Chapter Thirty-Seven: Watch and Learn

Private Sessions

Garden Flowers, Gamemaker

Every year, exactly five of the fifty or so Gamemakers are designated to be people known as "Sober Scorers," meaning we can't drink any alcohol during the Private Sessions.

The scoring process takes everyone's opinion into account- after each person is done, everybody in the room gets the chance to submit the score they think they earned. Then, we take the average of everyone's score (rounding if we have to) and boom, there's your score.

The only problem is (from what I've heard, anyway) is that after the Careers finish, the novelty of watching the sessions begins to wear off and everybody begins to get drunk and either submit scores that don't make sense or just don't submit anything. That's where Sober Scorers come in- if the scores are all over the place and/or don't seem to make sense, we only average the scores of those Gamemakers. (If the scores are still really scattershot, the president has the final word.)

This year, I'm one of them, which is good since I can't really handle alcohol to begin with. Summer always volunteers to be one since she's actually interested in what these tributes can do, and as for the other three (a man named Lux and two women named Casseiopia and Audra), while I don't know much about them, they seem ready to go.

After what feels like only an instant, we get the announcement. "Everyone's here, we're good to go."

"Good, send the first one in," Summer says. "Let's get this baby started!"

The girl from One enters first, as is tradition. Before she starts, I scan her bio, which lists a few basic facts about her- her name (Clara), her age (18), her height (6' 2"), whether or not she's a Career (yes) and a couple of other tidbits I mostly gloss over as she gets to work.

Her training session lasts all of the fifteen minutes she's given, but it never grows boring, which is a major positive in my book. In those fifteen minutes, she assembles a nasty-looking leg trap that activates correctly the first time it's tested, fights two trainers to a standstill with her sword (at the same time), and then proceeds to hit the track for a six-minute mile after she's already done the other things.

Once she leaves, we have a brief period to enter our scores. I enter "10."

When the period to enter has ended he results get fed into a computer that does the math for us. However, we don't know what anyone entered but ourselves, and out of tradition, we don't ask each other so things stay as unbiased as possible.

The guy from One proceeds to pick up two swords and ask for a trainer to duel. Someone gets sent out and they fight. It's pretty simple, and my attention actually starts to wander until I hear the first scream.

When I scramble to the window to get a closer look at the situation, I find the boy standing over the trainer he was just dueling, who's now lying on the floor. Based on the way this kid's reacting, I doubt he's getting up anytime soon, if at all. There's no blood, but I'm not quite sure if someone's neck is supposed to bend that way.

"Get someone to the floor," Summer yells, and the next few minutes pass in a blur. Several Avoxes run out to try and get the trainer moving again while the boy stops and stares, although he does eventually finish the rest of his session as the body gets carted off.

"Well, this is great," Summer says. "I'll organize condolences later today, but we have to get this done. Let's clean this up the best we can and try to move on."

By this point, not many people even remember what the kid ended up doing, including myself, so the score he gets is anyone's guess.

Several more Avoxes clean up the area as best as they can and then the girl from Two comes in, grabs a machete, and asks for a trainer to duel. One comes out, they fight to a standstill (she plays very defensively, blocking all the attacks without problems but rarely going on the offensive) and that just about wraps up her session. I don't know what score she'll get, but I do know that she was a step down from the other two.

Then the guy comes in, grabs a nice-looking sword, and requests to duel Cutter. Not just any trainer, Cutter specifically. He comes in, and the second they start fighting, it's pretty clear that both of them are top-tier swordsmen- neither one gives an inch, and neither of them is even scratching the other. After about ten minutes, both of them finally begin to tire out, but that's when the boy makes a move, knocking the sword out of Cutter's hand after a failed attack and then using it to knock him to the ground.

All I can think is "Wow." I don't know the exact number of times Cutter's lost to a tribute when wielding his favorite sword, but I've heard rumors that it's in the single digits. Before the boy can finish, though, he proceeds to grab several dummies off the rack, obliterating them with the same sword before his time runs out.

I'm not sure what score he'll end up with, but it better be high. If this kid doesn't get at least a ten, we need to revise our scoring system.

We get a respite from the Careers for a short while- the girl from Three comes in and has a remarkably ordinary session. She takes the edible-plants test and gets seventeen out of twenty correct, then starts a fire with relative ease and keeps it alive until her session ends. She marches out with her head held high, but I have no idea what the others think of it, so her score is up in the air for me.

The guy from Three follows, wearing all black and a mask. His session is probably the strangest one so far (and that's saying a lot). A single balloon gets released inside the Training Center before the lights cut out, leaving him shrouded in darkness and impossible to spot unaided. Shortly afterward, an Avox comes in and hands out a handful of flashlights, as well as leaving a note that our goal is to find him before he gets the balloon.

We do our best to do the job, switching off every few minutes as we hunt for the kid in our beams, but even after we've scanned the entire room, we haven't noticed him- either he's so good at blending in that we've just passed over him without noticing or he's just superb at dodging the flashlights. Either way, we don't see him until suddenly a hand reaches out and grabs the balloon, the lights kicking on as that happens.

All of us are treated to the sight of the kid on top of one of the beams that crisscross the ceiling. How he got there is anyone's guess, but he clearly has some talent if he's able to do, well, that.

Once he negotiates the way back down (thankfully, with the lights still on) his session is over, and he exits to be replaced by the girl from Four. Strangely enough, she's the only Career not to ask for a trainer to duel, instead seeking out targets once she's gotten her trident. She does a pretty solid job: out of her five throws, her first four get drilled into the center of the target. Unfortunately, her fifth one barely even hits the edge, which does kind of put a damper on the other four.

Right afterward, she throws herself in the pool, swimming four laps back and forth with ease, faster than I could ever hope to be able to. Once that's done, she gets a towel from the side of the pool to dry off, and her session is over. Just like that, all of the Careers are done.

Then the boy comes in, and by now I notice that the other scorers are starting to get drunk. They're laughing much louder than they were before and some of them wobble when they walk. However, after a brief look, I switch back to paying attention to the kid, who's surprisingly good considering he isn't a Career. Eighteen out of twenty on the edible plants test, an efficient method of cutting up a dummy with both a trident and a knife, and then absolutely demolishes the Easy difficulty of "Fighting Alliances."

We all put in scores, but I notice the spread getting wider with every tribute, and this is when people begin to lose interest. The scores are going to just stop making much sense (at least, the ones from non-sober people) pretty soon.

A handful of fairly ordinary sessions commence after that. Both the girl and boy from Five create traps during their sessions, both take a couple of tries to trigger but still technically work. After that, their sessions diverge- the girl makes it most of the way up the climbing wall before her height gets in the way and she drops, while the boy starts a fire with remarkable speed. It's all well and good, but considering they showed themselves as a minimal threat in terms of killing other tributes, I wouldn't be surprised if they get low scores.

The girl from Six, as far as I can tell, makes some kind of poison during her private session. (Since she requests the toxicity of it be analyzed the second she finishes, I'm pretty confident that's what it should be, anyway.) Right after that, she makes yet another trap- it's a little small and definitely non-lethal, but works the first time. As soon as she's done, the boy comes in and has the first dumpster-fire of a private session: he tries to use a slingshot, but most of the shots barely even graze the target, and the one that hits dead center looks a lot more like luck than skill. His attempt at building a shelter doesn't go much better: it collapses before he's halfway done.

Halfway done, and I can feel my attentiveness wavering. By now, a lot of the others are drunk out of their minds, so before the girl from Seven comes in, I turn to Summer.

"Is it always like this?"

She lets out a brief laugh, more out of relief than anything else. "Honestly, this is a lot better than usual. At this time last year, three of us were passed out on the floor. At least everyone's still conscious."

Once that brief chat is over, we turn to the girl from Seven, who turns out to be surprisingly interesting despite her young age. She hits the center of the target eight times out of ten with a slingshot and then proceeds to scramble to the top of the climbing wall before even getting her harness attached. (Going up, she kind of resembles the girl from Five after half a dozen cups of coffee.) Before any of us can react, she throws herself from near the top, breaks her fall with a smooth roll (which is a good thing, considering I'm pretty confident some of us thought she was trying to kill herself) and bows for us.

As for the boy, he's definitely more powerful- he takes on the Medium difficulty of "Fighting Alliances" by himself. While he does eventually lose, it's a very close fight, especially considering that it's three on one. I'm honestly not even sure what to rate him, considering that maybe comparing him to the Careers isn't fair, but it's hard to be unbiased after seeing them fight.

Girl from Eight comes in, and by now everyone except for the designated Sober Scorers is completely wasted. I'm seriously wondering if the entire team (except us, of course) is made up of alcoholics or something, because this is the second time this has happened in less than a week. However, this chick appears to snap everyone out of their stupor because she grabs two knives and requests a trainer to fight. Besides the Careers, she's the first kid to duel with a real person in her session.

I manage to whisper something to Lux, who's paying close attention. "Think she can do it?"

"Would be cool if she did," he whispers back.

And as it turns out, she can use those knives well. The trainer isn't anyone special by their standards, and the girl has an interesting style- instead of staying still, blocking, and then charging forward (like most of the Careers do) she's weaving around the trainer so fast that he's having a hard time seeing where she even is, although she rarely attacks herself. However, after ten or so minutes of this, he starts to tire out, and the girl manages to knock him down, pointing the knife right at his throat.

Through the glass, I hear her say, "Checkmate." Then, she walks off, strangely not even smiling.

The last five minutes, she tries her hand at the climbing wall, but at this point, that barely even matters- she's getting a good score, I can feel it.

The boy's another trainwreck- he picks up a knife and uses it to attack a dummy, but it keeps slipping in his hands and he can barely land hits on the stationary target. Presumably looking to try and salvage things, he takes the edible-plants test right afterward and manages to scrape together twelve right answers out of twenty- not anywhere close to good, but at least a better showing than his knife skills.

Eight sessions to go. The girl from Nine uses a dagger to attack a dummy and honestly doesn't look half bad while doing it. The boy, on the other hand, goes for a bow- he can't really shoot for accuracy, but at least more than half of his shots hit the dummy. It's better than nothing, anyway.

The girl from Ten comes along and has one of the more interesting sessions. First, she throws some knives and manages to do decently at it- not Career level, but far better than I'd expect. After that, she gets a solid nineteen out of twenty on the edible plants test before requesting a trainer to duel with no weapons. One comes in, she seems to follow a very similar strategy to the girl from Eight, and eventually they reach a draw because her time runs out.

Boy from Ten comes in and smiles for us. It almost works again- I feel everything else slipping away before I catch myself and break the connection. However, even without a connection, I can tell this kid is talented. At the beginning, he grabs a machete and takes on the "Fighting Alliances" Scenario Simulator on its Medium setting. Then, in a shocking turn of events, he proceeds to come out on top.

Four more to go. After a nineteen out of twenty on the edible plants test, the girl from Eleven tries her hand with a bow and arrow and isn't half bad. Her attempts at hitting stationary targets go well, but when she tries a Scenario Simulation, it gets harder. She still doesn't do badly, but her aim does get worse when the targets start moving. At least, for a time- her aim is much better by the end of her session than at the beginning.

The guy follows and has a session I can only describe as incredible. He starts by acing the edible plants test, then marches into the Scenario Simulator with a sickle, requesting the medium difficulty of Fighting Alliances. Everyone who isn't asleep or completely wasted gets drawn to the window where they can view how he does. Soon, he emerges victorious, all his enemies nothing more than orange particles on the floor.

He walks out of the area with a smile on his face. Two to go, and chances are, neither of them is going to be that interesting based on what I've seen about them.

The girl from Twelve comes in and picks up as many knives as she can carry before dragging a target into a more open area. She throws two knives in quick succession, both hitting close to the center. I smile, but I'm not sure if anyone else is looking.

If they weren't before, they start the instant a third knife shatters the glass in the window between us and the Training Center and three more quickly follow. Everyone who's awake, including me, screams and backs away from the window and suddenly Summer is screaming for someone to "get down there and restrain her, damn it!"

By the time she gets incapacitated by a tranquilizer dart, somewhere between ten and twelve knives have made its way into the room, although thankfully none of them have hit anything living. A trainer drags her out, and it's up to us to explain why the hell there's broken glass everywhere if her District partner asks.

"It's a shame," Summer says. "If she kept aiming at the target, she could have at least gotten a five or a six."

Last kid of the day comes in, thankfully not attempting to attack us or ask why our window is broken. Instead, he goes to the back and appears to be attempting to make a poison. A trainer moves in, probably to make sure he doesn't try anything like the last girl did.

However, he somehow isn't capable of stopping the kid from taking the finished product and pouring it into his mouth. He proceeds to collapse, trainers rush in and begin performing something called "CPR," and Summer has graduated from groaning to using every curse word in the book.

It doesn't seem to be doing anything. I'm not particularly sure how pressing on someone's chest would counter a poison (especially since they probably have no idea what it even is in the first place) but I digress. After about five minutes, they leave the kid alone and run out (presumably to get an antidote), but thirty seconds later, the boy springs to his feet like nothing happened.

I'm not sure what the heck just went on, and as far as I could tell, neither did he. He just kind of wanders out of the area in a daze and I have no idea what to do next.

Summer looks exhausted by now. I ask, "So, what do we do now?"

"We send the scores to the president, he goes over them and makes some final adjustments, and then they go to the press," Summer says. "They'll air at the same time they do every other year."

That's a good thing. At least our work will be made public to anyone who cares to see it. Which is probably the entire Capitol with how hyped up the Games are.

And if there's one thing I've learned from those above me, it's that exposure is good.

Author's Notes:

-I've got nothing to say, except that everyone's scores will be revealed next chapter. See you then!