains, then maybe that gives me the best opportunity to do just that.

"Alright," I say, forcing myself to smile as I turn to the rest of the pack and clap my hands together. "Where do we start?"

Arno Dupont

Training here feels strange. The outliers have all taken Pierre's threat seriously, and I can't blame them. A few of the stronger outliers are going to stations that might still give them some sort of fighting chance. The boy from Five is at the hand-to-hand combat station with the boy from Six, and the duos from Ten and Eleven are lifting weights and running agility courses. The rest are all scattered. The quarter-dozen twelve and thirteen year olds (and the girl from Five, too) are all sitting in a circle around the older girl from Twelve as she shows them how to start a fire and tells them stories. It's a waste of time, but at least it seems to be taking their minds off of things.

The notable person missing from that group is the thirteen-year-old from Eight, who has joined up with the duo from Nine at the snares station. That just leaves Eliya, Ariya's district partner, who is sitting at the nuts and berries station, crushing the fruit to make paintings on the floor while the trainer looks on exasperatedly. May, Pierre, and Ariya are all at the archery station and playing some sort of game or contest. Every once in a while Pierre will loudly shout out a random outlier's name, and the three will burst into laughter as the kid jumps up or falls down in fear when they look over to see his bow knocked and aimed at them.

And that's the half of the Career pack that I like the most.

The other three are scattered around the room on their own. Everly is in an intense duel with a trainer at the swords station, Ainsley is doing the same but with a katana, and Ethan is also at the archery station, but off to the side, occasionally stopping from his practice to give side-glances to the District One trio.

It hasn't even been a day, and the pack already seems splintered and ready to break, and I feel like I'm stuck in the middle. The trio from one are all assholes, psychopaths maybe even. While they might be fun to be around for now, the joking threats will stop being so funny once we're in the arena and they become real. Maybe in a normal year it'd be easier to stomach, but the outliers this year. . . I volunteered expecting to be in a fight, but this feels like it's going to be a slaughter. Do I want to fight side by side with people who will cut open the throats of twelve-year-olds, laughing the whole while, taunting them as they breathe their last breaths? Are those the people I want to call my friends, and go to sleep trusting them to keep watch over me?

I've been wrestling with those thoughts all day, and they haven't been getting any quieter. But at the end of the day, there isn't any other choice. Half the pack may be intense and backstabby and borderline emotionless, the other half psychopathic thrill-seekers, but I didn't volunteer for summer camp. I'm not here to make friends, and the awfulness of all of them will just make it easier for me to turn on them whenever the time comes that I need to.

The only reason I'm here is to clear my name, and I don't need anybody else's help to do it. It's an easy motto to repeat in my head, but it doesn't do anything to wash away the guilt that's already starting to pour through me.

"Hey, lookin' kinda spacy there." May is standing in front of me, arms crossed, eyeing me up curiously as an easy smile masks her expression.

"Just thinking," I say. "I mostly use a bow or sword, and those stations are. . . occupied currently."

"Plenty of extra room at the archery station," she says in a testing tone.

I look over to the station she just departed and smile pleasantly. "Not my scene."

"So you gonna just stand and stare at the ceiling instead?" She asks.

"I've gotten plenty of training in the last eighteen years of my life, I don't have any last minute catching up that I need to do."

"You saying that I need the practice more than you do?"

"If I was saying that, I woulda said it," I reply simply.

It's quiet for a moment, but then she exhales from her nose in something close to a laugh. "What's up with all this? We're all Careers, we should all be having fun, teaming up. Instead you're all off hiding in your own little corners. You aren't even an asshole or anything, what gives? You all threatened by the three person District One or something?"

"Nobody's threatened," I state calmly. "Everly and Ainsley are loners, they'd be off on their own no matter what."

"And you and Ethan?" She asks.

I shrug, and suddenly feel like being honest. For any of my hang ups, the kid at least seems genuine, which is far more than I can say about any of the other people in the pack. "We aren't distancing ourselves because we're scared or shy, we're distancing ourselves because you guys are assholes. Nobody wants to be friends with the psychopaths."

"You think we're psychopaths?" She snorts, halfway seeming to think I'm joking.

I shrug. "Maybe two-thirds of you, if I were placing bets."

"Why, because we're having fun?"

"Sure looks like they're having a load of fun," I say, nodding towards the outliers.

"They're outliers, of course they aren't having fun." Her smile finally disappears as she goes on the defensive. "It isn't our job to go and cheer them up. We're here to win."

"Yeah, and we don't have to make their last days miserable to do that. You think Everly and Ainsley are trying to win any less than you three just because they aren't threatening to torture kids for touching a weapon in training?"

"That was just a joke," she says darkly, though she hardly seems to be entirely convincing herself.

"Tell them that," I reply.

"And why don't you?" She demands. "Who are you to act all higher and mightier? You volunteered just the same as the rest of us. Are you gonna lay down your sword and refuse to kill when we're in the arena? Wipe the outliers tears off their faces and hug them and tell them it's all going to be okay?"

"I had my reasons for volunteering."

"And so did I," she says firmly.

"I'm sure you did," I say noncommittally. "And whatever the reason, we're both here all the same."

From the archery station, Pierre does his little game again. This time he calls out "Cyrus Till," and the young boy from Nine jumps when he sees the bow pointed at him, trips over a chair, and falls to the floor. His district partner runs to a trainer to complain, while the girl from Eight kneels down to help up her ally, all the while locking eyes with Pierre. He doesn't pay her any mind, though, bursting into laughter with Ariya. "You see that one, May?" He bellows over. "Best one yet!"

May doesn't respond, she's still looking silently at the boy and his ally, but Pierre doesn't wait for a response before turning back to Ariya. May's back is turned to me, so I don't even bother looking at her as I pick up my bag and get ready to move on to a new station. I pause just short of walking away silently. I should really just keep to myself, not stir up any drama or get involved in anything. Just keep my head down and out of the way, stand on the outskirts and let the Career pack rip itself apart without picking any sides. But from this angle, I can see May more clearly. I can see the uncertainty in her eyes as she watches the girl from Eight console her ally from his teary-eyed, balled up position on the floor.

"I get them two," I say quietly. She doesn't turn around, and I'm not even sure if she's listening to me, but I go on anyway. "I doubt they can even help it, it's just who they are, they don't feel anything. But what's your excuse?"

I walk away, and that accusation ricochets against myself. I picture myself a few short days from now, hands bloodied and bodies at my feet, and it's Elise's face I see voicing those words to me.

What's your excuse?

A/N: And there's our first day of training. There's so much to love about this career pack and I can't wait to continue to unravel all these awesome relationships. It really feels like each of these characters is so alive that it's easy for me to see how each of them would interact with every other member of the pack, and that allows it to feel so much more alive. Next chapter we'll stop in with Ainsley and Everly, so stay tuned for that!