Sotope Baymark, District 5

"Could I write a requiem for you when you're dead?

'She had the moves, she had the speed, it went to her head,'"

Belle and Sebastian, The Stars of Track and Field


Nucleus Woodheron wanted to be the hottest guy in District 5.

Nucleus had a very strange understanding of the word 'hot'. When he used the word in a sentence, as he often did, he did not use it to describe someone or someone with a high temperature. He used it to describe a set of qualities that nobody else could quite grasp.

According to Nucleus' long and complicated set of rules on what was hot and what was not, he was the second hottest guy in District 5. The only person he was willing to admit was hotter than him was Luka Starkwain, District 5's only victor, because Nucleus was exceedingly modest.

However, as Nucleus grew older and Luka also grew older, Nucleus realised that he had a pretty good shot at overtaking Luka in hotness. After all, Luka was nearly thirty and he still didn't have a girlfriend. That wasn't hot at all. On his quest for greatness, Nucleus Woodheron, king of his school, set out to find his queen and do his rival one better.

He soon decided that his queen was going to be Sotope Baymark.

Everyone in the school knew who Sotope Baymark was. She was the best athlete in the school, maybe in the entire district. But she was also gorgeous in a weird, nerdy way. Nucleus had spent years watching her attack the school day with her super-tight ponytail and her glasses and her incredibly short skirt.

Sotope seemed to attack a lot of things. She treated maths questions like people she'd been hired to assassinate and she was absolutely brutal on the sports field. But Sotope Baymark reached peak aggressive (and, in Nucleus' eyes, peak attractive) whenever some poor doofus decided to ask her out. She gave them a look like she was trying to rip them to shreds with her eyeballs and turned them down.

In Nucleus' school the true test of manhood wasn't how fast someone could run or how high someone could jump. It was how long someone could be in the presence of Sotope Baymark before her claws came out.

Nucleus decided that the problem with Sotope Baymark was that she didn't like regular schoolboys. Nucleus didn't blame her. All the other boys at his school were brainless slobs with bad acne. They weren't hot at all. Nucleus sometimes felt like he was a magical being of hotness trapped in the body of a teenage boy. He wasn't like the others. So, to prove his incredible hotness to Sotope, he planned to do something that only hot guys could do. And, by hot guys, he meant every male victor who wasn't Jet Beaumont, Brock Eska, Gajin Nakamura or Woof Casino. They were just accidents.

He was going to win the Hunger Games.

When reaping day came, Nucleus waited excitedly in the crowd. Not nervously, excitedly. Because he was excited, not nervous. Only losers got nervous.

Then Sotope Baymark was reaped.

Nucleus decided that he wasn't going to volunteer after all. It was impossible to pick up a girl in the arena. The kid with the acne who got reaped for the boys was on his own.

The next day, Nucleus went to school and immediately started flirting with Statica Wolftower. It had occurred to him that Sotope Baymark was probably going to die and that she couldn't be the hottest girl at school anymore when she was dead.


When Sotope Baymark made it to the top three of the Twenty-Seventh Hunger Games, Nucleus Woodheron started preparing the speech he was going to use to dump Statica Wolftower.

Sotope had been one of the favourites for pretty much the entire games. She looked great in her chariot, wearing a dress made of hazard tape. She'd scored a nine in training. She'd insulted Lucky Flickerman so much in her interview that there were rumours he was planning to go into retirement, but she'd still somehow managed to win half the sponsors. Then she'd been the first to reach the Cornucopia and had managed to kill two Careers with a javelin and a razor-sharp discus.

On the tenth day of the games, the gamemakers announced that they'd try something new - a 'feast' at the Cornucopia. Nucleus wondered why any of the three remaining tributes would need food, since Sotope and the two remaining Careers were all pretty well-fed. He still sat on the edge of his seat in the school lunch hall as the games were projected onto the wall.

As the two Careers drew closer and closer to the Cornucopia, the ground slid open and a table covered in food popped up. There was a blur of movement as Sotope ran to the table and vaulted onto it, grabbing an object nestled between the plates of food. The moment she lifted it up high, Nucleus knew she'd won the games.

It was the deadliest weapon of all - a lacrosse stick!

Razor blades glinted around the net. Murder glinted in Sotope's eyes. She charged at the Careers, dodging their weapons with ease. The entire lunch hall filled with cheers.

Everyone knew the injuries that Sotope Baymark could inflict with a regular lacrosse stick. Now that the stick came with extra razor-blades, neither of the Careers stood a chance.


Maybe Nucleus was being hopeful but Sotope Baymark appeared to be in a good mood. For once.

The Capitol had hurriedly replaced Lucky Flickerman with his teenage nephew, Caesar, for Sotope's victory interview and, even though the poor boy had suffered terrible stage-fright, Sotope had lasted the entire interview without insulting him. She'd just sat back and basked in the attention, looking like a queen.

The day after Sotope returned to the district, Nucleus walked all the way to her house in Victor's Village and knocked on her door. He knew he needed to ask her out before her good mood wore off. Sotope opened the door and fixed him with her death-glare, though Nucleus thought that her eyes were a little tired.

"What do you want, bozo?" She asked.

"My name is Nucleus Woodheron," Nucleus blurted out. "I'm the hottest guy in our school. I think you're a total babe. Wanna make out?"

"Absolutely not!" Sotope rolled her eyes. "I'd rather make out with the periodic table. The entire periodic table. Including arsenic! I've just been in the Hunger Games. Don't I get a break? Get lost, loser."

She slammed the door right in his face. Clearly her good mood was long-gone.

Nucleus Woodheron spent the rest of the day hiding in a nearby bush, watching Sotope Baymark's door. A few more boys got the same idea as Nucleus and tried to ask Sotope out but she turned them all down. It was only when Luka Starkwain, her mentor and her neighbour, came to her house to invite her over for dinner that she smiled and accepted his invitation.

Nucleus couldn't quite believe what he was seeing. Was Luka Starkwain, a man twelve years older than him, stealing his girl? He hurried back home, disgusted. Just when he'd thought he'd had a chance at beating Luka Starkwain in the game of who was hotter, his rival swept in with the promise of dinner. Dinner!

It had never occurred to Nucleus Woodheron that Luka Starkwain was just being nice to his new neighbour, completely unaware of the imaginary rivalry that Nucleus had dreamed up.

Nucleus decided that he'd definitely volunteer for the next Hunger Games, the last one he was eligible for. He would win the games and move into Victor's Village, right next-door to Sotope Baymark. Then he and Starkwain could fight it out like men.

Nucleus Woodheron wanted to be the hottest guy in District 5. If the only way he could do it was win the Twenty-Eighth Hunger Games, he'd have to volunteer at the next reaping.


I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I decided to experiment with comedy a bit. On the whole, the Twenties are my decade of experimentation. Nucleus is a bit of a ridiculous character. He's extremely narcissistic, like some teenagers are. We'll see if he makes good on his promise to volunteer next chapter.

Nucleus' view of Sotope isn't the best representation of her character but we'll see more of her later on, since a lot of District 5's victors have close friendships with each other. One thing that is clear (even to idiots like Nucleus) is that Sotope doesn't take any prisoners. She's also absolutely lethal with a lacrosse stick. I got the idea for her to use a lacrosse stick as a weapon from my mum, who was forced to play lacrosse at school and really hated it.

As for the 'relationship' between Luka and Sotope... It's safe to say that Nucleus is imagining that one. Luka wouldn't dump Callisto, who he's been faithful to for the last thirteen years, for his seventeen-year-old tribute. Luka and Sotope are just good friends, kind of like Surf and Mags but more sporty.