Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games. They belong to Suzanne Collins.
Note: The day of the Careers has arrived, and with it so has more additions to the 'modern meta' of the Hunger Games that we know and obsessively fangasm over. As before, worldbuilding is fun and this chapter was certainly no exception. I don't have overly much to say I hope you like the eighth Victor on the list. :)
"This one I remember," Katniss said, glancing off to the side. "She featured in a project they made Prim's class do. About important figures in Panem history, and who better to put in the minds of kids in Twelve than the first Career to win?"
Katniss silently wiped away a small tear, the thoughts of her sister quickly filling her up with grief.
"At least we have therapists now," Katniss muttered, her arms folded tightly.
"Apparently the Career Districts did, starting at the tenth Games. No such luck for 'Outliers'," Peeta said, a comforting arm around his girlfriend. "...Peridot gave the Careers in one their true beginning. Real or not real?"
"Real," Katniss confirmed for Peeta, looking down at the elegant and proper Career girl's face on the ground.
8th Annual Hunger Games
Name: Peridot Gaudy
Gender: Female
District: 1
Age: 17
Kills: 7
Twelve might be considered a number with a certain meaning to it in Panem. Twelve Districts for decades, tributes being eligible at the age of twelve, twelve pairs of tributes overall, twelve houses in the Victor Villages, the Mockingjay Rebellion originating from District Twelve and an all time kill record of twelve victims [as seen in the Fifty Ninth Hunger Games].
In District One the number twelve has its own meaning. Separated into twelve large estates of its own, the first of these is the Flawless Estate. It's home to twelve noble families, more or less the only individuals amongst those in the Districts whose wealth can rival people bought up inside the cushy, pampered Capitol.
It's a daily bloodbath for supremacy, the likes of which you'd not have even seen on the trashiest television back before the Dark Days. Ever since Panem came to exist it's been one argument after another with these elite families over money, property, bloodline, inheritance and all the rest of it. Like a Wendigo of legend, they can never ever be satisfied.
It's around the time in the Seventh Games when Gold has part of his face torn away by Node and his flail when the talk typical talks between the families go into a new direction.
The Hunger Games.
It's a record breaking four seconds (the last record was three seconds) before it turns into another vicious argument. Some of the families such as those from House Platinum and House Royalty see no need to do a thing, the odds being in their favour of avoiding the reaping effecting them and their children being well fed and strong anyway. Others like House Court and House Victory want to follow the example of what the rumour mill tells of Mr Overwhill in Two, having their own training centre. 'The few youths who self-trained and volunteered mostly did fine before their deaths, why not build on it to reap some glory and gratitude' they said, certain that President Orion would be fine with this given how there is the odd distant relative of his in One here and there.
House Fragrance wants a Victor within the family to firmly put them at the top and say that their boy has a solid chance of pulling it off in the next Hunger Games.
From there the figureheads of each of the noble families are practically inches away from knifing each other like actual tributes would. They don't even realise that Glamour was raped and murdered by Sword until hours after the sickening deed is done – consequently, this further defeat is used by Houses Court and Victory as another reason why a training academy is needed – as the arguments just go on and on. It devolves into a screaming fit of whose child has the best chance to win the Hunger Games.
House Saint-Silver are convinced their daughter Caramel has it on lock, simple as that.
House Moonlight shriek that their son Handbag could easily beat the current kill record set by Baron a few years prior.
House Court calls Handbag a living accessory, a fact only proven by his name they say, and affirm their confidence in their own son Jacinth's chances... naturally, the fact the next reaping would be his twelfth birthday doesn't factor into anything.
House Saffron call the other houses literal shit and are cold as ice when they say their girl Fantastica will be told to murder any of the sons of the other noble houses who might volunteer with her, and before the filth in Twelve at that.
House Fragrance finds the whole affair rather amusing, thinking it's one big joke that the other houses insist on pretending that their eldest son Topaz isn't the clear winner.
House Platinum remind the other houses that their second eldest boy – the eldest being too old by now – is known to be a master at archery and that Awesome has no mercy to spare for any who get in his way.
House Royalty were always keen to boast about their twins Cash and Coin with this being no exception. Glory meaning everything to them, they were more than willing to declare that both siblings would enter the next Hunger Games side by side.
House Victory said that their very name reflected triumph and success, so it was only fitting their girl Harp would become what her very name suggested. They saw it as a mere trivial detail that the girl was severely autistic and clearly not the swordfighter they hyped her up as.
House Château didn't deem the other nobles worth talking to, instead already phoning up the Head Peacekeeper and offering a handsome bribe in exchange for their fifteen year old son Whoa to be the male tribute of the Eighth Annual Hunger Games. They are ever so kindly told to fuck off as, noble or not, the Head Peacekeeper thinks they are bastards.
House Goldclaw have no children young enough, their two powerful sons already in their early twenties. They feel desperate enough to consider adopting a street urchin for their cause.
House Velvet brag over having two or three relatives in the Capitol who can pull strings to tilt the odds in the favour of their pride and joy, a vicious boy named Cadbury. The house, known for being perhaps the most elitist, cruel and backstabbing of the lot are firmly assured of Victory a year before the Games are even there.
House Gaudy vow that Peridot shall be the grandest champion of them all. The Gaudy's, seen as the lesser of the twelve houses, are sneered and laughed at. They're mere millionaires among billionaires, after all. Nevertheless, they don't back down and remain confident in their daughter.
Eventually it is decided that the houses will at least try to fake getting along so that they can get a training academy of their own started off. With all of them on board for the idea, Orion having some relatives in the District and the fact House Velvet has Capitol relatives it's all but certain this will be approved. All of the twelve noble houses know this shall be the year of District One and, privately, all of them assume it to be the year of their own house.
The children who were at the heart of the vicious argument and extremely unstable agreement don't know about any of this. They only know a week later when the President makes a personal visit to the Flawless Estate to give his blessings for the training academy to go ahead.
His only condition is that the nobles children all train as the first batch of potential tributes and whichever two get picked kill at least five children. The families all agree to this on their behalf.
Peridot thinks her family and neighbours are nuts, but then again she did always want to move up in the world and visit the Capitol.
It's not hard to find a good location to set up the academy. District One has plenty of wondrous properties and castles dotted around the lush landscape, the only issue being which one to actually go with. In the end a delightful six story castle built at the top of a grassy valley is deemed appropriate.
One day the Avoxes and other staff sent from the Capitol arrive to quickly set everything up just-so for the training ahead.
The next day all of the reaping eligible noble children arrive, each family having managed to send at least one offspring with the firm order to bring back the ultimate glory to their family. Failure is not permitted... not that it ever was, but this time the point is really driven in.
The first three days of training go well enough, most of the noble children display at leats moderate competence with a weapon or two and understanding how to use their personalities to appeal to a crowd. Two issues are noted:
Some of the children are friends and would never kill one another even if only they remained.
Having the noble families overseeing the training is doomed to fail as there is literally no possible way to choose who will actually be the tributes without extreme bias being present. A Court would only choose a Court, a Fragrence would only choose a Fragrence and so on.
By the fifth day a simple solution is found, that being to just get Peacekeeper Ronald Bayonet – the same one who watches over tributes from One until they have a Victor – to pick out who he deems to be the best candidates. Wanting to see 'his' District win, the man is willing to agree to this request.
It takes him not even a day to rule that Harp is clearly not fit to be a tribute, having issues truly understanding what everybody is training for and seeing it as some kind of a new, strange game. She doesn't mind being sent home. After all, Ronald was nice enough to give her a strawberry for the road.
Also ruled out at this early stage is Jacinth. Ronald claims that his exceptional speed doesn't matter, as in the end he's just a small twelve year old who the volunteers from Two would easily butcher when the time came.
Houses Victory and Court fume in utter disgrace, angered at their children, while the remaining ten noble houses feel all the more self-assured of their chances of having a Victor within the family.
As the noble children move on to focusing exclusively on swordplay for the next few weeks the noble families decide the time has already arrived to drive wedges amongst the children in preparation for the Games. Alliances are well and good, and if anything the nobles want the pair of tributes to be able to work together at the start, but they want to ensure their own noble house is directly responsible for the death of a member of a separate house.
A month of borderline brainwashing is all it takes for the children, some of them at least, to begin feeling wary and even a bit cold to one another.
By the time three months have gone by House Goldclaw has been eliminated, the street rat they took in (an anxious boy by the name of Ring) being deemed as a sub par fighter and lacking the potential for developing a killer instinct. He returns to the streets, discreetly stealing a golden necklace from the nobles along the way.
He's never caught for it.
Meanwhile the other children continue to develop their talents and gradually start to go from friends, or at least feigning tolerance for one another, to showing some open hostility.
Seventeen year old Coin and Cash, twins and the best of friends, naturally stick side by sick. They work together, using their natural number advantage to constantly harass Caramel in the hopes that the fifteen year old will crack and slip up in her training. After all, they don't want her getting too good with a sword.
Caramel cracks alright, taking her aggression out on a sixteen year old boy she never got along with anyway. Whoa is certainly not whoa'd by being beaten up by Caramel, giving her a black eye and taking out the anger unleashed within him upon Fantastica, figuring that the sixteen year old of the family his father hates is as good a target as any.
Fantastica takes to venting out the pain by shoving around Handbag. The gorgeous eighteen year old brute has none of it, shoving back... and accidently shoving Fantastica over a balcony and right onto a marble fountain below. As the water turns red and House Saffron becomes doomed to die out, Handbag tries to act like nothing happened.
He's executed by firing squad for the murder two days later, killing outside the arena being illegal. Consequently, House Moonlight is also doomed to become extinct.
While all of the fighting goes on, the potential tributes getting more and more deadly as the weeks pass, Peridot stands back from it all. Why waste training time with all this classless bullying? There will be plenty of time for that in the arena. She simply hones her skills with the sword every day, sticking to a rigid schedule.
"Why is everybody here so fucking stupid?" she laments one night, tucked up in the fine bed she was provided at the academy. "Why can't people be more mature and intelligent like me?"
Her suggestion that the other noble children still competing for the chance to be a tribute perhaps not act like savages goes unheard and leaves her covered in both spit and with a broken arm administered by Cadbury of House Velvet (specifically, this is the sixth time in her life that this boy had broken her arm). What reason have they to listen to a Gaudy, they ask.
Peridot makes a note to take Cadbury's sword and later shove it up his ass, as base and classless as the act might be.
Time passes until eventually the Eighth Annual Hunger Games are a month away. By now most of the noble children have been eliminated, told to either try again next year or warned against trying due to the certainty of their deaths.
Furthermore, Whoa died when his lucky charms turned out to have been poisoned. Nobody knows that it was Cash and Coin who did it.
At this point only Cash, Coin, Cadbury and Peridot remain as contenders, with Ronald claiming he could see all of them as potential Victors. But with two tributes allowed and four candidates he comes up with a fairly simple solution to settle things.
As Cadbury is in his final year of eligibility he is given the spot of the male tribute, Coin being promised he will be going in the following year. House Velvet is over the moon while House Royalty threaten their boy with a year lacking caviar as a punishment for making them wait another year to have a Victor in the family.
As Peridot and Cash are both seventeen they are put into a tie breaker, that being a sword duel. Both are given fake swords to ensure neither get killed before the arena even arrives and told to keep going until their opponent yields. The winner goes in the Eighth Games, the loser taking part in the Ninth.
"You're gonna wish you stayed in your hovel," Cash sneers as she and Peridot circle each other.
"You're gonna wish you spent more time focusing on training than on slandering other kids like a common pebble," Peridot replies, gripping her sword so tightly that her knuckles turn white.
The fight is as vicious as anybody could expect a sword duel between two teenage noblewomen to be. Both are evenly matched for over ten minutes, the fake blades clattering and clanging as bruises are inflicted again and again. Peridot keeps her focus, working her way around Cash's fancy movements and graceful style. She tries to mimic this as best as she can.
"Were your parents related? Like, before they were married?" Cash asks, snickering.
Peridot promptly decides' fuck it' and, with all the social standing of a caveman, kicks Cash right in her groin, following up with a few strikes to her neck while she is flailing around.
The end result of course is that Peridot becomes the female tribute and the twins are forbidden from having caviar for an entire year, the news making them both weep.
"Nobody said we couldn't fight dirty if it would help. If only one can live, might as well do anything it takes," Peridot says, shrugging.
Cadbury finds that he quite agrees with Peridot for once, already wondering how he can best take her down in even dirtier fashion. After the Outliers, of course. A Velvet boy must have some class.
With how wealthy the noble families of District One were it was no surprise that most of the Capitol knew who they were, down to each and every member. So naturally, the news that two nobles of One were coming to the Capitol to compete in their quote-unquote beloved pageant was the talk of the grand city.
So much so that the Capitol Citizens demanded to see more of the nobles before the Games began. They howled and cried, refusing to wait until the hovercraft interview.
Orion, wanting to see for himself what his approval of Careers in One had led to, was more than willing to comply. He'd ordered a grand stage to be constructed in his favourite park of his beloved city and had a hoard of audience booths made. Perfect setting for a live interview.
Of course, the 'Typhoon Twos' thought it was unfair that their favourite District wasn't going to get an interview so Orion shrugged and let all of the tributes get an interview. With there being an admission fee he thought it'd only make him even richer anyway.
That's why, on the fifth of July that summer, Peridiot found herself as the first tribute in history to be interview in front of massive audience by Mortimer. Ladies first was the Capitol way after all, even if Cadbury thought it was bullshit to be literally number two in this case.
Peridot paid him no mind, happy with the spotlight she was getting and took the chance to use her three minutes of fame to talk about her grand family, how easy it was to master the sword and outperform all of the other girls to get to where she was now.
"Can you outwit the twenty three tributes watching from backstage?" Mortimer asked her.
"Does a mutt kill?" Peridot responded, lightly. "Of course I can. Just watch, House Gaudy is going to be the best of all the nobles in a week tops. ...Can I have your autograph."
Mortimer shed a tear, having never before been so flattered.
The arena was a first that year. The tributes were launched and began shivering in their fluffy outfits as the countdown begun, the winter tundra full of fir trees around them barely being hospitable. The vicious howl of the wind had some tributes mistakenly think that a mutt was looming nearby and start to panic.
Cadbury and Peridot, having seen plenty of bitter winters in One from the comfort of their homes, knew it was just a rather nasty winter breeze.
Tiny boy Martin from Six didn't know this, freaking out over the imaginary monster and tumbling off of his pedestal.
The mystery of 'what happens if you step off your pedestal early' was answered for all as Martin was blasted into bloody pieces by the landmines. This only served to make many of the tributes freak out and scream even more.
No more tributes fell to the mines, but their shattered mindsets and panic attacks that were setting in put the odds completely in favour of the pack that had formed from the Ones and the Twos. Paying no mind to the screaming children around her nor to the boy from Twelve who sped past her on his charge away from the looming carnage, Peridot charged towards the Cornucopia and grabbed hold of a fine, thin sword.
It had the Gaudy family crest added to it by the Gamemakers.
From there, the outcome of the bloodbath was as clear cut as the corpse of the tall boy from Eleven twenty seconds after Peridot grabbed her sword. With the bulk of the tributes in the midst of severe panic attacks on, or near, their pedestals it was open season for the quartet and their weapons. Nobody managed to put up a real fight against them, their training paying off very well.
By the time the dust settled by the Cornucopia in that snowy, windy tundra only nine tributes were still standing. The corpses of fifteen innocent children (or perhaps, fourteen corpses and one splattered pile of gore in the case of Martin) were slumped around, the shiny white snow now a grisly crimson. The entire starting area had literally been turned an entirely different colour because of all the blood.
The term 'Cornucopia Bloodbath' became mainstream about seven minutes later.
Cadbury cheered and danced a little bit, having gotten six kills already. Granite and Mika from Two had managed two kills each, feeling this was a good omen due to how it matched their District.
Peridot, sitting upon a crate and quickly putting on two of the spare sweaters at the Cornucopia for added protection from the cold, had taken out four of the other tributes. She couldn't help but think of the screams and sobs for mercy sent her way.
Her family back home must have been pleased and that removed all of her doubts for the rest of her life. She rose, cleaning the blood off her sword with a fine cloth.
"Let's go," Peridot said without hesitation. "Five of them out there and if we're quick we should be able to catch them before they can get too far away. We're the most graceful, fast runners. It'll be easy."
Granite and Mika agreed, having no desire to make it last longer than it had to. They didn't like the freezing arena at all, already missing the warm summer they had left back in Two.
Cadbury agreed as well, wanting to see if he could best Baron's kill record. But he had an idea of his own.
"Somebody needs to stay guard," Cadbury stated, calm for once. "If they take our stuff this will only take longer. Peri, you're staying."
"Why me?" Peridot asked, narrowing her eyes. "...And don't call me Peri."
"You got four kills. You're clearly a competent guard if anybody tries something." Cadbury said, shrugging. "I got the most kills so I should be leading the hunt and these two, well, I figure you guys want a chance to catch up to my score a bit?"
"Do you even need to ask?" Mika stated, Granite nodding his agreement.
"...Fine," Peridot grumbled, sitting down on a crate and crossing her arms.
"Sweet," Cadbury said, smirking as he led his allies off into the tundra, following a trail of footprints left by one of the Outliers. "See you later Peri."
The noble boy's grin widened when Peridot's demand that he not call her Peri echoed around the tundra. Truthfully he didn't care about there being a guard, figuring that even if an Outlier took something he'd still be able to best them regardless. He just didn't want Peridot taking away the glory he intended to get for his family. Cadbury was many things, and one of those things was a hater of 'kill stealing'.
He slayed the boy from Seven that night, his allies cheering him on, having no idea what a mistake he had just made.
He'd given Peridot a chance to form her own plan, away from where he could see her.
While the trio of Careers hunted down in the southern reaches of the tundra throughout the second day, making a slow loop upwards to the eastern reaches, Peridot remained at the Cornucopia with a plan already in mind.
It had been easy to take out the girl from Nine, the one who had told many bad puns in her interview, when she tried to steal from the Cornucopia. She was half frozen anyway.
Cadbury and the Twos wouldn't be quite so simple, given they had extra jumpers and plenty of hot soup being sponsored to them by the hour. The Outliers who were not too cold to run were even able to evade the pack, for now, by using the discarded parachutes as clues about the pack's location.
The second day in the tundra went down as easily the most boring of the Eighth Hunger Games. The pack found nobody that day, while aside the demise of the girl from Nine the Outliers kept on moving around despite gradually getting colder and colder. It was a slow game of cat and mouse. Too cold for the liking of the Capitol citizens.
Luckily for the pampered Capitolites, Peridot was making the most of having the Cornucopia to herself. Having noticed the snow was particularly thick any deeper than an inch down she had asked the sponsors for a small trowel. With this she dug out several small foot sized holes here and there around the clearing. The idea being that somebody may carelessly step into them and cause a broken ankle to ensue if they were moving around too quickly.
"Come on. Come and get me," Peridot muttered that night. "My sword hungers ever so much."
The third day was one of the best days District One had ever seen in the Hunger Games thus far. Tundra arenas, as can logically be expected, were freezing. Most tributes, even the poorest among them, had simply no resistance to this kind of low temperature.
That's why the nobles of District One were disappointed as their tributes odds of beating the kill record fell lower around midday. The fisher girl from Four simply collapsed from the cold, never to rise again. After her frosty death half an hour later the once infamous chatterbox girl from Three fell silent forever as she, too, froze to death.
"Couldn't they have the decency to have dragged their frozen bodies over to Cadbury so he could make use of them and increase his score?" Fame Velvet had said back in One, displeased that his son was looking less likely to beat the kill record.
"Couldn't agree more," Felicia Velvet had agreed, distinctly disgusted.
The Gaudy's on the other hand didn't make much comment, more focused on how the burly boy from Twelve snuck back to the Cornucopia, desperate for food and warmth.
He broke his ankle in one of the holes and moments later broke his brain at the end of Peridot's sword. She returned to her soup, already moving on from her deceased foe and mainly just annoyed that the pack had utterly ditched her and left her no chance to fully explore the arena.
In the north, however, the pack were interrupted from returning to the Cornucopia – Cadbury planning on killing Peridot first and foremost – when a roar filled their ears.
From a mile away Peridot could only scoff at the dreadful sound, her sensitive ears already throbbing a bit. One polite request to her sponsors later and a fine set of earmuffs were hers, nicely blocking out the sound.
Meanwhile Cadbury led his allies in a battle against a vicious yeti. It seemed like they were winning as well because, even with Mika from Two suffering the dreadful inconvenience of her head being torn off of her shoulders and dropkicked away by the Yeti, the beast itself was bleeding badly.
"Come on, kill it!" Granite yelled.
"I'd rather kill you," Cadbury said, smirking.
Cadbury left that area of the tundra two minutes later with a dead yeti and a defeated District behind him. With only the Gaudy girl left he knew he had it on lock.
Peridot felt that, with only the Velvet boy left, she had the Games on lock.
They met two hours after midnight as Cadbury made a grand charge at the Cornucopia, easily spotting Peridot in the middle of the clearing. His family popped open their most expensive champagne as they prepared to welcome their son back as a Victor and celebrate the certain end of the Gaudy family line.
"You're gonna die Peri!" he roared.
The elitist pair began screaming and shrieking in mad panic as blood erupted form Cadbury's ankle, the powerful young man having stepped into one of the hole traps Peridot had dug. He collapsed, screaming and cursing as Peridot approached him at a dainty walk.
"You talk too much," Peridot said as she shoved a rag into Cadbury's mouth.
What came next was perhaps the single most humiliating death of the entire first two decades of the Hunger Games. The shame of it would never ever leave the Velvet family line, even after they all died out, and often popped up on many Hunger Games Countdown lists broadcast over the years.
Peridot observed her sword and her fallen enemy. Years of bullying, mocking and cruelty came to the forefront of the young women's mind. She strutted her way behind Cadbury, starting to smirk.
"You always told me to take my family and everything we are... and to shove it up my posterior," Peridot said, snooty. "See my family crest on the hilt of the sword? I'm doing the opposite of what you demanded of me. I'm taking my family and shoving it up your ass."
Over the next minute the nation could only watch in an utterly stunned silence (or, in the case of the Velvet's, a screaming rage full of humiliation) as Peridot shoved the sword up her fallen foe's ass right up to the hilt of the blade.
Peridot left the arena a minute later while Cadbury lay still in a pool of blood and humiliation. The cameras, naturally, took a moment to focus on the Gaudy family crest upon the sword hilt.
The Gaudy family went from the lowest nobles to the top in the time it took Peridot to jam the sword in its special sheathe.
The Velvet family became laughing stocks amongst the nobles, dying out due to excess drinking a mere three years later.
"You know, with how often Career families have tributes enter the Games every generation I don't think I can recall hearing about a relative of Peridot going in," Katniss said, thoughtful. "You'd think that it'd be a fact that they'd have forced people to know, the descendent of the first successful Career going into the arena."
"You'd think that," Peeta said, nodding in agreement. "Don't quote me on this, but I vaguely recall hearing she was sterile. Impossible to have kids."
"Before the Games ended that honestly sounds like a good thing anywhere except a Career District," Katniss remarked, slowly shaking her head. "Where did you hear that?"
"Remember I did that class project on the various kinds of bread among all twelve Districts?" Peeta asked. "Peridot was kind of addicted to the bread from One and it was listed as a trivia fact. Apparently it was her comfort food following learning she was sterile, but it may have been a prank. Wasn't an officially licensed book."
"Panem is a strange place," Katniss said, blankly as she and Peeta moved on further down the long street. "...Think this one slept her way through the Games as well?"
Imprinted upon the sidewalk was a cheeky looking girl, playfully sticking her tongue out.
"I don't think it ever happened again, so I'd say not," Peeta said. "Hmmm... can't say I know anything about Fir Buzz."
There we go, the first of the many Careers who entered the Games and left with their life intact. After all, I don't think Baron and Runa really count as Careers per-say. So, Peridot! Elegant, powerful, a good look into the noble families of District One and... probably my favourite final kill so far? Just... whoa. Some people really don't fuck around when it comes to making their own family name great and another family name fall into ruin. Stay tuned for more!
Stats
District 1: Peridot Gaudy (8th Games)
District 2: Baron Overwhill (4th Games), Runa Peace (7th Games)
District 3: Honorius Perthshire (5th Games)
District 4: Museida Selkirk (3rd Games)
District 5: N/A
District 6: N/A
District 7: Pliny Aransio (2nd Games)
District 8: N/A
District 9: Mizar Aldjoy (1st Games)
District 10: N/A
District 11: N/A
District 12: Duke Saint-Rose (6th Games)