A/N: This chapter's another different one to the usual tribute profiles. I imagine that each year these programmes would include some sort of retrospective on a previous Hunger Games, just as a programme at a sports game might include a report of the team's last match. So hopefully you all enjoy the change... :)

Hunger Games Recap

The First Quarter Quell

If you're one of the few who are important (or lucky) enough to grab one of the fifteen thousand seats here in the City Circle for the Hunger Games interviews on more than one occasion, then you should know by now that this is the time that we'll take you on a trip through memory lane to some of the finer moments in recent Hunger Games history, letting you remember the hype and the emotion of a previous Games, to really get you into the spirit of things before the interviews and the start of the Hunger Games proper tomorrow morning.

However, this year we're doing things slightly different and taking you all back to a time when the Games were still a relatively new and exciting idea; the time of the First Quarter Quell. Of course, the massive Hunger Games hype has no way deteriorated over the years, but fifty years ago there was well and truly a novelty factor that went with reaching the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Hunger Games.

Hopefully older readers can still remember the reaction when President Shawcross pulled open the slip of paper to announce that, for the first time, the people of the districts would vote on the people to represent them in the Hunger Games that summer.

It was most certainly a stipulation that nobody expected.

Aside from the reaping, the Games began like any other; although the tributes had not been randomly selected, the usual blend of strong and weak was present. The strong in the form of a sibling duo from District 1 named Glitz and Glamour, a strong male from District 2 and a couple of physically able tributes from Districts 5 and 10. The weak being most of the rest of the field and, contrary to form, the young and inexperienced tributes of District 4, who had won the two Hunger Games prior to the Quell.

Of course, what appeared to be a regular Games once the tributes arrived to the Capitol was completely turned on its head by the brutality of the arena once the Hunger Games began. In her only year as Head Gamemaker, Astoria Clarke had created terrifying arena with just the sort of lethal beauty that we have since come to expect from Hunger Games arenas more and more; it was her creation that, in many ways, raised the bar for arena creation towards the complex expanses that we often see in the Hunger Games today.

The overriding idea for the arena was fairly simple; a large, barren desert, with a fiery volcano in its centre, at the summit of which lay the cornucopia on a dangerous pillar of rock above the lava lake. However, everything was not always as it seemed in the desert. Terrific sandstorms disoriented the tributes, leaving them struggling for air as the sand dunes around them moved places. Small lakes of clear water sprang up sporadically around the arena; there one day, gone the next, almost like a mirage, fooling tributes into losing their way through the desert. Clouds never covered the sky but for a brief spell at the start of the Games, and so tributes could only find water by running into one of the small lakes by chance. On top of all this, temperatures soared in the day and dropped below freezing at night, ensuring the tributes could never feel too comfortable, and to top it all off the arena was littered by deadly venomous snakes, that would appear to materialise at random out of the sands of the desert.

All in all, the Gamemakers tried to do everything they could to make the tributes squirm.

It was needless to say that, excluding those who got lucky when picking up supplies on the first day or had considerable support from us, the Capitol sponsors, most of the tributes were dead within five days. The remaining ten got further into the Games by battling each other and the devices the Gamemakers had thrown into the arena to make life difficult for them, although after a fortnight only two tributes remained.

Faced with a plague of snakes, forcing the two survivors back to the summit of the volcano, Arturo Foster of District 2 and Glamour, the girl from District 1 fought a tough battle by the edge of the lava. The swordfight was in many ways legendary - often video packages advertising the Hunger Games still use the picture of the boy and the girl, blades locked in combat, the fiery world of the arena behind them - but eventually Arturo proved to be too strong for his opponent, and as the sole survivor he was crowned the victor of the First Quarter Quell.

The First Quarter Quell may be a long time behind us, but its legacy can still be noticed in the Hunger Games today. It may have been the first arena to feature a lava lake (although not the first sand desert), but it certainly hasn't been the last. Its unique method for reaping tributes is still talked about to this day, and the victor remained in the headlines for many years before his untimely death, succumbing to a long-term heart problem four summers ago at the age of sixty-four.

More than anything, though, the one thing that the First Quarter Quell told us is that anything and everything is possible in the Hunger Games. The Gamemakers could offer us anything, and will.

I guess that makes us more keen than ever to see what arena is waiting for us when the tributes show up at ten tomorrow morning.

A/N: OK, so that was something different... What did you guys think, anyway? A good different or not? Let me know via review. As ever, constructive criticism is welcomed :)

P.S. For anyone willing to know more about the First Quarter Quell, there's a short piece in the victor's perspective in Chapter 25 of my fanfic 75 Games, 75 Victors, 75 Oneshots, although I imagine most people reading this have already gone through that fic anyway :)

Normal service shall be resumed in the next chapter :)