Chapter Sixteen: Explosions

"Why don't you all take a nap?" I suggest cheerfully. "I'll guard. In a few hours we can head out again."

Cato looks at me strangely. "You sure, Clove?" he asks uncertainly.

I nod brightly. "Positive. I'm not tired at all."

Huh. I'm almost hyper right now. Maybe it's from the hot chocolate, or maybe it's just the high of finally having a successful kill. Either way, I won't need sleep anytime soon, that's for sure.

Cato, Marvel, and the kid eventually all climb into their tents, and after a while I hear snores coming from them. Well, we were hunting for a long time – it makes sense that they'd be tired. I wonder why I'm not, though.

I walk over to the Cornucopia and sit down at my usual spot by the mouth. I don't take anything with me, and for the next few hours I just stare into the woods.

Cato wakes up before I decide to wake him myself. He sits down beside me and after a couple of minutes he speaks.

It's odd, because he seems… nervous, almost. "Clove…"

I raise an eyebrow. "What?"

He grimaces. "Okay. Here's the thing. We're down to nine people. This alliance has almost half the tributes. I think…"

I sigh when he pauses again. "Spit it out, Cato!"

He raises his hands in defeat. "I think… I think we should consider breaking the alliance."

I freeze. What did he just say?

"Not us," he says quickly. "I'd like for us to stick together till the end. It'll be easier for both of us. But Marvel and the kid… they're holding us back, you know? I don't think I can put up with them for much longer."

I don't say anything at first, because I'm so relieved that he doesn't want to completely break the alliance. When I regain the ability of speech, I say, "Sounds good, but we need to figure out how and when we're going to – "

I break off and slap a hand over Cato's mouth as well. He looks angry at first, but I make shushing motions and point to my ear, and then to the woods. His eyes widen as he makes the connection. I've heard something.

Not a loud noise, just a rustling of a branch. But it's not windy or anything. It had to have been a tribute.

"Want to try for a second kill today?" I breathe almost silently into Cato's ear. His eyes narrow maliciously and he nods.

I stand up carefully. "I'm going to grab some food, do you want anything?" I ask in a normal voice. He looks confused until I turn back towards him and wink.

Then Cato grins. "Sure."

I smirk and walk halfway to the supplies. When I'm almost there, I call, "What do you want?"

He sighs exaggeratedly and walks over. "Can't do anything without being given exact directions, can you, little girl?" he says, pretending to glare. I suppress a giggle. Wow, not even the stupidest of tributes would fall for this…

"Hang on. I think I dropped a knife over there," I say, gesturing to the edge of the clearing. That's a lie, of course; I have a knife attached to my waist. But I need an excuse to get closer to where the tribute is…

When I get to the spot I pointed at and crouch down, I see it. A pair of amber eyes staring at me. "Cato?" I call wearily. "I can't find it, could you come help me look?"

Cato sighs audibly. "Pathetic," he mutters, but he catches my eye and I hope he can read the message in them. Found her.

Because it must be the girl from Five, right? Who else could it be? Lover Boy's eyes are blue, I think, and he's in no fit state to be walking around at all, let alone near our camp. Fire Girl's eyes are grey – I noticed while we were in the Capitol. Little Eleven is too short to be that person, and Thresh is too tall…

"I thought I saw it, just five minutes ago," I say to Cato, and I can tell that he gets the message.

"Did you check everywhere?" he asks slyly. "What about… the woods?"

Really, Cato? That's what you come up with? I roll my eyes. "This is pointless," I mutter, before spinning around suddenly and sprinting into the woods, towards those eyes.

She's fast – I'll give her that. I can hear Cato right behind me, trying to keep up. I see that flash of red hair and know that it is indeed District Five that we're going to catch.

"Come – on!" I puff. Damn, the girl is fast.

Oh, no. Please tell me that I'm just imagining that she's climbing up a tree, please…

No luck, of course. A strong sense of déjà vu washes over me.

"Are you kidding me?" Cato hisses furiously. I glare at the girl in the tree.

"Alright, District Five. I'm going to give you three options," I growl menacingly. "One – you stay in the tree and we leave. But then we'll find you later, and we will kill you very painfully. Two – you cooperate and come down here, and perhaps we'll give you a quick death. Three – "

"CLOVE! CATO!"

I whip around to face the noise – that's Marvel's voice. Is the camp being attacked? What's going on?

"CLOVE! CATO! GET OVER HERE!"

"What the hell?" I say furiously. District Five merely looks at us with those strange eyes.

"I'm not worried about him getting killed," Cato says quickly, "but if there's another tribute over there… I dunno, maybe we'll have a chance to take out Thresh, or someone else…"

I bite my lip and look up at District Five, who looks pale. "Later," I say threateningly to her, and Cato and I run back towards camp, weapons ready.

What – there's no one there except Marvel and the kid! "DAMN IT, MARVEL!" Cato shouts. "Why were you yelling like that?"

Marvel shrugs uncaringly. "I woke up and you guys were gone."

I stare at him, openmouthed. "You – we – we just had District Five up a tree, dammit!" I yell. "What the hell were you thinking?"

He looks worried. "You – you actually had her?"

"No, Marvel, she was kidding," Cato says, his voice dripping with sarcasm. "Yes, we had her treed! We only came back because we though someone was attacking you and figured they'd be a bigger opponent, you asshole!"

At least he has the decency to look somewhat ashamed. "Oh… I didn't know…"

I glare at him, absolutely furious. "I can't believe you. District Five is going to be much too far away by now for us to have a chance to catch her."

"Sorry!" Marvel says defensively. "How was I supposed to know?"

"Think, idiot! Why else would we have been gone?" Cato scoffs, looking disgusted.

I close my eyes briefly before opening them again. "You know what? Just drop it. Marvel, you're a moron, and you will pay dearly for this later. Cato…" I sigh. Soon, I mouth, when Marvel is looking the other way. We'll break the alliance soon.

He smirks and nods. Good, he mouths back.

I sigh and go to wake up the kid. We need to go hunting soon. Luckily, he's easy to wake – if there's one thing I'm lacking today, it's patience.

"Hey!" Cato shouts. I spin around, and he points off into the woods. I have to squint to make it out… but there's a tall column of smoke rising in the distance.

Instantly, I'm excited. Now we have a chance to make up for the missed opportunity with District Five! There will be another death today…

"Grab a weapon!" I call out. They should know the drill by now, but honestly, I have serious doubts about Marvels' intelligence…

"Kid!" Cato barks. "You're coming."

"No way!" Marvel argues. "We need him to guard the supplies!"

"Are you really as stupid as you look?" I ask him in disbelief. Hello? The mines?

"He's coming," Cato says with finality. "We need him in the woods, and his job's done here anyway. No one can touch those supplies."

"What about Lover Boy?" Marvel persists. Well, Lover Boy does know how to get past the mines, but still…

"I keep telling you, forget about him," Cato says, glaring. Okay, maybe he's being a little harsh. I haven't heard him say that at all. Maybe when I was asleep, or knocked out from the tracker jacker venom… "I know where I cut him," he continues. "It's a miracle he hasn't bled to death yet."

"A miracle for him," I mutter. Neither of them hears me.

"At any rate, he's in no shape to raid us," Cato finishes triumphantly.

Marvel raises his hands in defeat. I'm glad he doesn't argue further – we're wasting time!

"Come on," Cato says forcefully, shoving a spear into the kid's hands. "When we find her, I kill her in my own way, and no one interferes."

"You think it's Fire Girl, then?" I ask quietly as we jog towards the smoke.

He nods tersely. "She's mine, got that?"

I glare at him. "What happened to both of us killing her?" I hiss.

He scowls. "Right. Right… you can help. But not the other two!" He jerks his head towards Marvel and the kid, who are both struggling to keep up with us.

I sigh. "How do you plan to keep them away?" I ask.

Cato starts to run faster – this can no longer be called a jog. "We'll deal with that when we have to." I don't question that.

We run for another twenty minutes or so – after a while I lose track. It's easy to keep track of the tall column of smoke, and before too long it's pretty much directly ahead of us – it's hard to see anything, though, because the trees are so thick here. We slow down when we're about fifteen yards away.

I raise an eyebrow at Cato and move my finger in a circle. Surround them? I know he understands. He nods minutely.

I creep over to Marvel and tap him on the shoulder. I motion for him to take the kid and walk a bit to the side and then forward, and then separate a bit so that the fire starter will be surrounded.

"On go," I whisper, so quietly that I can barely hear myself. He nods, and the two of them walk away.

I walk a short distance away from Cato, making sure that I can still see him. Then I hold up three fingers – he nods and grins.

I place one finger down – then the other – then –

"GO!" I holler.

The four of us burst into the small area where the smoke is rising – yes, there's the fire – but – where's the tribute?

"You have got to be kidding me," I hear Cato say under his breath.

I groan and kneel down beside the fire. "What's going on?"

Cato's eyes tighten. "Fire Girl, I'd bet anything."

"There are others out there besides her," I remind him. "I doubt it was Lover Boy – but it could've been District Five, or either one from Eleven. They're all capable of starting a fire, you know."

He shakes his head. "No. It was her. I just… I just know, all right?"

"Whatever, Cato," I mumble.

The four of us sit in silence for about ten minutes. My eyes are downcast for the majority of that time, but eventually I look up, and –

"Another one?" I shriek.

Yes, there's another tall column of smoke rising, and it's not far from here, either. There's no jogging this time – we all flat out sprint towards this fire in the hopes of catching whoever started it before they have time to escape.

This time, it only takes us about five minutes or so to get to the place the smoke is rising from, but we're all so out of breath that we have to stay put for another few seconds to regain some energy.

"On three," Cato says in a hushed voice, "just rush in. I don't think anyone will be there – it's got to be a trick. But we'd be idiots not to make sure."

I nod. "One – two – three!"

As Cato predicted, there's no tribute in sight. I sigh in frustration and open my mouth to suggest heading back to camp, but –

"Holy shit, what was that?" I scream.

The mines. It can't be anything else, nothing else would make that much noise – unless every tribute in the Games died at once and a ton of cannons went off – well. No, not even that. Explosions continue to shake the ground, and it's loud and hurts my ears – eventually I cry out, it's so loud and I'm afraid that I'm going to go deaf – and then it stops.

"Is it over?" says the kid, sounding terrified. Startled, I look down – he's on the ground, curled up in a ball with his hands over his ears.

"You should know!" Cato snarls. "Why were there so many blasts?"

The kid looks terrified. "I – I – they – they were – they weren't supposed to, I mean. I set them up so that one wouldn't set off the others – b-but…"

Cato glares at him, looking too furious to speak. I cut in. "You'd better hope the supplies aren't all destroyed," I growl. "Or you will be in some deep shit, you hear?"

He squeaks a little bit – yes, actually squeaks – and nods.

We start running.

While we run, three more mines go off – why? It makes no sense, but all four of us manage to stay on our feet each time. With each passing second, I grow more and more furious.

How dare someone try to steal our supplies? Because what else could it have been? The nerve of some tributes! And now they're dead – obviously. We didn't hear a cannon, but it must've been lost in the mine blasts. I'm pleased that they've been killed, of course, but now we don't get to kill whoever it was ourselves…

Cato is ahead of me – I try to push myself to run faster, but his rage seems to power him forward. I lose track of time, and before long we enter the clearing.

Everything is destroyed.

Cato screams – like, really screams. "NO! HOW?" Then he starts tearing out his hair – literally. Locks of it surround him, lying on the ground. When that becomes too much, he falls to his knees and starts punching the ground – come on, now, Cato. What's that going to do?

Maybe he really is insane.

The kid carefully approaches the ashes that used to be our supplies – I see that he's holding a pile of stones. One by one, he throws them into the ashes.

"They've all been activated," he says, his voice trembling.

We all stand there in shock for a few moments before Cato breaks the silence. "Might as well check to see if there's anything useful left," he says flatly. He starts kicking at a few different items.

I sigh and decide to join him – Marvel and I both poke around the ruins, looking for anything that could still be useful to us.

Nothing.

Suddenly Cato freezes. "It was you," he hisses, turning around to give the kid a death glare. Uh oh. "WHAT DID YOU DO?" he shouts. "This is all your fault – you were trying to sabotage us, weren't you? You set the mines up so that all the supplies would be destroyed!"

"N-no!" the kid stammers. "R-really, I didn't!"

"You did!" Cato's eyes seem to be bulging out of his head. "I'm going to kill you!"

The kid lets out a scream before turning around and attempting to run into the woods, but… Cato catches him. Only seconds pass before the kid is dead – Cato catches him in a headlock and then jerks his head to the side.

Seven of us left… three have died today. District Ten this morning, the kid just now, and whoever set off the mines.

"Cato!" I cry. "Calm down! Please!"

"You're insane, man," Marvel says, shaking his head in apparent disgust.

Cato turns to glare at Marvel, and the smaller boy shrinks back. "SHUT UP!" he roars.

"Cato, please," I say weakly. "We need to handle this properly, and we can only do that if we can cooperate calmly!"

Cato stares at me for a moment, and then he takes a deep breath. "You're right. That was uncalled for. Thanks, Clove."

I nod shakily. "Sure."

"Now let's go!" he insists, pointing to the woods. "We've got to catch whoever did this! Let's go, we're wasting time!"

I roll my eyes and gesture to the sky. "They're dead, aren't they? Do you think anyone could've survived that?"

"No way," Marvel agrees, pointing to the sky as well. "They're dead. Whoever it was… we'll know tonight, when they show the faces."

Cato closes his eyes in frustration. "Fine. But I still want to get back out there in a couple of hours, okay?"

"Great," I say, relieved. "We'd better move, though, so they can collect the body."

"Right," he mutters, and we all retreat to the other side of the lake. A hovercraft comes and we watch the kid disappear. Forever.

We all sit by the lake for… I don't know. A while. I watch the sun slowly set and wait for the death toll. Soon we'll know…

"Finally," Marvel mutters when we hear the first notes of the anthem. The seal appears in the sky, and then it goes dark again. Then – the kid. He's replaced with the boy from Ten, the one who foolishly wandered into our camp this morning.

"Eleven or Twelve, then," I say quietly. District Ten is replaced by –

The seal.

"What?" I gasp. They – how – what – ?

"What the hell?" Cato manages to get out. "How – they – why isn't anyone else dead?"

"A mistake," Marvel says wildly. "They must've forgotten to show the picture, or – or…"

"Don't be stupid," I snarl. "They just don't forget things like that! Whoever it was that set off the mines… they're still alive."

"Unbelievable," Cato whispers.

I shake my head in a futile attempt to clear it. "No… no. That's impossible, of course. Maybe the kid set them up so that they'd go off at a certain time?"

"He might've been in cahoots with whoever started those fires!" Marvel agrees, sounding excited.

"No," Cato says quietly. "No, that's not it. It was her."

"Fire Girl?" I guess.

He nods, and I can see that he's literally shaking with fury. "Yeah. You know what? Let's go. Let's go! We need to hunt!"

I hold back a sigh and decide to just go with it. "…Sure. Let's hunt."

Cato and I put on our night-vision glasses, and Marvel lights a torch – lucky he was carrying it, along with some lighter fluid, with him during our last hunting trip. We begin our trek through the woods grimly.

"Let's think about this," I say when we're under the cover of the trees. "She can't have been acting alone. Those fires – they were a distraction. Fire Girl has an ally."

"Who, though?" Marvel asks.

"Not Lover Boy," Cato says immediately. "He's almost dead. He'll be dead any day now."

"What about District Five?" Marvel suggests.

I shake my head. "No, she was alone when we saw her. That only leaves District Eleven."

"I doubt it was Thresh," Cato says slowly. "I don't think he has any allies. Think about it – he rejected an offer from us. Why would he ally with anyone else?"

"Good point," I say fairly. Then a grin spreads across my face. "Little Eleven."

It fits. I didn't notice them being hostile to each other during training – I might've even seen them together once or twice. And… I remember Katniss Everdeen volunteering for her little sister in the reaping – this was before she was Fire Girl, of course. Would that little sister cause her to have a soft spot for the small tribute from District Eleven?

I don't see how it's possible, myself. But I wouldn't put anything past her at this point.

Either way, we're going to kill them both. Someone has to pay for blowing up our supplies, and who would be a better target than our biggest opponent?

"Little Eleven," Cato agrees. I smirk at him, and the unspoken new plan hangs in the air – from now on, even more so than before, our primary targets are Fire Girl and her new accomplice.

Writing this chapter was... well, at first it was painful. But then I got into it more, and it was really fun. :D Leave a review and tell me what you think... we're up to 80 already! :D

Just so you all know, I probably won't be able to update for about a week, because I won't have internet. That's not a guarantee, but that'll most likely be the case. I'll post the next chapter when I get a chance, I promise!

Also, a word about their encounter with Foxface. It might not seem entirely realistic, but I figured they needed some more excitement, and... okay. To be completely honest, I just wanted an excuse to make Marvel the bad guy again. Excuse me if I like to add it a little animosity between the allies. ;) It just makes it a little more interesting, you know? And it's really fun to write, if I'm being honest...

Sorry for the long author's note... and it would be super awesome if, when I can check my email again, I have lots of review alerts... please? :D I'll be your best friend... ;)

~What the Quell