Pinky Hurwitt, Gamemaker:

Seating myself in the white swivel chair, I turn my gaze upwards, to the video footage of the arena, and my fingers lightly tap out a pattern on my keyboard. At the station next to mine, Pyramus makes changes to the arena's terrain, and Cassus puts the finishing touches on the training outfits. He's got all of them done, but he's making sure they're neatly folded and the boots are laced evenly. I pull up a tablet that's connected to my hologram, and I pinch and twist at it, making sure that I'm selecting exactly the right muttation to begin with.

Lucent gave me the go-ahead to begin loading the arena up with my animals, and I have to admit, the task is made more difficult by my impatience. I've set up several screens where I have to type in passwords and confirm the mutt species, individual, and location before I get to virtually place it in its position so that nobody unauthorized could flub up my hard work by accidentally releasing stuff by mistake, but now it's tedious to run through the double- and triple-checks.

It'll be well worth it in the end though, because I'm now free to pore over a menu of mutts. The first ones I decide to put in the arena are a type of speckled, highly territorial fish. I select one, a particularly large female, and outline where I want her to start out, in a pond on the south side of the tree line. I wait anxiously as a loading bar appears. It fills up slowly, and although it irritates me to wait, I know why. It's because the folks downstairs have to find the correct individual, load her into a hovercraft, and transport her to the arena safely.

There are so many things that could go wrong so they have to be especially careful, particularly when dealing with some of the more dangerous ones. I have a number of small mammals that I've scattered around the arena, various badgers, rodents, weasels, raccoons and the like. They're not too bad, but for some of the more predatory beasts, the stakes are much higher. I've created a truly monstrous one, a tower of muscle fourteen feet high. It's crossed with a bear, among other things.

Those tributes are going to have the shock of their lives when I release it. Right now, I'm only putting the smaller, more docile animals inside the arena, both the mutts and the natural sources of food like deer and squirrel. The others, the ones that I'll sic on certain people during the Hunger Games itself, are only being moved to holding tanks underneath the arena, where they will be able to head upwards easily once somebody moves aside the locked grates.

I have a great deal of interesting insects as well. Forget Tracker Jackers, I've come up with an even worse wasp mutt. These are much, much smaller, and they're tunnelers, so they can burrow into the flesh of whichever unfortunate tributes happen to agitate them. I could have used mockingjays to mimic the sounds of the tributes' family members, that's a classic Quarter Quell event, but instead I took it a step further and created some junebug mutts. They look quite innocuous, but if disturbed, begin to emit screams and cries for help that sound exactly like the tributes' loved ones.

The beetles aren't really meant to harm the tributes as the wasps are. They're just a tool to lure tributes away from their alliances or towards danger. I made them with the intention of disorienting the tributes and influencing their movement throughout the arena, so I can better control them at Lucent's urging.

Of course, I have other, less interesting mutts as well. I've developed a hybrid between an ox and a bison to roam the flatter ranges of the arena. They're naturally relaxed animals, and only become aggressive when attacked. If larger alliances like the Careers manage to kill one, it'll keep them fed for a good while. I made sure that the meat is extremely lean and tough, which will provide more concentrated energy, as opposed to fattier meats that provide minimal, longer-lasting energy.

For the more rocky areas, my feeder mutts mainly consist of small game, like genetically engineered hares and coyotes, along with some regular old burros with just a few alterations.

I'm very proud of my work. The muttations I've made come in many varieties, from bearlike apex predators, to poison-leaching stoats, to anaconda-eels, to the relatively harmless junebugs, the tributes will never know what's coming next. They'll constantly doubt themselves, always wondering if the creature they just trapped is safe to eat or secretly spits acid. They'll be wary when trekking through the forests, flinching when they see a bird in a tree, running away from a snarling carnivore as it bears down on them, cautiously stalking a fox to find a water source.

I'll always be watching, waiting for them to provoke a creature into a deadly altercation, waiting to see them get separated from their stash of food, waiting to see sponsors fork over money for snakebite antidotes. This is truly my domain, and although I don't take pleasure in seeing children die, I can't help but be proud of my mutts whenever they're the cause of a cannon going off. It means they're doing their jobs well, and that means I'm doing my job well.

After all, everybody knows what happens to Gamemakers who don't do their jobs well. I don't think President Mikhail would do that to me unless he really had to, he tends to be fairly generous, but then again, he did it to Lucent's predecessor, Langston Arquette. His greatest failure was the lack of adequately vicious mutts, and while I think I have that covered, one can never be too sure.

I'm only twenty-eight. I have my whole life ahead of me, and a wife and a daughter at home. Gamemaking is a dangerous job. A highly acclaimed one nonetheless, but still perilous to those who fall short. As much as I love it, I still have a healthy amount of fear of my superiors. Average Heads of Muttations can be found easily, they are expendable, and I have seen many come and go in my lifetime.

All I can do at this point is hope my creations will measure up.


Hey y'all! This is a super short chapter, just to give everybody a taste of the mutts. But in other news, we hit 150 reviews, which is absolutely insane, and I love each and every one of you for taking the time to read, let alone comment on my writing! The next chapter will be out soon!

~LC :)