Cato Pierce, 44
Victor of the 74th Hunger Games: District 2

It's been over 25 years since Cato had won the Hunger Games, but he has never been able to escape the images that follow him on a daily basis. But this year, in the weeks leading up to the Games, the memories were coming back full-force. At the age of 19, the third Quell was the first Hunger Games that Cato had ever mentored for, so the upcoming Quell was doing nothing to calm his nerves.

His Games had gone just about the way everyone expected them to. Eleven tributes were killed in the bloodbath, and Cato was responsible for three of them. From that point forward, he stuck with his group of Career tributes, minus Rhys from District 4 who was killed in the bloodbath by the boy from District 11, and with the surprising addition of Peeta Mellark from District 12. Peeta claimed that he was joining the Career group to help them track down his District partner who had rejected his advances, but when it was revealed that they were working together all along, Cato left him with a nasty cut on his leg before leaving him for dead.

He made two more kills before reaching the final six tributes, when the Gamemakers announced that the tributes should all meet at the Cornucopia to retrieve the item they needed most. He and his District partner, Clove, were relieved. All of their supplies had been blown up several days before, leaving them with just the supplies on their backs and the weapons in their belts.

At the feast, Katniss Everdeen of District 12 made herself known. Cato wanted nothing more than to kill her himself, as she was his biggest rival, and doing so would increase his sponsors tenfold. But Clove only had two kills compared to his five, so he told her to kill the girl, but to make it bloody. After all, it had been announced that both of them could win, so any sponsors for her were sponsors for him as well. She succeeded in killing the girl, slicing open her face and eventually digging out her throat with her knife. The victory was short lived, however, as the boy from District 11, the same one that killed Rhys, smashed her head with a rock until she died.

Cato still heard Clove screaming his name every night.

Katniss and Clove's faces both appeared in the sky that night, along with Peeta, who had finally succumbed to the infection brought on by the cut Cato gave him. That left just Cato, the boy from District 11, and the girl from District 5. The Gamemakers released muttations that resembled wolves. The wolves killed the girl from District 5, leaving Cato and the boy from 11 to fight it out in the finale. It was a long and hard battle, but ultimately, the fact that Cato was still wearing the armor that he got at the feast led to his victory.

On the warm June day three weeks before the Reapings for the 100th Hunger Games, Cato handled his memories the same way he always did: with a punching bag.

His parents were the ones who pressured him into volunteering for the Hunger Games in the first place, since they were distressed after his older brother had volunteered and placed second in the 67th Games. But Cato found out quickly that being a Victor wasn't just fame and wealth and honor to your District. It was nightmares and guilt and not being able to form close relationships. So when Cato came home, he didn't ask his parents to move into his house in Victors' Village with him. He never married or had any kids, so each additional bedroom in his house served a different purpose. His favorite was the home gym.

When the voices of the tributes he watched die, or the phantom growling of the mutts in the finale, or the buzzing of the tracker jackers became too loud, all he had to do was blast some loud rock music over the speakers in his house and let his aggression out on the punching bag. Or the dishes, the drywall, or on one particularly bad occasion, the sliding glass door.

The memories were always the worst right before he had to mentor another batch of tributes, but they were worse now than they had been in almost twenty years. His first Quarter Quell was embarrassing enough. Since the twist that year was that the tributes were older, both tributes from District 2 were older than Cato by several years, and too cocky to take advice from someone they viewed as just a kid. He knew that it was their fault that they died, not his, but he couldn't escape the feeling that if he had worked harder to make them listen, one of them could have survived. But no, they were two of the first deaths in the Career pack, and the man from District 9 of all places ended up winning it all.

But there was no twist this year. Cato tried reminding himself of this whenever his nerves and insecurities started getting the best of him, but he still couldn't shake the feeling of impending doom. His body was telling him that something was wrong, and no matter how much his brain tried to use reason, it was no use.

Cato would not be calm until the 100th Hunger Games were over and done with.


I'm gonna admit, this wasn't so much about me wanting you guys to become familiar with Cato as a character, I just really wanted to clear the air about how the Hunger Games are still going on and what happened with Katniss and Peeta. At this point in my verse, the rebellion likely still exists deep underground, but it's not something I'm going to be exploring.

I'm also going to take this moment to mention that this story will have a sponsoring system for the readers. I'll drop more information about it once I have all of the tributes accepted (I'm not going to have a chapter with the tribute list and sponsoring rules. I'm going to have a website, and once I have all of the tributes, the link to the website will be dropped at the end of another prologue chapter), but all you need to know right now is that you can buy things for your tributes (or other random ones that you just like) using points, and the biggest ways you can get points is by leaving thoughtful reviews, and having characters in the story that do cool stuff. Another big thing about my sponsoring system compared to a lot that I've seen before is that each arena day that passes, the items will get more and more expensive. Just like in canon!