Damien True- District Nine

The Twenty-Eight Hunger Games were full of upsets. The first came when Arielle died in the Bloodbath, felled by a spear she didn't even see. Then Pray died the third night. I didn't know it at the time, but afterwards I saw that it was Mako who did it. There was literally no one I would have been more surprised to see. Then a week later the Gamemakers sent a tsunami, killing anyone who happened to be near the beach. All the Careers but Chantal were wiped out. Everything was backwards.

Not that it made a difference for me. I was alive still, but that didn't mean I had any significant chance of winning. I was alive, but so were Chantal, Alexa, Farlan, and Lilith, any one of whom were stronger than me. My chances increasing slightly meant their chances also increased slightly. And twice zero was still zero.

Maybe I was a little cynical, but I had no reason to be anything but. I'd seen the lives of everyone around me, and happy endings weren't a thing. My mother was married to a jerk, my stepfather was rich and still wouldn't spare his wife's son a pocketful of lint, and I got Reaped for a Games commemorating a war I hadn't even been born for. Nothing about life gave me any impression that optimism was rational.

When I saw Chantal through the trees, I started to picture the secondhand coffin Cultur would no doubt select. I saw her just as she was about to throw, and that extended my life another thirty seconds. The spear thudded into the tree I'd been leaning against a second ago. Naturally, I yanked it out and pointed it at her.

La-dee-dah, Chantal no doubt thought. Ooh, I'm scared now. She picked up a big branch and came at me, knowing I knew no more about spears than which way to point it. I wasn't giving her weapon back to her, so I held onto it until she got close enough to stab. She swung back her branch, ready to deflect me when I stabbed at her chest or head.

I slammed the spear down into her foot.

"YAAAAACK!" Chantal shrieked, sounding more furious than pained. I bolted into the trees, looking over my shoulder to see her yank the spear out out the dirt under her pierced foot and come after me, limping with murder in her eyes.

Oh you've got to be kidding me.

The trees cleared in front of me, revealing a sheer wall of rock. I had run straight into the only cliff in the entire Arena. I turned to skirt around it, but to do so, I had to backtrack through a length of impassible cliff. At the other end of the bottleneck I saw Chantal, making good time for a human pogo stick.

Frick me sideways. Well, what you gonna do? You do what you can.

I picked up the biggest rock I could throw and chucked it at Chantal's head. She saw it coming and easily stepped out of the way. As she did, she instinctively threw up her arm to protect her face. I wish I could say I cleverly took advantage of her distraction and hit her with another rock while she couldn't see, but it was nothing that cool.

She just tripped over a root.

Down Chantal fell, the sound of snapping branches and ripped grass accompanying her descent. I noticed a branch sticking straight up and wondered, just before I turned to run, what a coincidence that it landed so perfectly balanced.

BOOM!

Hey, I'm not dead yet! Rude.

I looked back. Oh. It's not balanced. Chantal wasn't getting up. Her spear stuck straight out of her back, as though it was perfectly balanced.

Wow. Didn't see that one coming.

The two strongest Tributes dead in the first three days. A tsunami. A fight between a Career and a nobody from Nine ending with the Nine boy left standing. There were a lot of very pissed-off gamblers out there right now, and a very few very happy ones. As I stared at Chantal's body, I could only think of one thing.

My boy, I would say, sighing heavily as I sat in my favorite chair. Did I ever tell you how I won the Hunger Games?

How, Daddy? My starry-eyed progeny would say, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of me. Did you fight everyone and beat them all? Did you catch them all in traps?

While I ran desperately for my life, the other guy tripped and impaled herself on her own spear.