AUTHOR'S NOTE

Hi, sorry about that wait, anyone who enjoyed the prologue. Life, y'know? Chapter 1 is here at last!

Idea by PrimroseRaspberry, and she owns her OC (who you'll get to meet a bit later). I do not own any characters in the Hunger Games or the Hunger Games universe, only co-own the story of this fiction.

1

Thud.

My fist collides with the punching bag.

Thud.

If you didn't know me well enough, you could have thought I was taking out my anger on it.

Thud.

More like excitement.

Thud.

Today is my day.

Thud.

And the next two weeks will also be mine.

Thud.

I hear the quiet hiss of the automatic doors opening, even under the noise from the punching bag.

Thud.

My instincts are immaculate. As they should be.

Thud.

'Jeez, that punching bag insult your grandmother?' Cato says.

Thud thud thud THUD THUD!

'No, but you just insulted me.'

I whirl around and sneer at him. Enobaria says that to make up for my looks (or lack thereof) I need to present as vicious, monstrous even. The role suits me plenty.

'I was going easy on it. I won't on you.' I lie. That was exhausting, but I don't show it.

Cato tenses. It's likely enough we'll end up against each other eventually. It would be so much easier if we weren't an almost perfect match. But we have to keep it that way. No one wants to be weaker.

'You should practice with your throwing-knives. You'll be using them more than your fists.'

I see through the tip right away. He's uncomfortable at my fist fighting skills. He's the melee fighter. I fight long-range. If we end up as the last two in the arena, his only is chance to get close to me and destroy me with no room to run. He needs to keep that chance as fat as possible.

Let him be scared.

I glance at the digital clock above the doors. 7:32.

I have ten minutes shy of an hour to transform from sweaty, irritated gym girl into perfectly assembled Career monster.

I grab my towel from a bench and wipe my face, before chucking it at Cato and guzzling from a bottle of water. He recoils.

I lift my lips from the plastic mouthpiece.

'If you'll excuse me, I need to go shower,'

'I noticed.'

'And so do you, unless your presentation tactic is sweaty pink pig.' I say with a scowl. 'But I'm good on my training. How are your fight skills coming along? Have you mastered the basic stance yet?'

I flick his chest with my thumb and index finger (Yuck, his shirt is wet) and grin impishly, twirling out of reach of a vexed shove. I hurry through the gym doors without turning back.

Pretty much everything I need resides in this building. The gym and training centre take up most of the ground floor, with a small kitchen and refectory in the back. Upstairs is the large, sleek living room and the bedrooms, for kids and coaches alike. It's a short walk to my room, which means a short Enobaria danger zone. Even so, I do a preliminary sweep of the hall and stairway before I enter them. I don't want to be penalised for not being ready for the reaping and then penalised for not being in the gym. Enobaria loves her double standards, and she doesn't dismiss the little details either. An iron fist and dragon's temper make her the single most feared individual in District 2.

I make it upstairs with no sign of Enobaria and rush across the common area to my room. There's a few smaller kids already in frilled dresses and clip-on bow-ties gathered in the living room, with a coach watching over them. I remember that coach. She trains some of the new arrivals for a year, until they turn eight. She's far too kind on the little ones so they're too soft when they progress to the next stage of training. I'm glad I didn't have her. One year of slacking could mean death in the arena.

I push open the door to my room. My reaping clothes lay on the bed ready for when I get out of the shower. A black thigh-length dress and thick leather belt, with black tights and chunky-soled boots from the same shiny leather as the belt. The buckle on the belt is the sigil of District 2, which is a smart touch. The star of the show, however, is the long, white silk jacket layed out neatly by the foot of the bed. The silver clasp is allegedly from District 1, shaped to resemble an olive branch. Way to secure an alliance.

I go into my bathroom and undress, leaving my clothes strewn across the tiled floor. Enobaria's pet hate, but I don't care. There's no time to do laps around the building now, so why not rebel a little?

I step into the shower and let the hot water flow over me. The feeling of the soap gliding over my body and the sweat being rinsed off is amazing. I'm suddenly aware of my muscles rippling with each movement, a perfectly oiled killer machine. My mind wanders to the other Tributes. Every year, nearly everyone that isn't from a Career district is scrawny, cowardly and malnourished. They won't stand a chance. Feeling my body now, a few fishermen and jewellers can't be too hard to take out. And Cato can get a literal knife in the back. I smile to myself, then I stop. The bathroom door is directly opposite my bedroom window, so light shimmies through the crack in between the door and door frame between the hinges in the mornings. Only now it's in shadow. The morning is cloudless and I can swear the curtains were wide open when I came in to the bedroom. That means something, or someone, is blocking the light. Did I leave the door unlocked? I don't think so, but it can't hurt to be careful. Instincts never lie.

I leave the shower on so my mystery intruder doesn't realise I'm aware of them, and slide past the shower curtain, pulling on a robe. I grab my toothbrush (you'd be surprised how sharp they can be if you swing them hard enough) and, clutching it in my right hand, put my left hand on the doorknob. I begin to count to three in my head. The intruder shifts slightly, enough to let me see a flash of pastel yellow.

Three…

The light wavers in a way that suggests they are doing something with their hands.

Two…

I hear a soft, child-like giggle.

One…

I fling open the door and shove my toothbrush hand in front of me, leaping forward right at the infiltrator. But instead of tackling them, I flop onto the bed and the toothbrush flies out of my hand.

What. The. Hell.

I stand up immediately, knocking a few items of my reaping clothes to the ground as I do so, and look around. I'm alone in the room. I try the handle on the door. Locked from the inside. I rush to the window and test the latch. Only the narrow top half of the window opens and I'm on the second floor, so it's not a likely entrance choice, but I need to make sure. Sure enough, the window is unlatched. I throw it open as far as it can go, stick my head through it and look down. You'd need to be incredibly skinny and a very talented acrobat to dive through such a small space as quickly as this intruder would have, not to mention closing it shut behind you. Feasible, if you don't mind a fractured skull, that is.

However, there was no slam of the window shutting, so that theory is out of the window, no pun intended. Great, I think. I'm dealing with a ghost.

I pace around the room, checking every nook, cranny and orifice. Nothing. I pause in front of the window, panting. My palms are getting sweaty from the effort of holding back a tsunami of unwelcome thoughts. I wipe my hands on my bathrobe, but if anything, they only get stickier. I move to wipe my furrowed brow and stop, my hand hovering by my forehead. It's covered in pale pink patches of something that looks like jelly.

I look down at my robe. There's large streaks of red jelly smeared all over the front. I think I would have noticed being drenched in strawberry jelly, so my robe must have come into contact with the fruity substance after it had already been smeared somewhere else.

Oh no.

I replay the last two minutes in my head. There's only one way this jelly could have gotten all over me.

When I got up from the bed, the white jacket slipped onto the floor outside my bathroom door. I find it crumpled there, folded up in such a way so the front is invisible until I flip it over. My heart plummets off a cliff.

The jelly has been strategically distributed under the flaps of the jacket so it would be undetectable in its original position until worn. Presumably, the point of the joke was I would put it on only to end up stewing in sugary spread, but my fantastic belly-flop managed to squeeze most of the stuff past the flaps and onto the front. The ivory silk is destroyed.

I rock onto my knees and hold my head in my sticky hands. Such a minor tragedy can really be a big one in the arena. I face my own music and let the thoughts wreck my brain.

First up, that jacket was a literal and figurative olive branch. Capitol-quality silk and stiff cotton backing, and a clasp from District 1. Expensive, in money terms and alliance terms. If I don't have that piece of jewellery displayed on me today, District 1 could take it the wrong way. They're always looking for an excuse to betray their allies that provides a defence, even a weak one, to the peas they call their consciences. God, the politics of Careerdom.

And secondly, my only theory on the escapade of the vandal is about as solid as the jelly they used, which means either I've missed something or I'm vividly hallucinating. Neither prospects are good. I going to have to depend on my smarts and my senses to stay alive in the arena, and if I can trust neither, I may as well have a target painted on my back.

Last but not at all least, I let an intruder escape. Me. The Career that notices everything. The Career that can outrun every boy under eighteen and throw further than anyone in the district. I don't even want to think about that conversation:

So, Clove, how did a petty little intruder escape your murderous clutches?

Well, in my defence, they possessed the power of teleportation…

Yeah, right.