Hey guys! Don't worry, I haven't dropped off the face of the Earth. And I'm a total butthead for not updating in months! So soorrryy! I'm begging for your forgiveness.

Anyways, without further ado, here is the next, very overdo chapter:

Avella POV (D7)

The pain in my leg renews with every teeny tiny move I make, the dread in my heart growing with each beat of it, and the hollowness in my eyes increasing with each blink. And its only the second day.

According to Carbon, I slept through the anthem last night. I am so glad that I did. The showing of the dead tributes is disrespectful to their memory and a psychological game with the rest of the tributes, advertising that nobody is safe from the unmerciful massacre that happens annually. I bet it would happen more than once a year if they didn't have to build the arena.

As my forest green eyes adjust to the early morning light, I see Carbon slumped against a tree, arm tensed around a serrated knife and eyes bloodshot but wide open. We are on the verge of the jungle and the tundra, sitting close to the stream that separates the sections. At first we were terrified that all the water throughout the arena was poisoned, but we all know now that it is as safe to drink as the stuff in the Capitol.

"Hey," I say to Carbon. "Why don't you sleep, and I take next shift?" He turns his weary eyes to me.

"But your leg…"

"Just trust me, okay?"

Carbon looks reluctant, but nods off as soon as he consents, snoring loudly. I sit myself up, gripping the knife, when I hear a crashing in the trees. It's nearby, and definitely no monkey.

"Carbon!" I scream, thankfully, he had only been asleep for a few minutes so he woke quickly. His eyes become wild.

"What is it?" He cries. It is then that I realize that screaming may not have been a good idea. I scramble to my feet, leaning heavily against the tree because of my wounds. The knife is ready in my fist.

A huge girl appears, with a huge nose and a very muscular body, strength over stealth. She has a bloodthirsty look in her eyes, and I yell for Carbon to run as I scramble up the tree like a squirrel. I am slightly less swift as I would have been had I not been injured, but it was obvious that the girl would not be able to follow me.

I leap through the branches, leaves whacking me in the face but not causing me to falter. Once I cross the stream into the tundra, there are no more trees for me to climb. I drop to the snow covered ground, my feet sinking into the wet snow. I forgot my jacket on the other side. As soon as I hit the ground, I collapse from the weight of my stabbed leg. Looking up from the ground and clutching my leg in blinding pain, I see that Carbon has barreled across the stream as well. A worried look in his eyes, my ally hurries over to me, pulling me to my feet and steadying me before his eyes widen and glaze over, a bubble of fresh, crimson blood emerging from his lips. The silver tip of a sword juts out from his narrow chest, and he looks at me in panic before his head lolls to the side. The sword is pulled out, and the body of my late ally sinks to the snow covered ground. Standing in front of me with a bloodied sword in her hand is the girl that we were running from, a crazed look on her face.

Rage fills me before sadness does, and I do something so impulsive and instinctive that it could've been a suicide mission. I bring my right arm back, and my bony, tan fist connects with the girl's chin, her ugly face contorted in pain before she falls back, her head connecting painfully with the ground. Without a thought, I pick up Carbon's serrated knife and plunge it into the girl. Again. And again. And again. Finally, regaining some sense of sanity, I leap off of the girl, long dead but inflicted with fresh wounds. I drop the knife, looking at my blood-drenched hands.

My forest green eyes widen with the horror of what I've done, and I back away slowly, before sinking into the snow, leaning against a boulder. I wipe my hands frantically on my tan pants, wiping off the evidence. Tears blur my vision as I goggle at the two bodies not twenty feet away from me. The once pure white snow is stained through and through with the blood of two kids - two kids that had barely lasted. They could've been anything, and that was taken away. In the girl's case… by me.

My name is Avella Hightree. I am fourteen years old. And I am a killer.

Corin POV (D7)

How could she?

I punch a tree, rage hiding the pain.

Why did she?

I moan in frustration, not caring if anyone can hear me right now. I am beyond caring. Evi lied. Evi cheated. Evi is everything Avella said she would be. And most importantly, she's with him. Every since I started training for this stupid Games, I have hated him. Him being Erik. His mint green snake-like eyes, his slow, menacing smile, his lecherous gazes at Evi from across the room…

God save her.

My thoughts pulse and change like the tide against my skull, giving me a headache and leaving me wanting desperately to sink to the moss-carpeted ground and lean against a tree, sleeping my troubles away. But of course, you can never just sleep your troubles away in the arena. Once you wake up you'll be faced with even more than you began with.

But of course, stupidity and fatigue win out over all my other feelings, and the next thing I know, I am woken up by the boom of a cannon, loud and sonorous against the eerie quiet that blankets the forest. My eyes pop open in surprise. Once I register the sound that I heard, I leap to my feet, my eyes scanning the area. Another cannon sounds out.

One for Avella, one for Evi, a taunting, inhuman voice chants. Sister dead, wannabe girlfriend dead. Dead dead dead. Deader than a fallen tree. Deader than a black hole. Deader than you are gonna end up in this Game. Dead dead dead!

"Shut up!" I say aloud, gritting my teeth in frustration. I run off blindly into the darkness that it the forest. "Evi! Avella!" The sound of my anxious feet and loud voice cause some scurrying in every direction, forest animals that are fleeing from the predator. I wonder if that's how Evi and Avella sounded when they were killed. "You don't know that, you idiot!" I grumble to myself.

The anthem of Panem blares out of invisible, hidden speakers. My forest green eyes widen helplessly, not wanting to look at the sky but unable to resist. It is magnetic. The first day five people were killed. Down to nineteen. Today, at least two died. That makes seventeen. Nine more to go before the final eight. Nine more until a ticket home.

The anthem stops, and I prepare myself to see the worst. First, the picture of the little boy from District 1 flashes. He was a puny thing, and I think that the Careers finished him off.

The Careers.

Evi.

I wonder if she took her turn at the kid, dug her knife into his flesh.

Next up is the ugly girl from six, a brutish girl with an overlarge nose and a glare in her piggish eyes. The sky fades to black, no more pictures.

My girls are safe.

Evi POV

"Only two?" Erik glares at Ashur, as if the low mortality rate is all his fault.

"Yes, cap'n," Ashur replies sarcastically.

Erik glares back, and I know that another full out fight won't do any good. I stand on my tiptoes and whisper into his ear, so close that my words tickle his neck. He smells like sweat and blood and meanness. "Carbon died," I hiss, wincing at how I am disrespecting his memory. He was only fourteen! But, it's a part of my plan. My master plan. Nothing can go wrong. And nothing will.

"But, that wimp of a Career was finished off, so that's a good thing."

Marcus looks like he wants to protest, and Emma looks at her feet. Although they are the perfect Careers on the exterior, I think that they possess souls. Something that Erik clearly doesn't.

"He got what was coming for him, I think." Erik then decides to explain all of the things that he would have done to the kid, in graphic detail. I'm sure that Carbon's parents must be having a heart attack.

Emma stands up, clearly she has had enough. "I'm going to sleep." She leaps up and walks into the tent that accommodates all of the Career girls except Ebony, who prefers to sleep outside under the stars. The Career boys have a smaller tent, except for Erik, who has a tiny private one. He is the bulkiest, and he would probably kill Ashur in his sleep, so I think that this is for the best.

"Fine then, Ashur has first watch." Erik glares at him again for good measure, before moving towards his own small tent. The other Careers disperse to their own tents. I jog up to Erik, touching his arm lightly and leaning against him. The thought of being close to him makes me want to vomit. But I discipline myself, and I know that this is all necessary.

"Erik, can I sleep in your tent tonight? I'm afraid," I widen my emerald eyes as if I am just a little girl, afraid of the monsters under my mattress.

He smirks in response, snaking his arm around my waist as we crawl into the tiny space. It is barely big enough for me to lay down in, let alone Erik and I. The proximity of us nauseates me.

He grins wickedly as he nudges me onto my back, his arms on either side of my shoulders, his face just above mine. He gently nudges my jacket off, revealing my skimpy camisole. I had left my long sleeve shirt in my pack, which was just outside of the girl's tent. As soon as the jacket is off, all sense of gentleness is gone, replaced by greediness.

Erik presses his lips to mine forcefully, almost hurting my teeth. My eyes are still open as he kisses me, and I very reluctantly close them and wrap my arms around his neck. After a few long moments, Erik pulls back to breathe. I relish in my few moments of clean, fresh, unspoiled-by-Erik air. But all too soon, Erik descends again. His lust surprises and scares me.

It is going to be a long night, I think, as I play my part. I roll myself onto Erik's chest, so that he is below me. He makes no sign of wanting to sleep. I inwardly groan.

But it is a necessity.

Ashur POV

I sit outside by the dying fire, absentmindedly wondering if I should add some more fuel. Footsteps crunching against the jungle floor alert me to the presence of Ebony. She is the only one I can stand here. Erik is just Erik, Glamor scares me, Emma and Marcus seem to eager to kill for my taste, and Evi just acts like Erik's personal plaything. Its disgusting.

I look up as Ebony sits next to me, the dying fire lighting up her eyes, the reflection of the flames flickering and sparkling in her irises, as if there were two burning flames in her eye sockets. I look to the sky, which reminds me of Carbon. He was just a kid. Barely had a chance to live.

"Hey, you okay?" She asks me. Her gentleness reminds me of Anya. Her eyes are probably trained on the television screen as she twists her engagement band anxiously - a habit of hers when she was worried. I didn't want her to worry for me. I didn't want anyone to worry about me. Nobody should.

I clear my throat. "Uh, yeah. I'm fine." I laugh bitterly as I realize how stupid that sounds. We are pitted against each other in a fight to the death. Definitely not fine. "Well, as fine as you can be when you constantly look over your shoulder for District Two's sword ready to run you through like a kabob. As fine as you can be when you don't quite trust District One as much as everyone else. And as fine as you can be when a fourteen-year-old boy was just murdered and you couldn't do anything about it."

Ebony chuckles humorlessly and looks over her shoulder at Erik's tent. "I'm pretty sure District One is pretty, er, occupied at the moment."

My face contorts in disgust. "What the hell is she doing?" I spit out.

"None of us except her know. And I'm pretty sure that no matter what delusions Erik has cooked up, its not because he is so spectacular."

"Still, she is like his little concubine! If you saw the way he looks at her…." I shake my head. I have nothing against Evi, but I worry for her because of Erik. I'm sure, however, that he won't kill her until she starts refusing him. Then he'll slit her throat and possibly torment her if her doesn't miss her "company", and probably advance on Glamor.

"And I've seen the way she looks back. Her smiles and gestures play along, but her eyes are hollow almost. She's not doing this because she can. She has a plan. Maybe one that can place her at the head of this pack instead of Erik. And I look forward to that day."

Ebony's wisdom and foresight surprises me. I just nod thoughtfully.

Please, Evi. Have a plan.

Well, I feel pretty bad for all of these charaters. I mean, Avella just had a pyschotic episode, Corin was betrayed (so he thinks), Evi has to go through torture to play out her mysterious plan, and Ashur and Ebony have fiancees/fiances at home.

Well, now I'm rambling so here's the questions:

Whose POV should be next? (I'm thinking Mila and Ax) What is Evi's plan?

Bye guys!