Disclaimer: I do not own The Hunger Games. They belong to Suzanne Collins.
Note: Here we are, another Victor of the many, many still to come! Not exactly got much to say here, beside how world building continues to be fun. After all, it's time to answer a question I've had in mind for a while now... how did the tesserae system start? Let's find out the answer!
Peeta looked down at the image of the boy with thick, heavy specs on the sidewalk. He couldn't help but narrow his eyes thoughtfully.
"So, he was the first to use fire as a weapon. Like, how exactly? A bush fire caused with intent?" Peeta asked. "Or just swinging a burning torch at somebody?"
"Not quite. From the stories I've heard it seems this boy build a flamethrower," Katniss explained, looking grim at the thought. "Death by fire. It's horrific to imagine, and after my run in with the fireballs I can imagine it far more clearly than I'd like."
"I'll take your word for it. I guess... whatever gets somebody out of the arena, right?" Peeta said, similarly disturbed. "Victors have resorted to more painful means of combat than a flamethrower."
"They sure have," Katniss said. "Too bad Shunt's just like all of them in the end. He didn't win without killing."
12th Annual Hunger Games
Name: Shunt Gaspar
Gender: Male
District: 5
Age: 15
Kills: 6
At the time of the 12th Hunger Games it seemed that Panem was starting to get put back the way it once was, albeit with increasingly suffocating Peacekeeper security and a much bigger feeling of hopelessness upon the minds of many District citizens. With aid from Olga playing the part of the patriot so well it had been easy to get District Two right back to how it should have been and, indeed, somewhat better than it was before. Life seemed to be fairly good there.
Of course, plenty of other Districts couldn't say the same. Reconstruction and clean-up in places such as Three, Six, Seven and Eight was still ongoing without any clear estimate for when the work would be finished. Of course, at least those Districts did not have the issues District Five had.
Broken and mangled generators, collapsed power plants and extremely polluted rivers... things the citizens were forced at gunpoint to clear up and fix. People died in the efforts, a tragedy the Capitol merely saw as an even trade for what had happened in the Dark Days. Of course, with Five providing a lot of the power the Capitol needed it had eventually been clear that they needed to step in at least a little bit, otherwise little Billy just off of the central park of the great city wouldn't be able to use his night light. They couldn't be having that, could they?
With the citizens overworked, overstressed and having almost nothing to live on a problem quickly presented itself, one that was wide spread in almost all of the Districts. People were starving and productivity was slowing down because of this. It seemed clear to Orion that something had to be done; without food they would die and then the Capitol would be unable to sustain their system and their lives of excess and luxury.
Naturally, just giving out food was too easy. Too merciful. Any food and escape from suffering would come at a cost from the 'generous Capitol'. Thus, after a meeting with his ministers – with grand food provided of course – the tesserae system was started. A year's supply of oil and grain would be given out to the person who signed up for it and all those within their family who they took it out for.
The catch was that for every person that tesserae was taken for, the person signing up would have their name added to the reaping an extra time. For some, this meant one extra slip in the reaping bowl and was deemed irrelevant when put beside starvation.
For Shunt Gasper this meant ten extra slips within the reaping bowl that year. One for himself, five for his siblings not yet in reaping age, two for his parents and two for his paternal grandparents. His entire family. While he was far from the only person to take out a bulk of tesserae, he was among the poorest and scrawniest of those who did so.
As the reaping for the Twelfth Hunger Games drew nearer those who had chosen to take out tesserae faced the reality of just how greatly their odds of being reaped had increased. Many tears were wept and screaming fits had over the injustice of it all. But as the Capitol was keen to remind any riot, it had been the choice of those who took tesserae to begin with.
Some youths were given comfort, others were straight up told to make every day count just in case the worst were to come true. Shunt, however, was given something far more useful in his situation.
Advice.
Shunt came from a family of lower class mechanics and engineers, the sort who were often covered in oil stains, scars from being zapped or patches of engine grease. Their job had always been to repair broken power plant equipment, restart generators or to make new welding equipment for the higher-ups. It was gritty, unpleasant work but nonetheless work that were effective with.
"Don't call any attention to yourself, son," his dad had told him. "You saw how that went for the boy from Four last year. Let them just forget about you to start with."
Shunt's only reply had been to timidly wheeze out what would happen if they came for him anyway.
"You run," his dad continued. "Run until you are alone and can put your skills to good use."
Despite his rather lanky, bony sort of build the fact was that Shunt couldn't be called a boy lacking skills. He was observant, quite nippy on his feet and had taken to the family craft with ease. For him it was child's play to make some sort of useful, functional device from the various parts he was supplied with.
"What skills do I have that work in the arena?" Shunt asked. "Five never gets sponsors. Where'd I get parts for something?"
Mr Gaspar laid both hands upon his son's shoulders.
"If you are reaped, because you are never volunteering, try using what is within the cameras, the launch pedestals and such. It's all artificial, and an artificial place requires building components," he told his son. "Stealing is acceptable in the arena. In essence, you'd be just grabbing supplies from a place other than the Cornucopia, son."
The talk ended with father and son heading out for a midnight work shift. As they worked away on a generator throughout the night Shunt began to idly notice that he had another skill that would be of help, if he was indeed reaped.
He almost never slept and was so used to this fact that he could survive on three hours of sleep a night.
With very few exceptions many of the District child had their lives and choices decided for them from the moment they were born, that being to go into their own District's industry lest they face the consequences. Shunt could handle the work just fine, of course, but even he had his own personal ambition that he longed to have the opportunity to make into a reality.
Writing.
Simply put, he loved to write stories. Tales of knights and dragons, anecdotes of aliens and Peacekeepers, journeys starring pirates out on the unknown seas beyond Panem and far more besides. His mind was often abuzz with ideas for stories to be written, stories which he knew would never be able to go anywhere due to the powers that be having decided his destiny for him.
He liked stories about dragons the best. Something about their fire breathing, their immense power, their hoards of treasure... it held his attention effortlessly. So much so that he'd even been plotting out a story of a small dragon having to save his realm when a tubby lizardman, maybe based on the President or maybe not, came by to lay waste upon the magical, peaceful world.
"It'll never happen," said his mother.
"It'll never happen," said his teacher.
"It'll never happen," said his supervisor at the power plant.
Shunt could only sigh sometimes, futilely telling himself it might just happen one day far in the future. Maybe, just maybe.
He knew it was pretty pathetic to lie to himself.
Shunt was a bit more surprised than he later admitted he should have been when his name was drawn from the reaping ball on a rainy summer day. Standing upon the stage alongside a girl prone to twitching after having been shocked so many times in one of the power plants it seemed like another year of defeat was in store for Five.
Who would put money on a scrawny whelp with thick coke bottle glasses and a skinny, pimply girl prone to twitching?
Shunt sat in the Judgement Building with his family for quite a while, for as long as they were able to stay before getting literally dragged off to go to work. Hugs, kisses, words of comfort, last minute advice and thinly veiled final goodbyes were shared all around by the Gaspar family.
After all, it really did seem like goodbye. Five had never managed to win, the closest they ever got having been the previous year where their chances of victory were swallowed up by a shark alongside Arendellian. Stronger boys than Shunt had already died, twelve times over.
The tesserae system had saved them from starvation, but condemned Shunt to a likely far more painful fate. The food was given over and the Capitol benefited as always, but also as always the Districts had been cheated and taken the full penalty for the mere scraps thrown their way.
Shunt was silent for the twenty minutes between his family leaving and being taken to board the train. There wasn't much of anything that he could really say after being reaped for what seemed to be an almost certain chance of being slaughtered.
But there was plenty that he could think. And so, notebook in hand, Shunt boarded the train with a feigned smile and began to make notes on everything that was going on around him, whether or not he thought it was relevant.
His twitchy District Partner, a short seventeen year old by the name of Chrome.
Captain Derceto, the Peacekeeper assigned to 'mentor' tributes from Five until they had their first Victor, whenever that may be.
The tributes from the other Districts shown on the reaping recap. Powerful brutes from One and Two, a lanky duo from Three, two tiny kids from Four, druggies from Six, a lumberjack and lumberjill from Seven, a heavyset pair of fabric workers from Eight, two field workers from Nine, a butcher and a ranch hand from Ten, two starving youths from Eleven and a pair of scarred miners from Twelve.
As Shunt lay in his bed within the train that night he kept rereading all the things he had taken notes on. All he could think about, aside fear of death, was how all these characters would factor into his story.
"It's my story. They are characters. The hero never dies," Shunt told himself.
It was the first of hundreds of times he would repeat those exact words to himself, both that night and in the days to come.
One thing he knew for sure was that the dashing boy from One with the cocky smirk was sure to be the antagonist of his tale. It was a gut feeling.
The only thing that kept Shunt going through the training days was forcing himself to see the looming nightmare as a story, much like the one he so desperately wanted to publish and make a name for himself with. So, that's what he did. He suppressed fear and reality, outright forcing a mental block against the grisly feelings and kept telling himself that it was just a story, one with a happy ending.
The training centre become the barracks that every hero had to train their skills on to slay the monsters up ahead.
Chrome became his wizard sidekick.
The four Careers became a pack of dark, corrupt knights who cared not for justice, only personal glory. The large boy from Seven they allowed to join them became their pet ogre.
The Gamemakers became the corrupt noble court.
The weapons at the training stations were merely magical equipment used for slaying evil. All the survival stations were simply a skill check to ensure the knights were able to survive outside the walls of the barracks.
None of this helped at all when Shunt was laying awake long into the nights, unable to get the image of Randolphus from One sneering at him and Chrome like they were sheep and he was a vile wolf.
"You're a knight, you are courages. Knights can be scared and still save the day," Shunt muttered to himself. "If you cannot wield a sword, make something you can use..."
After much sketching and torn up paper in his notebook Shunt found his answer when his mind dwelled upon dragons.
Shunt had only managed a four in training, knowing that he simply wasn't built for using the most impressive of weaponry nor learning the most cool of skills like the Career pack were going to. Thus, the interview became his only real chance to show off for the crowd and earn some favour.
The issue was, despite handling the etiquette training just fine, Shunt was hardly what one could call a social or popular person. In fact, after the four Careers gave one truly dashing performance his rather nerdy discussion about fantasy and of his gritty maintained work was fairly subpar in comparison.
I fact, it was even subpar to the girl from Three who claimed she had no issues killing and was of the mind the rest were just computer viruses needing to be cleansed from the system. Such an attitude earned her at least some form of interest.
"I like to tell stories," Shunt said to Mortimer with a small shrug. "You know, the tales of old when knights were bold. Oh, and dragons. They're just like my work back home, actually... lots of fire generally being involved. You could say the arena is going to be a story of which I'm the main character."
"Will you be one of the heroes who dies for the greater good?" Mortimer asked. "For the sake of peace and prosperity in Panem?"
"Heroes don't die," Shunt said, firm. "And once I make it out... buy my book? It's almost done."
The audience cheered that they would, but it was barely concealed lies. They were all chattering about the Careers on the way home, no mind paid to the scrawny boy with thick glasses from Five.
Shunt didn't mind this. If he was forgotten about then he might just be able to survive the first day.
Many of the tributes were confused when they were launched into darkness that year. All but Shunt, that is. He'd spent enough nights working on generators or welding equipment in pure darkness and thus had been gifted rather strong night vision. To him, it was obvious what was going on and easy to see the grey coloured Cornucopia distantly outlined in the shadows.
The arena had gone from the overground to the underground. It was a massive, open cavern that the tributes had been thrown into this year. Rocky terrain, plenty of dull coloured moss, shallow cake lakes, stalactites and stalagmites, blind cave rats and more were what this year's batch of unlucky kids had to content with. Above all, the darkness was going to be quite a problem for the tributes to navigate through.
Especially due to the fact several of them were afraid of the dark. The young pair from Four howled and cried in the darkness, the screams soon making the heavy girl from Eight start to wail as well. The end result to all of this was that the girl from Four fell to the mines, dying before the countdown had even come to an end.
Shunt swallowed his own vomit, forcing himself to put aside all feelings of sheer mortal terror. This was his story and he was the adventurer who'd be making it out of the deadly decadent court's dungeon. So, when the gong rang, he ran into the fray.
His night vision served him well, allowing him to easily pull ahead of the other tributes and gather up the largest backpack, night vision goggles and a tool kit. By the time the rest of the tributes had gotten their hands on equipment and some deadly weapons Shunt was already running away into the deep shadows and off in the direction of one of the underground lakes.
With the difficulty in seeing what was going on and how Randolphus had been the only one able to grab a pair of night vision goggles in the precious opening minutes the bloodbath had been small. It was a twisted sort of world when the loss of seven young lives, including Chrome, could be seen as 'small'.
Watching the anthem that night Shunt wept for the loss of his wizard companion.
This year presented another problem that the Gamemakers were to learn from in future years, should they ever decide on an underground terrain again.
The tributes couldn't see shit.
Only five pair of night vision goggles had been provided. Shunt had one of them, Randolphus and his partner Vanilla had a pair each, one pair had been destroyed in the opening bloodbath when the boy from Seven had accidentally thrown the boy from Eight on top of them and the last pair had been snagged by the girl from Twelve.
Everybody else had to make do with flashlights or torches, but therein was the next problem. Nobody dared used them in case the Careers or a mutt would find them. The only ones who did make a use of them were the pair from Two and the boy from Seven. They had no issues finding their way around.
It also meant they scared off all their prey, the Outliers able to see them long before they could, in turn, see them right back. It meant that nobody else had died after the bloodbath by the time day four rolled around. The pack argued loud and furiously over this, action finally entering the Games again when Randolphus lost his temper and skewered the girl from Two on his rapier.
"You bastard!" Homer from Two had sworn.
Of course, with the Ones tightly allied and the boy from Seven backing them up he had no choice but to flee into the darkness. Just like that, the pack had split.
And, just like that, the noise they made drove their prey even further away from them. Orion demanded that in future the Gamemakers put in more night vision goggles, or else they'd be retired... from existence.
Shunt took advantage of the fact the Careers were audible a mile to the north and made a beeline back to the Cornucopia, his mind abuzz with ideas for what he could do next. Indeed, as soon as he arrived and saw nobody was there he began to ransack the place of its food and water.
His backpack had been full of food from day one, but one could never have enough in Panem. Or a dark cavern as the case may have been.
Shunt had been midway through breaking cameras for their parts and using a crowbar to prize open a launch pad to snag some of the pieces inside when footsteps entered his ears. Two sets, in fact.
The girl from Twelve was being pursued by the girl from Ten and based on her bloodied arm and the cleaver the ranch hand was holding it seemed the chase was only able to end one way.
Shunt firmly told himself the girl from Twelve was a damsel in distress, the girl from Ten a wanted outlaw and himself the knight that would save the day.
The fight was short and savage, but under a minute later Shunt had tackled the girl from Ten and quickly stabbed her thrice in the back. Panting and shaking, he looked at the girl from Twelve and she back at him.
They noticed each other's night vision glasses.
"I think we might live longer if we formed an adventurer party with each other," Shunt said, offering out his hand once he was sure the girl had no weapons on her. "Shunt Gaspar."
"Bernadette Love," the girl replied, looking a little confused by Shunt's wording. "Uh, you mean working together, right? Sure, I have nothing left to lose."
"Then let's find a place to camp and make a plan of battle against the dark knights," Shunt declared, wringing his hands and making a great effort to not look at the corpse of the so-called 'outlaw'.
Bernadette seemed a little confused by the way Shunt was talking, but shrugged it off. If it was his way of keeping himself sane in this hell then who was she to judge? She was the one who had resorted to eating a rat already.
Shunt told Bernadette, two days later, that the best way to stay relevant was to ensure they were the main characters, though this train of thought only served to confuse her.
"I mean, think about it, this is a show in the Capitol right?" Shunt had explained. "So, let's make ourselves the stars of that show. You've seen late night horror movies, right? The people who do the most live longer and the quiet ones get forgotten about and die."
Bernadette had never seen anything on TV aside from the Games at mandatory viewing, having been too poor for a television. But even she had to admit Shunt's words made a sort of sense.
"So, what our our roles?" she had replied.
Figuring that he'd nothing to really lose anymore, Shunt called himself the bold knight and Bernadette the pretty and tough princess. Even with being in the arena and there still being ten other people hunting for them the girl from Twelve had to admit that being called pretty was something she rather liked.
"I like that role," she said, giggling. "But how to we stay relevant?"
"Slay a monster, defeat a warlord or kiss," had been Shunt's response.
Thinking of it as the least deadly of the three ideas Bernadette gave Shunt a light kiss.
"A thank you for saving me," she said, awkwardly.
Shunt felt like more of a goofy jester than a fool in that moment, but he hardly cared. A girl had kissed him, a real girl!
Hidden away near a fissure that night while the main Career pack were hunting down the pair from Nine and Homer was reluctantly working with Calculus from Three to escape a hoard of rat mutts, the knight and princess were making a plan of action.
"How can we... slay the dark knights if they're much better armed than us?" she'd asked. "How can we slay anybody if they're all hidden in the darkness. I think my goggles are running out of power."
"We make a bigger, better weapon," Shunt said, emptying out all the parts he had collected. "I think I have most of what I'll need... my princess, I need you to guard I, the knight."
"To what end will I be guarding thou for?" Bernadette asked, playing along.
"I'll be making us one holy weapon indeed," Shunt replied. "A flamethrower."
Shunt worked throughout the night, his princess watching over him with knives in hand in case of any trouble. Two cannons fired, marking another defeat for District Nine and more triumph for One and Seven. There would have been a third cannon, had Calculus not been able to convince Homer to work with her. Even Homer would admit that taking on his three former allies by himself was suicide.
All such alliances hardly mattered to Shunt, not when he got the final bit of wiring and last two bolts in place. The flamethrower was finished after sixteen hours of constant work.
The only issue he had, one that had him wary as he settled down in the fissure alongside Bernadette, was where he would get the fuel from.
Shunt's story took an unhappy twist by the time day eleven came around. After a long walk to where the moss grew at its thickest, the plant being a workable substitute fuel for Shunt's weapon, during which he had taken down Jeremiah from Seven – the boy left for dead by his former allies from One and having been mostly dead already – disaster had struck.
One moment Shunt had been fuelling up his flamethrower at a leisurely pace while Bernadette sipped from her water bottle a few feet beside him.
The next moment the pair from One had descended upon them, leaping from the short cliff above. One swing of the sword had Shunt's princess dead before she could even react. He screamed, breathless in horror at the sight of his ally laying dead in a pool of blood.
He sat hunched up with his weapon, fuelled only seconds before, in his hands. Randolphus and Vanilla circled around him, blades in hand and laughter echoing out of their mouths.
"You call yourself a knight? You're shaking like a little boy," Randolphus taunted. "You call yourself a hero? I call you an extra."
"You lost little boy? You want your mommy?" Vanilla sneered, holding up her sharp sword for Shunt to see. "Shame the little miner bitch didn't scream... but I bet a shrimp like you will."
Like many heroes, Shunt was a boy who had a limit and a certain list of things that got him angry. Among the topmost of that list was mocking people whom he cared about, whether they were living or dead.
"Keep my princess out of your mouth," Shunt said, rising up with shaky legs. "You shan't take her name in such vain!"
"Or else what?" Vanilla spat.
"Yeah, what?" Randolphus added, having stood back a bit to enjoy the show going on.
"He won't do shit Randolphus," Vanilla said, snickering. "He's just a weak little boy with dreams he'll never ever-."
Vanilla stopped speaking the instant Shunt pulled the trigger on his weapon. Lacking proper fuel the fire wasn't as long ranged or searingly powerful as the flamethrowers the Capitol were known to use at times.
But that didn't mean anything when Vanilla was a mere meter away from Shunt. In an instant she was screaming in the most shrill, severe agony as her body was consumed by the inferno of fire. Hardly a few seconds had passed before she collapsed in a burning, crumpled heap. Her screams were breathless and near silent, her vocal cords having been burnt to a crisp.
When her cannon fired Randolphus had lost all traces of mocking and laughter. Keenly aware his foe was clearly nowhere close to harmless, he was now alert and fully focused.
"You're tough, I'll give you that. That was a brutal kill even by my standards," he said, unnerved by what he had seen. "Let's do this."
Alas, they did not do any such thing. Shunt had already used up the limited fuel and ran for his life into the darkness. Randolphus pursued him, of course, but Shunt had gotten a head start and managed to lose the Career by swiftly moving through an area full of large stalactites and stalagmites. It took all his energy and left his body screaming in protest, but he managed to climb up a large stalagmite and watched as Randolphus ran by under him, not bothering to look up.
It was a restless, depressing night for Shunt. His princess was lost, the dark knight was on a rampage and he felt like he was hardly the hero he kept telling himself he was.
Perhaps this was a story told through the eyes of its villain? Shunt shuddered at the thought, trying to work out what to do next.
Three days passed by, deathless. Only Shunt and Randolphus had night vision goggles, but finding the other tributes in the massive cavern was proving to be a highly difficult endeavour. Even Homer was reluctant to kill Calculus, having found her company admittedly tolerable.
The Gamemakers called a Feast, one that promised food, water, medical supplies and more besides. To ensure the tributes would actually be able to find it they launched some large light pillars by the Cornucopia, unmissable from even several miles away.
Shunt had run out of food and, with his flamethrower now fuelled on oil from a small pool he'd found at the edge of the arena, felt it was worth risking it all by attending the Feast.
The seven tributes all ran into the fray to gather what they needed. Randolphus wasted no time getting to work, ignoring the supplies in favour of swiftly slicing Pumpkin from Eleven with his sword. The boy fell, dead seconds later.
Perhaps he was the lucky one really, given what happened next.
While Homer and Calculus worked side by side to take out Breezy from Seven a rematch ensued between Shunt and Randolphus. Shunt dodged all the wild swings of the sword, the Career boy going for quantity over quality with his attacks. He didn't want to be too close to the flamethrower and end up like Vanilla had.
Shunt activated his weapon and missed Randolphus, the boy leaping to the side and taking a moment to catch his breath.
The fire, however, did not miss the canister of fuel on the table. It had been provided as a proper fuel source for Shunt to use.
The result was a fiery explosion. Shunt turned and ran, abandoning his weapon in favour of keeping himself alive and not incinerated. He only paused to grab a short sword off of the ground on his way out of the illuminated clearing.
When the already vast inferno met the flamethrower the scorching fire practically tripled in size as another explosion erupted. In seconds the clearing was on fire and so was Randolphus arm. The boy howled in agony as he tore away into the darkness, trying desperately to put out the fire.
He was lucky, especially due to how the fire had consumed Calculus and Homer right away. The former burned over two horrible minutes while the latter was burnt to a crisp in mere seconds.
The only other survivor of the gradually spreading inferno was Thimble from Eight. The heavy girl ran off into the darkness clutching a basket of bread, half crazy from the torment she'd witnessed and experienced.
Shunt had been right about the most major 'characters' lasting the longest, as the Gamemakers had ended up sending rats mutts after the comparatively minor Thimble. It was just the hero and the villain who remained, and after having five kills to his name Shunt was no longer sure which one he was.
It didn't matter, because he wanted to win for the sake of his family and his princess. Barely a full day after the fiery explosion at the Cornucopia he came across Randolphus once again.
Though the inferno had not spread more than a mile past the Cornucopia and wouldn't interfere with the finale, it had been clear from a glance that Randolphus wasn't fighting at full power anymore.
The way his left arm was utterly charred and burn marks peppered his body may have had at least a little to do with it. That and how his night vision goggles had been lost to the fire.
The pair were like a duo of shadows in the darkness, fighting and moving at a rapid pace. Randolphus had size and battle tactics, while Shunt had speed and better vision. The burns had negated Randolphus' advantage.
"I'll destroy you!" Randolphus had roared.
Shunt said nothing, content to dodge and lunge about as he gradually inflicted more and more small cuts upon the once powerful villain of his story.
The blood loss from the cuts caused Randolphus to stumble about before long, drained and unfocused. He made one final swing at Shunt that could've easily cut him in half.
It would have had Shunt not seen it coming and rolled behind Randolphus, thrusting his short sword right through the boy's lower back and out of his ribcage on the other side. He was dead before he crumpled over.
Shunt left the arena alive, feeling like he had been the darkest knight all along.
"I'm no hero of this story," he told Mortimer after the Games.
"I'm no hero of this story," he told the Districts on his tour.
"I'm no hero of this story," he told his youngest sibling, a small girl called Bulba, months later at their home in the Victor Village.
Bulba gave her brother a big, tight hug.
"You're the hero of my story," she told him with all sincerity. "You stopped us from going hungry ever again."
Shunt couldn't help but smile. Maybe, just maybe, his story had bought about some good after all.
Indeed, the stories of Maverick the Dragon sold well and his pet project Bernadette the Warrior Princess seemed bound for success too.
"You know, now that I think about it, his name rings a bell," Peeta said, his eyes narrowed slightly in thought. "I think I once saw Effie reading a book written by this guy. I mean, maybe it was somebody with the same name but... I just think it's too much of a coincidence."
"What was the book about?" Katniss asked as she and Peeta kept on walking.
"I didn't really ask, I just saw the title," Peeta said. "Something about a princess called Bernadette."
"...I feel like I know that name..." Katniss trailed off, unsure. "Not sure why."
"Same," Peeta agreed. "Here we are, number thirteen."
Upon the sidewalk was the face of a timid looking girl with long hair, looking like she was in a permanent state of shyness. Notably, the right half of her face seemed to be a deformed mixture of swollen and badly shrivelled, her right eye somewhat lopsided due to this.
"What happened to her face?" Katniss asked. "Arena injury?"
"I... think she may have been born like that?" Peeta replied, not overly certain. "Looks aren't everything. Didn't stop Gwenith Rosebud here from winning the Hunger Games."
I had fun writing this one. I feel like D5 is a bit underrated at times, if that makes sense? Then again I am sure there are people who can make a case for literally ANY District being underrated. Anyway! Shunt, a geeky nerdy dork who loves fantasy and what somewhat amounts to LARPing. I don't know why, but it just seemed to really 'work' you know? If nothing else, building a flamethrower is a certain shade of badass. Made for some rather fun writing overall. With Shunt's victory that makes eight Districts that have a Victor now... when will Six, Eight, Ten and Eleven have one too? Stay tuned to find out!
Stats
District 1: Peridot Gaudy (8th Games)
District 2: Baron Overwhill (4th Games), Runa Peace (7th Games), Olga Machete (10th Games)
District 3: Honorius Perthshire (5th Games)
District 4: Museida Selkirk (3rd Games), Mags Flanagan (11th Games)
District 5: Shunt Gaspar (12th Games)
District 6: N/A
District 7: Pliny Aransio (2nd Games), Fir Buzz (9th 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)