We were led light animals for slaughter to silver plates, which rose onto the arena. They encircled a pile of weapons and boxes. No Cornucopia, just stuff scattered around. I saw Cato, who mouths `Love you.` I smile, and the klaxon sounds.

Students shot off their plates, some away from everyone, others, towards the supplies. A boy leapt on top of me, pinning me so I faced the sky. `Be strong for me.` Cato's words rang in my ears. I turned the boy over onto his back, and snapped his neck.

`No regrets.` I told myself, then threw myself into the bloodshed. A knife vest. I grabbed it, only to see another pair of hands holding the vest. `No mercy.` I booted the girl away. The vest was on me in seconds, and the fallen girl had a slit in her throat moments after. Knives. My greatest weapon, a close friend. Armed with knives, I joined Cato, who was hacking away with a sword, to kill of stragglers.

I felt something stir in me. Bloodlust. I saw a girl grasping at the pile. Soon, she was just barely grasping on to her life. A plunge of my knife released it from her pitiful grasp. As she goes slack, another life drains out of a body, as it is impaled by my wicked knives.

Sharp beyond possibility, shining like a knight in armor, deadly as a snake. Swift as an eagle, precise like a laser beam. I watched in utter fascination as the point pierced skin, broke into muscle, drew beads, trickling, even rivers of blood, mesmerized by how it pooled on the ground, around the wound, staining the blade. I relished down the blade glided smoothly across one's throat, silent, deadly. I loved how it felt like a skate blade on ice, smooth, fast, cold. Pain didn't deter me, it surged me on.

I saw a friend from my elementary school. `Clove…` She said in a voice tinged with wonder, relief, and sadness.

I looked her in the eye. `Tina.` I said in a icy voice, then release a dagger. She's dead before she knows it.

And so the killing goes on. I let my cold, cruel, sadistic side I never knew I had, take over, and hid my true self. Student after student fell around me. My victims fell and bowed to my knives, everyone of the kneeling before me, some even down on the ground.

I craved power, I craved killing, I craved blood. And it was terrible.

My greatest fear had come true. I was no longer human, but a heartless, killing machine.

Cato walked over. `You survived the first day.` He said, stating the obvious.

I studied the hands that killed so many. `Yes. And it turned me into a monster.` I growled in indignity.

`Be strong, Clove. No mercy, no regrets.` He reminded me.

`No alliance either?` I pointed out.

Cato nodded. `We're being strong.`

`I'm stronger when you're with me.` I smirked.

He teases me by licking the blood from a gash beside my right eye. Thank god, we had the same blood type.

`What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.` He quoted,

I laughed. `So the only people still alive are those who ran away at the beginning right?`

`Yeah.` Cato dragged the mutilated bodies in a pile, then counted them. Sixteen dead in the first hour.

The ground underneath the bodies open, and the corpses fall into a dark abyss.

No cannon, no anthem, just pictures of the fallen students in the sky. Somewhere, I knew that sixteen families would be bestowed by the news that their son or daughter was dead, and somewhere else, sixteen families rejoice that their child has made it through the first hour. People will find out about what is happening, and the 99% of people in Vancouver who have absolutely no idea that kids are being massacred, will shrink, slowly, until everyone knows of this horror. My friends and family will know that I am in the arena, fighting for my life, as the BBBC sat in a spotless room, controlling the arena, taking notes, all part of an experiment. It infuriated me.

Just then, it began to rain. Thunder rolled around. A gust of wind made the branches of tress sway precariously. Torrents of rain pelted us. Cato whimpered. It was on a day with similar weather, that he saw his father shot to death before his eyes. He was perpetually scarred.

`No tent can help us.` I said, `Be strong, brave out the storm. It can't go on forever. We can survive. We have each other.` I knelt down, and shielded his body with mine. I gritted my teeth as I felt the cold air bite into my skin. Cato bunched up the front of my shirt, clinging onto my body. He tucked his head under my chin, pushed his waist between my thighs, and curled up into a ball, sheltered by my body.

I kissed the top of his head, brushing back his slick, spiky, golden hair. `It'll be all right. I'll protect you.` It wasn't safe out here. Anyone who chose to brave the storm could kill me with their bare hands. But if it would spare Cato, then I was willing to do it for him.

I zipped up the jacket around us, exhaling down the back of his shirt. I knew from the content sounds he was making that it gave him the warmth he needed. He soon fell into a fitful sleep. I smiled, shivering, then wrapped my hands around his back, rested my head against his, and slept out in the open, where the cold winds blew.

I woke to the sun peeking over the horizon. Cato stirred inside my jacket, and yawned. `Where am I?` He asked groggily. H looked around him. `Oh. The High School Games.`

I unzipped the jacket and let him out. Grunting, I stretched my cramped back. `Storm's over.` There wasn't a single cloud in the sky.

We plodded into the forest. A gurgling brook teeming with fish appeared, a source of food, water, and shelter. The fish finished cooking, and we sat against a tree, eating fish.

`Thanks for covering me last night…` Cato said with a hint of shame in his voice.

`No problem Cato, no need to be ashamed.`

Cato looked away, slightly embarrassed.

I loved teasing him like that.

We walked on. Then I noticed something sticking from behind a bush. I bent down to examine it, and when I realized it was a human hand, I shot backwards. I knifed away the foliage to reveal a body, charred, and the scent of brunt flesh entered my nostrils.

`Our culprit.` Cato said, holding up the metal machete the girl was carrying. `It attracted the lighting, and killed her. The plastic in your vest and your body covering my sword probably saved our lives. I bet at least one other person died of this storm.`

I shivered at the thought of a blackened student, their untimely death carried out by an electric current. I retched up the breakfast of fish, the vomit splattering the burnt out corpse. `I'm a fricking 14 year old 8th grader!` I growled between gasps of air. `Damn the scientists. Turning me into a heartless bastard.`

Cato picked me up from my hands and knees. `Get up. Be strong. We can't stop the Games now, but maybe when we win, maybe. But all we can do for now is survive.`

`But… but…` I started.

Cato lifted my chin up so we looked each other in the eye. `Don't say anything, butcherbird. It'll be better this way.`

I faltered, thinking of something to retort with.

Cato must have sensed it, because he sealed my lips with a searing kiss. I never expected him to be gentle, and this was no exception, so I kissed him back, harder. A shiver ran down my spine as he pushed his hands up the back of my shirt, and I ran mine down his muscular arms. He finally pulled back, and put a finger to my lips, smiling.

I nodded, and smiled back. Grabbing his hand, I ran towards the forest, spurred on by Cato's little bit of knowledge. We could only survive. This was what we could do, and that would be what we would do.

A/N: Finally back from my trip, just in time for Victoria weekend! So, continue reading this story, 'cause I've gotten over my writer's block, and am back to writing. See you soon, readers.

-Katara Macken