Gigi Sampson, District Five female (16)

My chest heaved, sending burning air up my throat, as I stood in the jungle. I ducked partly behind a nearby tree, moss flaking off against my palm. My thoughts fluttered over some possible way to tell from a distance if anyone coming was Dionysus or Anthony. If it was Dionysus, he'd probably come openly, right? He wouldn't need to hide because he wasn't trying to sneak up on me. Anthony, however, would come skulking. If I didn't hide I might not know it was him until too late. If I did hide Dionysus might not see me and might crawl somewhere and bleed to death. Behind me, the gentle gurgle of a brook belied the dread of the scene.

The decision was made for me. The crackling of branches foretold someone's arrival. I looked in the direction of the noise and seconds later there came a form crashing through the jungle. Blood painted its head but not so much that I couldn't see the dark hair. Dark, like Dionysus'. Dionysus ran under a low-hanging tree and a branch caught his hair. It shifted and I saw the platinum blonde showing through like bone through the blood.

Without thinking about it I screamed. My hands flew to my mouth as I pressed against the tree. Anthony's head jerked at the noise like a panther. He looked straight at the tree I was hiding behind, even if his eyes didn't lock with mine peeking from beside it. I muffled my sobs as he came into closer view. He was limping heavily, making it easy to mistake him for Dionysus approaching openly. Adding to that, he was clutching his side with one hand, and the blood on his face was freely flowing. Some last bit of energy started to flutter in my stomach. It might be, just might be, that Anthony couldn't catch me if I ran.


Anthony Morgan, District Four male (18)

Dionysus' lifeblood oozed out around the three craters my trident had left in his face and throat. When I pushed up off of him his head fell sideways, still staring balefully at me as I stood to run after Gigi. He'd left his mark, subpar Career though he was. My leg buckled under me when I first tried to stand. I leaned to one side when I tried again. Distantly I felt the pain drowned out by a sea of hormones. Everything seemed so crisp, so starkly outlined around me. I'd never been so focused in my life. In that clarity I knew I was flying high on adrenaline. Right now I could do anything, even run on a perforated leg. For the next few minutes I was impervious. After that... Temporary incapacitation at best. Bleeding to death at worst. Unless I won the Games before that happened.

I cursed the trees and grass shuddering around me as I sprinted. I didn't have the time or energy to run with stealth. All I could think of was Gigi ahead of me, betrayed by her own path of frantically trodden-on undergrowth. I followed it like a hound runs after a fox foaming and panting with the last moments of the hunt.

I might not have found her if she hadn't screamed. If Gigi hadn't screamed she could have slipped away while I was looking elsewhere. But she screamed, and after I took a few steps forward, she ran.


Gigi Sampson, District Five female (16)

It was stupid to look behind me. I could have tripped and lost everything in a single moment. But there was something human in me that had to know how close death was behind me. I looked and saw Anthony wasn't running, not really. He was lurching after me with a drunken, wheezing gait like a still-turning zombie. I jumped over the narrow brook and turned to face him, still far enough away he couldn't reach me. I looked down at the river. I looked back at the man who killed my friend. Something deeply ingrained in me fizzled out and died.


Anthony Morgan, District Four male (18)

Gigi bent and thrust her hand into the brook between us. She came back up with a fist-sized rock in her hand. She threw it at me, almost toppling into the water with the force of her throw. Wherever she was aiming, she hit me on my sternum. My chest, already constrained by the bruised ribs, shuddered, and I took a step back. I raised my arm as she took aim again. The larger stone hit me on the hip with bruising force.

It was like a tornado. Gigi started to throw as fast as she could pick up rocks. Stones small and large pelted me with painful or debilitating force according to their sizes. I stepped back to regroup and Gigi stepped forward into the ankle-deep water. I was afraid to throw my trident in case I missed and Gigi took it, so I bent to throw a rock back at her. A particularly well-thrown rock- or maybe she was just coming closer- hit my hand like she'd stepped on it.


Gigi Sampson, District Five female (16)

Sometimes I screamed as I threw. Other times I was dead silent. I pressed forward as Anthony backed away under my onslaught. I shook with anger, each throw a vicarious blow against someone I might not be able to approach but I still might be able to kill. Let him feel it like I was beating him down myself. I wanted him to feel everything he'd been to me. Let his kind know what it's like to be chased and torn apart by someone who you never asked to meet. He volunteered for this, to kill scared children like me, and let him feel the life he gave us.

Anthony guarded his arm with his body as he tried again to pick up a rock. I was so blinded with rage I hardly saw him aiming before he threw. The rock hit my cheek and it felt like my face exploded. Blood bubbled out of my mouth from the tooth knocked clear back into my throat. When Anthony tried to follow up on his strike, I let him. I ran sideways up the creek as he lumbered forward to cross it. He knew by now that he couldn't even retreat at this point. I wondered how big a rock it took to kill someone when thrown at the back of their head. But Anthony was facing me, and as I hefted a melon-sized rock with two hands, it was his face I aimed at.


Anthony Morgan, District Four male (18)

Every impact knocked away some of my adrenaline shield. My fingers buzzed with the slivers of bone Gigi's strike had split loose, fractured further when I curled them around a rock of my own. I ran at her, half-blinded by the blood in my eyes. She wouldn't stop if I tried to tactically retreat. I didn't know if I could get away before she wounded me past being able to run. I steeled myself to the pain and ran right at her, ready to take a point-blank hit if it meant getting her in my grasp. It would be so quick when that happened. A dozen stones couldn't do what I could do with one thrust of my trident.

It felt like a cannon. I had a brief glimpse of Gigi straining to hold up a rock, her back bent and her arms over her head, before it hit me like a cannonball. The stone struck my lower stomach so hard I doubled over and fell backwards, halfway into the creek. As it lay on me it felt heavier than something Gigi could lift. It took all my effort just to push it off.

Gigi's shadow fell across me where she'd scrambled up the shallow bank. She threw down another fist-sized rock that hit me square on the forehead where I lay trying to get up. My thoughts blurred around the ringing in my head. Blood ran into my open mouth, drops flecking off with more impacts as Gigi threw again and again. Everything was coming together. Everything was draining out. It still didn't hurt. As the adrenaline wore off, my consciousness was ebbing at the same time.

I'm dying. Every Career lived with it peeking over their shoulder. None of us thought it would come for us. Each of us thought we were its chosen one and it was all of the others who would find it in the end. I thought of my parents watching at home. My mother had to know I loved her. I hoped that sustained her through this. I could have had a long life if I'd stayed with them in Four. I gave that up for her, though she never asked it of me, and that would be my legacy.

If I could just stand. If I could just sit up. If I could make my fingers curl around my trident. The brook was inches from my face, its blurred surface reflecting me, breaking up as blood dripped into it. I looked into my own eyes as I fell.


Gigi Sampson, District Five female (16)

Anthony might have died even without me at the end. He was facedown in the stream as I pelted the back of his head with stones. He shook at the first impacts, each time less noticeably. A cloud of blood drifted down the stream and thinned to nothing like his ghost leaving his body. The cannon came as I was hefting another stone. I dropped it and it thudded to the ground inches from my foot.

The air was shuddering around me. It was slapping at me like it was alive. I looked up and saw the hovercraft I hadn't heard at all. A ladder descended and it looked to me like a noose. I hooked an arm through the rungs and at once my arm went numb. I dangled like a kitten as the hovercraft lifted me through the trees until I was far enough above the ground for my stomach to flutter. The hovercraft moved a few hundred feet and began to descend again. As I approached the ground, a girl slid from a pile of vegetation like she was shedding a cocoon.


Soleil Kingston, District Eleven female (17)

A cannon. I was going home. I'd never believed it from the start and I didn't then. People like me didn't win the Games. No one wanted someone who ran and hid. Lives like that weren't valuable. Brave people won the Games. Whoever won the fight, that was the winner. The hovercraft would take them away and leave me here to hide.

The trees quaked with the sound of the first human technology I'd heard in a month. A ladder descended like an angel from Heaven. I couldn't believe it again when I saw Gigi. Her face was covered with blood as she clung to the ladder, her flexed muscles standing out stark. She looked down at me with the violent eyes of a hunter. Then all at once she leaned against the ladder and the fight left her eyes. She reached out her hand, finally believing it. As I took it, I believed too.


4th place: Dionysus Bacchus- Stabbed by Anthony

Originally I planned for Dionysus and Gigi to win and be friends to combat SYOTs' tendency to force all pairings to be romantic. I enjoyed this second chance to give Dionysus the full story he was denied in No Way Down. Something else came up and that will be more explained in the other epitaphs. A lot of people disregarded Dionysus as just a party boy. This time I looked closer and let him tell me he was a person, too. No one just decides to become an alcoholic. Whether it's pain in your life or just not knowing how addictive it is until too late, people get ensnared so quickly and deeply we like to say it's their fault so we don't have to admit it could be us just as quickly. Dionysus had demons but he had value as well. He was a good friend to Gigi and once he saw what his impulsiveness had gotten him- an addiction and the Arena- he showed gold in his final days. Dionysus could not survive the consequences of his actions but thanks to him, someone else did. Thanks Evan for Dionysus, who is more than people want him to be.

3rd place: Anthony Morgan

Funny thing, I didn't connect to Anthony as well as most OC authors have. He seemed a little generic to me- another soft-hearted Career with family back home. I didn't DISLIKE him but I didn't see much spark in him. He lived this long purely out of realism- he was strong, well-rounded, and didn't have fatal flaws like Allure or Dionysus. I respected him all through the story but I wrote him as a person deserving dignity, not someone I was developing into a Victor. I think that will be different in other OCs so that will be cool to see. Thanks Treblenotes for a well-rounded, human Career not cartoonishly evil like some.

Victor: Gigi Sampson, District Five female

Gigi was the original Victor that ended up still winning in the end. Picking Soleil as a winner changed everything- I considered every possible permutation of the final four winning. I retained Gigi both on her own merits but also as an homage to Dionysus. She spared his life and now he gets to save hers. Had he not severely wounded Anthony he would have easily killed Gigi. Gigi sparked in me as a Victor when I first read her form. She was so... mundane. She was a normal teenage girl who most people would never even comment on. She wasn't even a cute angel character- her form specified she was selfish and callous toward others, two flaws most SYOT submitters avoid so their Tributes aren't unpopular. Had it not been for the stress and deprivations of the Arena she never would have acted so OOC refusing to kill Dionysus. Gigi is a different person now. Befriending Dionysus made her into the person who won the Games. It's not that the Games were a "good thing"- she would have preferred to live with her sister all her peaceful life and not go through this- but it's different. She's different and we'll never know how her story, equally valuable, would have unfolded back in Five. Now she's a Victor in this most unlikely of Games, since I 100% embraced the "chaos" element. A real friendship between a Career and outlier could never happen anywhere else and I enjoyed this single chance to write it. Congratulations pioneer9 for a very strange first victory in my universe.

Victor: Soleil Kingston, District Eleven female

You're going to laugh, but Soleil is actually the second Pray. Soleil is the second character to win the Games by bugging me into submission. I intended to kill Soleil after Martin and Porsche but I couldn't initially think of a good way. Then she sidled up to me and whispered "what if you don't?" I was like "well I gotta eventually" and she whispered "why? because I'm a side character? Side characters want to live, too. Why do I have to die so the Chosen Ones can live?" and slowly she got to me. Soleil seemed like a born side character in her form- a quiet and poetic tribute who hides for a while and has some tragic internal musings before her time inevitably runs out. But she would not lie down and die. She gave her case again and again, growing more confident as she survived longer into the Games. And at last I conceded. She wasn't just a side character. Side characters are as human as main characters and this time one of them was not going to allow the author to stuff her in the fridge. I gave Soleil the okay and she turned into Hunger Games Rambo, killing only because people would not let her be peacefully. Soleil's quiet, unobtrusive life had the same value as anyone else's, and when I could only keep two I kept her. Congrats to Daughteroftheonetrueking for rounding out this most unlikely pair of survivors.