Author's Note: I'm watching Hunger Games right now, which has inspired (and reminded) me to update this fanfic as well as encouraging me to write another chapter. So here is Chapter Fourteen. Sorry about being so slack with my updates, I've just been too tired in the evenings and weekend to do any writing or even bothering to update. So yeah, sorry about that.
I've been told by one of my mates at College (TAFE for any Aussies), who's been reading this fanfic as I've been writing it - I've been reading his as well - that Annie seems to have gotten more spunk and independence as well as becoming quite sarcastic in Part Two. I haven't really noticed, but then I'm actually writing Annie with her feeling how I think I would feel in if I was in the Hunger Games, but let me know if she is becoming out of character for you and I will try and fix that. My mate says he doesn't mind, that he actually enjoys reading Annie being mentally sarcastic and having a bit of spunk, but he did point out that this is quite different to how she was in Part One. My argument is, when you enter something like the Hunger Games, I think you would become a little different to how you are normally, because you would have, to survive mentally, I think. If you didn't, I think you'd lose your mind what with everything that is happening around you.

Chapter Fourteen

Sixty seconds.

That's the amount of time we are required to stand on our metal circles before the gong is sounded for us to go. Step off too soon and you'll find yourself without any legs.

Sixty seconds is the time we are given to take in our arena before we start fighting for our lives. Sixty seconds to figure out if the strategies that we worked out over the past couple of days will indeed work to our advantage. If not, figure out a new one. And fast.

I look at the Cornucopia; the giant gold horn shaped like a cone with a curled tail with a mouth about seven metres high, spilling over with things that could save all our lives. Food, containers filled with water, more weapons than you could possibly imagine, medicine, the list goes on. Strewn all around the Cornucopia are other supplies, the further they are away from the Cornucopia the greater the decrease of their value.

I am fast, faster than probably everyone else here. I could grab some good supplies from the mouth of the Cornucopia before anyone realised what had happen.

I look around me, taking in the arena.

We are in a flat section of a very steep valley. I can see high mountains all around me and when I listen hard, I can hear the sound I heard originally, a large amount of water falling on to more water. Almost like breakers breaking upon the rocks of the bay, but… different.

There is a forest all around me, lining the bases of the mountains.

But the forest doesn't really interest me nor do the mountains; it's the sound of the water that does. I could survive the whole Games if I can make it to the water I can hear.

The gong goes and I am off my metal plate immediately and shooting off in the direction that I'm sure the water I am hearing is in.

"CRESTA! Where are you going?" I hear Merle bellowing after to me and I, despite myself, stagger slightly in my run at the sound of his voice.

STUPID! He's going to kill me know.

I can hear it, the sound of metal cutting through air.

I double over and cartwheel away from the sound at the last moment. I then hear a wheezing gasp and a thud quite close to me.

My head snaps back to look behind me. A boy is lying, dead, behind me with Merle standing over him, a huge sword in one hand and was wrestling an axe out of the dead boy's death grip.

"Wha…" I stammer, not sure what had just happen.

He frowned down at me.

"What are you doing?'

"Running for my life."

"Why? Stay put, guard the Cornucopia, we'll stop them getting to you." and before I could say anything he had grabbed my arm and was dragging me back into the chaos, the screams of terror and pain, him shoving a spear into my hands and making me stand in the entrance of the Cornucopia.

What was going on?

Also, I have never seen so many kids running free from the bloodbath before, not in any of the games that I have seen in my life.

I didn't understand why this was until I saw Jade, saw how much she liked to take her time while killing her victims, torturing them first before slowly stabbing them in fatal areas and yet knowing they won't die immediately.

"JADE!" I hear Cole bellow out in frustration as he spears down one of the lingering kids. The kid dies quickly and without a sound. Probably didn't even know what hit her. "Kill the kid already and help us."

But it's too late, the kids are basically all gone and apparently the grand total of deaths during the bloodbath is six.

Nineteen of us left.

Has there ever been so many tributes still alive after a Bloodbath before? Not since the very early Games I'm sure. Though nearly none of them were able to grab any supplies that I saw and I know that while not many were killed, a great number of them were running wounded.

"Jade! What were you doing? Did you not see how many kids got away?" I heard Jeopardy complain.

"What was I doing?" Jade sneered back at him, "What were you doing, all of you? Too scared of breaking a nail to do any real work?"

Already there is friction in this group and it's barely half an hour into the Games.

I looked around me at all the gear that we had at our disposal and noticed something odd. Looking closer and I knew that what I had just discovered was just about to cause even more friction within our happy little group.

"What's with you Cresta?" Merle asked suddenly, only now noticing that I was checking in various crates and backpacks that were still within the Cornucopia, checking varies water container.

"Um," I say feeling somewhat torn between being amused and horrified at my discovery, "we, um, we seem to have no food."

"WHAT?"

"No food… or water." I add as I pick up a water container and give it a good shake, before opening it to prove to the rest of them that the container is truly empty.

I almost laughed when I saw the looks of complete horror and panic that were written all over Districts Ones and Twos faces.

The four of them shoved passed me, forcing me out of the Cornucopia which was find by me because I wanted out of there and starting their own search, soon discovery that I was indeed correct.

"HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO US?!" Serendipity shrieked.

"To liven things up a bit? Maybe they think we've had it too easy in previous years and they want to offer us a challenge this year." Merle offered. Serendipity shot him a none to pleasant look. I didn't blame her for being unhappy. One of the main ways a tribute from another district wins the Games is for the Careers to run out of food and to then either starve to death or end up eating something poisonous because they don't have any survival skills beyond fighting.

"Shut up!" Serendipity snapped at him, before turning her glare on me, obviously noticing my amused smile and snarled, "Why didn't you kill her?"

Everyone is looking at me now and I can feel my heart starting to race. Should have just kept running.

"Because," Merle drawls, "she's useful."

"Oh, useful, fantastic! What can she do, magic food to appear?" Serendipity snapped.

"No, but she can find it." Merle replied calmly and Serendipity falls silent, though still glaring at me.

"That true?" Cole asked a thick, heavy voice that matches his huge frame completely. He's like a bear, a huge one, one wipe of his great paw and you're dead.

"Um, yeah." I say trying to sound confident while inside I just want to run and hope that I'm fast enough to miss Cole's spear, "but I think we should look for water first."

They all, with the exception of Merle, look at me strangely.

"Shouldn't we look for food first?" Jeopardy asked.

I shake my head, feeling a tad exasperated.

"No. We can survive a couple of days without food, but without water," I shake my head again, "staying hydrated during the games is one of the most important ways of keeping ones self alive. If you don't… well, you're easy pickings for anyone." I watch the Twin's gap at me while Merle and Cole nodded a long with what I was saying while Jade… Jade simply looked furious. Like I've personally insulted her or something.

"So first move is?" Cole asks.

"We find water." I say, trying to ignore Jade's glares, "I'm pretty sure there's a large body of water close by. Hear it? Water falling upon water, or breaking upon water." I shrug. "Either way, there is water somewhere close by, so we should head for it." I glance at Jade, "it'll be where all the other tributes will be heading." I add and I feel horrible for doing so, but it seems to pacify Jade and the others are more eager to come along, though as we start off I start to wish that they had just let me go and find the water by myself while they went hunting down food… or other tributes.

They are all boisterous and loud, pushing and shoving each other as we walk towards where I'm sure the large body of water is.

I want to tell them to shut up, by being as loud as they are, they're either attracting unwanted tributes or whatever beasts that the Gamemakers have thrown into these games to make them interesting or they're scaring away all potential food.

Biting down hard upon my tongue so as to stop myself from yelling at them - a sure way of getting a knife in my back I'm sure – and just kept walking, keeping my eyes and ears open for anything. But besides from the growing thunder of water and the almost endless green of the forest around us, I saw and heard nothing out of the ordinary.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw a rabbit bolting away from us and felt some relief that at least we had some source of food, though I've never actually cooked rabbit and I wasn't sure how it was exactly done, but I've heard of the consequences of eating raw rabbit and personally I don't feel like experiencing them. Especially now…

I rest a hand briefly upon my belly which feels somehow more swollen in here, in the arena than when I was still in the Capital. Could a pregnant belly grow that fast simply over night? Or maybe it was just my imagination.

I drop my hand to my side and straight my shoulders though it is hard as I'm the one carrying all of the water containers in a large backpack – the largest in the Cornucopia - on my back while the others are all holding weapons. I dread to think how heavy my pack will be when all the containers are filled with water.

We break free of the trees and my mouth drops.

Before us is something that is like the ocean back home only much smaller and calmer, barely any waves are rolling upon the sandy beach. A lake… this is a lake.

And on the other side of the lake is a waterfall. A huge one, that crashes down upon the lake's surface like thunder, causing a rainbow to be thrown up from its spray.

I feel myself smile. How could something so beautiful be in these games?

"Oi, Cresta? You still in there?" Merle is snapping his fingers in front of my face causing me to blink and look away from the awesome sight and smack his hand away from my face.

"Ow, easy Cresta." He waves the hand that I smacked up and down, his face pulled into a somewhat comical hurt expression.

I actually felt myself smile at him.

"Oi, can we fill these water containers up already so that we can go and do something interesting?" Jeopardy complained where he stood on the beach, his sister echoing him.

"Well, you guys could always go and do something "interesting" and I can stay here, fill up the water containers and set up some nets." I say, rolling my eyes back at them.

"Oh, so you can sneak off and steal all the water? I think not, District Four." Jade sneers at me.

I blinked back at her.

Eh, what? Wait, that isn't actually a bad idea, but…

"I don't think she even thought of that Jade." Cole rumbles. Jade simply gives a snort before roughly yanking the pack of my back, causing me to stagger, and threw it to the ground.

"Hey," I say, "easy. They're pretty strong, but not that strong if you keep throwing them around like that. These have to last all of the games, don't you understand?" I asked her with annoyance. I hear murmured agreements around me.

"Look, there about thirty in here, so how about each of us take five water containers each and we're each responsible for our own containers? How does that sound?" I ask them all in exasperation. Once again I'm given strange looks, but when I start handing each of them their five water containers, none of them complain and each start heading for the water.

"You don't think they've poison it or something?" I ask Merle, who stares at me before looking thoughtfully over the lake.

"I don't think a large body of water could be poison, since it's so big. Why?"

"I just thought of it." I start biting my lip. "I think a large body of water can be poison or rather, um, what's the word," Merle shrugs. "It's starts with 'P' too." I wave a hand threw the air. "um, um… Oh, polluted. It could be polluted or something…"

"Or you could be over thinking things and the water is completely fine."

"You know, those are probably the last words of lots and lots of tributes during these games." I grumble as I follow him slowly down to the water's side.

"What this? You, afraid of water?" Merle teased and I scowled at him.

"NO! I'm just being cautious. I want to live you know and not die because I did something stupid!"

"Fine Cresta." He knelt down by the lake side and dipped his hand into the clear, blue water. He made a cup with his hands and took a sip. I waited holding my breath.

"Taste fine, quite sweet actually, almost like…" his face froze and started gagging. The others look up from where they're filling their water containers to over at us, where Merle is on all fours and choking.

"Oh, no, Merle." I drop my water containers on to the soft sand, my brain working in overdrive to try and remember some cure to being poison.

"Merle." I crouch down beside him, pressing a hand upon his trembling shoulder. " Merle? Merle…" freezing cold water hits me straight in the face and while I'm blinking it away, I hear Merle and the other's laughing.

Self-centre jerks!

"Jerk." I say as I storm away from him, wiping water from my face.

"You should have seen you're face." Merle howls after me but I ignore him, instead I walk along the beach – after I had picked up my pack and thrown my water containers back into it - looking down at my feet, searching. Searching, searching, searching… aha!

"Found Dinner!" I yell back down the beach at the idiots, who all come running up to see what "dinner" was.

When they are close and with a wicked smile, I throw the smelly, rotting fish right at Merle's face. He yelped and tried to duck, though it was too late and it still hit him, though only on the forehead.

"EW!" Serendipity shrieked, "That's gross! What is wrong with you!" she screamed at me.

I continue to smile as I shrugged back at her.

"Absolutely nothing. But you know what that means." I say to Merle who is giving me a half-hearted glare.

"What?"

"Dinner."

"I'm not eating that!" the twins shriek in sync.

"You won't be." I snort, "But don't you get what that rotten, smelly thing means?" I ask them, wondering if they all possess the minds of five years old because they've all been smack too many times over the heads with sword and clubs. Actually I know five year olds smart than these five!

"It means," I say when none of them get it, "that if there is one fish here, then there is probably whole schools of them," I finish with a roll of my eyes.

"Oh…"

"I don't like fish." Serendipity grumbled.

"Well then you can go catch yourself a nice, plump rabbit. I saw one while we were walking here, which means there is probably more of them about. See, plenty of food about, we just need to look carefully. Especially when it comes to finding greens and fruit." I add with a warning tone. I knew that I was at some point going to have to give them a lecture about editable plants soon or later before one of them really does go and poison them selves.

"We'll we've found water, so let's go." Jade snapped.

"Go where?" I ask in bewilderment.

She sneers at me.

"Where ever a poor tribute happens to be."

"Oh…"

"You got a problem with that?" Jade asked stepping closer to me and bearing down upon me. I was once again filled with the desire to run, but by sheer bravery – more like stupidity – I stood my ground and glared back at her.

"No." Though of course I did. Why did Merle have to yell out to me at the bloodbath? I could have been safely away from these murderous freaks by now. "But shouldn't we at least wait until nightfall? They'll be all running scared right now, but tonight, they won't be, they'll be slowing down, tired and weak, you cut up some quite badly today," I remind them all, hating myself all the while.

"So what do you want us to do instead?" Jeopardy asked impatiently.

"Start making traps and nets." Blank looks and I fight back a scream of irritation and exasperation. Why was I even bothering?!

"To catch food with!" I all but yell at them. "And catch the other tributes in too." I add so as to fully appease to the group. They look happier when I suggested this, not much happier, but I guess they saw some sense in what I was saying. But seriously, why wasn't I just leaving them to starve already? Clearly none of them had been paying even the slightest attention to any of the stations they had followed me around to on that second day of training.

Fighting back dark grumbles I start stomping back towards the Cornucopia.

"Where you going Cresta?" I hear Merle yell after me and I fight the desire to peg one of my water containers at his thick head. But why waste a perfectly good water container on his stupid head, thick as it clearly is, it might just break the container.

"To the Cornucopia."

"Why?"

Oh give me the strength not to hit the stupid, thick bastard!

"Rope! We need rope, don't we?"

Oh, give me the strength to not hit all the stupid, thick idiots!

"For the TRAPS!"

"Oh… right. Yeah, we'll need that, won't we?"

Argh!

Waving my arms in the air in frustration I continue stomping off, back into the forest, back in the direction we had come, back towards the Cornucopia. Which just goes to show how bright I am, since I was going back alone and almost completely unarmed except for my backpack of water containers and a small knife that I had attached to my belt earlier.

I stop in the middle of the forest, just now realising how stupid I really was and actually laughed. Yeah, now let every tribute close by know where you are, you're a genius Annie.

But I couldn't help it. It was such a stupid thing to do! So completely stupid and innocent thing to do. So trusting was I, forgetting that I was involved in a Game that could very well kill me because of my own stupidity by being exactly that, stupid!

I smack my palm against my forehead.

"Oh, I'm such an idiot."

I hear a rustle nearby and fight back a sigh. Wonderful… that was fast.

"I know you're there, you might as well come out." I say, feeling strangely calm. I wasn't injured… yet, so if all else fails, I can run. Which I was already moving myself into a position to do when the simple-minded, baby face boy from District Six came lumbering out from behind some trees.

He looked at me with bright, terrified blue eyes, clutching a arm that had clearly been hurt during the Bloodbath.

"Hey," I say and suddenly I'm more worried that the others have realised my foully, well maybe Merle has, and they've come after me since I know exactly what they'll do to this poor child trapped in a young man's body.

He doesn't say anything; he simply trembles from where he stands a few feet from me.

He's a big boy, despite his baby, dull and simple facial features; tall with big muscles. I would honestly hate to be hit by him if he ever got angry or scared. He might just kill me with one accurate punch.

I don't know what to do or say. A part of me desperately wants to take care of him, to give him a hug and tell him that everything will be ok. And another part me, a truly horrible, dark side of me that I never before knew I had, wants to kill him. Kill him now and quickly and spare him the torture and agony that I know other Tributes will put him through. I bet if I pulled out my knife and moved fast enough, I could kill him before he even knew what was happening, his simple mind moving too slow to process what I was doing.

"Titus…"

"What?" I ask, shaking myself away from my dark thoughts. The simple, baby-face boy smiles a full, wide smile and says, "Titus," again.

I stare at him, rattling my brain all the while as to why this meant something to me, why it sounded so familiar, like I had heard it several times before. Titus, Titus… Oh, Titus.

"Titus? That's your name, isn't it?" I feel all drive to kill him drain out of me as soon as I saw him beam, so delighted that I had spoken his name, that I felt sick to my core that I ever even thought of ending his simple life, even though I knew that by my killing him now would spare him a world of pain later on during these Games.

"Titus." He points to his chest happily, excitedly.

He looks at me expectantly and I give him a weak smile.

"Annie. My name is Annie." I was so going to regret this, I just knew it.

Titus beamed somehow even more brightly and repeated my name over and over again to himself.

Oh, no, what had I done?

"Look, Titus, you need to go. Leave here, alright."

"Annie?" his simple, baby-face is now confused and he looks even hurt.

"You-need-to-go. There are going to be some bad people coming this way, bad people who will hurt you, you know them. They hurt you this morning," I gesture to his bleeding, hurt arm and he looks at it and lets out a little whimper.

"Hurts."

"I know, but if you stay here, you'll be hurt more, do you understand, Titus? You have to leave or you'll be hurt more."

"Hurt more?"

"Yes, hurt more?"

"Annie, hurt?"

"No," not yet at least, "but you will be, so you need to go and hide somewhere, far away from here, ok."

"O-kay."

"Good. Now, off you go. Go in that direction." I point towards the mountains, which he looks to and gives a small nod.

"Go on." I wave my hands at him and he starts to lumber in the direction that I directed him in.

"Bye bye." He says as he waves a great hand back at me. I wave until he's out of sight before feeling deflated.

What had I just done?

Marlin and the others are probably ready to strangle me right about now. But how could I? How could I kill such an innocent, simple-minded boy in cold blood? I couldn't and I wouldn't.

I just prayed that this incident wouldn't come back to bite me.

Author's Note: Yes, I know, I threw Titus in. And I know he's been over-used to the extreme in a lot of fics, but I actually have a reason for throwing him in. Several actually. But I'll only tell you a few now, the rest you'll just have to wait for.
1. I'm actually interested in him since we know so little about him, meaning I can add my own twist to his character that I haven't read before. This version actually makes me depressed when I write and think about him since I think how this sweet, innocent-mind baby will become what he does.
2. he's a means to an end, in someways, I need a reason behind something happens near the end of Annie's games, and he's the way to make it to happen. Doesn't make sense now, but it will.
And 3. I'm a horrible person and I'm making Annie's life even harder.
But the most importantly, I'm not adding him seemly for the sake of adding him - something that I've read a tad too often - and I'm not adding him to enhance the gore in this fic...'shudders'. I have reasons and purposes as to why he's in this fic, which you will all read in due cause.
Anyway, hope you all enjoyed this chapter. Please Review and if you have an suggestion or criticism - constructive, no flames - I'd love to hear them.
Bye for now.