Um... anyone gonna review? I'll pose the question one more time... who is your favorite character, the one you want to see live longest? Cir, Fillie, Chryssie, or Hawk?
"Hey, Rosa," someone called, and I glanced up. The morning light filtered through the windows and gave Ty a sort of halo as he jogged over to me. "How're your feet?"
"Hmm?" I asked, and then remembered the night before. "Oh, fine. Nothing a good shower couldn't fix."
"That's good," he said, grinning. "I'll try not to sneak up on you again, or you might die or something."
I just rolled my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest. "You better watch yourself, Hawthorn. I might be the one surprising you next time."
He raised his hands in mock-fear, with wide eyes. "I'm terrified."
"Will you guys shut up?" Dianna called from the other side of the room. We were in the entry hall to the Center, and all 52 tributes were waiting there in anticipation to see how we were going to spend our next week. Apparently over eight floors sprawled below us of various different rooms; perhaps some were training rooms, but we had no idea what the rest of them were for.
"Oh, look," Ty said, putting a hand over his eyes and squinting past Dianna. "It looks like they're getting ready to take us down to the training rooms." I followed his gaze and saw a group of Capitol citizens in surprisingly un-Capitol-like clothing pushing through the glass doors that connected us with the outside world.
"Hey, Ash," I called out, glancing around for the blonde head that belonged to my brother.
"Yeah, Rosa?" his voice came from behind me. I glanced over my shoulder to see him, Fillie and Hawk standing together.
"Stay close to me, alright? I don't want you getting too close to some of these people," I said.
"Alright, can Fillie and Hawk stay with us, too?" he asked, grey eyes wide and innocent.
I glanced at the boys. They were the only other boys that were in Ash's same year and I knew that Ash and Hawk had been in the same touring group over the previous days, which resulted in the two of them becoming friends. I was tempted to say no, because I knew it would be a bad decision to encourage their friendship, but I realized that would be terribly hypocritical – I had no intention of avoiding Ty, Dianna, Thray or Thomas.
"Um, sure," I said, and the boys highfived (which was pretty comical to watch, actually, because three people highfiving all at once is somewhat difficult to do).
"Hurry up, Rosa," Ty said, and I turned and started walking towards where the Capitol citizens were training. Once everyone stood close to them, a man with an oddly trimmed beard stepped forwards.
"We are the trainers who will be working with you for the next week," the man said. His voice was low and rumbling, and his eyes flicked over each of us without a hint of emotion in them. "We will teach you how to fight and survive in any conditions. I am Varius, Head Trainer. I will be overseeing the entirety of the events over the next few days."
A slender but strong woman stepped forward then. She was very plain by Capitol standards; she hadn't a trace of make up on her face and her completely ordinary brown hair lay straight and flat going down her back. "I am Marina. I am the cardiac trainer, and I will work with you on drills, endurance tests and running exercises." She stepped back, and another woman stepped forward.
This woman was taller but thinner, without the well-formed muscles that Marina had. "I am Iulia, the botanist trainer. I will work with you on identifying various forms of plant life, and learning what purpose each plant serves."
A man stepped forward as Iulia stepped back. "I am Marcus, weapon's master. I will oversee all weaponry training."
"I am Horatius," a thinner boy said, not stepping forward. "I am the knife trainer."
"I'm Laelia," a girl said, staying where she stood as well. "I am the archery trainer."
And so they continued introducing themselves; a sword trainer, a hand-to-hand combat trainer, a spear-throwing trainer; a trapping trainer, a basic survival trainer, a medical trainer... honestly, their names just started going over my head around that point.
After what seemed like an eternity, the trainers led us to the other side of the room to a hallway I had never noticed before. The hallway wasn't terribly wide, only perhaps 8 feet, and moved at a downwards slant. It had a gradual curve to the right so that we were walking down in a giant spiral, heading into the belly of the earth.
Gradually the hallway widened out and a huge, cavernous room opened before us.
The room was divided by large glass barriers that were painted with a special coating that made it appear like a mirror, although it wasn't really. I was familiar with this material because sometimes the schoolmasters used it to ensure that the students weren't cheating; you could see through the glass as though it was normal glass when you wore a certain type of glasses. In school, they would put these thin barriers between the desks so that the students couldn't see each others' papers, but the schoolmaster would wear the glasses so that they could see all the students at once with ease. Almost like one-way mirrors, but slightly different.
The glass barriers stretched upwards about 10 feet but didn't reach all the way to the ceiling, and within each division I saw different things. There were sword racks, there were archery ranges, there were tracks, there were a few smaller obstacle courses, there were things that I couldn't find a purpose for. But what really interested me was the glass figure at the farthest reaches of my vision. It was a maze made out of that glass, and from what I could see the passages were narrow. Something glittered inside the entrance, and I realized with a jolt that it was a trip wire. The maze was booby-trapped.
Everyone spread out throughout the training center, and the only way I could distinguish all the tributes from the trainers was by the color of our uniforms; ours were black with a blue tint, while theirs had a red tint.
"Where do you want to go first?" I asked to no one in particular, giving the center a second glance over.
"Let's go there!" Ash declared, pointing at a random part of the center.
Hawk and Fillie started running towards it and Ash was on their heels, and I sighed before following them.
"I'm going to go over there first if you don't mind," Ty said, pointing to the station next to the one that the boys were running towards. "I'll meet up with you in like, ten minutes."
"Alright," I said.
Once I got to the station, I immediately saw why Ash had wanted to go to this one first. There were two trainers there, and one of them was making a bow.
"Why hello there," the man making the bow said, offering the boys a kind smile. "Would you like to learn how to make weaponry?"
"Yeah!" Hawk said.
"Rosa had started teaching me how before the final invasion happened and interrupted it," Ash said, looking up at me. I felt the blood rush to my face and I wished that he hadn't said that; there was really nothing that the Capitol could do about it, but it still wasn't information I wanted spreading around.
"Really?" the man said, looking up at me. He had dark brown eyes, so dark they were almost black. "Have you made bows before?"
"Only a couple times," I replied, glancing down at my toes.
"Well," he said quietly, "That's all it really takes, doesn't it? How straight to they shoot?"
"Pretty straight, every now and then I make a weird arrow that's off by a couple centimeters per twenty meters..."
"Well I'm sure we can help you with that," he said. "Meredith, would you show these boys how to shave a branch?"
The second trainer looked up from where she was organizing the tools and supplies, and nodded. The man placed the bow he was making on one of the tables, and reached for something under the table. He pulled out a bucket filled with long, thin sticks, and placed it by his bow.
"So, tell me," he said, running his hands along the top of the branches. "Which of these would you pick to make an arrow?"
I looked at him skeptically, and then looked at the bucket. I couldn't see them very well from their half-concealed position, so I dumped the bucket out on the table and spread the sticks out so I could see each one.
"Good," he said, quietly. "Now what?"
I reached for the straightest branch I saw.
"No." He shook his head. "Scrape at the bark a little."
I ran my thumbnail over the bark and cut it. The cut was green.
"It's a fresh branch, it might not dry as nice, or it might become brittle."
"Oh," I said, sheepishly. Those kind of rules applied when making a bow, why wouldn't they when making arrows? Although for a bow, you could peel it and then let it dry for a few months... I shook my head to clear my thoughts.
"Try this one," he said, deftly picking up an equally straight but completely dead and dry branch. I offered him an embarrassed smile and reached out to take it from him, and glanced around for the tools required to shave it.
"Do you have a knife or anything?" I asked, glancing up.
"You should use sand paper instead," he said. "Knives can take out chunks or give it sides while sandpaper just rubs the bark off, leaving it smooth and round." He fumbled under the desk again and handed me a piece of rough sand paper.
"But I'm not going to have sandpaper in the arena," I said, frowning.
"No, but there will be sand for you to hold and rub against it, which will do nearly as well," he replied. I thought about it for a moment, nodded, and started sanding the stick down. After that it was easy enough to split one end to make a notch, fletch it and attach on a pre-made arrowhead to the other end.
When I had completed my arrow, I heard footsteps behind me and a hand rested on my shoulder. I looked up to see Ty studying the arrow I held in my hand.
"Did you make that?" he asked, gently taking it away from me. "Not bad."
"Did you have fun doing whatever it was you were doing?" I asked, taking my arrow back.
"Oh, loads," he said, rolling his eyes. "It was kind of cool, actually. Your brother's doing pretty well making a bow." He nodded towards where Ash was sitting, cutting notches into the ends of a stick in order to string it.
"Hmm," I said, moving over to where Ash was sitting to work on the bow. I sat in the vacant chair beside him, and watched the trainer tell him to cut the notches deeper.
I yawned and stretched out my legs, closing my eyes ever so slightly.
Something ran into my foot and I opened my eyes abruptly. I looked up to see one of the female tributes from District Two, Maroon Ison, was sprawled across the ground in front of me. She brushed herself off and glared at me.
"You think that was funny? Tripping me?" she demanded, anger mutating her otherwise pretty face.
"Oh, sorry, I was just stretc-" I began, glancing up at her.
"Yeah, sure. You were trying to piss me off, weren't you?" she got to her feet and brushed off her knees again. "Well, you succeeded. You've made your first and worst enemy, bitch."
She spun on her heel and left me sitting there, still trying to figure out what happened. But one thing was sure – she was right.
She would end up being my worst enemy.