A/N: Sorry about the song choice, the song was the only one that had a lyric like that. I needed it.

Shoutout to tallbutnerdy for commenting the correct songs in the first two chapters. I hope you didn't just look at Chapter 3, and go back.

Let the 74th Hunger Games BEGIN!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Can Creep Up Inside

As soon as I hear the gong go off, I immediately rocket off my pedestal and sprint towards the Cornucopia. As I reach the Cornucopia someone tackles me. I look at the person, and I see it's Marvel, he tries to punch at me, but I catch his punch, and use my strength and his own weight against him, sending him rolling away from me. I stand back up and run back for the Cornucopia, but I give up on the idea of getting that bow for Katniss.

I reach the Cornucopia and grab the first bag that's at its mouth, a medium-sized khaki camouflage colored one. I run further inside to get something to fight with, and I find a rigid cloth belt full of knives. I immediately take it, and run out of the Cornucopia, barely avoiding a spear thrown by Marvel. The other careers are distracted killing the other tributes.

As I run off I try to find Katniss. I don't see her anywhere, nor do I see a corpse that looks like her. Her pedestal was to the right of the Cornucopia, she likely ran off into the other side of the forest in the clearing. It's too dangerous for me to try and get to that side, I've already tried my luck as it is. I run off to the forest, literally running into the girl from 5. We both get up, and she looks up at me, clearly terrified, especially because of the knives I have on me that are plainly visible. Neither of us do anything except stare at one another for a few moments, and then we run off in opposite directions.

As I keep running, I keep reiterating Haymitch's advice in my head, water, it'll be your new best friend.

I eventually come to stop running near a small meadow. I look at it, feeling rather comfortable at the site of all the rue flowers growing in it. Come to think of it, I hope Rue herself is okay. She probably is, she'd be smart enough to run off from the bloodbath from the get go, unlike myself who was stupid enough to risk my life for supplies. But I guess it may have paid off a bit.

I start examining my supplies, starting with the knife belt. There's a whole assortment of knives; small, large, one is even curved slightly like a mini-sickle, and one has a ridged side like a saw.

I take a look in my bag, and I find a thick sleeping bag. There's a medium-sized water canteen, it's weight indicates it's full of water. I open it up, and I glance inside and I can visibly see a filter in the neck of the canteen. There's even a small medkit to treat small wounds, but nothing trauma-level obviously. To my elation, there's rope in here too, and a hell of a lot of it. This'll be good to set traps for the other tributes. I also find a pair of sunglasses inside, their black, except for a small raised dot on the left leg, and a sun-shaped symbol on the right. I put them on and I pressed the raised dot. I'm nearly blinded by what I see. I quickly take them off, and I look at them, they look like they brightened everything in their field of vision. I press the button again and they revert to normal. I put them back on, though I avoid pressing the button again. I don't what these things are for, but at least I can use them as sunglasses. The last thing I find in my bag is a small wooden box. Inside are what look like a lot of crackers. Last resort sustenance, but I can make do with the forest and trap animals.

I put everything back in my bag and I trek to look for a source of water, carefully drinking out of my canteen to save water.

I walk for what feels like forever, taking short resting breaks. I'm following Haymitch's implied advice, avoiding the other tributes. Katniss will do the same, and I bet Thresh will too. All three of us are capable of killing, but we have no wish to do so, so we stay away from everyone. The sun is high in the sky, it's still early afternoon when I hear a cannon. Those are what signals the death of a tribute. I stop to listen, and I count eight cannons. Eight people dead in the first 12 hours of the games. No more death occurs at once than in the earliest few minutes of the games.

I resume my search for water, and I come across a large river. This must be what feeds the lake. This is also probably where the other tributes will be if they're not at the dangerous lake, I better be careful. I gorge down the water left in my canteen, and keep on refilling and drinking until I feel nicely hydrated. I refill my canteen once more before I return to the dense forest, and start setting up traps, and small snares. I also make use of my small slender knives in place of a bow, with far less success than I typically have with a bow. I catch myself a couple of small squirrels, but that's it. No point in holding onto food out here, can't preserve it. I start a tiny fire to cook them and use a knife as a utensil. I stomp out the fire when I'm done.

It feels rather nice to be in the forest. It's so weird, I feel comfortable out here, even though I'm currently in a deathmatch with over ten other people now. Both me and Katniss are in the same emotional clash I bet. I hope she's okay, she and the little one. I want to try and find her, but I don't even know where to start. I could end up walking right into the careers, and unless I'm lucky, that'll be the end of me.

I find a tree where I can spend the rest of the daylight hours and sleep, a tall one with thick branches high up, strong enough to hold my heavier weight. Katniss has the advantage, here, she's much smaller than I am, and can climb more trees and higher up. I manage to find a nice large tree. I climb up to a nice thick branch that extends relatively flatly, and I tie myself to it before taking out my sleeping bag. It's only long enough to cover my legs anyway, but it does the job quite well in keeping me warm.

After the sun sets, I can see that the "sky" probably isn't a sky. Its got a star pattern, but there are also noticeable blue lines running through it. They extend as far as you can see along the horizon. A sudden cannon gets my attention, I wonder who just died. I look around and I don't find anyone nearby, dead or alive. I hope to God that wasn't Katniss. That's when the anthem of Panem begins, and a large figure appears in the sky. It starts with a label, The Fallen. It's everyone who was killed, the image of the person and their district. None of the 10 people dead today were from the career districts or double digit districts. Katniss and Rue are alive, and now both of them know that I am too. Whether or not they fit the definition of okay is entirely different. The fatigue of the events of today is finally getting to me, my eyes are heavy. I don't fight it, I simply let myself drift off to sleep.

It's been two days since the games began. Yesterday was uneventful, unlike the first day. In fact today has been just as uneventful, no cannons going off. Given the apparent size of the arena, judging from how far the false sky seems to stretch, I'm not surprised. If the tributes save for the careers spread out, we're probably spread out far. The days are so uneventful and monotonous, that I'm actually getting more nervous that something is gonna happen to simply spice things up. I know Katniss is probably very far from all of us by now. I chose to stay here, the food seems rather plenty, lots of animals to trap, and a good supply of water. I don't dare to pick anything, I can't recognize anything deadly. The meats I had are good sustenance, but not enough apparently. Today I feel weaker than normal, though that could be just because I'm used to the Capitol's food, since I've had it for a week.

I head over to the river to drink up, but also to think. Think about how my family and Katniss's are doing back home. I wonder if they can see me right now, watching me. This is a television show to the Capitol, that's how they'll display it. If there's a threat to me nearby, everyone will know about it. I can only hope that there isn't anything nearby that's harmful to me. I also wash my face a little, less to be clean and more to wake myself up.

Eventually, I let my hands sink into the river, the cold flow a comfort to my hands. I lift them out repeatedly, letting the water slip between my fingers, before I finally stand up to return to my area. I keep moving, wanting to simply wait out the days until the games end. Like that'll happen, the gamemakers would never let it. That only happened once, when the arena was a winter tundra where everyone pretty much stayed where they were and froze to death.

Out of nowhere, I hear a bizarre noise, a whooshing noise, like something big and heavy is moving through the air. It's rhythmic. I look around, trying to decipher where it's coming from. Not only that, but I'm also trying to determine what the hell I'm hearing. The whooshing is getting higher pitched and the rhythm is accelerating. I keep trying to figure out where it's coming from. The first thing that finally gets in my head is that something like that isn't natural.

The next thing I feel is something hard strike the side of the front of my head. I lunge to the side in response, and I start running, or at least trying to, while holding the spot where I was hit. I'm dazed from the impact, whatever it was struck me hard enough to make it hard to focus, I can hardly see. I have no sense of coordination right now. Before my senses return, something knocks me with great force to the ground. I regain enough of my vision to see some boy holding a large rock, clearly he wants to beat me to death with it. He throws the rock, but I manage to roll and avoid it, I regain enough of my strength and composure to stand up and pull out a knife from my belt, and I immediately charge forward.

I thrust the knife, but he manages to avoid it and pushes me away. My dizziness spell is quickly putting me at a disadvantage. He charges at me and tackles before I can react, knocking the knife I was holding out of my hand, and he takes another rock and tries to hit me with it.

I manage to knock the rock out of his hand, but my dazed mind prevents me from putting up an effective fight. He resorts to wrapping his palms around my throat. I stand no chance, my arms can't produce the force I normally can. I vainly attempt to do things to his face, but he simply brushes it off. Katniss, I hope you somehow know that my last thoughts are of you.

In a last ditch effort, I grab him by his hair and an ear and pull as hard as I can, causing him to loosen his grip on me. I don't hesitate for an instant, I hook him in the face, forcing him off of me. I can barely move now, I'm dizzy from the first strike to my head, and now I have to catch my breath. I manage to stand up, still trying to catch my breath.

I glance to my side, and through my blurry and darkened vision spot the boy reaching for the knife that was knocked out of my hand earlier. I try to flee, but I'm still catching my breath just from the strangulation, let alone how tired I am from defending myself. I hear footsteps behind me, and I turn and the boy punches, knocking and pinning me to the ground again. This time, he thrusts the knife down, but I move my head in time. He lifts it up and tries again, but I catch it with my right hand. I try to use my left to fight against him, trying to get him in the eye.

I grab his ear and roll us, trying to get him off me and get the knife away from him. I end up on my back again, below his knife. I try to reach for another knife in my desperation, but he seemed to have anticipated my move. He grabs my weaker left arm, and holds it away, before pinning it down with his foot.

I'm left with just my right hand pushing against his knife-wielding hand, and then against both his hands when he switches the task of his free hand to killing me too. I hold off for a time, but I'm even weaker from the punch combined with the prior headstrike. My arm rapidly weakens, and the knife begins lowering to my chest. It gets to the point where the knife's tip is very nearly touching my chest. I'm not going to survive past this moment.

The boy recoils, holding his eye, crying out in pain. I feel drastically less pressure on my left arm. I pull my left arm out and hook him across the face. I grab the knife from his hand, sinking the blade deep into his thigh with both my hands. He howls in agony a the stab. I rip the knife out, earning an even stronger scream, and blood rapidly fills his pants leg. He stands up and begins to frantically limp away.

My weakness surges through me again, far stronger than before, quickly putting a surge to fall asleep echo through my body. I let my head fall to the side, and the last thing I'm aware of when my vision goes black completely is someone running to me. I guess this is my last moment alive.

Song credit: Disturbia by Rihanna