Looks Can Be Deceiving

by team-this-isnt-twilight

With the looks of an angel and an innocent smile, Lacey is automatically counted out as the victor of the 33rd Hunger Games. They are judging her by her appearance, but will her past be enough to help her come out of the arena alive? Or will she be in a wooden coffin on the way back to her district when the victor is crowned? Rated T for a reason!

6. Until I Get Caught Red Handed

Okay, so I discovered over break that more time at home actually equals less writing time. :( My parents apparently believe that breaks equal family bonding time, so instead of getting to write like I had planned, I got to play board games with my parents and watch movies, one of which was about a boy and a girl who switched bodies. :S I ALMOST DIED BECAUSE IT WAS TERRIBLE! and then I cried a little because I was feeling the need to write and my parents WOULDN'T LET ME! Just kidding, I just started acting all bitchy XD.

ANYWAY, here is the chapter, almost a week late... SORRY! Oh and here is a box of matches, feel free to burn down my house while I'm sleeping because you are that mad at me. (Just kidding...)

Originally, this had a completely evil cliff hanger at the end, but I changed it so the scene doesn't even exist anymore. Fair warning though, once I get to the actually games, expect some cliff hangers. XD I hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: I DON'T OWN THE HUNGER GAMES! :O

I wake up and blink, expecting to hear some sort of buzzing or screeching, but I am only met with silence. It's kind of creepy, I mean, I'm in the Capitol, and in the Capitol there is no such thing as silence. Yet, here I am, waking up to complete and utter silence. I glance at my clock. 10:56. No wonder I am waking up to silence; I have four minutes before my alarm goes off. Thinking that I should try to be as quiet as possible, I quickly turn off the alarm and walk into the bathroom, where I already have laid out the clothes I am planning to wear for tonight's training. I pull on the simple outfit I picked out earlier: a plain white tank top, black running shorts, tennis shoes, and a gray zip-up jacket. I pull my hair back in a pony tail, and when I look in the mirror, I can't help but smile. For the first time since I came to this wretched place, I don't look weak or fragile or girly. If someone passed by me, I could easily make myself look that way, it's quite simple actually. All I would have to do is widen my eyes slightly and replace my current smirk with my girly smile. Somehow, I doubt I am going to run into anyone though. It's the middle of the night and the others are too stupid to think of night training. Night time strategizing on the roof has been done before, but I think I am the first one to train during the night.

Silently, I slip out of my room, shutting my door slowly behind me so that I can make sure that it won't slam shut and wake everyone up. I walk down the halls and tip-toe down the stairs, being extra cautious since every sound echoes loudly in the stairwell, even the drop of a pin would sound like you dropped a giant rock. Okay, so maybe I am exaggerating a little, but the point is that any sound I make could potentially wake someone up, and I don't want that. Sighing in relief as I exit the stair well, I enter the Training Center and look around, checking to make sure that I am truly alone. Positive that I am, in fact, alone, I run over to the weapons corner and stare at the wall they have dedicated to weapons. Any weapon you could possibly want, from at least 100 different knives to more obscure ones like bull whips and sledge hammers, they have it all. I know it makes me sound completely blood-thirsty, sadistic, and insane, I can picture using a different weapon to kill every tribute… except I'm having difficulties doing so for Jagger and Alice. I'm sure I will get over that, but for now, I guess I can live with the fantasies of killing the rest of them. It's not that I really want to kill other people, it's more like I want to come back alive so I can continue to live… for my family, and I really would like to get revenge on the Capitol for both killing my family and attempting to kill me. They will soon regret the latter, but if I want that to happen I need to focus.

Looking over the weapon rack one last time, I grab a few hatchets off the wall. Like I said, you should typically start in your comfort zone and work your way out of it, and hatchets are definitely in my comfort zone. Walking over to the dummies, I experimentally swing the hatchet a few times, testing the weight and the grip on the handle before sending it slicing into the nearest dummy, hitting it in the neck, but not quite decapitating it. I didn't expect to decapitate anything with a hatchet, that's generally what swords and axes are for, but I personally favor hatchets and I can't help but smile as I note that this hatchet is much sharper than the one I have at home. Slicing through a few more dummies in quick succession, I grin at the mutilated dummies that surround me. Some of them are missing arms or legs, but most have giant cuts in their necks or chests that would kill a person almost instantaneously, the last dummy even has a hatchet still lodged in its 'skull'. I yank it out and walk back about 10 feet, tossing the hatchet over my shoulder without looking and smirking when a familiar thump that resonates throughout the room. As I turn to face the dummies, I throw two one after another. Thump Thump. Looking at my handiwork, I notice I hit all the dummies in the chest, right where their hearts should be and that the blades are all at least 6 inches deep, which would instantly kill most of the tributes. I jog back so that I am standing 20 feet away from my target. Thump. Now 25 feet. Thump. At 30 feet away I throw the last three I was carrying, sighing as they miss their targets by a foot or so. As I am retrieving the hatchets, I hear a distinct click coming from the hall. No! No one else is supposed to come down here! Quickly, I gather the hatchets and run into the obstacle course. Instead of trying to jump to the second platform, I jump into the gap between them, effectively concealing myself unless someone happened to literally be looking down on me. I hear the clicking get louder, and I recognize that the noise is the clicking of high-heeled shoes tapping against the concrete floor that covers this level of the Center.

I harshly take in a breath as I hear a soft but annoying, due to the Capitol accent, voice call out, "Blair? Storm? Are you guys down here? You guys need to come back to our floor!" After few moments that seem like pure torture, the person sighs and grumbles something about their mentor killing her before leaving, the clicking slowly fading into the distance as I release the breath I didn't know I had been holding. So the Careers are meeting on the roof again… interesting. I have no need to spy on them; I have more important things to do at this time, like train more. I slide out of my hiding spot and walk back to my spot at the dummies, throwing all eight within seconds of each other, just a little harder than I had a few minutes ago. I watch as two fall to the ground, closer than they were last time. The other six, I note, hit the dummies, two in the leg, one in the arm, one in the chest, one in the head (lucky shot I guess), and one… well, let's just say that if I hit a guy there with a hatchet, they wouldn't be getting up due to extreme amounts of pain. It's good, throwing a hatchet from this distance is difficult, but I'm not proud of it. I will be happy once they all hit the dummy. Retrieving the hatchets once again, I back up and throw them again, grinning triumphantly when they all hit the dummies, pelvic region and up. I gather the weapons and put them back in their rightful places on the wall. I grab a few axes of various sizes, from a little larger than a hatchet to so large I was surprised I could carry it so easily. I repeat the process, minus the hiding incident in the middle. The farthest I can throw the axe and still hit the target is 20 feet, but I can live with that.

Satisfied with my hatchet and axe skills, I examine the wall again. I should learn to use every weapon here, you never know what they have will have in the Arena, and I could have difficulty getting weapons, so being able to use them all may be helpful. Actually, I will learn to use almost every weapon here, some are just too obscure to care about. I honestly doubt that they would have them in the Arena unless someone showed a particular talent with them. I pull out my notepad, which I have decided to carry with me to all night training, and make a list of what weapons I will train with each night. After 15 minutes of thinking and organizing, I officially have made a list.

Night One (tonight):
-Axes and hatchets
-Swords
-Hammers
-Tomahawks
-Pickaxes
-Sickles
-Survival Skills and Intelligence

Night Two:
-Close-combat
-Whips
-Knives
-Tridents
-Spears

-Machete
-Maces
-Stealth, Climbing, and Strength

Night Three:
-Bow and Arrow
-Crossbows
-Blow-guns
-Sling shots
-Boomerangs
-Daggers
-Flexibility, Agility, and Speed

Seeming satisfied with my list, I grin and check off Axes and Hatchets. I may go back to it later, but for now I am happy with my skill in that area. I decide to try swords next. They are one of the few weapons that I couldn't use at home, but they seemed easy enough. I had watched the careers all day, so I picked up a few tricks and tips about how to use them. The girl from one, Flame, is surprisingly talented with swords. I expected her just to be a pretty face that had no talents other than manipulating boys to do what she wants them to, but I was wrong, and I will admit it. Surprisingly, the Careers all seemed to have different strengths this year. While Flame was talented with swords and, surprisingly, maces (I don't even know how it's possible, but she is), Cameron seemed to do better with spears and tomahawks, another surprise to me since I didn't think that they would train the Careers with the unusual weapons. Blair, like most girl Careers from two, was deadly with knives and daggers, and from what I had seen she was really agile and fast too. Storm was like every other District two male, huge and relied on brute strength, making his forte close combat without any weapons, but he seemed to pick up an interest in hammers, which I found odd. I don't know what the Careers were taught to use back home, but I doubt that this was it. Sebastian was typical as well; his main weapon being a trident, and Brandon seemed to be good with whips and lassoes. If you didn't know what District he was from, you would likely guess District ten. Then you have Alice, who surprisingly was nowhere near the Careers all day. Instead, she was talking to a lot of different people, and none of them were the people the Careers told her to figure out. She didn't really show any talents today, but I knew that she had to be good with some sort of weapon. All I knew about her was that she was clever, smart, can read people well, and she is sneaky. I wonder what weapon she is good with…

Shaking my head to clear the thoughts out, I turn back to the section of the wall with the swords on it and gingerly pick up a few, testing their weight and grips before finding a couple that I like. They were light, meaning they could move quicker through the air, and they had long, sharp blades, allowing you to stand a few inches further away from your opponent. Grinning, I turn back to the targets; the dummies turning into people that I wanted to kill even more than I wanted to kill the other tributes. The tributes that had killed my loved ones, Peacekeepers, Capitol citizens, and the one person I would give anything to kill, President Snow. Even though he isn't actually here, just imagining him looking at me, laughing and talking about how much he loved watching my family die on national television is making me see red. Almost as if I wasn't human, I growl at the image and lunge at it, slicing my sword through the dummy until it is nothing more than a pile of shredded plastic, rubber, and whatever else the use to make dummies. I quickly decapitate the rest of the dummies, finishing them all off within seconds. My anger slowly begins to fade and I look at the mess around me with a mixture of satisfaction and complete horror. I'm satisfied since I can use a sword quite well, and that I just killed "President Snow", but I'm kind of horrified because I realize that I am just as bad as the Careers and that soon I will be killing innocent kids just like they are. The horror quickly disappears as I remind myself that it's not my fault I'm like this, its President Snow's. If he didn't kill my family off and then send me to the games, I wouldn't be violent and kill-happy in the first place.

I practice killing a few more dummies before putting a little check next to swords and moving on to hammers, which is next on my list. I quickly discover that I can't really pick it up, much less actually hurt someone with it, so I cross it off and move on to tomahawks. They are very similar to hatchets, but generally weigh a bit less, which means I can throw them from a greater distance. I take ten off the wall and step back to the 30 foot line, deciding against trying to throw them from closer up. I throw them all at the dummy, grinning when they land side by side in the dummy's chest. I retrieve them and try 35 feet. Then 40. At 40 feet, 7 out of the ten hit the dummy, the others falling short and literally landing right in front of their target. Although that might scare a tribute, if I was going against a Career I would be practically giving them a weapon to use against me, and even though I didn't see any of them use one today, I didn't, under any circumstances, want to hand them a weapon. That's like putting a neon sign on your head with flashing lights saying 'Murder me now!'

I throw the tomahawks a few more times, never managing to get them all to hit the target from this distance, before giving up, checking it off my list and moving onto pickaxes. Glancing at the weapon, I decide to just forget about it, it doesn't look useful anyway and I doubt they will ever be in the Arena. I decide the same for sickles, they seem kind of useless if you aren't trying to harvest crops, but the District eleven tributes may use them in the Arena. I'm sure there will be other weapons, so I suppose it will be alright to skip these two. I cross them off my list and then basically repeat what I did all day: work on my survival skills. I didn't have to pretend to be bad at these skills during the day, so I got plenty of practice then, but I suppose it can't hurt to get some more practice in.

By the time I am done, I dispose of the dummies (they actually have a trash chute for destroyed dummies. It's very convenient) and look around one more time, making sure that the room looks like it did before I came in. I don't think there are any changes, so I exit the room and creep back up the stairs quietly, exiting on District seven's floor and slipping back into my room, shutting the door soundlessly behind me. I take a quick shower, thankful for the sound proof walls which make sure that no one can hear the running water. I step onto the platform which instantly air dries me and get dressed in my night-clothes. As I am walking out of the bathroom, I hear a light knock on my door. Wait, it's… about 4:30 in the morning and someone is knocking on my door? I know it isn't Evanna, she would have to be completely idiotic to be knocking, plus there isn't any shrieking to go along with the knocking, and it isn't loud at all. So who could it be? Did another tribute see me training? No, that's not possible. I need to look like I was sleeping; otherwise the person will get suspicious. I mess up my hair a little; taking a brush and brushing through my hair from the tips to the top which effectively makes my hair look messy. I then rub my eyes a little and walk over to the door, opening it and squinting a little as if the lights were too bright.

Outside of my room is a man, but not just any man, Griffin Erwyn, the Head Gamemaker for this year's games. OH SHIT! Shit shit shit shit shit… there were cameras in the Training Center. I must have been staring at him with wide eyes for a few minutes, because he clears his throat and shifts uncomfortably. His movement wouldn't have been noticeable to most people, but I trained myself back home to look for these sorts of things because if an opponent has all their weight on one foot, especially if it is their non-dominant one, then they aren't balanced and it will be easier to take them down.

I shake my head and blink a few times before taking a step back and saying, forcing my voice to tremble a bit, "Hello Mr. Erwyn."

He smiles and shakes his head slightly, shifting his weight to his other foot. Oh… so he's nervous. I wonder why… I think. However, when he speaks, he doesn't sound nervous, although all the signs are still there. "Why hello Lacey. You can quit pretending to be afraid of me, I know that the whole 'I'm weak and innocent and afraid of everyone' thing is just an act. I have something serious that I would like to discuss with you, and it would be better if you would stop pretending to be afraid long enough for us to talk."

I roll my eyes and smirk at him, almost laughing at the look on his face. I think he thought I would still be girly and wide-eyed, just no trembling voice or looks of fear. Well, he's wrong, and I'm tempted to see if I can scare him, but quickly decide against it. "Okay Mr. Erwyn, you caught on to my little act. My guess is it's because of cameras placed in the Training Center, and that's what you are here to talk to me about. Come in, I guess… unless you would rather talk in the doorway and make this a very awkward situation when Evanna comes around like she does at this time. She treats me like a daughter, so I somehow doubt she would be very happy about this… meeting. Oh wait, maybe you are here to talk to me about Evanna! Which one is it, the Training Center or Evanna? My guess is the Training Center; otherwise you would have come at a different time," I say, smiling with just a hint of the girly one that I typically wear and step to the side, allowing him to enter the room.

He looks at me with an odd look on his face; it's like a mix of shock and nervousness and a little bit of anger. He stands there, uncertain of what to do, and I raise an eyebrow before saying, "Well, I suppose we could talk somewhere else if you would like, but I swear Evanna starts walking up and down this hall around now."

He glares at me and I shrug, fighting the urge to laugh now. It takes me a minute to realize why he is being so hesitant. There aren't any cameras in my room, otherwise I would have gotten punished for the Evanna incident, and he clearly has seen what I can do, it's the only reason he's here now. He must be worried that I'm going to try to kill him. I grin and laugh quietly, earning another glare from the Gamemaker in front of me. I shrug my shoulders innocently and say, "We could go have that discussion you wanted to have in the living room, there are plenty of cameras there and Evanna doesn't start running around there until after she has woken us up."

I must either be embarrassing him or annoying him, but I don't really care. It's too early for discussions, and I'm going to make that clear with breaking any rules. He nods and turns away, mumbling something about sending someone else next time and I chuckle before following him into the living room, where I sit down in a chair across from the one he is sitting in. He still looks extremely uncomfortable; the Gamemakers don't usually have to deal with the tributes. I smile again and ask, "What did you need to talk to me about?"

He sighs before replying, "Well, after the Gamemakers saw what you can do, they have taken a sudden… interest in you. From what we have seen, you are better than the Careers, which could make for a very exciting games this year. But, you broke a rule. No tributes are allowed off of their floors at night. Now, technically we are supposed to punish you, but that would make the games a lot less fun this year, so we have decided on something else. You can take the punishment… or you can do what we tell you to in the Arena."

I stare at him for a moment before I burst out laughing. "Ok. One, you are crazy. Did you really think I was going to fall for that? Two, last time I checked, that wasn't even a rule. Three, even if it is a rule, I wouldn't be the only one who broke it. And four, why on Earth would I do what you told me to in the Arena? Honestly, I don't know what made you think that would work!"

He smirks and puts a book on the table, opens it up to a certain page, and shows me the rule written there.

64: All tributes must stay on their floors at night.

I laugh again and he looks at me like I have gone insane. When I finally stop laughing, I look down at the book again and then say, "Ok, it's a rule. Guess how many tributes you have to punish? Eight and that doesn't even include the ones that will sneak out tomorrow! Oh and then the ones that go to the roof the night before they are sent to the Arena! Have fun ruining the games completely this year by punishing all the biggest competitors! My guess is that the Careers are still on the roof. You have a camera pointed right at the spot where they were sitting last night. Oh and one more thing, the tributes get a different copy of the rule book, and rule #64 in that one is no blackmailing other tributes. You made a book in hopes to blackmail me to do what you wanted me to do. Congrats! It failed," I smirk at him and add, "Oh and you guys may want to add the rule ' Tributes cannot attack their escorts.' I mean, it's not a rule now, I checked, but it should be one. Also, warn the escorts not to be idiotic and wake up their tributes at four in the morning just to say that training starts at ten. Thanks!"

He looks at me with a look of pure hatred and I just smile at him, pissing him off even more. He stands up and glares one more time before harshly saying, "Oh so you read the rulebook. I think you are the first tribute to ever do that. But trust me; I will make you regret outsmarting me in the Arena."

I giggle, getting more looks of anger and confusion from him. I stand up and yawn before replying, "You just tried to play the wrong tribute. Try Flame, she's an idiot; she will definitely fall for your blackmail. Oh and you can throw whatever you want at me in the Arena, I have nothing to lose. Your games already took my family. But I can assure you, I will survive, because you and I both know you'd get in a lot of trouble if you killed me in fire because the Capitol loves a good show, and a sweet, innocent, weak 12-year-old murdering everyone in the Arena by herself is exactly that. So unless you want to die too, you can't kill me in some freak nature accident. And don't laugh and say I'm making this up, because whether or not President Snow told you or not, that's what they do to Ex-Head Gamemakers, they execute them. Well, that was a nice talk, but I'm tired, I'm going to bed. Goodnight!" I smile brightly at him and skip down the hall, opening the door to my room and turning around to look at him one last time before shutting it behind me, giggling at the fact that he was literally staring at me with a complete look of shock on his face.

I warily lock the door and slip into my bed, falling asleep instantly.

There! All done! Thank you for reading, but a special thanks go to those of you who reviewed! Literally, your reviews mean the world to me. :)

Hey! I've never met you, (unless you are Jinx Kalantha)
And this is crazy...
But here's my chapter,
Review it, maybe?

Please? :P

Okay, I'm going to stop wasting your time. XD Bye!

Thanks again for reading!