The 26th Annual Hunger Games.
Cricket Mallen, District 10.
District 10 was a complicated place.
Since the end of the rebellion it had rebuilt itself quite nicely and continued to supply the Capitol with premium livestock for both food and labour; it's people hadn't been entirely quiet during the war for freedom but nor had as many of them given their entire soul into it, put their lives on the line time and again as in some other Districts [cough cough, District 3].
The District's different levels and social strata had reformed and re developed in the quarter of a century after the rebellion too. Cricket Mallen had grown up in one of the District's poorest families on the southern ranches and most of his compatriots struggled to avoid a severely hungry belly at least a couple of days a week. Cricket was almost an exception.
One particular thing changed that.
When Cricket was 9 years old one of the old monstrous mutations that had roamed the outside of District 10 since being abandoned at the end of the rebellion broke in behind District lines and destroyed several buildings and Capitol property in a few minutes flat. The Peacekeepers prepared to mobilise and shoot the creature dead as soon as they arrived; not out of love for the citizens of District 10 but purely loyalty to their overseers.
When they arrived on the scene they saw something…..unexpected.
The 9 year old boy had gotten hold of a lasso and was dodging the blows from the creature-shaped like a semi anthromorphic tiger-and preparing to swing the lasso at it's neck and strange the beast.
Several of the Peacekeepers aimed to fire at the beast but their Head officer ordered them to stand down; the boy was now on the back of the creature, literally climbing around its body to avoid all the blows he could. If they fired at the creature there was too much risk they could kill him directly.
So they watched, amazed, as Cricket successfully harnessed the lasso around the creature's neck and strangled it.
After that things changed in his life a little bit, and Cricket discovered something rather unique about District 10.
It was the only District to hold its own 'unofficial Hunger Games'.
For the last 70 years or so-some time after Panem had been officially formed and order established in all the Districts-10 in particular had been an area of intrigue to the Capitol because of the remaining historical artifacts from ancient civilizations, before the old settlers from 'Europe' had even discovered the continent. Some of the Peacekeepers and Capitol forces had gotten a hold of these artifacts. Some of them were art, gold, traces of writing; others were ancient styled weapons; tomahawks and hatchets.
For the last number of decades they'd enjoyed a unique system in District 10. Wherever possible they would pay, bribe or pressure young men and women of Mexican-Panemian descent to essentially fight in gladiator-style matches against each other purely for the entertainment of the Capitol-origin elite-indeed, the original idea for the Hunger Games had taken some inspiration from this arrangement, thought this original setting did necessitate lethality.
Physically, Cricket was of old Mexican descent. He'd already proven himself to be a skilled and entertaining fighter. The Peacekeepers put this offer to him and there was no easy way to say no.
So for the next 8 years Cricket trained and was trained; to the point he was almost as skilled with certain weapons as the Careers would have been.
When he was reaped for the 26th Hunger Games they had no idea what was about to go down. Especially since Cricket had absolutely no inclination to receive an offer to join them and acted deliberately weak in the training sessions, scoring a 4 when in reality he could have comfortably achieved an 8 or even 9.
This strategy didn't truly successfully work again for another 45 years and even then Johanna Mason was physically smaller by several inches and weaker then Cricket, not to mention the biases of the male Careers against outlier girls.
The arena that year was actually perfect; a 'noir city' with slightly gothic architecture, canals and shadows for anyone to hide in. Cricket thought it was a load of baloney and decided if he ever had to give a 'special victor guided tour' of his arena like he'd seen a few previous winners had to, he'd decide to subtly mock it as much as possible and see how smart the tourists would have to be to see through him.
Cricket had the chance to kill the boy from District 6 at the bloodbath but decided to let him go, reasoning it was still too early to draw attention from the Careers. He wandered through the arena for a while, alone but calm. He'd noticed a hatchet in the Cornucopia similar to the ones he used at home and decided he could use it…..if he could wait til the right point in the Games between the Careers coming after him too early and waiting til all 6 of them would just be hunting him…if he could strike the right balance in between, he could kill 1, then be ready to face some of the others with a strong weapon.
He actually grew to appreciate the arena a bit more over the next few days; although it wasn't eternal darkness, like that one from 7 years earlier, the sky's colour didn't change enormously from day to night; it was a sort of constant silver-yellow-grey mixture. Maybe he'd just 'shitpost' the Games itself instead of the arena.
Before running into the Careers he made just one kill; the male tribute from District 8 had been armed with a crossbow and was confidently overlooking the arena, moving from roof to roof. Cricket didn't want to kill him but knew fighting on the defensive against a tribute with a crossbow wouldn't end well. So he snuck, crouching along behind the other outlier boy keeping a storey below him on the other buildings, treading as quietly as possible; testing his footfalls constantly. At the right time he jumped up and down on the spot briefly; measured the distance to the other tribute, then ran at him, tackled him to the ground by the legs, knocking the crossbow out of his hands, and shoved the other boy off the rooftop to the ground some 60 feet below [oddly reminiscient of the death of the boy from 6 last year at the hands of the victor].
The rest of the Games slid by relatively easily after that; he snuck into the Cornucopia, which was guarded by the rather overconfident girl from 2, and noticed that none of the Careers clearly had any skill with a hatchet. He quickly smashed her brains in from behind, noticing that there were still three other outliers out there to eliminate as well as him, and snuck off into the distance.
By the time Cricket was the only outlier remaining the Career pack had been whittled down to just both tributes from District 1 [far away in the control centre the victor of the 9th Games was hoping to reverse last year's utter embarrassment] and he felt confident about his odds. Sure enough, the 2 tribute from 1 faced him together, clearly very overconfident in themselves, and they sparred. The Careers were better trained but Cricket was faster and managed to leave them with nick after nick after nick as he lead them, exhausted, on a race across the rooftops of the twilight city. Finally the boy from 1 lost his balance after almost 2 hours of chasing the other tribute and plunged to his death. That left just two.
The girl from 1 twirled her sword into attack position and narrowed her eyes at the remaining enemy. 'Surrender immediately and I won't be angry at all. Won't have to scratch that pretty little f-AgH'.
Cricket wasn't much of a talker and decided his better strategy would be to literally jump up and crush the Career girl with his full body weight pinning her legs down. The blonde girl glared at him, then her eyes began to fill with fright before Cricket quickly swung the hatched into her neck once and crushed enough of it for the cannon to boom.
Life was very good indeed in District 10 for a while; Cricket's family were very glad to see him return and the District itself was happy to be the first non-Career District to achieve three victors. But over the next number of years things became notably more difficult in terms of performance in the Hunger Games; President Ravinstill noted that the Capitol were extremely polarised on the newest victor; some of them viewing him as a dashing, clever hero who'd used a new strategy to outsmart everyone else in a classically satisfying way; while others were angry that they'd lost the chance to bet appropriately on the 'real odds'. So District 10's impressive streak ran to an end for a while. Reaping of any of the semi-trained tributes was ordered to stop, with harsh penalties applied for rule breaking, and only a certain number of young people allowed to participate in this private industry. A longer timespan would pass before District 10 won again. But they would; and they never gave up home in the meantime.
AN. Yes, I'm quite fond of the livestock District, so here they are again already with another win; it'll be a longer wait til their next one though. Bit of a shorter chapter this time compared to previously but with what I think is a fairly interesting theme, not something I've seen be explored before. Cricket is one of those characters I would probably get on with most in real life, so there's that.
We've seen a fair few rather tough, well prepared victors recently with Elena, Lucas, Coral and now Cricket. I wonder if we might see that reverse pretty hard some time soon in the future…but only time will tell.
As always, please review and I'll be sure to do the same for any stories you have! Until next time…
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