Acre Kao
Tech Team (Department 2)
Age 19
Partner Announcement
Acre slumps into the plush chair beside his partner.
"You ready?" Diletha asks, slowly setting down the coffee pot he'd been holding.
"Nope," Acre inhales, "not in the slightest."
He nonchalantly nods, pursing his thin lips, "Raask was much better at things like this."
"Raask?" Acre can't help but feel taken aback by the thought of their departed member. Raask always was a lot better at the talking aspect of their job… but he's not here, not now, not ever. He betrayed them. All of them. Acre sighs, "or we're just bad," he jokes, trying to ease the tension.
"Fair point,"
"You sure we have everything in place?"
"I believe we do," Diletha smiles, "at least I hope,"
"Great!"
"I'm just not exactly excited to talk to the… uh repulsive children,"
"They're not children...?" Acre says, slipping much more of a questioning tone into his words than he'd have liked.
Diletha chuckles, "they're all minors and therefore children."
"A lot of them are actually eighteen,"
"Ok fine, a few repulsive young adults and some children- not all of them are eighteen,"
"That's fair, almost all of the careers are eighteen, some outliners too," Acre responds, thinking back to the reaping and how he was shocked by the number of aged tributes. Only a few are under fifteen.
Diletha grins, glancing down at his notes, "But there's the girl from four,"
"The one who's only fourteen?"
"No, the one from seven years ago with the broken arm," he sighs, "of course the one who's only fourteen,"
"Sorry,"
"Nothing to apologize for."
"Anyway, Vivia, yes, she's fourteen," Acre continues, nodding at his partner.
"And she volunteered,"
"Wow,"
"She's either gonna die really quickly or rise to the occasion and beat the shit outta the others."
"Could go either way, you never know." Acre smiles.
"But her district partner… he means business,"
"He's the one who punched Laurent in the face at the welcome party?" Acre asks, trying not to laugh.
"That's him, his name is Phoenix."
"Yep, him,"
"Ya wanna know who else means business?" Diletha asks, smirking.
"Who?"
"The girl from Twelve."
"Lapis! Yes! She looks promising,"
Diletha laughs awkwardly, "She showed up to the reaping with a freaking knife, of course she has potential."
Acre picks up the dark coffee pot calmly. "That she does," he nods, reaching for the mug laying on the counter.
"Not sure what to think about her District partner though,"
"Kayn?" he questions.
"Yeah."
Acre sighs softly, "none of us do,"
That makes Diletha burst out in a fit of chuckles, "we're doin' great this year,"
"We have no dang clue what we're doing," Acre grins.
"Damn right,"
"We have a whole week though… should be fine?"
"Probably," Diletha says through evil-sounding cackles.
"Yeah, yeah," Acre responds, "yeah."
"Well, we get to meet them today, officially."
"Very true,"
"Not looking forward to it,"
"Same," Acre takes a small sip of his coffee in loosened spirits, "same,"
"But are we gonna do it?"
"Nope,"
"We're just gonna ditch the biggest day for Department Two, love it."
"As one does," Acre sets down the ceramic mug.
"We'd get in big trouble with Vasilius though,"
"Huge,"
"But fuck him,"
"Please don't fuck our boss…"
"Not like that Acre!"
"Just sayin'," he snorts.
"Well don't, gross. I have standards."
"Oh you do?"
"Hey, we don't talk about the exes."
"That we don't." Acre shudders in remembrance of his friend's past. "But is there anyone new?"
"Nope, not now at least."
"Good, we don't need another Felica,"
"Hey! Felica wasn't all that bad, I guess, but what about you? Anyone you fancy?"
"Still single, but I'm lovin' it," Acre nods.
"That's the spirit,"
"Working on loving myself-"
"Hey! Department Two! The tributes are ready!" Maddox says, interpreting the pair's conversation as she flies into the Tech Team's break room.
"Oh fun," Diletha sighs, rolling his eyes.
The pair get slowly to their feet, collecting their notebooks and thoughts.
"Let's do this thing," Acre holds out his fist and Diletha bumps it with his own.
"Let's," he nods.
Diletha Rath
Tech Team (Department 2)
Age 26
Partner Announcement
Twenty-four faces stare blankly at the pair.
Acre gives Diletha a terrified look, of which he returns. Together, they step to the microphones, as they had practiced a million times before.
Diletha inhales deeply. He's not ready for this meeting announcement thing in the slightest, but if he follows Acre, he'll be fine. Probably. Hopefully.
Crude looks spill off of almost all the tribute's faces. A band front of hormonal teenagers that cannot help but make Diletha question his life up to this point. Why is he here? He should be traveling… seeing Panem… doing things, he shouldn't be up here talking to a bunch of stupid teenagers.
"Hey!" Acre calls, waving his hand awkwardly towards them.
"Hey…?" Evadne, the girl from Three responds, a sweet smile puttering from her pale lips.
Lapis gets to her feet, almost instantly, chair toppling to the ground with a loud thud, "Who are you?" she questions. Her eyes are full of inquisitive fury as she stands below the stage.
"My name is Diletha and this," he motions to his partner, "is Acre."
"And we're in charge of y'all getting safely into the arena," Acre adds and the girl slowly picks up her chair, sitting back down.
"But today we have something special to announce."
"Let's first start by saying this year isn't a normal year," Acre smiles at Diletha, their sentences bouncing off each other as they'd practiced.
Diletha grips his index cards even tighter, knuckles turning white, "and there will be two victors."
Hushed whispers erupt in the crowd. Some of the tributes look over at all-ready formed allies, nodding, while others just scowl at the idea of sharing their potential victory. The majority of them just look lost, but that's to be expected… or at least Diletha hopes.
"And those two victors will be paired, as will every one of you in this room,"
"What?!" the girl from Five, Clara, exclaims furiously.
"By the end of the week, everyone will choose a partner, to whom their life will be tied to," Diletha explains.
"However, you will have a lot of time and statistics to help you formulate the best partner strategy."
"At the choosing ceremony, tributes will be selected at random to come to this very podium," Diletha motions to the stage the pair stood on.
The floor beneath them is wooden, elevated just above the rows of chairs. The Tech Team had heavily decorated it for this announcement with colorful banners, posters, streamers, and other leftover party decorations they had from the welcome party. Everything is dressed to the nines, shimmering in artistic perfection.
"And select a partner from the list of other tributes. Once someone has been selected by another they must stand and either refuse or accept this pairing. If expected, the duo will move off to the side so they won't be roped into other partnerships, if refused the tribute must select another partner and this will continue until everyone is paired."
"Choose wisely, every decision has its pros and cons but I recommend finding someone to balance out your strengths and weaknesses; this is a game for two. You are leaving your fate in someone else's hands because if one of you dies, both of you do."
"Trackers will be implanted," Acre continues, "and once inside your body, it will split into four pieces and attach to your hypopharynx, if your partner's tracker goes offline, yours will squeeze together causing your trachea to rip apart and deny oxygen to your lungs."
"What the hell?" demands Phoenix dryly, "can... you choose to not work with anyone and enter the arena by yourself?"
"Not a chance," Diletha smiles as the tributes squirm in their seats. He's much more comfortable now, having gotten halfway through his speech. Besides, he has Acre in case he screws up.
"You said statistics, how will we have statistics on the other tributes?" Avery, from Eleven, questions politely.
"We're getting to that," Acre says, nervously.
"There will be two tests." Diletha says simply, "one to test your strength, agility, speed, and balance,"
"And one to test your adaptability, mental toughness, intelligence, and problem-solving skills." Acre continues.
"There are 30 possible points on each test, so 60 total. Please keep in mind that everyone will be able to see these scores so please, do your best."
"What kind of test will it be?" the boy from Five, Soren, narrows his eyes.
"We cannot tell you everything, some things you must experience to understand."
"Amazing motivation right there," Acre chuckles.
"Damn right," Diletha nods.
"And that concludes our announcement, please view the schedule taped to the Hall doors for when the tests will take place!"
"Good day tributes! Take the rest of today to converse with potential partners and rest up, tomorrow we kick off training!"
CAPITAL PRE-GAMES SCHEDULE:
Tuesday, Training day 1
Wednesday, Training day 2
Thursday, Training day 3
Friday, Break and Recovery day
Saturday, Test one
Sunday, Test two
Monday, Partner day
Tuesday, Choosing ceremony
Wednesday, Implant day
Thursday, Interviews
Friday, Launch; Enter Arena
A/N: Annnnd I'm back with another chapter! Staboom! Short little baby chapter but it has a lot of info so yay 3. Very excited for training next! We're cranking up the pregames heat, let's gooo.
However, I'm still taking a lot of hard classes that are killing moi as well as some mental shit BUT I promise I will write any chance I get, no more hiatus.
And yeah, that's all I got, as always- have a good day/nice/afternoon.
Bye for now,
Marie