"Hey, wake up Katniss," Backpacky said, lying squarely next to her head in the sleeping bag. She woke with a slight intake of breath.

"Wait, do you sleep?" she asked.

"Nope."

Katniss turned her full attention to the orange pack, intrigued now. "What do you do all night then?"

"I think."

"So you think twice as much as a person does?"

"Mmhmm."

Katniss picked it up the bag by it's sides. "You can tell me how to win then! You must be a super genius!"

"It only takes one thing to win," he said, his big white eyes tunneling into hers.

"What?"

"Attitude."

She threw him back into the sleeping bag. "Dang it that's what Haymitch said."

Katniss rolled up her thin but effective sleeping bag, placed it inside Backpacky, and quickly made her way down the tree with the ease of a squirrel, but with the added caution of a squirrel who was being potentially chased by twenty three other squirrels.

As she trekked on, the one water bottle that had been in Backpacky began to drain at an alarming rate. Resisting the urge to panic, she began following the slope of the land downward in the direction her future water source would be flowing. Before long she came to a stream-fed pool. She skimmed the surface with her water bottle, then dripped in the correct amount of iodine.

"Here give me some of that, " said Backpacky. Katniss slumped him off her shoulder onto the ground and brought the bottle to his mouth.

"Seriously?" he said, "I don't need to sleep, but you think I need water?"

She swooped the water bottle up to her own lips and forced out a laugh. "Yeah-"

"I was kidding," he said dryly.

"I know, I was just going along."

Backpacky contiued to judge her with his eyes. "Wow."

A ball of fire splashed and exploded into the water with a great swooshing sound. Katniss slung Backpacky over her shoulder and scrambled up into an awkward run as another sphere of flame sizzled over her head.

"If that's another tribute, they're going to win," said Katniss, attempting to weave a defensive pattern through the trees.

"No, that's the Gamemakers. Pretty funny too," Backpacky chuckled.

She ducked and rolled. "What's funny about this?"

"Think about it."

"What am I looking for, a pun?" she panted.

"Sort of."

Katniss snapped her fingers. "Oh," she laughed, "Girl on fire-fireballs, that is fu-uaaaaghhhh!" she skidded to the ground, clutching her shin. Crawling and scraping her way behind the cover of a half-buried boulder, she ripped off the bottom of her pant leg. The shiny pink flesh and dark red burn marks were not encouraging.

Backpacky chuckled from behind her. "Fire..."

Ignoring this, Katniss ripped some strips from her pant leg, "Do you have anything in there for burns?"

"Wait, say it like you're Dora the Explorer."

Katniss grimaced. "Hey, Backpack!," Katniss said in a high enthusiastic tone, "Do you have medicine?" her face darkened again.

"No!" said Backpacky, mimicking her impression.

"Dang it."

An oppressive heat descended down upon them, and a crackling could be heard in the distance. A deer pranced over the rock and flew over Katniss's head. She struggled to her feet and looked over the grey rock to discover that the forest was completely ablaze behind her. It was advancing somehow, pushing onward through the brush like a wall.

She took off once again, limping wildly, knowing that the Gamemakers were shoving her into another entertainment opportunity. Just as she began to really out-distance the fire, that opportunity came.

"Look!" came the voice of a career.

Katniss could see the pack of well-armed tributes. She scaled a tree, and they circled around underneath her.

"I'm going up," said one, handing off some of his gear. He made it some ways up the tree before a branch snapped under his weight and he fell.

"Fatty," Backpacky shouted.

"Shut up!" the boy retaliated from his bed of broken sticks.

"Fat fat fatty."

The insulted boy was about to defend himself when another member of their pack came forward with a bow and took careful aim at the tree. One shot revealed that she was not as skilled as Katniss feared, and another arrow stuck into the tree just below Katniss, who took it and waved it around.

"We might as well camp here. We can deal with her in the morning," the pack began to settle.

Katniss stopped waving the arrow. "That's it?"

A male career looked up at her. "Yeah. You wait though."

"That's all you're going to try?"

A blank look in return.

"Why not set fire to the tree? Or try with the arrows again. This one was pretty close," she displayed the said arrow for him.

The tribute shook his head. "Nah."

Katniss's face revealed her growing agitation. "Okay, this is not a siege. I am not in a castle somewhere in France, being surrounded by the armies of my godless foes who are going to plunder my villages and rape my women. I am in a tree, and there are like six of you. This is not Monty Python and the Holy Grail, where I taunt you and you come up with increasingly ridiculous plans to enter my domain. All you need to do is burn this tree, or throw a knife, or something."

Ignoring their besieged squirrel, the careers made camp next to the unassailable tree.

Katniss surveyed the dark tree tops around her until a pair of eyes blinked out of the gloom at her. A dark face followed. It was the little girl, Rue. She pointed a tiny finger upwards.

Katniss followed the little digit up until she saw it too- her escape. It was a hornet's nest. But not just any hornet's nest. This was a Freaking Death LSD Hornet nest. The usual buzzing and resulting terrible swarming attacks that followed coming into close proximity with these nests had been delayed by the smoke from the fire.

"Oh, that's convenient," Backpacky expressed bitterly, "Bit of a deus ex machina, don't you think?"

"Shut up," Katniss began sawing away at the branch the nest was attached to with her knife.

Her knife dropped through and the big grey ball fell. Somehow, almost magically, it managed to fall through an entire tree-full of branches and not get stuck. Splitting open on the ground with a crunch, the hornets woke up from their smoky sleep. Katniss heard the cries of the careers as she moved as quickly as she could down the tree, hands scraping across bark. When she reached the ground the tributes were in complete disarray, and, in a daze, she noticed a green lump on her arm.

She laughed. "That's weird."

"Hey, Katniss? Katniss?" Backpacky called from her shoulder.

Stumbling through the camp, she was so busy observing a new variety of hopping tree that she almost walked over a bow. It was clutched in the swollen hands of a dead or dying female tribute. Katniss pried the precious weapon away and groped about for the arrows.

"Katniss!" it was an urgent looking Peeta.

"Sourdough?" Katniss looked at him skeptically.

"Are you literally hallucinating a giant loaf of sourdough bread right now, or are you just calling me that?" he asked, checking behind his shoulder.

She pulled the arrows off of the dead tribute, laughing. "What?"

"Run!"

Cato crashed out of the forest, slashing his sword at the hornets. Katniss ran off into what she was pretty sure was the other direction with her bow.

"I think the venom is starting to kick in," Katniss said deliriously, whipping her hands around in front of her face.

"It's not," came a deep, raspy voice from the shadows. She spun around.

"Who are you?"

A black figure pulled itself out of the darkness. "I'm the Batman."

"Katniss! You're hallucinating, I can't see him!" Backpacky said, straining to see over her shoulder.

"I can't see him, maybe he's the hallucination," came the harsh voice again.

"But why are you here, Batman?"

"I'm everywhere there's injustice."

"That's noble."

"I try," said the caped crusader with a nod.

"Oh my god, Katniss, don't start tripping out on me man," said Backpacky worriedly.

"Don't swear to God, swear to me!" Batman flew forward, his cape cloaking them in darkness.