AN: Here we go, bitches! Hop on board the cringe-express and let's start rolling, because there's no getting off now, baby!
You may notice that I'll be doing the Districts out of order. There is a method to my madness, however. I'll be going in increasing order of complete craziness. So at the beginning, we'll have the undeniably Sue-ish but not completely awful characters, and at the end we'll have District 4, which includes a boy with no less than forty-nine fucking names and a girl who is literally a time-travelling murderous child-bride called Kristen Stewart.
Disclaimer: Dinosaur-of-Fabulousness is not responsible for any vomiting, eye-damage due to excessing rolling, gagging or suicidal thoughts that may arise form reading this fic. If you feel an overwhelming urge to gouge out your own eyes with a rusty spoon please contact your physician immediately. pls dont sue kthanxbai
Uh, also, warning for like curse words and big boy themes. So, like, ask your parents permission before going on the Disney website or something.
Other disclaimer: Much like a lambourgini, decent clothes, or any friends whatsoever, the Hunger Games do not belong to me.
Chapter 3: These characters sound familiar somehow...
Acacia Evergreen, 16, D12F
When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold. My fingers stretch out, seeking Rose's warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress. She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother. Of course, she did. This is the day of the reaping.
Wait. This sounds familiar somehow…
Whatever, I think as I climb out of bed. I perform the sacred ritual that all tributes partake in on the day of the reaping: looking at themselves in the mirror and describing their own appearances.
I look at myself in the mirror and describe my own appearance. I have fiery shimmering bright grey eyes the colour of, I don't know, dirt? And I have olive skin. I'm tall and muscular but not like bodybuilder muscles, gross. Like "white girl on tumblr" muscles. My armpits, legs and eyebrows are perfectly maintained. Duh. Despite the fact that I live in poverty, I've still got killer tits and legs for days. Being malnourished is like, so last week, amiright?
I have long, straight BROWN hair. See, I AM original. Brown hair, bitches. Deal with it.
"What are you saying, Acacia?" comes a voice from behind me.
My ultra-fast reflexes kick in and I fire two shots with my bow and arrow at the sound.
"Rude," my sister Rose says, with two arrows stuck in each eye. Luckily she watched a Youtube video on how to get into med school (the key is to be Asian) and now knows all there is to know about medicine. She quickly bandages herself back up, steals two eyes from a passing llama and shoves them into her face.
I hug my little sister. She's so sweet and pure and innocent and…. and….shit, those are her only personality traits, aren't they?
"Are you ready for the reapings?"
"Shit, I forgot about the reapings!" I cry, since it's the law that every POV character will forget about the reaping until the last possible moment.
"Are you going hunting?" Rose asks.
"Of course, just after I finish narrating my backstory," I smile.
"Great," says Rose, running off to sit in a corner for an hour until I need to interact with her again.
I make my way out into the woods. My hair whips out behind me as I run, tangling itself into a perfect braid. I think about my backstory as I run. My parents died in a mine accident when I was young. Ever since then, I have lived with my generic, ineffectual, unhelpful aunt. In the five seconds while they were bleeding out on the floor, my parents taught me to hunt with a bow and arrow so I could feed myself and my little sister (my aunt can starve since she's not significant to the plot). My life is so sad, it's almost like a movie. One that will get needlessly split into two parts just as it gets interesting.
I meet up with my BFF4evsies Adam on the way there.
When I first met him, I was so shy that I mumbled my name, and he misheard it. So now it's our little friendly inside joke for him to call me-
"Hey, sugartits," he says, hugging me. He smells like apple and woodsmoke and human faeces and snow-dampened leather.
"Hi!" I say.
"Look what I shot," he smiles, holding up a human foot with an arrow in it.
"Mmm," I say gratefully, biting into it. Tastes like fungus. Yum.
Adam and I sit and talk for a while. He talks about rebellion and stuff. I sometimes wonder what it was like before the Dark Days, before the Vague Bad Things happened. Before President Trump took over and turned it into his dreamworld- Panem, which stands for Place of Amazingly No Ethnic Minorities. It's tough sometimes, being sixteen and the only person who recognises the problems with totalitarianism.
"We could do it, you know," Adam says suddenly. "Take off, live in the woods. I've heard there's a place beyond the outside. A magical place filled with freedom and syrup. They call it "Canada"."
I sigh. "What are you on, Adam?" Adam was such an idiot. Didn't he realise I had to protect my dear innocent pure little sister Rose? I was all she had left. Besides our useless ineffectual aunt. I think Adam had siblings too, but they were so irrelevant to the narrative that we never talked about them.
"Are you ready for the morning?" Adam asks, changing the subject. I shudder, remembering last year's games. A sadistic young fungal infection called Sam Pepper had been reaped from District 8. He had stabbed five tributes to death while screaming ITS JUST A PRANK BRO before the District 1 tribute finally killed him.
"Yeah, I guess," I say, picking at a piece of grass. "Okay, gotta go." I say, standing up. "Have fun at the reapings."
"Wear something pretty," he says flatly. "Or nothing. Nothing works too." Then he grabs me by the waist and draws me in to kiss me deeply on the mouth.
Ah Adam. We were such good friends. He was like a true brother to me.
Pooto Mollork, 16, D12M
"Good morning Pooto," smiles Spineless Enabler, my father, as I walk into the kitchen. My brother Rye is already eating his breakfast, and my other brother, idk, Toast, is slicing a loaf of bread and buttering it. My mother, Bitch, is propped up against a chair, reading a copy of Mein Kampf, munching into her favourite food: fresh baby.
"Toast!" she screeches suddenly. "Get your feet off the table!"
"Yeah Toast," I grin, "stop LOAFing around!"
I look wildly around at my family, smiling, and bring my fingers up to point at them.
"Geddit… cause loafing has the word loaf in it… loaf of bread… and we're bakers…"
My mother slaps me.
"You need to stop," my brother Rye says, shoving into me as he gets up.
"Or do I KNEAD to stop?" I ask. Rye slaps me.
"Seriously," Toast snaps, "stop!"
"I can't stop!" I cry, "I'm on a ROLL!"
There's a symphony of claps as three family members all slap me at once. My mother does it with her copy of Mein Kampf. Ouch.
"We need to get going," Dad says suddenly.
"Yes, I've laid out your reaping clothes on your beds," my mother says.
"Uh, mom-" Toast begins.
"Don't worry, it's not the Nazi uniforms again." The whole family breathes a sigh of relief.
Once we've put on our reaping clothes, we head out the door. Rye is wearing an elegant, hand-washed tuxedo with a sprig of fresh flowers at his lapel. Toast is wearing a silk shirt and trousers lined with mink fur. I'm wearing a trash bag. I wonder who the favourite son is.
Then we walk to the reapings, because the author is getting bored and wants to move on to the next POV.
Acacia Everdeen, 16, D12F
"I got you your favourite blue dress," my aunt says, laying it out on the bed.
"I don't know," I say, squinting, "it looks kind of white and gold to me." I put it on and make my way to the square pulling my sister along with me.
"Wait- Acacia- I'm not dressed- you- idiot!" she says, as her chin bumps along the floor. I pull her up as we get to the square and hug her tightly. She turns to go.
"Wait," I say, grabbing my little sister. "Here, take this," I hand her a jabberjay from my pocket.
"Jesus Christ Acacia!" Rose screams, trying to hang on to the squawking live jabberjay in her hands. "Why did you give me this!?"
"I don't know!" I cry. "The submission form just said that my token was a jabberjay! I assume this is what they meant!"
Rose stabs the jabberjay in the neck and shoves it in her pocket, rolling her eyes at me. She walks off to the twelve year-old section and I go to the sixteens.
I look up at the stage, where Effie Trinket is furiously making out with Haymitch Abernathy because yep, it's that kind of story. The mayor reads out the generic speech.
"In conclusion, we really should have been more worried about global warming," the mayor finishes. Effie pulls herself out of Haymitch's grasp and hops up on stage, wobbling slightly.
"Right, um… Gryffindor!" Effie announces. "Wait, shit, that's not it. Uh, Dauntless! Fuck, which YA book am I in again? Right, right. Ladies first!" she announces, pulling a name out of the bowl.
"Rose Evergreen!" Effie sighs, rolling her eyes.
Oh no I think my poor innocent dear sweet sister. What am I to do?
"Are there any-"
"I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!" I cry.
"Gee, who'd have seen that coming?" Effie says. "Well, get on up here then."
I hop on stage, ignoring the groans and angry reviews that are already being flung my way.
"Okie dokie," Effie says, sticking her hand into the bowl. She plucks a name and reads it aloud.
"Pooto Mollork!"
Oh no, I think as he mounts the stage, not him.
FLASHBACK TIME Y'ALL
Once upon a time, my dad decided it would be a good idea to light up a blunt in the mines. He took it down to work and sparked up. Smoke was seeping into the air, the smell of weed was everywhere. His co-workers kept yelling at him to stop, cut it out, but he wouldn't listen. He just kept #420blazinit. The spark was a dangerous light in the darkness, and everyone kept screaming at him to stop, just stop, but he never did.
Anyway, five years later he died in a mining accident. I was out on the street with nothing but a pice of bread, some tattered clothes, and a small loan of a million dollars. I was all but ready to give up hope. The only meal we had left to eat was meat surprise (the surprise: the meat is Buttercup). Rose kept whining about how she was hungry and scared and hadn't eaten in five days or some bullshit. I decided to take one last chance and go out into the street to sell some of Rose's limbs that she wasn't using anymore.
I was crawling through the streets as it rained. The evil Merchants kept turning me away, saying ew and no and oh my god is that an arm I'm calling the cops. Jerks. Eventually I came to the baker's house. The rain was pouring on my face and I was staring out at him- Pooto Mollork. It was like that scene in the Notebook, y'know?"
"Please," I whispered, my voice coming out cracked and hoarse. "I'm so poor. I need some food, money, anything."
"So," Pooto whispered, "you could say you need…DOUGH?"
His mother slapped him so hard I saw a bruise on his cheek the next morning. But it was too late. The pun had filled me with light, with hope. I no longer felt the pain of hunger in my belly. I returned to Rose and told her the joke. She laughed happily and the world was filled with light and joy again also we sold our little brother Tommy to child traffickers.
FLASHBACK TIME OVER Y'ALL HOPE YA ENJOYED THE RIDE NO REFUND THANKS BYE
Pooto walks shakily up to the stage.
"Hello dearie," Effie smiles, putting a comforting hand on his shoulder. Peeta stares down mournfully.
"Gee," Pooto says, looking down at the floor. "I guess things have really gone a-RYE, haven't they?"
Effie slaps him.
"Well now," she says, "any volunteers?"
Pooto looks out hopefully to his two brothers. "Toast? Rye? Want to-"
"NOPE!" Rye shouts, flipping Pooto the bird.
"FUCK OFF!" Toast adds.
'Well, that was awkward," Effie says. "Ah well. Is there anything you'd like to say, Pooto?"
Pooto scratches his head. "This is a real CRUMB-y situation, huh?"
"You are such a weirdo," Effie says, right before she slaps him again. She motions for the audience to clap and we're lead off stage. Pooto stays for some reason, looking pensively out into the distance.
"Are you okay Pooto?" I ask the lone, desolate figure standing bowed at the stage, the morning light shining off his golden hair and casting a long, thin shadow on the ground. He whispers something, his voice caught and whisked away by the summer breeze.
"What did you say?" I ask, grasping his hand. His eyes meet mine, and the tender blue shines with regret and longing.
"I said," he whispers, "don't you mean I'm such a weird-DOUGH?"
The silence is broken only by the sound of Rye, Toast, Bitch, Spineless Enabler, the Mayor, Rose, my useless aunt, Finnick Odair, Johanna Mason, Beetee, Wiress, Cashmere, Gloss, Seneca Crane, Seneca Crane's beard, Harry Potter, Hitler and Han Solo running up to Pooto to slap him.
Pooto Mollork, 16, D12M
I think of Acacia as I walk down to the waiting room. I've had a crush on her ever since we were in school together (what? She was a sexy sexy five year-old). I would watch her walk home everyday from school, like that's not creepy at all. One time I crept into her house and watched her sleep. She woke up screaming WHAT IS THIS EDWARD CULLEN SHIT. She was so beautiful as she called the cops on me. I knew right then that I wanted to marry her and knock her up with babies with dumbass names like Pruefrue or something.
And now I would be forced into a fight to the death with her. Well, shit.
There comes a knock at the door.
"Heyo," says Toast as he jumps into the room, grinning. "Can I have your bed?"
"No way!" Rye shouts, sidling up to me. "I get the bed! Right Pooto? I'm your BFF, aren't I?" He gives me a smile, putting an arm around my shoulders. Jerks.
"Then why didn't you volunteer for me, hmm?" I ask. "Or should I say RYE didn't you volunteer for me?"
Toast slaps me. "No. You shouldn't."
Bitch and Spineless Enabler walk in. My dad is crying, and my mom looks like a bitch.
"Oh Pooto," Dad cries, wiping away his tears with a loaf of bread. "What are you going to do?"
"Make bread puns probably," I reply.
"Oh well," my mother says, "maybe District 12 will finally have a victor this year."
"Aw, thank mo-"
"She's a fighter, that one," my mother finishes. "Geddit, Pooto? SHE. SHE's a fighter."
"Yeah mom, I get it."
"As in, you're not gonna win."
"I understand-"
"Because you're not a fighter."
"I already said-"
"And you're gonna die."
"OKAY MOM I GET IT JESUS."
"No need to be like that," she sniffs. "We're all hurting here."
"God," I say, rolling my eyes. "No wonder I didn't care when you guys all died in Mockingjay."
"What?"
"Nothing," I say quickly. "Just a bread pun."
"Oh, right," my mother says, just before she slaps me.
AN: So my search history right now is 90 per cent bread… yeah.
Up next: District 7! Rude horses, advanced weaponry and inaccurate depictions of twelve year-olds.
Also, please review. I crave validation. And bread now for some reason.
Also also, do any of you guys have any ideas for a cliche arena? I've got some ideas, but I'm not really sure yet.
Hope you guys had a merry Christmas/Hannukkah/Kwanzaa. Consider this long overdue chapter a late present. See ya next time!