Author: WARNING. From here on out, things get violent. If you were expecting something else, then you have obviously not read the Hunger Games. In accordance with the rules of the site, I rate all further chapters at an M level for violence only. I will still continue to filter out bad language as I always have. And with a wolf-mutt as the main character, that guarantees no rated-M romance scenes. I will leave the rating at T on the index page because A) all of the chapters until now have been rated-T material, and I have just given you a fair warning that this is about to change. And B) This is the Hunger Games. Death is expected in this story genre. And if the original story can be categorized as YA, then this fanfic can be rated T.

I've woken up. I've eaten breakfast. I've been whisked away in a helicopter and had a tracker injected into my arm. I've been given clothes to wear; a light blue t-shirt, a tan canvas jacket and matching cargo pants, a pair of socks and hiking shoes. I've dressed in them and looked down at my pendant before being loaded into a glass tube. I have been raised from the darkness of an underground hull and into a world that, at first, seemed brighter than the sun. And now here I am, standing on my pedestal, watching the clock count down. Everyone here knows that if we move from our spots before that timer reaches zero, we are blown sky high.

Everyone, that is, except the mentally impaired girl from District Three. I don't know what other explanation exists for what she does; she steps off of her pedestal. BOOM! Suddenly, little bits of Jenny Gizmo are everywhere. The girl from District Ten screams as she watches the person next to her erupt into goo. Two pedestals away from the explosion, I struggle to keep my balance, but I manage. It was loud, and I can't hear anything except the ringing in my ears.

Now I focus on taking in the arena with my eyes in order to keep from feeling helpless. A vast, green field of closely cropped grass splays out in front of me, dotted with bits and pieces of female District Three tribute. In the middle of the field sits the Cornucopia, and objects radiate outwardly like the spokes on a wheel. A path of canteens, tarps and ropes lies between me and the District Ten girl. This path transitions into small and then larger backpacks as it goes closer to the center of the wheel. At the end of each path lies one weapon, and then the Cornucopia.

Twenty-five more seconds on the clock. I look around and pull in a quick summary of my surroundings. Directly behind me, there is a field of exceedingly tall grasses that have some sort of seed at the top. They're probably some sort of wild grain that Barley or Millie could easily identify, and are quite possibly a source of food, from both the grains themselves and the animals that may lurk within them.

Across the field, and at an angle to my right, I see a forest not unlike the one in which I've hunted at home. But this is the arena. Nothing is what it seems.

Ahead and to my left is a different kind of forest. There are trees, but they don't resemble any with which I am familiar. They all seem… what was that word in the plants book? Tropical? So is that… a jungle?

Where the tree line for the forest meets the tree line for the jungle, I look up to the sky and see… a building? But it's not in the sky, merely on the horizon. It seems to be on the side of a mountain, right before it juts off into a sheer cliff. And it isn't like any building I have ever before seen. The roof is a strange, stone dome. In fact, the entire structure seems to be made of sand-colored stone. Just below the dome-roof is a circle of enormous, arced windows. If they look large from this distance, then they can probably hold five people on their base up close. The rest of the building stretches out into a standard box-like design, and I realize that the dome is merely a decoration of sorts. Or perhaps it is a tower of some kind. But I'm only guessing.

I try to decide where I should run, as the timer only has five seconds left. Should I go into the jungle? No. I don't remember enough about plants to try my luck in there. Four. Should I venture into the grass? I still remember what Millie said about those snakes, so I guess that's out too. Three. There's that building on the cliff-side. But for some reason, I don't trust it. Two. The Capitol made wolf-mutts to appear trustworthy, but we weren't. It may be the same with this building. One. I guess that settles it. Forest it is. Zero.
The world erupts into a flurry of movement as everyone leaps from their pedestals. The girl from District Ten grabs a tarp and a rope and runs off into the grass, her white-blonde hair quickly vanishing in the tall plant-life. I rush down one of the spokes full of supplies and grab two canteens, a rope, and a small backpack. That's when Dream sees me. Thankfully, she doesn't yet have a weapon. I know this because she picks up a chunk of Jenny Gizmo and hurls it at me. I duck, and the piece of corpse hits Atom of District Five on the back of his head. I run past him and towards the forest, morphing along the way. My hearing returns with the protrusion of my wolf ears, as they were not exposed to the blast. And it happens just in time too.

A whizzing noise to my left causes me to stop and turn my head. A knife whirs just past my human ear and I watch it as it strikes dead into the heart of the girl from District Twelve. I hear a voice yell, "Shoot!" I turn my head back in the direction from which the projectile had come. D.C. glares at me. "I was aiming for you, not her. I was planning for a moving target. Next time, don't stop!" I turn and run in the opposite direction and grab the knife out of the girl's chest. Now I have a weapon. I take off for the forest again and end up tripping over something. Fortunately, I am able to fling the knife away in time to keep it from stabbing me. I watch it embed into Octane's calf. Oops. I wasn't even aiming for anything.

I turn around to see what tripped me. It's a pick axe. Coal could use this. I pick it up and fling it onto my shoulder before I take off running again. My backpack is on, the coil of rope is shoved onto one arm, and the canteens hang by their straps from the other. Something flies toward me from behind and gets tangled in the rope. I hear a shout of, "I hope my sister hates you now, Wolfgang!" and I smile. At least I didn't hurt Octane too badly. I don't want to kill anyone if I don't have to… except for maybe Neptune.

Once I'm a good distance into the forest, I stop to see what it was that Octane threw at me. I sit down the pick axe. Then I drop the rope and find that the bloody knife is enfolded within its coils. Grinning, I pick up the knife and plunge it into the soft, moist dirt in order to clean it. I morph back into human form to test for the return of the hearing in my human ears. The ringing has subsided, but now my eardrums throb painfully. The only thing I can hear is my heart beat.

Or so I think until I hear the words, "Don't move, or I ram this spear through your spool of a head."

I don't know what startles me more; the fact that I can hear, the words that I've just heard, or the fact that I know the voice of the person who spoke them. "Seamus," I reply, "it's me."

"Wolfgang?"

I nod. "Yeah."

"Oh, hey man! I got you a spear." He walks over and stoops down next to me with a smile. "Dude, I am so glad I found you. I thought that I was going to have to go it alone out here." His blue-green eyes sparkle amiably. "So, what did you get?"

I pull the knife out of the soil. "This, a little backpack, some rope, two canteens, and a pick axe for Coal."

"Nice," Seamus answers. "I only got the spear and this." He swings a large backpack off of his shoulder.

"Good job. Those weren't easy items," I tout him a bit before picking up the rope and putting it back on my arm. "We should get moving. We need to find food and water before the sun goes down, and a nice hiding place too." I turn and look at him before gripping the spear. "Give me that. You can carry the pick axe."

Seamus releases the spear and his smile vanishes. He puts his backpack back on and lifts the pick axe off of the ground and holds it loosely at his side, swinging it rather leisurely as though it were not a weapon.

I carry the spear in my left hand and the knife in my right. - I remember when I was six and learned about how humans have a dominant hand. It was a strange concept to me then, because all wolf-mutts are ambidextrous. I can do anything with either of my hands, although I tend to prefer my left one. From as often as Lupine sketches, I know that he prefers his right. And Randolph alternates hands. - I keep the knife because I know that I can use two weapons at the same time, whereas Seamus can probably only use one.

The two of us start deeper into the forest together on the first day of the hundred-and-seventy-fifth Hunger Games.