WARNING: Let me write this here before I forget. If suicidal thoughts or actions are a trigger for you, please either skip Cerise's Pov or don't read this chapter. Now that's out of the way. Please enjoy the chapter :D

District 2: Jaehaera Blackfyre (17) Pov-

By the time we reach the cornucopia my feet feel as though they've magically turned to lead. I can feel every heartbeat all throughout my body, though it's more of a burning sensation really. Though the walk can't have taken more than half an hour I can't remember half an hour ever being so long.

I hold my hand over my eyes like a visor as Declan and I step out of the forest.

This is the first time I've felt pure, unobstructed sunlight in… how long? Two days? Three days? I've almost forgotten what the pleasantly warm feeling of sunshine feels like.

But a 2 girl doesn't have time to be all sentimental. We're on the last leg of our journey and we can rest all we want once we reach the horn.

"Earth to Jaehaera, Earth to Jaehaera," Declan says, waving his arms to grab my attention.

I raise an eyebrow.

Declan points in response at a silver smudge on the horizon. Even from this distance the cornucopia seems to sparkle like polished glass.

We both stumble toward the silver smudge, our packs and the grime on our skins weighing us down.

"Nero," I call once we're close enough. "You home?"

A boy I've never seen before pokes his face out of the horn. His face looks sallow and gaunt, almost like he hasn't eaten in days. It actually takes me a moment to make the connection that it's Nero Ryker. How he looks so horrid I don't know.

"Need anything super important?" Nero asks. "Medicine, anything?"

I shake my head, sliding my pack off of my back. "Just a change of clothes and some food. That's an order, hurry up."

Nero races into the horn and soon he's nothing but a faint bit of movement in the darkness of the cornucopia's boxy interior.

I turn to Declan.

"Why does he look so bad?"

Declan shrugs. "I guess sitting around for four days with nothing to do isn't really his cup of tea."

In a few minutes a disheveled Nero returns with everything I requested. Declan and Nero trail away to go gather water and I'm left alone.

The next moment I hear a faint beeping sound. Ten feet to my right, the sunlight catches on a faint silver parachute fluttering gracefully toward the earth.

Jaehaera,

Dip weapon in.

~R

Underneath the note I find a bottle of bright-orange liquid with bursting bubbles and a crackling surface and all the other you-definitely-shouldn't-drink-this details.

I tuck the bottle of poison into my coat pocket, without a shadow of a doubt that it'll come in real handy in the future.

District 3: Pixel Watt (12) Pov-

I don't think anyone can blame me for how reclusive I've been acting lately.

The games have been going on for four days and I've already made two alliances, both of which have failed in the first 24 hours. Thinking about it now, Hopper knew he was going to die all along. The fay blankness he got in his eyes whenever I asked him about the games was a sign of acceptance.

But Mavvi wasn't like him at all. She was strong, resilient, determined to fight her treacherous way through the games.

Her screams still seem to ring in my ears to this moment. Things like that tend to stick with a girl.

Adding to my depression is the fact that I'm now defenseless. In my and Mavvi's mad dash to get away from the unicorn mutts, we didn't bother to note our path so I'd—but then it would have been we'd—be able to make our way back home.

All of my weapons are now lost, tucked into my butter-yellow pack at our far-away camp. All my food. All my supplies.

At least I'm not cold and alone in the middle of the… well, things could be worse.

Despite my bickering I have one thing on me. A bit of stretchy transparent wrap that fits snugly around my torso—body armor. It's almost like it was specially fit for me. Oh wait.

Around noon I end up settling in a clearing. I find that the further down I dig the damper the soil gets until I can cup my hand and scoop a good tablespoon of water out of the earth. Disgusting, muddy water, but water nonetheless.

For shelter I slither under the layer of forest leaves, too exhausted to gather branches at the time being.

Look at me. Procrastinating in the Hunger Games. It sure is your girl Pixel Watt.

District 5: Adelaide Hampton (16) Pov-

For the first time today I allow myself to peel back my bandages and take a peek at the stump of my severed finger. And for the first time in as long as I can remember I breathe a sigh of relief. It's coming along extraordinarily well. The pus isn't coming out nearly as quickly and the throbbing sensation that issues from the wound whenever I move is significantly less than yesterday.

It turns out the magic of the healing stream isn't instantaneous. Even soaking my bandages in the tinkling water nearly a hundred times a day, it looks like it'll take another couple of days for the blood and the pain to stop coming.

Ever since the agony lessened I've made a number of improvements to my shelter. I ended up scrapping the weak wall that kept collapsing and then shifting it up against a tree. The only downside is that I have to be careful about touching the trunk; it's covered with sticky sap.

I've just finished eating the small animal when a beeping sound comes from outside. I crawl out of the shelter assembled from branches and find that only a single slip of paper is held in the carriage of the hovercraft:

Adelaide,

You're doing so well. Don't leave the stream. And get lots of sleep.

~F

After reading over it a few times, I discard the note from my mentor Finch.

Now that I think about it, I'm super tired. A long, refreshing nap sounds heavenly, yes, that's what I've have right now, please…

District 7: Cerise Yew (15) Pov-

When I was a little girl in 7 my Uncle Jon once sent me to fill one of our pails with water from the nearby well. That evening my Aunt Wren had dropped from exhaustion on the job and one of the peacekeepers had slammed her in the back with his whip. I can still remember the horrid red meat-like texture of the beaten skin on her back, and even looking at it I could feel it burning like fire.

I sprinted to the well to gather the water we needed to clean her bandages. Once I reached it I tied the rope firmly around the bucket and began lowering, slowly but surely. Soon I heard the bucket sink into the well's watery bottom.

As I lifted the pail back up using the crank, I noticed my feet beginning to slip.

I let out a scream of panic and tried to regain my footing, but at that point my efforts were in vain. I'd already gotten too far off-balance and the slippery mud-mottled snow was more than happy to put me even more off-kilter.

In an instant the force of the relaxing rope had tugged me into the well.

I couldn't tell how long the fall was, but in an instant the ice-cold water was pressing onto every square inch of my body, turning every cell of my body to sandpaper and crushing my bones. For a scary second I had no idea which way was up. It must have been at least half a minute before I broke the surface of the water.

Despite the darkness of the night I could see my breath fogging up in front of me. The well water was so cold it felt like fire—so cold I just wanted to sink down here and die.

The weird thing was it took me a moment or two to realize someone had come to my help. Gazing up, I saw the dark form of a human being leaning over the opening of the well, lowering some kind of rope.

Thinking about it now the fact that they heard my screaming is the only reason I survived.

I grabbed onto the rope and instantly let go. The icy cold was siphoning away my energy more and more each second and I just didn't have the strength to pull myself up.

But the prospect of not being completely helpless somehow kept me going. I was not going to die. Not there. Not that night. I held onto the rope with every ounce of strength I didn't have, refusing my muscles' pleads to let go as my mysterious savior pulled me higher and higher.

Seven years later I can still remember what it felt like submerged in near-freezing water. Lost. Confused. Hopeless. Like surviving didn't matter. Like nothing mattered.

Life in 7 has put me through a crazy number of crazy things since then. But I've never felt that lost feeling, that hopeless feeling, until now. With Erik gone my entire world feels like it's collapsing around me, leaving me helpless in the middle of a dark, cold world.

The only reason I made it through training is because he was there at my side. The only reason I made it through my interview without screaming and bursting into tears is because of the thumbs-up and the smile he gave me before it was my turn. And the only reason I've survived this long is because he was there to help me.

I'm useless. I'm hopeless. I'm that sad little girl everyone will see on television and feel bad for before turning the show off. Because whatever they say nobody really cares about me. Erik was probably only faking to garner attention from the sponsors.

No matter what happens I'm going to die cold and alone in these games the way I should have died seven years ago. Because I'm just a burden on everybody who's ever had the misfortune of knowing me.

I've picked up the hatchet at least ten times today and gotten so close to ending it all before pulling the blade back from my flesh. I don't know why. It's pretty cowardly to let the animal desire to survive keep me from leaving the world in a much more painless way than I could later.

District 11: Jaro Veldt (15) Pov-

I'm left staring at an empty paper wrapper after I swallow the last bite of the bread loaf. Every bite of it was delicious.

I crumple and discard the wrapper and then get to my feet, which is extraordinarily difficult given my current load. I take a quick check to make sure I'm not forgetting anything. Sleeping pills in my pocket. Check. Pocketknife in my other pocket. Check. Compass in my hand. Check. Axe and sleeping bag. Check and check.

By this point in the games I think I've fallen into my day-to-day routine. In the first few days I was much more adamant about having a fixed shelter, but now I'm starting to think a nomadic lifestyle is more for me.

This way I don't have to worry about losing my shelter. In fact, from now on my purpose will be to lose it. Staying in one place for too long is never a good idea, though I don't know why it took me this long to acknowledge that.

After a few minutes a sweet, delectable scent floods around me and I find myself drawn toward a tree bearing pinkish-red fruits. The skin of the fruit is so thin I can actually see the seeds inside.

I don't hesitate before downing one of the fruits. I remember a whole screen at the edible plants station back in training about this one fruit. I think its name starts with G. I don't really remember.

Toward the middle of the day I settle in a bright-green meadow strewn with brightly-colored flowers. The mess of colors should make it hard for anyone to spot me at a glance. Thinking about it, that's the single best advantage I can have in these games.

I spend the rest of the day picking the stems and blossoms I recognize and heaping them together to make a kind of salad. A fulfilling dinner, though there's a slightly sour aftertaste.

Alliances:

Careers: Declan, Nero, Jaehaera

Loners (For Now): Pixel, Dory, Adelaide, Lincoln, Cerise, Luc, Orford, Jaro

A/N: Another update! This one was slightly more uneventful in my opinion but I guess those chapters will happen sometimes. Also, I don't know if this was clear, but it's implied that the person who saved Cerise from the well was a young Erik. Hope your lives are all going swimmingly :D

Question: Do you own any Hunger Games merchandise, and if so, what?