Author's Note
I do not own the Hunger Games.
The tubes rose upwards, and the tributes caught their first glimpse at the arena and the other tributes. They stood in a wide, thirty foot circle around the cornucopia, which was piled high with backpacks, weapons, and supplies.
Behind them, the arena stretched out. Large stones and statues jutted up from the ground around them. In the foggy distance, there were vague, blurry shapes.
The tributes wore black, black shoes, black trousers, black shirts, black jackets. They looked frantically about each other, trying to evaluate threats, pick out their District partners.
The countdown ticked down.
The gong rang.
d2m
He is the first from his podium, racing for the cornucopia. He can't see her, the half trained girl he's ended up with as his ally, but he hopes if she has sense she'll have learnt what to do from the instructors.
Despite his slight head start, he's the second to the cornucopia, behind the boy from Four, who has grabbed up a trident and several backpacks. He takes a broadsword, his own weapon of choice, and hesitates a moment on whether to engage before the boy takes off to the left and he becomes distracted by the girl from Five.
d6f
She doesn't really know what she's doing here, and she can't see her District partner.
There are a few useful pieces close to her and she snatches them up, a canteen of water, a loaf of bread, a plastic sheet, a coil of wire.
Then she runs, as the first tribute falls at the hands of an enormous, dark haired boy.
She runs, and she runs, and she wonders if anyone back home will miss her.
d5m
Most of the other tributes look bigger and stronger and rougher than him, but this is the Quarter Quell and the Hunger Games and he has nothing if he doesn't have any supplies, so he runs while a small girl is spearing down a sallow skinned boy and snags a small backpack, scooping up a knife as he ducks, and then races away past the pedestals and away from the fighting.
He tells himself to run and keep running.
d12m
The world is chaos.
He doesn't know where to look.
He doesn't know where to run.
He sees her, so he runs for her, stooping to snatch up a coil of rope and a knife. She has a small bag and a canteen, and she changes direction to race away from the cornucopia and the death. His legs are longer, and he soon catches up. She's crying again, he sees, but he says nothing.
D1m
He can't understand why anyone would want this.
There's fighting and death all around him.
A small girl and a lanky boy are playing tug of war with a backpack, a tall boy is swinging round a mace; and his District partner has found a spear amongst the supplies, which she drives through the chest of a dark haired girl.
The sight of her reminds him he's a Career.
Or he's meant to be.
He looks at the supplies around him, picks up the weapon nearest, a sword, and rushes at a small, pale girl.
If he does it quickly, he decides, it won't hurt as much.
He's so focused he never sees the boy from Four coming.
D9f
She must never cry, she tells herself, they must never see her cry.
They must never hear her scream.
She sees him cut down and thinks, well, at least she hadn't been counting on him.
She finds a sickle amongst the supplies, and she's familiar with using one even if she's never killed anyone with one before. That soon changes when a dark skinned boy tries to rip it from her hands and she sweeps it at him in a panic, cutting him open from neck to hip.
She wants to scream, but they must never see her scream.
D1f
She sees his corpse and nearly screams, but instead swallows it.
Most of the tributes have fled now, so she stops to search for the largest backpack and scoops one up when she sees it looks suitable.
"Hey! One!" comes a shout, and she spins round, swinging her spear. It's a small, broadshouldered girl with braided hair and beady eyes.
"We allies or what?"
She shifts the weight of the backpack and smiles. "Two or Four?"
"Two, if it matters."
"Allies then."
The girl smiles back.
d11m
He thinks he's safe as he runs.
He's fit and fast, and he thinks there might be somewhere to hide away from the area around the cornucopia.
He keeps running, and then he crashes into someone else.
They crash to the ground, yelling and kicking, and then there's blinding pain in his head and another pain in his side and then nothing at all.