Hey everybody! I'm so sorry I haven't written in such a while! My computer's been broken! But now it's fixed. And I just wanted to clear something up! I know this chapter will be a little confusing, with all of the explanations and everything, but let me just say that, obviously, happens after the Percy Jackson books, which would be after the big war, so I'm having the Big Three be able to have kids again. Please review!
Glimmer
I passed a lot of people on the way to dinner. Let me rephrase that. I passed a lot of kids on the way to dinner. They ranged in age, from about twelve to eighteen-which were the general ages of the Hunger Games tributes, and surely the other districts had their own trains. Right? That would be the obvious thing. Another weird thing was that every adult I passed said something to me, and everything was some kind of variation of, "Oh, you're Aphrodite's, for sure." What? Who hell is Aphrodite, and what has she got to do with anything? Is she like a special trainer or something? When I got to the dining car, I was surprised to see about thirty people sitting along one long table, most of them being the kids I saw earlier. Are these the other tributes? As I sat down in one of the only remaining seats, the woman at the head of the table looked at me and said to someone, "Oh, yes, you're right, she's definitely Aphrodite's." What is going on?
Marvel
Finally, the last tribute arrived and some people started serving dinner. "These are Avoxes," the head at the table explained. "For a punishment, their tongues have been cut out, so they cannot speak." HA! This is great. You can bully someone, and they can't even rat you out! I knocked the tray of food out of the Avox standing next to me, spilling its contents all over his shirt. "Whoops, sorry," I smirked.
Clove
While the Avoxes were passing out food, the head at the table spoke again and introduced herself. "Hello," she said. "My name is Leeva, and I am your escort. I know you must all be very confused, so I will explain. First of all, you will not be participating in the Hunger Games." This one sentence caused pandemonium.
"What?" I cried, quickly rising from my chair. I wasn't the only one who did this. Tributes all over the room were standing up and yelling at Leeva, their anger apparent on their faces. Others, however, like the little girl from Eleven, looked like they were going to faint in relief. I was furious. I had waited my whole life for this! Who did these people think they were, taking away my only opportunity to get rid of my life?
"Because they don't exist," Leeva plainly stated. This sentence caused even more pandemonium.
"WHAT?"
"That's bullshit!"
"My brother died in one of them!"
"SILENCE!" yelled Leeva. "If you aren't going to be quiet, you will be turned into temporary Avoxes!" She pointed to an Avox in the corner of the room, who held up a roll of packing tape.
"Who do you think you are that you can take away the Games?" Cato, the other guy from District Two, shouted, apparently not believing Leeva about the tape.
An Avox marched over to Cato and slapped a piece of tape over his mouth and tied his wrists behind his back so he couldn't rip it off.
Cato
That bitch! I screamed in my head. How dare she shut me up? And more importantly, how the hell was I supposed to explain this to my brothers? They had expected me to win! Hell, I expected myself to win! I was finally going to prove myself to them! Suddenly, I caught the girl from District One looking at me. (Well, everyone was looking at me; she was just one of the more attractive ones.) I wiggled my eyebrows at her and tried to put on a sexy face. (Well, as sexy as I could manage with tape over my mouth.) She looked away quickly, a disgusted look on her face. I shrugged my shoulders and tried the same with the other girl from Two. (I didn't know her name, she wasn't from my village.) She gave me the finger. I rolled my eyes and turned my attention back to Leeva, who was starting to explain why we were here.
Leeva took a deep breath. "You are all demigods," she started. "Half-human, half-god," she said to our confused expression. Well, that just confused us even more. Well, at least it confused me even more.
"There are many Olympian gods and goddesses," she said. She sighed again, seeing our blank faces. "The thirteen major ones are Aphrodite, Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Demeter, Hephaestus, Hera, Hermes, Hestia, and then the Big Three: the brothers, Zeus, the god of the sky; Poseidon, the god of the sea; and Hades, the god of the Underworld."
"More bullshit!"
"Gods don't exist, idiot!"
Two more mouths were taped.
I laughed in my head. What an idiot, Leeva is.
Cosette (Foxface)
Leeva continued as the boy from One and the girl from Two got their mouths taped shut. I didn't understand what Leeva was saying. How can gods exist? And if Leeva was telling the truth, why didn't any of them help us when we were hungry, or couldn't heat our homes? Where were they then? And then there was the situation with the Hunger Games not existing! Of course they existed! I saw Gavroche die with my own eyes!
I raised my hand. "Excuse me, but what does any of this have to do with the Hunger Games not being real?"
Leeva looked at me. "Oh, you look just like our little Gavroche. You're his sister, aren't you?"
I nodded slowly.
Leeva smiled. "Oh, he'll be very happy to see you,"
See me? Were they planning on killing us a different way, then? Because the only way I could see Gavroche was if…I died, too.
"Please let me finish and you will soon to understand…or, at least, start to. These gods like to, ah, interact, if you will, with humans. Their offspring, called demigods, have certain characteristics that separate them from humans. They're hyperactive, can't read well, and have a certain smell that draws monsters to them, and trust me, monsters are not good. They will try to kill you. Most humans are unaware of our existence; the only ones that know are the human parent of the demigod and a handful of others."
"I think you've made a mistake," said the boy from Twelve. "I live with both of my parents."
"Ah, some of you may, also," she said, addressing the rest of us. "However, either one of your parents is a step parent or you could be adopted. Or you could be this year's Victor."
"What do you mean, Victor? Like the Victor of the Games?" the boy from Ten asked.
"Yes! Precisely!" said Leeva. "Now, pay attention; this is where the Hunger Games come in. Every year, Camp Half-blood, which is a special camp for demigods in the Capitol, takes twenty-three demigods from the districts to Camp Half-blood, where they live until they turn twenty-one, which is when their powers are weaker and have less of a chance to be discovered by a monster and eaten. Obviously, we can't start taking kids all over Panem without some kind of explanation, so that's why the Hunger Games were created. Like I said, they don't really exist; we just film them, and everything's fake. It's meant to look real, of course, to fool the rest of the districts. Everyone that you've seen die in the Hunger Games is actually still alive today at Camp Half-Blood."
I almost burst with the excitement that filled me at the sound of that.
"Unless, of course, they were sent on a quest, and died then…but don't worry, that rarely ever happens!" Leeva said perkily.
"You said twenty-three tributes. There are always twenty-four of us," stated the girl from Four.
"The twenty-fourth tribute is our Victor; the one who goes back home and does not go to Camp Half-blood," replied Leeva.
"How do you pick the Victor?" I asked.
"Oh, we don't pick the Victor; they are simply the one tribute with no godly parent. However, to make sure they don't give us away, we erase the part of their memory of filming the Games, the explaining, of all this, and instead actually implant into their minds the memories of actually participating in the Games, so when they go home they actually believe that they've been in the Games." Explained Leeva, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"But, but that's horrible!" I cried. "What if they can never recover from their memories of the Games? What if they…go crazy or something?"
Leeva shrugged. "It has happened, and that's just a risk we have to take."
Thresh
Somehow, everything that Leeva was saying made sense, in a way. It meant that I would be able to see my older sister again, who up until very recently, I thought had died five years ago in the sixty-ninth Hunger Games. She wouldn't be at the camp anymore, though, she was eighteen when she was reaped. I wonder what she was doing and where she was living now.
"What do we do after we leave camp?" I blurted out. "No one's ever come back to District Eleven."
"Well that's because, after camp, the demigods live in the Capitol, which is just a huge community of demigods. Of course they couldn't go back home to their districts! People would think the dead were walking the earth! It would just be absolute mayhem! Now what you choose to do, that is your choice. Now, my father, Hermes, is the god of traveling, so I decided to become an escort and travel across Panem, escorting other demigods to camp, where they can be safe."
"When do we get to meet our parent?" the girl from Five said.
Leeva hesitated. "Well-I don't know. After the Big War, which I will explain later, gods and goddesses were required to visit their children at least once. You may have already met your parent; you may have not. Some visit more than others." She looked at me. "Who do you live with?"
"My grandmother," I said stiffly.
"Is she your grandmother on your mother's or father's side?"
"My mother's."
"Oh, well then, you're parent would definitely be a god, because you wouldn't know your grandmother on your godly parent's side."
"Fascinating," I said, uninterested. Who did I care about knowing my godly parent? They didn't do anything for me or my grandmother until now. Not that this would be really helping her, she probably doesn't even know.
"Would my grandmother know?" I asked Leeva.
"Oh, yes! She knows and is being cared for. Since she is your only family, she will have the choice of moving to the Capitol when you are done with camp. No need to worry!"
"So…my father and brothers and sisters won't be able to come live with me?" the little girl from my own district asked, her lip trembling.
Leeva's face softened and she walked over to the girl and put her hand on her shoulder. "Oh, it's alright, Rue, you'll be okay! Eventually, the rest of your siblings will be reaped and sent to camp, and once the youngest one is at camp, your father will be able to move to the Capitol, too!"
Glimmer
All of this was slowly beginning to click into place in my brain. I was a demigod…part god! That was so fricken cool! So that's what everyone meant when they said I must be Aphrodite's…they meant Aphrodite was my mother! I wonder how they knew. Suddenly, while I was turning all of this over in my head, I felt my face tingling. I started to bring the tip of my finger up to stop it, when a voice popped into my head. Don't, it said, you'll bring on pimples. I sat, confused at this, and didn't realize that everybody was staring at me until Leeva said happily, "Well! Looks like we have our first claiming! Between the ages of twelve and eighteen, gods and goddess will claim their children by sending their symbol to appear over their children's heads. But, Aphrodite's way of claiming is quite unique. Instead of sending her symbols, which are the swan and the dove, to appear over her children's foreheads, she sends them Aphrodite's Blessing. She is the goddess of love and beauty, and her Blessing turns her children impeccably beautiful for a few days, no matter how much they try to get rid of the makeup on their face or muss their hair up. And it appears Aphrodite has claimed Glimmer!"
Leeva handed me a mirror. I looked at my reflection and the shock almost made me fall to the floor. My blonde hair, which I had straightened for the reaping, had curled itself; and not my usual small, natural corkscrews; they were fat curls that rained down to just above my elbow. Wait a minute, just above my elbow? That wasn't right! MY hair had always been down to my waist! The Blessing had shortened my hair! And then I stopped looking at my hair-and noticed my face. Blush was applied to the apples of my cheeks with the lightest hand, and silver shimmer sparkled at the corners of my eyes every time I moved. Soft green and sparkly silver eye shadow were blended together on my eyelids, which complemented my emerald green eyes. My eyelashes were long and luscious. Then I saw my dress, and my heart stopped. It was easily one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen. Held up by two minuscule white spaghetti straps, the diamond-studded bodice danced down my body, randomly clumping large groups of diamonds together, where, at my knees, a skirt of silky white feathers swirled around my feet.
"It's…beautiful," I whispered, touching the mirror.
Looking at the mirror, though I tried my hardest to push the thought from my mind, I knew something was off about my claiming.
Marvel
Well after Glimmer was claimed, it turned into a whole shitshow of everyone jealous of her being claimed, and they wanted to be claimed, too. Leeva tried to regain order, but it didn't work as well as she might have hoped.
"Everyone, please, please, just shh! You will all be claimed by the time you're at the camp fire on your first day at camp, alright? Jeesh, shut up!" to one of the Avoxes, she murmured quite loudly, "Every year, you know, they're worse."
"Well when are we getting to this camp?" the girl from Four asked impatiently.
"Well, in a couple weeks, maybe a month?" Leeva said uncomfortably. "It will take up to two weeks to get to the Capitol, and then we'll have to spend a few weeks shooting the Games."
"What the hell? So we have to wait a month before we're claimed?" yelled the boy from Seven. He, like me and the boy and girl from Two, got his mouth taped.
Clove
"Well, if you want, we can try to guess who your parent is, how about that?" Leeva chirped. "Some of the gods favor districts. Aphrodite, for example, favors District One, for their prime industry of luxury items for the Capitol," she said, smiling at Glimmer. "Apollo also favors District One, because he's sometimes known as being 'flashy'. Ares, the god of war, favors District Two, for their production of weapons. No wonder why District Two's tributes are always so…bloodthirsty." She smiled weakly at Cato and Clove. "Poseidon, the god of the sea, favors District Four, for obvious reasons. Hephaestus, the god of the forge, favors districts Twelve and Two, for their mining abilities. He also liked District Thirteen, until, you know…Anyway! Athena's children are known for coming from District Three. Hermes doesn't have a personal preference; as the god of traveling, he stops in whatever district he feels like! Now this doesn't mean that the gods only stick with one district. A lot of their children are from different districts. Who am I forgetting? Oh, yes, Demeter-"
Leeva never got to finish before a bundle of harvested wheat appeared above Rue's head.
"-favors District Eleven," Leeva finished, smiling at Rue, who suddenly went palefrom all of the eyes on her. Rue slowly pointed to the symbol over her head, then to herself, and stammered, "D-Demeter?"
Cato
God, I hate that kid. If we WERE doing the Games, she would be the first one that I would kill. It just annoys the HELL out of me how she acts so scared and weak all the time. And now, with the claiming and everything? Everyone will just LOVE her. SHIT! I FUCKING HATE HER!
Okay, everybody, I hoped you liked it! Sorry I cut it off so quickly, I just ran out of ideas. Can we try for a bunch of reviews?