I didn't recognize myself.
And being the person I was, someone who had gone through torture and other disfiguring processes, I was pretty good at distinguishing my own features no matter what happened to them.
But this was a bit different.
My long, dark hair had been pulled back into a sleek high ponytail, and my sharp, feature-defining makeup combined with what I was wearing—to make an understatement, I looked fierce.
To make a more accurate statement, I looked like the goddess of war.
I was dressed in gleaming silver armor, with various lengths of spikes on the shoulders and waistguard. From not far off it just looked like fancy armor, but up very close you could see, engraved in the surface, numerous battle scenes, all of them depicting previous victors over the years.
The gruesome pictures of death didn't alarm me though, if anything they made me feels more empowered. I smirked at myself in the mirror. My lips were a dark, fierce red. The sharp black eyeliner and the muted blush under my cheekbones made my face more angular, angry-looking even. I looked like a warrior. I looked ready to kill people.
Awesome.
I turned around to see Zeke come in, dressed very similar to me, except he clutched a large blacksmith's hammer in his hand. Why they trusted him with any form of weapon , I didn't know.
"You ready?" he said with a little confident smirk, his eyes looking me over. I gave him a short nod, then looked past him when Ovid came in through the door, a woman following him.
"Excellent," the woman grinned, clasping her hands together in excitement, "They look simply divine." Ovid nodded in calm agreement, looking us over. The armor was rather a masterpiece, and it came up to the top of my neck and covered my hands and feet, so none of my scars showed. I felt fierce and confident in it. Ovid pressed something into my hand, and I looked down to see it was a whip. Interesting accessory.
I did admit, I had had my doubts about being in just silver for our costume. But when we arrived at the center where the parade was to be held, I thought we might stand out the most.
Because there was just so much color.
Everywhere.
District Three's complicated getup was edged in flashing neon lights. District Ten's usual rancher outfits were now electric pink and blue—and not to mention, they didn't even have a chariot: they were sitting on their horses. Even District Seven, not—wait for it—dressed in lame tree costumes, wore some crowns of branches and capes made of unnaturally brilliant autumn leaves. Then my attention was drawn to the large fishbowl in the chariot that just rolled in, and the two tributes from District Four dressed as a mermaid and merman standing waist-deep inside of it. What a strange idea.
But enough about the outfits. The competition was all I cared about, and now, here, I got to see the whole cast of tributes. They were too spread out for me to get a close look at each one, but I could still get the sense that this was going to be easy. I caught a glimpse of the District Eight tributes, both of them amusingly small, staring at me. They seemed to be terrified by my mere presence.
As we neared our chariot, I had to squint to even be able to turn my head to our left, because the light overhead was hitting the array of sparkles and jewels across District One's costumes.
"I wonder if they'll let us talk to the other Careers today," I heard Zeke mutter.
Oh yeah. Other Careers. Working with people and not killing them. Ick.
"I hope not," I said bluntly. A blonde girl in the chariot glanced back and gave us a big smile, then turned back to her stylist to adjust her tiara in a mirror. The tall boy next to her gave us a slight nod, no expression on his face, and didn't say a word. My only thoughts on them were: the chick looks like a moron, and hey, the guy isn't blonde.
"Now," Ovid smiled, "As you can see, it's become more than just the costumes this year. It's all about the whole presentation." I then noticed how our chariot had been filled in with a large pile of red rocks, and only a small raised square in the center for us to stand on. "Corundum bricks, just for a bit of flash instead of normalcy," he said absently, his eyes scanning the setup, "I thought I might combine every aspect of your district into one. The masonry, the blacksmithing, the Peacekeeper training, the weaponry. All of it, powerful."
He helped us step over the bricks and up onto the platform, then knelt down and reached underneath the chariot. I looked down to see a mist begin to creep out from under us, and gather around the chariot just a foot high off the floor.
Then Ovid went to the front of the chariot, flipped a switch, and suddenly two concentrated beams of light hit me and Zeke, forcing me to squint a little. He toned down the light just slightly, then took a step back to look at us. It was then that I realized what the spotlights were for: they reflected off of the bricks, the mist, and our armor, and our entire chariot was gleaming like the sun. And since the ruby bricks were translucent, the light made it seem as though we were standing on a mountain of fire, or blood even, not just building blocks.
So while the other districts might be decked out in color, we shone brighter than all of them, our only color being blood red at our feet.
"I'm liking this," Zeke muttered to me, looking at us compared to everyone else, his usual smirk playing on his lips.
"We definitely stand out, that's for sure," I murmured, fiddling with the whip in my hand. "What's this for exactly?"
"I'm pretty sure it's supposed to connect to the whole Peacekeeper thing," he chuckled under his breath, "Remind me not to piss you off while we're up here."
Back at Academy, I had spent a couple of weeks learning how to fight with just a whip. I had taken on Zeke in a sparring match and, for the first time, had beaten him so badly it was almost embarrassing. It had been rather amusing, really. Embarrassing enough, however, unfortunately for me, that he seriously beat me up after practice that day.
I was jerked from my memories and back to reality when the carriage suddenly began to move. We were moving into position, into our one line of chariots to enter out into the public, out to the cameras and crowds.
"Good luck," Ovid nodded at us as we left him, "Stand tall, look impressive, and get them to love you."
An explosion of cheers, so immense that I could practically feel the giant sound wave ripple over us, erupted as the giant doors opened and District One's chariot led the way out. If it were possible, the crowd got even louder.
Our chariot followed theirs, out onto the grand path that went down between the two massive stands packed with people, and down to President Snow himself. I kept my eyes fixed on that podium straight ahead, not even glancing at the people, most of whom were up on their feet now in over-excitement at our appearance, because I knew the sight of all those eyes on me might make me sick. I could barely see them anyway; the beams of light inside our chariot were nearly blinding by themselves, and I couldn't see much because of them.
I did force myself to look up at one of the large television screens, so I could see the whole parade line up behind us. Ovid had been right. While there were many extravagant, over-the-top parade costumes, ours stood out the most by far amidst all the color in both the others' costumes and the crowds around us. We were gleaming silver, standing on mounds of fire, brighter than anything else under the darkening sky.
I noticed, though, first on the screen and then right next to me, that Zeke had engaged his charming side. He was waving and occasionally flashing smiles at the crowd, making me look like a stubborn idiot, since the beams of light really highlighted our faces. I fought the impulse to roll my eyes, and forced a little half-smile half-smirk expression onto my face, waving briefly once or twice. I even cracked the whip I held in my other hand in the air. I would have felt like a complete moron except for the fact that the entire crowd was going crazy. It was slightly sickening, but encouraging too.
Something grazed against my cheek, and I realized it was a rose. People were throwing them at us constantly. I caught one in my free hand to look at it for a moment. In the light I could see it was a dark red, matching the color of my lipstick. I sniffed it for a moment, feeling ridiculous, but I found the scent made me actually less nauseous—it was something real, calm, and soothing, and not wild and crazy like everyone else here. Get them to love you, Ovid had said. I sighed lightly, tossed the rose away, and on an impulse I blew a kiss to the general direction the rose had come from. I could hear screams of delight from that area of the crowd, and for a moment I felt a more genuine smile of amusement on my face.
From what I could see, the attention was all focused on the Careers more than ever. Zeke and I especially. We made a more fearsome, impressive-looking team than the District 1 kids did, if I did say so myself. Apparently the crowd agreed, I even saw a sign go up, "Mars and Minerva", the Roman god and goddess of war, and I smiled completely genuinely now. People loved us.
This was seriously going to help me win these Games. Sponsors were often going to be the deciding factor between life and death in the arena, the arena the Gamemakers had made worse than ever for the Fourth Quarter Quell.
When we reached the end of the path, we made a circle around the end of it, as President Snow stood up to begin his speech. He was a tall, thin man who had very pale skin, and piercing gray eyes that you couldn't look at for too long for fear of being burned to ashes.
I hated the fact that one person like him could have so much power over every living being in the nation.
But I kept my smile on, seeing as how the cameras were on our chariot right now. I turned in the direction where there seemed to be a camera, and I blew a kiss straight at it and smiled before we finally left to go back into the building.
The second we were inside, my smile dropped and I tossed the whip down to the floor. My ears were ringing painfully after so much noise, and my eyes hurt from staring into the light for so long.
I saw a flash to my left in the corner of my eye, and I turned to look. It was the District One boy, removing his headpiece of jewels. As if he knew someone was watching him, he turned to look at me, and our eyes locked for a moment.
And then he smiled at me.
Not a malicious, "I'm going to kill you soon" smile, but a genuine, friendly little smile. I quickly looked away from him, finding it strange that a District One tribute could look neither menacing nor full of himself.
"Well done, both of you." I jumped down from the chariot as Ovid came up to us, looking proud of his work. "Brilliant performance. You two were by far the most noticeable and the most intimidating. Now, I'll put all this away and I'll meet you upstairs; I believe your mentor is waiting there so you go ahead." He nodded in the direction of the elevators down the hall. As I followed Zeke toward them, I saw him give a passing smirk to some little tributes nearby who were staring at us in fright.
When the elevator doors opened a moment later to the second floor, I walked in and stood there for a moment to look around at all the splendor, vaguely impressed. Zeke looked like he cared less than I did, and walked right past me.
"I kinda like our stylists," he mused, throwing the breastplate of his armor down and collapsing onto the couch.
"They seem to know what they're doing, at least," I said, sitting beside him, "Did you get a good sense of our competition today?"
"Blaze, please." He propped himself up on his elbow and looked up to look at me. "The only difficulties we'll ever find in these Games are the things that the Gamemakers throw at us. The tributes themselves are a laugh."
"I don't know. The other Careers looked somewhat good, at least."
"Blaze, you make me laugh," he smirked up at me, his dark eyes twinkling, "Did you even get a look at the blonde girl? She'll be no problem, I could snap her in half without much effort, really. The guy, I don't know. He's awfully tall but who knows if he's actually strong or skilled."
"Either way, I imagine the arena will be hard enough for us to deal with."
"Have faith in your training, girl," he said, "You've been trained with every weapon on every terrain in many scenarios. I'd say we're both prepared." To silence me he reached up and grabbed the back of my head, and pulled me down to him for a kiss.
I quickly sat up and turned around at the sound of the door closing, not really sure how to feel about the kiss.
"Well, well, well." A tall man in a suit had entered the room. The suit wasn't neon or flashy: it was black, with a white shirt underneath, and a black tie. He wore sunglasses indoors, but that wasn't why I felt the need to stare at his head—his hair was dyed in a black-and-white, zebra-like pattern. His general appearance was both strange and mysterious.
"You must be Blaze, and you must be Zeke. My name is Marcus. I will be your mentor for these Games."