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Five
"Ooh, Cinna, these look fabulicious!" Peeta exclaimed, twirling around so that his black cape fluttered out behind him like a flag.
"Peeta, you're acting like boob!" Katniss said grouchily, tugging at the hem of her own costume. "Cinna, how long do we have to wear these for, anyway?"
The stylist brushed off her question with an impatient wave of his hands. "Shush, shush, daaahling. You look faaabulous!"
"Fabulicious," Peeta corrected him. Cinna shrugged, and then attempted to toss his short hair with no effect whatsoever.
"Are you ready to go, daaahlings?" He asked, gesturing to the waiting chariot.
"No! Wait!" Peeta shouted. "I need my bug spray!" He procured a bottle of Deep Woods DEET from somewhere on his pocket-less person and sprayed it all over himself. "Now I won't get bug bites while I'm on fire!"
"It's not real fire, Peeta!" Katniss explained, aggravated. "It's fake fire."
"WHAT?" Peeta gasped. "That's lame." He ran over to where Rue was using a blowtorch to cut Thresh's hair and snatched it from her hands. "This'll be way cooler!"
And as he lit himself up like a firework and was instantly incinerated, they were all inclined to agree. Except Rue, that is.
"Man! He broke my blowtorch!" she complained, and gave his tiny pile of ashes an irritated kick.
Six
"Peeta, what the huggles are you doing up here?" Katniss demanded, clambering up the last few steps to the roof of the training center and glaring at the strange baker boy.
"I'm being in tune with naaaaaature!" Peeta warbled, slowly raising his hands over his head. He was sitting cross-legged on top of a fuzzy, tattered blue blanket, and he had his eyes closed.
"You're doing yoga?" Katniss asked disbelievingly. "Shouldn't you be learning to disembowel people and stuff?"
"This is far more important," Peeta declared loftily. Katniss simply rolled her eyes.
After a few moments, however, Katniss spotted a small squirrel staring curiously from the top of one of the trees in the rooftop garden. She watched as it scurried down the plant's spindly trunk and cautiously approached Peeta. Peeta didn't seem to be aware of it at all, and continued his meditation, or whatever his loser-ish activity was called.
That is, he was unaware of it until it screeched loudly, lunged for his face, and latched onto his nose.
"AAAAAAAHHHHH!" he caterwauled, jumping to his feet, running around, and flailing his arms. "GET IT OFF!"
The air was suddenly thick with more squirrels – they flew from the trees like heat-seeking missiles and bit onto her district partner's exposed flesh. Peeta did not seem very thrilled at this new development. "GAH! THEY'RE EVERYWHERE!"
Arms pinwheeling, the boy reached the edge of the roof and stumbled off of it. He was immediately electrocuted, and the squirrels all migrated to the other side of his face and held it against the force field until he became unresponsive.
Katniss smirked at them as they began to eat his kneecaps. "Nature really sucks," she observed.
Seven
"Peeta, are you ready to go?" Portia asked wearily, rubbing one palm across her face before daring to look across the room at the wayward tribute. "It's almost time for you to get into the elevator…"
"Oh, you worry too much, Porty-pa!" Peeta said cheerfully, taking a big bite of a banana cake. When he continued, Portia could see gooey bits of mashed-up fruit spewing from his mouth, and she turned away again in disgust. "Those silly games can wait for a few more seconds! I need more of these!" Peeta grabbed another one of the sticky desserts from the hatch in the wall.
"Actually, Peeta, they can't. This is a matter of life and death!"
"Really!" Peeta was flabbergasted. "I thought that it was a cooking show! Y'know, 'The Hunger Games'!"
"No! It's really not." Pori wondered, for close to the hundredth time, just why she had been chosen to watch the ignorant tyke before he went off into the arena that would hopefully kill him.
"Well, I don't suppose that there's much of a difference," Peeta decided, and went back to cramming his mouth full of food.
Finally, finally, the elevator doors opened. Portia prodded him inside and waited, relieved, as the countdown's finish drew nearer. And just before the doors closed, Peeta stuck his hand out give her one last wave.
But then the glass doors slid shut. Right on his foolishly waving hand.
"Crap!" Portia rushed over and tried to shove it through, but it was stuck fast. Peeta was wailing and hollering as loudly as he did whenever his bathwater wasn't bubbly enough, which meant that he was making quite a racket.
"Ow! Farting Popsicles! Screaming Monkeys! OW!"
And then the elevator started to rise. And his hand was still stuck.
Portia watched, not without some amusement, as Peeta eventually wiggled his hand loose. The last bit of him she saw was his feet hopping up and down as he jumped around, waving his hand like a lunatic.
And then she heard the resounding 'BOOM' of the bombs above as he jumped right onto one of them.
"Oh well," Portia said airily, and went back to her crossword puzzle.