I hope this chapter manages to remind you that they're all still just kids (except maybe Calvin and Fleur, they're bordering on demon spawn) since I think the movie might lose some of that with all the 20-something actors.
I'll try doing a chapter a day (I'll have to to keep up with the archive at any rate…) for a little while at least. Probably up to the blood bath when I want to start the suspense :D
Brony test: spot the MLP reference.
And a well-this-is-awkward-moment. Let's try Millie, take two. Clearly she didn't work how I intended her to in the Reapings so I rewrote it (check it out, I uploaded it just then too) and if you don't want her to survive by the end of training, I'll just go die in a hole.
Aglaeca Grenier: (District 1)
I never thought I'd say this coming from District 1 but the train car is brilliant.
Avoxes wait on our every word, I've already had a shower and I've wrapped myself in an enormous, fluffy bathrobe that smells of strawberries. We've been offered plenty of snacks filled with strange fruits and sugary sweets like chocolate and candy but the drinks were restricted to hot chocolate, orange juice and water. No caffeine for the tributes.
Well at least no caffeine until Felix picked the lock on the drinks car and returned with 'energy drinks' from the Capitol and a few bottles of beer. This means I'm in a drunken stupor as we almost fly along the train tracks towards the Capitol.
"I'm smashed aren't I?" I slur to Felix who's draining a beer while watching some strange Capitol game show where the contestants dress up in weird costumes and jump down waterslides and stuff. It looks like fun…
"Ah-yup," he replies, his leg hanging over the edge of the couch as he sprawls backwards. I'm only a few centimetres away with my head only just resting on the back of the couch while the rest of my body lounges over the plush cushions. Normally I'd be really uptight about being on a couch with one of my competitors but I'm drunk and he's definitely hot.
"You're really good looking, you know that right?" I blurt. Bad habit… meh.
"You don't drink often, do you Aglaeca?" Felix replies casually as he tosses the bottle perfectly into a trash chute, his blue eyes glinting.
"Nope, the 'rents won't let me…" I slur back. I've never been interested in trying it before when I've been training anyway. Now I'm even more uninhibited than normal and it's fun.
"I guessed that," he grins as I grab a cushion and smack him around the head before leaping out of his reach as he prepares to hit me back with his cushion. He's fast as he crushes a can of energy drink and pelts it at the cushion in my hand before leaping over the back of the couch.
I've got the cushion a few metres from his face when our mentors walk in.
Great first impression.
"So what do you think?" I ask them.
There's general face-palming all round.
Calvin Emil: (District 2)
The train is cool.
Fleur and I got orange juice as soon as we got on along with little bags of lollies and potato 'chips.' It's yummy.
There's still a lack of blood to finish it off and the train car is boring silver, no red anywhere. The Avoxes' tongues look funny and I want to try it out but there aren't any cats around and I can't do it to Fleur. That would be mean.
Maybe the escort, she talks a lot and talks to us like babies. If it weren't for the fact that I wouldn't get to see the hearts in the Games if I cut out the tongue of our escort it would be fun to make her be quiet.
Our mentor is nice. He's about 25 and named Brutus. He knows what it's like to want to see blood and kill people. He's nicer than all the other people who run away from us, pulling away all of that fresh meat that we could use. Maybe there will be more Capitol people after me and Fleur win their Games. They would have big stomachs and lots of things you could play with inside them. Their skin is different colours, maybe their hearts would be too and we could collect lots of different colours of hearts.
The other mentor keeps talking to us like babies until Fleur smashed a glass over her head.
She looked kinda funny with the little bits of glass out of her head and the trickles of blood running down her face were pretty.
She was too surprised to wipe it off and it got in her eye. Blood looks really cool when you blink it over your eye and it mixes with all the water stuff on people's eyes. Then it was like she was crying blood and her face started going all red.
Maybe people crying when I play with them would be better if I could make them cry blood too.
I can't wait until the blood bath.
I wonder if I could drink blood…
Flo Wren: (District 3)
The furniture in the train is all wrong.
There's no rocking chair in the corner, Gran isn't sitting on the non-existent armchair, Mother isn't washing the dishes at 5.50, the bedroom door is on the wrong wall in relation to where we came in, the couch faces west but sometimes it turns and faces south, the train jolts at uneven intervals and the room is 102% lighter than the inside of my house.
That's not even counting the colour of the wallpaper and all the glasses around the room that could get glass shards in my hand if the train moves.
As soon as I got onto the train I grabbed every glass I could find and put them all in a ring around me before gripping my legs in a ball with my eyes closed and my fingers in my ears.
I still can't mask the smell; that fresh carpet smell that doesn't have a hint of mildew or the burnt stench of old electronics. There's the scent of fresh food wafting around the train and the funny smell of Lucas' sweat.
It's so wrong-everything's wrong.
The train left on time at the very least. Our escort understands the need for things to be on time. Since then we've been moving constantly and the escort is still in her bedroom so I don't know what time we're going to stop so I have a headache because I can't go up to my room at home at 5:37 and I can't go to my room here at the same time because it isn't the right room.
I feel a tapping on my shoulder and slightly open one eye to see Lucas standing over me with a glass filled with orange juice.
"You want any?" he asks.
"Don't you?" I reply, trying to seem cordial before I burrow back into the safe blackness of my arms.
"I'm not drinking anything the Capitol gives me," he spits.
I check the time; 3:28. No, I can't have a drink now; my next drink isn't scheduled until 3:30. I can't drink before that.
"No, I can't," I reply, my breathing getting faster as I think about drinking before the allotted time. It would make me sick, it would make things wrong again and then I'd have even more wrong until it killed me. Wrongness is like bad karma, my wrong timing is why I got Reaped, everything was wrong today, is wrong today.
"You sure? You look… off," he says, not taking away the glass.
"NO!" I push the glass away, but Lucas was holding it at the top so it tips over.
The orange juice splashes all over my clothes.
I can't have anything on my clothes, they can't get a stain, I can't wear anything that isn't dry.
I sprint into the bedroom assigned to me, rifling through the clothes in the closet that I can choose from for the arrival at the station. They have to be right; they have to be the same type as my other clothes.
Whenever I need new clothes in District 3 I have to specifically find something that feels right like the clothes I had before. They have to feel the same, feeling different would be wrong, it wouldn't be the same as it had been.
Nothing in the drawers feels the same as what I'm wearing.
I toss off the clothes I'm wearing so I can let them dry off while I wash the juice off my body; the feeling of it is unclean.
The shower water is too hot, the soap suds start immediately and they cover my body before I can get rid of them and wash it all off with hot water then cold water like my normal shower, the temperature has to be exactly right. Then I get a bar of soap but it's so smooth that I have to scratch it with my nails to make it rough like my soap at home but then I get soap under my nails and I have to scrape it out.
This means that I have to rush the rest of my shower to finish after 3 minutes and 21 seconds.
When I get out, the shower doesn't drip and each drip that doesn't happen makes my head spin. My body burns from not scrubbing it for the full portion of time but I can't stay in the shower too long; it would be more wrong.
Back in the bedroom, my clothes have vanished to be replaced with a pale green shirt and black pants.
They don't feel right.
The blackness in my ball doesn't feel right either without right clothes.
I want to go home.
Felix Haas: (District 4)
Oh yeah, I'm almost at the Games.
Already I've been delivered a hot towel by some servants, a cool, sugary drink and had a boiling hot shower and dressed in a tight training shirt and baggy running shorts.
This is the life.
Better yet; I'll have even more time to get used to it after the Games when I win. I'll be living it up every day with all the food I could want, all the servants and I'll never work another day. No more fishing, just a blissful retirement at the age of 16.
Summer's looking green.
A Career, whose parent was a victor of the Hunger Games and yet she looks like she's about to start crying like a baby. Pathetic, I almost agree with all those other Districts that reckon District 4 is always the weak link in the Careers. She's a perfect example.
I want to grab another drink to tide over the time until my glorious arrival at the station in the Capitol but Summer has her chair in front of it. She's such a waste of my time; I don't know why the even bothered bringing her since she's just going to die.
"Move it," I try and push the chair aside, just like she'll be a pushover in the arena.
"No, piss off," she growls back, reaching behind her and pulling out a drink.
I know we aren't allowed to start fighting before the arena but as she opens the 'lid' and starts drinking, I'm sorely tempted. She takes another sip and lets out a huge 'ah' and I make up my mind. There are places you can hit without leaving an exterior mark and she definitely deserves it.
As she goes to drink again, I smash her in the stomach and she jolts back and I reckon I've beaten her.
Then she rolls back forward and spits her drink all over my shiny new tribute shirt.
That bitch is going to pay.
She grins and drains the rest of the drink before crushing it and throwing it so it bounces off my forehead, leaving an ugly red mark on my perfectly tanned features.
"Problem beaky?"
No one insults my nose. I don't care if I get reprimanded for killing my District partner before the Games; it'll just remind everyone that Felix Haas is a bad-ass who should not be messed with.
My hand is flying towards her throat and she's sliding off her chair and slips between my legs to come back up behind me when Whale the psycho escort walks in.
"Ooo, excited for the Games are we? Wonderful! Just keep that enthusiasm in check until the Games when you can share it with everyone, not just me!" he grins, his tone sounding so wrong with his 'whale' voice.
"Now, now children?" he keeps talking, going up on the end of each sentence like it's a question? As Summer and I keep glaring at each other? "Oh dear, what has happened to that shirt of yours? You must get cleaned up? Summer, you should get changed into your uniform too?"
As we go into opposite rooms I glare at her; youhaven'twonanythingyet,bitch.
She replies, bringit.
Joey Cox: (District 5)
The train is pretty…
There's so much I can draw, from the little things like the perfect curvature of the walls to the curving couch with the red velvet, unlike anything I've seen in District 5, down to the tiny things like the bubbles floating through the drinks we were given as soon as we got onto the train.
The liquid changes colours constantly, making it almost impossible to draw as I have to keep changing colour until I have a rainbow drink that mimics catching the light streaming through the gilt window frame and filtering through the glowing strips on the ceiling.
I've put the finishing touches on a copy of the spiral pattern dyed into the carpet when I feel a slight tap on my shoulder.
Spinning around, I see Apollo looking nervously over my shoulder, "Uh… hi. They delivered some food but you were concentrating so I thought I'd wait until you were done… It's really good you know!"
In Apollo's hand is a plate half filled with biscuits of all different kinds and a nervous smile on his face.
"Thanks, that was really nice of you Apollo," I reply as he smiles a little bit more, tapping his feet anxiously as I take the plate from him, "Don't you want any?"
"Er… the plate wasn't half full when I got it…" he looks slightly abashed.
"That's okay, you didn't have to wait for me, I know Dave, Karla and Leana wouldn't wait, Dave's appetite is bigger than his brain sometimes…" I reply, trying to put him at ease. I don't mind if he ate them, one person and her three imaginary friends only have one stomach after all.
"Dave, Karla and Leana? Are they your friends?" Apollo asks, trying to keep up the conversation.
"I know they're not real, it's just nice to have friends who aren't people…" I answer as Apollo nods earnestly.
"That sounds cool!"
I'm thinking about something to say in reply when one of the servants walks in to clear up the empty plates and glasses that we've left on the floor.
Her jaw and neck look a little funny but they wouldn't… would they?
She looks a little like Dread Knight Asmodeus looked after Dave as the High King cut his tongue in punishment for spreading deceit in the land of Joevia.
Surely that doesn't happen in real life… no, I must be confused.
I grab my pencil and start drawing the servant girl like she's in High King Dave's world in a fancy dress with a smile on her face and a whole tongue clearly visible. She's talking to a little night in shining armour who was originally going to be Dave but I realised as I finished the last bit of fur on his shiny gauntlet that it looks more like Apollo, maybe a little older than he is now.
I'd totally forgotten he was still there and when I look up, I realise he's been watching me draw for the last hour or so.
"Here," I wrap up the picture into a little roll and give it to him, "It's for you. Thanks for waiting to give me the biscuits; the carpet in that picture is like this carpet so you can have a little bit of the picture too…"
Apollo grins like a light bulb has flicked on behind his face as he takes the picture, "Thanks!"
He's nice… I wish I knew him back in District 5 and he and Dave could have been friends… maybe he could ride a horse or even a griffin… wasn't I going to draw a griffin earlier?
Maybe gold…
Wolfgang Ardenne: (District 6)
I'm finally here in the Games; I haven't chickened out. I'm ready to prove to my father that I can make it on my own.
I'm so ready to use my German kickassery on anyone who thinks that they can beat me when we get to the arena.
"Hey Taryn, you ready for the Games?" I ask as she remains silently curled up in her chair with her arms folded. If ever I saw someone with a black cloud hanging over someone's head it was here now. You'd think someone had already died.
"Oh yeah, I'm loving the fact that I'm heading to my potential death soon with an insensitive git. It's exactly what I want to be doing with my morning," I doubt she could have slathered that sentence with more venom without turning into a snake.
"So not a Capitol fan then?" I ask evenly as though we're having a polite conversation.
"What do you think, moron?"
"I'll take that as a… no," she gives me a death stare as I pause between the 'a' and the 'no,' "They are just a little bit obnoxious aren't they? At least they know how to make their digs comfortable," I lean back in my chair and kick out the footrest.
"Because how comfortable their 'digs' are is really important right now," she snaps. Apparently taking a joke; not her forte. I mean, surely it's not because of me, is it?
"Yup, if we're going out we might as well go out in style. Besides, I wouldn't let the Capitol get to me without at least eating all their food first. You have to get something out of them," I grin as she rolls her eyes.
Right as it almost gets awkward, in comes the escort. This will be fun.
"Come on now you two, you must get out of those rags into something more fashionable! What on earth are you wearing Taryn? It looks like it has blood on it!"
"Yep," she replies.
"Don't be so disrespectful to your elders! Now go get changed. Now. I'll hear nothing more about it until you do it!" he taps his foot impatiently on the ground and delivers a glare even more impressive than Taryn's until we both go to get changed.
Not that I'm giving up that easily.
When I return to the sitting room with Taryn, I have the numbered shirt in my arms and I waggle my eyebrows at Taryn as her eyes flick over rather unsubtly. Still, she's not the target of my 'unfortunate' but highly attractive shirtlessness.
"How do you put this thing on? That darn head hole ain't big enough for no head and there ain't no buttons on it!" I put on an over the top District 10 accent and put on an overdone look of slack-jawed stupidity.
I can see Taryn poorly concealing a grin and the escort who wandered in, vaguely following the escort, with an empty smile on his face.
The escort himself looks aghast, "Don't they teach you anything in those Districts! Shocking, you don't even know how to wear a shirt!"
"This ain't no shirt, there ain't no buttons on it!" I reply, acting equally involved in the trivial conversation.
He grabs the shirt but as he pulls it over my head I 'accidentally' head butt him in the face. Then as I step back as though dazed, when really I know how to head butt someone when I want to (thanks Father), I grab his shirt to stop myself falling backwards but really I tear it and then roll so that he smacks straight down on his face while I lie on the carpet with my arms crossed casually behind my head after yanking the shirt on neatly.
As the escort sprints out of the room, bawling his head off, I ask, "Now that he's dealt with, anyone up for pizza?"
I decided to split it there so it doesn't become a chore to read since this section is the length of an average Reaping for me. Still, the other half is up now if you want to read them consecutively.