Katniss

We drag Olive to the beach, her hanging half-concious between me and Madge. Curie is stumbling along infront of us, barely managing to stay on her feet, whatever those fruit-things did obviously having had an effect on her, too. And they must have done something. Because while I'm not overly fond of the Career, I realise that she's pretty clever. She would never be dumb enough to just eat those things if something wasn't wrong.

Amphitrite comes sprinting towards us just as we reach the beach."What the -"

"No time to explain,"I cut her off."We gotta make Olive puke."

The girl from Four doesn't question this and helps me hold down Olive once Madge filled a few containers with salt water. The girl from Two fights against ingesting the stuff, clearly still not really aware of the situation, but between the three of us it's easy enough to pry her mouth open and force the water down her throat.

When she finally starts convulsing and wretching, Madge and I quickly move back while Amphitrite helps her onto her knees and holds back her hair."There you go, just let it all out."

She turns her head towards me."What exactly is she letting out?"

I quickly fill her in on what happened and she nods thoughtfully."We were wondering where you'd gotten to. I mean, we heard the screaming but going in alone seemed insane and we couldn't just leave Avalon lying around by herself in the open, so we figured we'd wait and see if you'd come back."

"Reasonable enough,"Madge says, her nose wrinkled slightly."Can we move away from the vomit now?"

Amphitrite pats Olive's back."You done, sweetie?"

The younger girl nods, shakily getting to her feet with Amphitrite's help. We move to where Demeter is sitting with Curie and Avalon, who's finally awake but still pale, cracking open shellfish.

We talk through what happened once more, in more detail, when suddenly Olive freezes."It's a clock."

"What?"I turn to her, as do all the other girls. Curie lights up, nodding enthusastically, while the rest of us are just confused. Olive gestures to the girl from Three."Jayjay's been trying to tell us. The arena is a clock. The jabberjays stopped right before those fruits popped up. The fog just stopped, so did the monkeys. Then there's those tolls in the middle of the night."

"And right then the storm started,"I take over, realisation hitting me."Twelve tolls. It started at midnight. Each wedge is one hour."

"So we're safe here for now,"Demeter says."The beach here isn't affected and the hour's over anyway."

Madge nods thoughtfully."But we can't just stay here. We'd be sitting ducks."

The way she says it sounds like she's talking about the Careers, but camping out isn't an option because it would make us too boring. Get the Gamemakers onto us.

"Then where can we go?"Avalon asks."We don't know where the Careers are and most of the hours are unknown to us. Some might affect the beach, even though it seems most don't from what we know so far.."

Amphitrite shrugs."We know some, better than nothing. We could follow the wedges. Move up one every hour." She smirks at Olive."You figuring this out might make people forget you puked live on television."

"Oh crap,"Olive says, eyes widening."The whole country saw me throw up."

We can't help ourselves, we start cracking up. It's probably the stress we're under but the situation suddenly seems hilarious.

"Johanna Mason saw you throw up,"Amphitrite adds between giggles. Olive kicks her in the shin lightly."Will you get off Johanna Mason already?"

The girl from Four only smirks and gives Olive the sultry look I know all too well by now."I'll get off her when you stop thinking about getting on her."

Olive kicks her again, laughing."Fair enough. So that ain't gonna happen."

We're laughing like we don't have a care in the world now, even Curie's giggling. The young girl is still an enigma to me. She's Prim's age but she seems much older than her and at the same time much younger. After a while, Madge brings us back to reality."Not to ruin the mood, but what's our plan?"

"Killjoy,"Amphitrite mutters, albeit with a smile and wink."I feel sorry for your baby already. Mummy's strict."

"Let's just take today to rest up properly, yeah? Get moving at midnight,"Olive suggests and we're all happy to agree to that. Even though I know that nothing can logically have happened to Prim, the jabberjays have still shaken me.

We busy ourselves with cleaning out the fish Amphitrite caught, tending to our various wounds and napping in turns until a parachute drops down to us. There's twenty-four little rolls that Avalon recognises as from her district. Amphitrite makes her count them twice, for some reason, and Avalon is only happy to oblige."Twenty-four,"she repeats once she's done again, sounding like she just said something of great importance.

Soon the anthem starts playing. Tonight there's three faces in the sky. A girl from Five, a girl from Eight and Elise, the girl from Ten who was with Demeter and the others initially.

Olive raises her eyebrows."You realise it's just us, some girl from Eleven and the Careers now?"

"Five of them, seven of us,"I say."Seems like we have an edge here."

Amphitrite snorts."No offense, but you two -" she gestures to the girls from Three, "are not what I'd consider fighters. And Madge, Demeter, you're good but not Career-good. Katniss, great shot, awesome long-range fighter, passable melee at best. Olive and I rock, obviously, but that's two of us and four of them. Plus that chick from Six."

"Doable, but kinda risky,"Olive agrees."Especially if we go looking for them and get stuck in their territory. They must have basecamp somewhere. And we'd have to go into the jungle. Exhausting, dangerous, annoying."

A part of me feels like maybe I should be offended, but they're right. And I don't want to go looking for the Careers anyway. Prim said there's a plan so I don't see why we should kill the others if they don't attack us first.

"I might have an idea,"Avalon pipes up. She holds up the wire she has not let out of her sight yet."We fry them."

"Excuse me?"I say, all of us staring at her. She explains her plan and it sounds so insane it just might work."We need the cover of dark,"she finishes,"And today won't be enough time so we do it tomorrow. At midnight."

)o(

I actually have a good reason for updating so late this time! I reaaaally don't want to get to the next chapter and the longer I didn't post this one the longer it wasn't the next chapter lol

all pinky promise not to hate me next week? please and thank you

also how good was mockingjay criny over the hanging tree 58375 times a day since wednesday tbh