Leonidas Feldspar, Victor of the 1st Annual Hunger Games
April 9th, 19 ADD - Just under three months before the 19th Games
"Tell me, Miles," Leonidas asked, voice overshadowed just enough by the din of clashing weapons and grunting teenagers to be lost to anyone outside a circle of five feet. "How many times, exactly, have we now climbed on the bandwagon that Royale has oh so graciously built for us?"
Were they uttered by any other man, the words might be considered those of bitterness or jealousy, a feeble attempt to grasp at the glory a rival had obtained through superior maneuvering and strategy. But Leonidas had never been so arrogant or grasping, not even in his youth - it was simply fact, not bias, that had him rule supreme as the best fighter the very first Hunger Games had seen, and it was fact, not bias, that nineteen years later he still held a plethora of Games records that had yet to be broken - the most kills, the most successful mentorships, the most Capitol endorsements - the list went on and on. He never bragged about it, never hyped up his own accolades or shoved them in peoples' faces, and why would he? The accomplishments spoke for themselves.
And in turn, as it would seem, he was equally as magnanimous in defeat as well, as for the first time since he could remember, someone had finally proven themselves worthy of proving themselves his equal. He wouldn't have guessed it from the seemingly fragile blonde girl that had been plucked out of One a year and a decade ago would have anything on his chosen champion for the year had he been asked - Cordelia had been one of his first trainees, and one of his greatest, armed with as many survival tips as his best and brightest could pass on to her and a wicked swing with a sword that she'd inherited from her infantryman father. Yet at the end of it all, it would not be Cordelia that would be exciting the arena of the 8th Games, but the blonde girl - Platinum Royale, a girl who even then had proven to be a ruthless strategist that even President Dominus would have envied had she been born into the war instead of peace.
As it was, Leonidas prided himself on one thing, and one thing only - his ability to never be outsmarted by the same person twice. During the war, he'd served ably as his father's right hand, and together their tactical geniuses had made them the third most prolific commanders in the Capitolite army, and the best not to come from the Capitol itself. In the Games, the girl from Eleven had outsmarted him once, landing the only solid hit he'd received before victory on his body, and though he still carried the scar on his chest, she'd died the same way as the other ten kids he'd killed. Even the beloved President had gotten to him only once, when he'd pinned him into a corner with barely concealed threats regarding the birth of his new Games academy and what such a thing might suggest to the rest of the nation. That victory had not come without sacrifices, but Leonidas had walked away with his body intact and his permit secured.
"Three, last time I checked." Even if he'd been the type to wish to hide such an emotion, there was no disguising the smugness that radiated off of the words of Miles Brazier, victor of the 4th Games and Leonidas's best frenemy. "The alliance, the sponsors, and now the stacking. 'Fraid you're getting soft in your old age, Leon."
Leonidas did not laugh at the playful barb, but that wasn't uncommon, not for him. True, genuine mirth was as uncommon to him as many emotions had ever been for him. He called it a necessity in order to survive the world around him, because in wartime, in the Games, no one held onto their emotions and emerged with their sanities intact.
Or so he'd been led to believe, at any rate. To this day, it was one of many perpetual arguments he and Miles had from time to time, each as stubborn as the stone that still made up Two's most widespread industry. To him, it was a necessity; to Miles, it was, quote, 'a damn tragedy.'
"Counterpoint, Brazier," he said, watching intently as a lean sixteen year old was swept off his feet by the spear of his training partner. "Maybe it just so happens that for the first time in my life, someone out there has proven to be my equal."
Words of cockiness and arrogance, were they spoken by any other man. Spoken by Leonidas, however, it was the same as any other; just a cold, hard fact.
"Whatever helps you justify it t'yourself," Miles snorts, not unkindly. "I dunno about you, but I preferred it when we were the only so-called Career academy around. All we had was one trained kid to worry about, and they were our own, and now we have these upstarts in One trying to do what we do, but better. Hell, next thing you know, we'll be seeing wannabe academies popping up in Four and Seven and probably Twelve of all places for all I know."
"First off, that's ridiculous," Leonidas retorted back, the ghost of a teasing smirk finally forcing its way onto his face. "I mean, really, an academy in Four? Those fisherfolk are obsessed with their district honor to a fault, you'll never see them training to gain the advantage over anyone. Second, you can't tell me you're afraid of a little friendly competition, are you?" The banter came as naturally as it ever did, as did the teasing pat on Miles' back. "Besides, having Royale create her own academy over in One might actually benefit us in the long run. Look at all of the tricks and exploits she's found since then that you or I would never have thought of. Commanding the sponsor base, bringing a refreshing new side to the loyal patriot angle that we've commanded for the last decade…" He trails off as a particularly well-built sixteen year old girl snaps her opponent's spear in half with a single swing of her mace, quickly confirming that the only injury the latter suffered was a blow to her pride. "Hell, even her teamwork angle was genius. The Games might only ever have one winner, but each district always sends two. Why not have them be two trained volunteers?"
Miles sighed, and Leonidas mentally braced himself - though it'd been a long time since their last heated argument over Games strategy, Miles had made no secret of his distaste for the way the 18th had ended. Leonidas had been pragmatic, recognizing that Trajan, for all of his skill in battle, had failed to recognize Platinum's strategy in enough time to deal with it on his own. Miles, while recognizing its merit, had resisted Leonidas's idea that they implement it themselves - what was the point, he argued, of spending four, six, eight, even ten years training a pair of kids to win the Hunger Games if only to doom one of them right from the get-go?
But to his surprise, the words Miles spoke weren't laced with the fires of war, but the bitterness of resigned defeat. "I know you're right," he acquiesces, and such was the grimness of his tone that Leonidas turned and focused his attention on his friend fully for the first time. "Sure, I don't love the idea of sending an extra kid in there after we've proven multiple times that we can get the job done with one. Cause for all of Royale's practicality, sending two of her trainees into the Games didn't get her two victors."
"But it did get her one," Leonidas said. "You knew Trajan. He was one of our best. Had he been fighting only Kingsley or Silk, there'd be no question as to who would have come back.
"Again, I know that." Miles sighed again, a long, deep sigh. "Doesn't mean I like it any better. We train kids here, some of them for half of their lives, to win the Hunger Games, Leon. Not to place second, not to lay down their life in favor of their district partner, not to doom themselves before they ever set foot in the arena. To send two of our kids in there means that every year, that's the kind of fate we're pinning to one of them."
He paused, and a decade and a half of friendship meant that Leonidas did not need words to realize that Miles was reaching the climax of his point. "And?" he asked gently, a decade and a half of friendship likewise telling him that sometimes, even the most hardened victor needed a small push.
Miles laughed bitterly in response. "It's selfish, really, what made me change my mind."
"To be a victor is to be selfish, Brazier," Leonidas retorted back. "Truly, you're in no finer company to share such thoughts, if I do say so myself."
Something flashed behind Miles' eyes, something raw and wild and real in a way that Leonidas rarely saw with his old friend. "It was Marcus, you know?" he said in a hushed voice, as if paranoid that one of the trainees might overhear. "He…he turns twelve this year. First time in the reaping bowl, and Matilda and I forbade him from taking any tesserae out even though we all know full well he doesn't need it. And I thought to myself 'what if?' What if I chose a girl to represent us one year, and that year just so happens to be when he gets reaped? How would I ever be able to trust myself to not nominate anyone other than a boy for the ten years my kids will be in the reaping even if they're far from our best chance of winning? And then here comes Royale with her ingenious plan of sending two of her trainees into the Games instead of one, and for the longest time I thought it was ruthless, right? And then I realized."
The metaphorical light bulb clicked on over Leonidas's head a second before Miles confirmed it.
"Last year was the first year that a district didn't have a single reaped kid enter the Games," Miles breathed. "Platinum sent two of her trainees in, and both of the kids who got their names pulled out of the bowl got to live and see another day."
That was the downside of the Games working the way they did, Leonidas supposed. They could train their champion, sharpen their steel and hone their mind all they wanted in a spirited attempt to bring them back home again, but for every kid that Leonidas had trained to put through the Games, there were still those that slipped through the cracks, kids who were plucked from obscurity and thrust into certain death on the grandest stage known to Panem. And Leonidas wasn't a savage - he made sure that each and every kid that stepped foot into the arenas was as well prepared as they possibly could be, be they trained by him or not.
But Miles had always mentored the unlucky ones before his retirement. And even then, Vulcan and Valeria had more than proven themselves willing to help the poor sniveling fourteen year old as opposed to their former comrade-in-arms. Helping them had never been on his radar, not like it was on Miles.
Another case of too much pragmatism and not enough heart, he thought bitterly.
"Selfish or not," he said instead, for he'd had more than enough practice to hide any emotion, unsavory or otherwise, behind a steel visage of calm. "It's a fine rationale. And whether Platinum Royale chose to send two of her own champions into the arena for that exact reason or if it had nothing to do with it, well, that doesn't matter, because there's no shame in stealing tactics from your rivals if you can make them better."
Miles snorted. "Yeah, well, that aside, you'll forgive me if I say that I'm going to opt to not join you in the gleaming Capitol this year again while I come to terms with whether sending one of our kids knowingly to die is better than letting some random unlucky bastard out there take the fall instead."
An emotional response, to be sure. But wasn't that why they'd always worked so well together? Leonidas Feldspar, the poster child for the Capitol loyalists, the emotionless machine fully committed to victory, and Miles Brazier, the ordinary citizen caught in the wrong place at the wrong time whose heart overruled his head two times out of every three.
"Remember that this is why we built this humble abode of ours in the first place, old friend," Leonidas said, turning his attention back to the trainees just in time to see a raven-haired girl whack the back of her training partner's head with the flat part of an axe. "We made this to give our kids a chance, to help prepare them for the greatest trial they'll ever have to face-"
"-and to make a difference of course, yeah yeah," Miles said, and at last some of the old humor had resurfaced upon his face. "You don't need to spout that propaganda bullshit to me, you know. I've only heard it a thousand and one times ever since the bricks were set, Feldspar."
And despite himself, Leonidas grinned for real. "And I'll remind you a thousand and one more if that's what it takes to drill it through that thick skull of yours, Brazier."
Miles responded by playfully slugging him in the arm. But Leonidas didn't mind, for he'd already refocused himself on the plethora of kids, training tirelessly to fulfill the same duty that he had so many years before.
Yeah, that's right, he thought.
Together, we're making a difference.
Welcome back to An Illusion of Instability! To preface a bit before I jump into the chapter, I have been truly blown away by the amount of submissions and interests that I have received already, especially since this is my first go-around posting any sort of fanfic material, let alone an SYOT! To all of you that have submitted or shown interest, I thank you from the bottom of my heart, and I'll do my best to continue making this a story that holds your interest.
Now, for the chapter itself! Here we see Leonidas Feldspar, victor of the first ever Hunger Games in this universe, and his oldest friend, Miles Brazier (victor of the 4th Games) in the months leading up to another grand spectacle of Games. After years of being the dominant force in the Games due to their shared idea of preparing kids for them ahead of time, the recent emergence of a second academy led by a rival victor has them discussing a key point in their strategy, and wondering if, at long last, it's finally time to start stacking the odds into the district's favor instead of a single individual's. Both of them seem on board with the idea, and there surely seem to be more than enough trainees at this point to justify the approach, but will this pay off the way it did for One last year, or will it come back and bite them in the ass later on?
Also, fun fact; those of you that have checked out the story website (wink wink nudge nudge) may have noticed that each of the eighteen Games that exist in this universe's canon have their own fully fleshed out victor and Games summary, and that is by design! Because throughout An Illusion of Instability, each and every one of those eighteen victors will have their moment in the proverbial spotlight, getting some character development and their own shot on the stage (as if trying to write 24 unique tributes wasn't going to be enough all on its own LOL). Since Miles, as stated, will not be traveling to the Capitol in a rare privilege offered to Two only due to the sheer number of victors they've amassed, this is his moment in the sun. As for Leonidas, well, we'll be seeing plenty more of him in the future, I assure you.
Lastly, a small reminder that submissions for this story will close at 11:59pm PST on October 28th, or almost exactly 11 days from when this chapter is posted. Once that deadline passes, then we'll be well and truly in the thick of the story itself with all of y'all's characters - and I, for one, cannot wait to see what's in store for them.
See y'all next time with Prologue III!
