Ohmygods guys I love you. 3 I left after posting chapter 8 and I come back an hour later and I had like... 7 emails about people favoriting/following/reviewing. I was literally dancing in my seat. It was completely awesome, it means a ton to me when people favorite/follow/review. You are beautiful people. 3 As a reward, have another chapter!

He handed the dress to me, with a stack of other clothes. When I didn't strip out of my robe right then and there and start dressing myself, he frowned slightly. "Do you not like it?"

"She's SHY, Dad," Tatiana said, rolling her eyes. "Leave the room, I'll help."

"Just like Katniss." Cinna shook his head and left. I sincerely hoped he would stop comparing me to my mother; it just kept reminding me of her. Once he was gone, I reluctantly shucked out of my robe and stood there awkwardly with Tatiana. She handed me a thigh-length thin cotton shirt, which I pulled on over my head eagerly. It was very VERY tight fitting, but it covered me so that would have to do for now.

She wrapped a thick cotton thing around my chest then that was almost like a bra but not quite, I had no idea quite how to describe it. Then came the corsette... I knew what that was, but knowing it's name made me no more comfortable wearing it. It snapped across the back and held me super-tightly in place. I was already starting to regret that whole wanting to be girly thing that I had been thinking but moments before.

Tatiana growled irritably from behind me and pinned my hair up quickly; I assumed it was getting in her way.

Then came the stockings. It was weird to me, because with such a tight corset I really couldn't bend down to pull the stockings on myself. If it had been up to me, I would have put them on immediately after the shirt, but apparently it really wasn't up to me. Once the stockings were just past my knees I could pull them the rest of the way up. They were nude and smooth, I suppose to cover some of the scars that I had from a childhood playing in the woods.

Then, finally, came the dress. She pooled it gently on the floor and I stepped into the hole in the center. She pulled it up around me and it fit like a glove, lacing up behind me around the snaps on the corset to make an elegant web of black and silver. The front of the dress was black and had a thick band around my midsection that started just under my chest and ended just above my hips, showing off my figure in every way it could manage. The black midsection was studded with tiny silver diamonds that swirled up and around my body tracing spirals and flowers. The lines raced up over my right shoulder to meet in a diamond flower, leaving my left shoulder bare. The lines on the other end of the swirls raced down my thighs where the black gossamer turned into a deep dark red, then a bright orange, then a yellow. The gossamer was cut into strips around my knees, almost like the petals of some burning flower. The bright colors on the end of the dress matched my hair, creating a sort of balance.

Then, he got out the shoes. They were black and made out of a sort of fabric, almost like ballet shoes and they wrapped up and around my legs in a laced pattern to tie behind my knees. Silver diamonds were studded on the shoes, too. While he laced the shoes up and tied them, Tatiana grabbed hold of my hands and started drawing on them with an oil-charcoal pencil, tracing swirls and designs up my arm in black that made my skin look ghostly pale even though I was rather tan.

Then, they went back at my hair.

I lost track of everything they were doing to me but when they finally stopped, they steered me before the shining metal mirror. My hair hung in waves of fire running down to my waist, and it was pinned back on one side with a diamond flower to match the one on the shoulder of my dress. The coal on my arms was elegant and made what pale skin showed through look flawless even though I knew there were scars and freckles there, and the dress accented my body in a way that made me look completely other than myself.

I stared for a long while. I couldn't believe how different I looked, it was unsettling. Almost like I had stepped into the body of another.

"Hurry up!" a voice outside the door interrupted my thoughts. It was Aelia's voice, whom I had forgotten completely. "We should be going, going, gone!"

"You are ready to walk out if you'd like," Cinna said in that calm, somber voice.

I nodded slowly, then paused. "Is any of this going to smudge if I rub it or anything?" I asked. I was worried about messing up their hard work and ending up looking like I came from a party in a mine.

"You really think that after working with Katniss, I would have given her daughter ANYTHING that smudged?" Cinna said, arching an eyebrow at me. I smiled half-heartedly and turned, going back for the door.

"Oh, and... Primrose," Cinna said, causing me to turn back around. "Don't forget to smile."

I didn't have it in me to smile then, but I did reply, "I'm Rosa, by the way. Primrose was my aunt." I then left the room, closing the door behind me. But not before I heard Cinna murmur under his breath,

"The name must be cursed."

The other three from District Twelve weren't so lucky in their stylists. Allie was dressed completely ridiculously, in a coal miner's uniform and had coal caked on her face. She looked about as happy as a wet cat. John was showing off his toned body in a speedo encrusted with fake, polished coal. He had stripes of coal on his bare skin and face, and looked completely uncomfortable. It was a good thing he was cute, or he'd have absolutely ZERO funding from the Capitol in that outfit.

Ash was slightly better off, but not much, which kinda pissed me off. He needed funding from the Capitol, what the hell were these stylists thinking?! He was in a skin-tight full body black suit, with a red and yellow cape on him like he was some kind of superman. Clearly, his stylist had tried to copy the fire of Cinna's ideas, but basically it looked like someone had printed a picture of fire on a blanket and tied the blanket around his neck.

When I entered the room, John looked impressed. Ash grinned. And Allie looked pissed. She didn't say anything, though, so that was nice; I didn't either.

We didn't have much of an opportunity to talk before we were ushered out, anyway. We stepped into the elevator, cramming the four tributes, the eight stylists, the two mentors and Aelia all into one elevator going down the building. When we reached the bottom floor, it was similar to how we remembered it but there were already probably sixty people in the room. I looked around and spotted the District Ten tributes with their mentors, stylists and escort. District Two was there, as well, and District 13. I couldn't place the other district that was already down there, which was odd... I thought I'd remember the tributes enough to place faces with a District, but I guess not. Maybe they were from Nine or something.

"Because there are so many tributes this year, they didn't want to put you in chariots," Aelia started talking to us. "They would either have to cram four of you into a single chariot or split the districts into groups of two tributes to go into the chariots, and that wasn't what they wanted. So, instead, your stylists had three options... to have you walk or dance your way across the town, to have you ride a horse, or to have you stand on a float. Your stylists chose horses. I think... Did all of you pick horses?" She turned to look at the stylists, who nodded. Even Cinna, who winked at me. "They were allowed to decorate the horses specially though so... they will show you your horses. Down this way, this way!"

She skipped off down the stairs and into the entry hall that we had seen when we arrived a few hours before. She then led us through a huge corridor to the right which emptied out into a large stone room. The room was missing a wall; instead of having a wall up by the street, it was completely open and bare. We could see a crowd gathering outside already.

In that room, six more blobs of people were standing. Some of them were around floats, some of them had horses, some of them were standing around nothing. Aside from those 6 blobs, there were seven more marked off spots in the room, one of which had a large black banner hanging over it with the number 12 written on it in gold thread.

We walked our way over and as we got closer, I could make out the four horses standing there. They were all black, but they were each decorated in a different way. I stopped looking at them, though, because I knew I would have plenty of time to observe them later and instead took the opportunity to scope out our opponents.

That girl with the red hair and the brown eyes from District Seven was watching me. When I looked up, I made eye contact with her immediately. Her face was calm, as though she was at peace, but her eyes were shadowed and calculating. Her shoulders were back and she stood there completely confident. She was draped in a gossamer green cloth that wrapped it's way around her body, letting skin show through in all the right places. Her red hair was held back partially with a stick slid between her locks, holding a bun in place. She looked precisely like a wood nymph. And she had no horse, and no float. It made me wonder why her stylists were planning on making her walk.

I tore my gaze away, and saw the scared little girl from district 5. She was watching me too. She was smaller than Ash, by a lot, and she had wide green eyes that sought me out. I wondered why so many of them were staring at me, and then I remembered what Cinna had made me look like. The girl had the crackle of lightning running across her dress, I suppose to make her look electric considering that District 5's main export is power.

I looked away from the girl, too, and realized we had already reached the number 12. Cinna steered me away from the other three tributes and to one of the horses. This particular horse was incredibly tall, so tall that I wasn't entirely sure how I was going to be able to get onto his back, much less in a dress. He was such a dark black that he was almost blue and had white flecks in his coat here and there, almost as though he was made out of the very fabric of the night sky. He had boots on his hooves and the saddle he was wearing glowed, same as the reins going back along his neck. His mane and tail were a silvery-white to match the flecks in his coat and his eyes weren't brown as was the norm in horses, but rather an eerie blue that showed the sideways-slit pupils that all horses had. Cinna steered me past him before I could finish appreciating him and to a wooden platform with steps leading up to it. I climbed atop it and Tatiana led the horse over to me.

I started to climb onto the horse in the only way I had ever seen a horse ridden, but Cinna made a noise in his throat that made me stop. "Side-saddle, silly duck," Tatiana said, smirking. "Just turn and sit on the saddle like it was any other bench."

I did as she said, and then she slid my right foot into the stirrups so as to hold my place. "Good, now turn so your torso so you're facing forwards... good, good," Tatiana continued instructing. "Now hold the reins like so. You don't need to steer him around, he's very well trained. He walks very smoothly, as well, so you don't have to worry about falling off. Just smile and look pretty, make sure to wave."

I looked up and smiled at her, a genuine smile this time, and in the process of looking up I saw that now eleven of the Districts were in this room. The only one that was missing was District 13.

Nero's voice came over the loudspeakers then, and all of the tributes grew quiet.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" Nero announced. "Welcome to the Parade of Tributes, the first ever of the Graveyard Games! Immediately after, we will interview each of the tributes, so you can well and truly meet the fifty-two tributes you will be spending the next month of your lives with!"

Cheering made the building shake, and the horse beneath me quivered.

"What?!" I hissed to Cinna. "These are the interviews too?! I thought they were supposed to be separate! What am I going to say?! How am I supposed to act?! What... How..."

"Just smile. I hope you have your Dad's personality, because Katniss was about as personable as a sack of crabs," Cinna said calmly. "Your mother... She was fire. She burned away the competition, and that's what coal can do. The other thing that happens to coal... it turns to diamonds under pressure. Good luck."