Now that I finished OC, it's WS time!

Jurrien Lauda, District Three male (18)

Everything felt like a waste of time. I wasn't trying to be whiny or fatalistic, but it just seemed like training was a joke. The Careers had been doing this for longer than a decade. Obviously it was just exercise for them. And for everyone else- what could we do in a week? Were we going to master a weapon like some chosen one from a cheap fantasy novel written for people who wanted to be the hero without doing anything to earn it? Sure, I went to the knife station, but it was to give myself a tiny chance, not to make any real difference.

I permitted myself some angsty self-pity as I walked to lunch. For once it wasn't my fault. It was just a quirk of fate that took my name out of a bowl instead of a thousand others. All the things I did to screw up my own life and cold fate would be what ended up killing me.

"Jurrien? Jurrien!"

I turned sharply at the voice, not believing what I was hearing. But who else could it be? Where else in the Capitol would I hear a Three accent?

"Fermi?"

"Jurrien, I can't believe it!" Fermi was almost unrecognizable. At the boarding school he'd been so minimalist. Now he was decked out in a plaid jumper and spiked white hair.

"Woah, what happened?" I asked, nodding at his outfit.

"Oh, you know. When in Rome..." Fermi said, a little bashfully. "How have you been? We all thought you'd be back in a few days but you just disappeared."

"Family stuff," I said. It was bad enough Fermi was living up to everything we'd dreamed of and I was living in a rat's nest. He didn't have to know it was because I got scammed like an idiot.

"Oh, sorry," Fermi said.

"What have you been doing?" I asked.

"I work in a statistics think tank," Fermi said. "Pays pretty well, as you can see. They even let me send money back to my family." He smiled. "I suppose you're on a tenure track somewhere by now, right?"

"I work in customer service," I said dismissively.

Fermi didn't pick up on my tone. "Oh? Just part-time, while you're writing a paper?"

"I work at a gas station." Let it all out, then. Let them see Jurrien the loser.

"Gotta start somewhere," Fermi said, his too-big smile betraying his embarrassment.

"I'm taking a few years off to focus on my daughter," I said. As stupid as it was, something in me still cared more about an old friend seeing me disgraced than I did about dying in the Hunger Games.

"Daughter?!" Fermi lit up, then shut down again. "Oh, your wife must be so scared."

"No wife," I said.

"Oh, taking it slow. Good idea," Fermi said.

"We're not together."

"But the kid's got a great dad." Fermi would not give up. "And you'll be back to her in no time."

"Thanks, but I'm trying to prepare for the worst," I said with a sad smile. "A lot of people think they'll win the Games."

"A lot of people thought they could get the scholarship, but we..." Fermi's eyes flashed as he realized his gaffe. His shoulders dipped. "I'm sorry, man. I'm sorry things weren't better for you."

"It's okay," I said. "It's nice when things work out for people. Not me, but people."

Fermi was gracious enough to ignore the barb in my words, which just made me more bitter. "I'll be watching for you, okay? I'll send some stuff, and if... you know... I'll take care of her."

"Thanks." I was glad Jurrien didn't know the emotion in my voice was almost as much anger as it was sadness and gratitude. I shouldn't need charity from my old schoolmate. I was supposed to be here with him, wearing tacky clothes and drawing a Capitol paycheck. But things don't always work out that way. Sometimes everything that can possibly go wrong in life does.

Theta Faraday, District Three female (17)

I needed some drugs. The Capitol losers had taken my token. God they were uptight. It was just some stickers. You know, the kind you put on your tongue. Like my life didn't suck enough without having to die sober.

"Can I help you with anything?" the assistant asked as I breezed past the shelter-making station.

"No thanks. I was homeless for years. This is child's play for me," I said, relishing the assistant's horrified expression.

"Sorry to hear that," she said.

I rolled my eyes. "I'm used to it," I said.

It was interesting to see all my fellow Tributes with their little plans. There was the weird alliance, the one with everything from Beth to the moth person. I would have made a comment on how weird that was but I was sure he'd heard it before. There were the Careers, suspiciously watching the weird alliance and wondering how to take out Beth and Isabella without getting overwhelmed by numbers. I was getting a lot of dark pleasure out of how much of a trainwreck the Careers were. Charm's face looked like a cat's butt as she glared at her nut job District partner and the freak from Two. Out of the lot of them, I hoped Marley lasted the longest. She looked like a fun chick to hang out with.

My own District partner usually hung out with Beetee. It was endearing, in a pathetic way, how much he hero-worshiped him. He seemed to actually think he might be able to follow in his footsteps. Yeah, right. A deadbeat dad who washed out of a scholarship was going to win the Games.

"This looks like a fun place to learn how to kill people," I said when I dropped by the sword station. The assistant looked up boredly and went back to tapping at the tablet in his hand.

"Guess I'll hit that mannequin. Or I could just pick one of these people and go stab them," I said, sweeping my arm across the Tributes surrounding me. The assistant was uninterested.

"Glad to see an engaged worker," I snarked as I swung the sword around a few times. I didn't really know what I was supposed to be learning. Sword, right? Hold the holdy end, point the pointy end.

"This is all right, but do you have something really gross? I want to obliterate someone, not just kill them. I'm talking blood and brains all over the floor." If he was going to keep ignoring me, I'd just have to get grosser. People could be so fragile. I just loved to push their buttons.

"Might I suggest?" the assistant said, pointing without looking up. I followed his finger to the maces he was pointing at.

"Don't mind if I do," I said. I wrapped my fingers around one of the handles and yanked. The heavy mace barely budged from where it rested on the table.

"Don't mind if I don't."

"Oooh... that looks nice." I slid the sleek metal baseball bat off the table. It was solid but light and I could just imagine the noise it would make when I swung it into someone's head.

"You think if I hit someone really hard their eye might pop out?" I asked, looking down the bat like I was checking the barrel of a gun.

"Go try it and let me know," the assistant said, finally looking at me.

"Wow, no need to be so cynical."

Gosh the struggle is real writing Theta. She's just so obnoxious