Late chapter, huh? Well, I've had finals and tests and projects and school ends on Wednesday for me. So yeah. Today had been the first solid day to work on it because there was a fire in part of my school and the fire was small but the smoke was really bad so school was cancelled (yay - except for the fire...). Anyway... Finally, I give you day one. It was going to have a Career POV, but then I thought that it would just never be posted if I added another POV. So no Careers. But I did add the little mini Anti-Career pack thing.
Also - TRIBUTES! I need them for the next Games.
Come away little lamb
Come away to the water
Give yourself so we might live anew
Come away little lamb
Come away to the slaughter
To the ones appointed to see this through
We are calling for you
We are coming for you
"Come Away to the Water" by Maroon 5
D4- 13- (Nelly Carter)
I think Calypso and even Kayla only see me as this silent, insane backstabber. I think that they think I'm not just a small, little District Four girl who's untrained and was scared during the bloodbath—because that's all I was: afraid. So I got quiet and I listened, tried to see and hear everything at once even though I knew I couldn't. I think they see me as a coming threat, a growing killer.
I'm not. Oh, God, I'm not.
They look wary around me, and all I can think about when they do that is that this isn't a good alliance for any of this. Floods of images from the last Games fill my head and I remember the way that Gray looked at Ryan and the way Ryan looked at Gray. I want to look at Kayla that way, but I can't. She's not worthy of the admiring, adoring look. I want her to look at me that way too, but she's afraid of me—me! The youngest in the alliance, the least mentally sound… But I'm not the kind of insane that would make me thrash out and kill them in their sleep… My friends say I'm the good kind of insane that makes me sometimes flail around while I'm talking without knowing, or wake up at a sleepover and forget I ever went to sleep, carrying on with the same conversation in gibberish because I'm so tired.
It almost makes me sad when they give me fleeting glances, as if to make sure I'm not pouncing at them. Or when they look at each other after I've done something particularly odd, seeming to say with their eyes, Did you see that? Watch out for her… She might attack now. I won't, I won't, and oh I won't! Why would they think this? How could they think this? Do I do crazy things that I don't remember? Am I imagining all of their looks of suspicion?
Actually, I don't mean it almost makes me sad. It does. I am genuinely sad. I don't want to be insane. I want to be strong for Ryan. I want to pull myself together, stand tall, and tell the whole world silently, specifically the Capitol, "You killed my friend. You killed him, and you did this to me too. And now you're killing me, and I don't approve. So please, step aside while I let the squirrels rip you to shreds and my spider army eat your remains."
I remember the day of the reaping, when I went to the Victors' Village and stood at the house that I was sure Ryan would've chosen had he won. I remember looking out over the ocean of District Four, and that sadness is happiness in comparison to the sadness that fills me because of my spiraling sanity and the fact that I don't know if I can make it out of this. I will fight to the end and go down trying hard, but in the end…I'm just a thirteen-year-old girl. I'm still little, barely a teenager… And here I am. On the brink of death. Dying, dying, dying with every second, knowing that every breath another tribute takes is a breath they take to keep themselves alive so they can kill me.
More than anything I want to go home, crawl in my mother or father's lap, and cry into their shoulder. I want to hug my big brother Erik and tell him I love him. I want to laugh with my friends and say that I am most certainly insane and it's most certainly in a good way, and I want it to be true. I want to see Ryan and I want to have a sleepover with them and I want to wake up late at night, forgetting I fell asleep, and talk gibberish for a while before dozing off again. I want to flail my arms and not know it.
I don't care what I'd be, but I don't want to be a tribute.
"Nelly?" I hear Kayla ask quietly. It's the early hours of the morning. It's my shift now, and it might be close to time for me to wake them up. I suppose they're already up, though. I look to Calypso and see that she's not, so I decide to whisper when I respond.
"What?"
"Is everything alright?" she asks me in a sympathetic voice, which almost startles me.
I frown. "Why wouldn't it be?"
"You're crying."
D7- 17- (Decon Crow)
"Pack up" is my morning greeting.
I turn over and scowl at Damien, who had commanded me to do this. I cross my arms stubbornly, my eyelids drooping over my eyes. I let out a yawn, flip over, and defiantly don't do what he's told me. As if he can order me around, especially when I'm so tired and hungry. He can pack up himself. And while he's at it, I feel like having some waffles with strawberry syrup from the Capitol.
"Get up," he snaps; he shoves me as well, all too hard considering that I'm really tired and I pretty much saved his lucky ass yesterday in the bloodbath.
I sit up and glare at him, pissed off. "Like hell. Why don't you sit your bipolar ass back and let me get another half hour so I can save you again later when I'm rested?" I snarl. I have to add one more thing: "And while you're at it, I'd simply love it if you could make me breakfast, Damien dear." I continue to glare for a second, adding an angry grimace, and lie back down.
"Get the—"
"Guys!" Nick interrupts. I look up and see him with a squirrel on the end of his spear, its blood still dripping down from it. That's all he got? I groan silently. We're going to starve if Damien and I can't do any better. "Cut it out!" He rolls his eyes when he sees Damien's fists, clenched so tightly that his knuckles are white. I hadn't noticed that. I'm glad Nick interrupted when he did.
"Decon, sleep. Damien, skin this." He tosses his spear down by Damien, who stares at it with silent loathing and fury. "I'll get everything together and try to get more food while you're being a bum, Decon."
I roll my eyes. "Thanks, whatever," I mutter, and roll over. After a minute of listening to Damien's "Ew's" and the shuffling of Nick moving around, accompanied by the swampy, muddy, wet plain's noises, I'm still not asleep. I groan and sit up, saying quietly to them as I get up to help Nick, "Well, I'm awake for good now. But I'm taking the short watch tonight."
"Done," he tells me, shoving me away as I try to grab something nearby him. "That's mine."
I knew it was his. I hoped he would think it was when he saw me going after it. I sigh and sit back, packing what really is mine was Damien passes the dead, mutilated squirrel corpse to Nick, who skins in badly but more skillfully than Damien's sloppy disgusted way of poking a knife at it and gagging. Damien packs everything up. We wait for Nick to finish now.
When he's done, he throws the carcass into a little bag which he tosses into his backpack. He hides the hide of the animal in a particularly tall patch of green, green grass, and it makes a squish sound as it plops onto the grass. Nick arranges the grass so that it hides the skin well enough and I throw my backpack over my shoulder, standing up. I hold my axe close to me as we set off diagonally through the grass, making a line towards the mountains.
We spend an hour doing this, and the somewhat distant, ominously insurmountable land feature becomes more defined. Then we take a sharp turn and we're headed towards the forest again, still in the squishy wetness of the grassy plain but edging closer and closer into the desert plain. I tell them we shouldn't go this way, but we do. It begins to rain. Where the grass cuts off and the desert begins is distinct because of one thing: There's a river between it. No rain falls on the opposite side.
"Rain," Nick says with a sigh. "Too bad we have no shelter."
"Do we have anything to purify our water with?" I ask, already sliding my backpack off to look through it. Rain drizzles down slowly in small droplets, but it's picking up again. I search through the my backpack and so does Nick as well as Damien. Damien pulls something out and reads the label. My eye catches something and I pull it out. "I have something," I announce, reading the label like Damien.
"Me too," he says.
"I do too," Nick pipes up. "Why?"
I shrug. "Maybe there's shelter up that river." I nod towards the one separating the grass and the sand. "Until then, fill the canteens with rain if they're empty."
D12- 18- (Krumr Strongthews)
My watch shift is nearly over. Carlyn's sleeping in the open space. The ground below us is a light shade of brown, dry as ever. I see storm clouds way across the entire arena, on entirely the other side of the arena. I think about the flaws of this arena. The flatness makes me able to see anyone in the dry, light-brown dirt area unless they're hiding. Three heads in the distance haven't spotted Carlyn and me, and they haven't moved since last night either. We're hidden pretty well, Carlyn and I. Once she wakes up, we'll be off, though, to get the oblivious three ahead of us.
I nudge her softly. She's slept too long as it is. I've been lenient on the length of time I've allowed her to sleep. It's past early morning and into midmorning. The heads have been moving around since dawn. I worry that they'll start to move and make everything about killing them harder than it has to be. Carlyn's eyelids flutter and she starts to move her hand to her bandaged wound, but I stop her.
"Good morning," I greet her softly. She looks up at me, blinks, and sits up slowly. "I let you sleep too long."
She frowns. "What's wrong?" she asks me. She clears her throat.
"Nothing," I tell her.
"You sound short." Carlyn looks down at her side, wincing. It's bandaged in meticulously-placed and tied tissues, which make for crappy bandages but they were the best I could do for her. It's really good, though, considering what the materials available were.
I watch her closely and shake my head, saying nothing else. If she's not used to me generally sounding short because I am, then she should get used to it.
"Let's go," I snap, making an effort to sound snappier than usual without making it obvious that it's being done on purpose. She frowns more at me when she gets up and I don't help her or ask her how she's doing. She limps because it's close to her leg, and yesterday she told me every time she put pressure on her leg it made her wound ache and felt like the boy from Two was wounding her all over again.
I watch the heads as we advance on them. Their actions are jerkier, quicker, like they're preparing in a flourish but not quite sure if they should be preparing at all. They must think that we might want to ally, to move towards the woods that everyone craves desperately together, ringing around the arena and enclosing it. Secretly I do wonder what's in there, why they added it when it's so far away from the Cornucopia. But I push that thought away, narrowing my eyes. My hand stays on my axe the whole time. I'm aware of the knife in my backpack, the quiver of arrows slung over my shoulder, the bow on my other shoulder, ready to be pulled off in a split second and loaded. I'm ready for the kill.
"Hurry," I mutter to her. "Don't…hurt yourself," I advise impatiently, letting out a small sigh, "but go quicker." I don't want to hurt her, but then at the same time I do. I don't want her around, but then I think about if she wasn't and wonder why I ever wanted her gone. I don't want to see her in pain, but I imagine winning and think that she's not important enough to cost my life. What is she? Is she another tribute to kill, to ally with, a friend, a…girlfriend? For her to be my friend is pitiful enough, but to even consider her as ever being my girlfriend, of ever caring so much for another human being again? I can't stand the thought, but I can't push it away either. I tell myself that it's so ridiculous that it sticks in my head, but really I'm not so sure that this is the reason why it seems to be stuck to me.
We—I—begin to make real progress on approaching the three by noon. They've begun to move too, but I told Carlyn soon after the repulsive girlfriend thought that I might speed up, but after I killed them I'd slow down and come back for her. She nodded understandingly. By now she must know I'm impatient and so she lets me run off towards the three tributes, heads bobbing as they run.
Eventually I'm close enough to see they're females. Two are about the same height, one is older and taller. They slow down for a breath but I do too to preserve my energy for the final stretch, the final sprint, to them. I take a drink of water and swallow in air, catching my breath as quickly as I can. I start off again before they do, so I make progress in good time. When they pick up their pace again worriedly, I'm close. I have a long-distance weapon. They stand no chance…
"Girls, go!" the older one screams. The younger ones' heads turn to her and she points her arm towards the woods. "Now!"
"Kayla," one says. I'm close enough to hear the girl and the desperation in her voice. "Go faster, Kayla, please."
"Shut up—I'll be right behind you if you go now!" The older one is almost snarling her words, obviously frustrated with the disobeying girls. They still don't run, and a smirk forms on my face as I slowly pull my bow from my shoulder. With extreme annoyance, I watch as the whole world seems to slow and my hand goes behind me, curling around an arrow. I pull it over my head and to my bow, loading it carefully. Lifting the bow. Choosing a target. Aiming a bow. Who do I want to kill? Who do I want to let go—for now?
I can hear the girls begging for mercy, and I can hear myself I'm teaching them an important lesson. I can picture the older one attempting to seem defiant, not crying out unless she's in a lot of pain and giving me a deep glare, giving the sky—and thereby the Capitol—an even more hateful glare, a glance that will make her entire district melt with love for this girl… Ugh. It's a fairytale for these stupid older ones, isn't it? To be defiant and to give a look they think is meaningful but is truly meaningless at the sky? A look that might be broadcast, but will do more than give their families harsher living conditions for no plausible reason other than to go down with a "fight"? To me, going down with a fight means you actually give your killer a bit of a struggle and you actively try to and nearly wound or wound your opponent before death. Have I not been updated on the new definition of "glare"? Does it mean to go down with a fight now in the Hunger Games? God, I hope not. That would be cheesy.
In the end, I choose to shoot and kill the older girl—maybe as an experiment of sorts, to test my theory on if she will try to act defiant but ultimately fail in that pathetic, idiotic way. She'll die with the shame of fake triumph on her broken shoulders, fake courage soaring through her heart which comes so close to stopping, to never beating again. The thump-thump will end all because she was predictable, all because of hatred used in such a wasteful manner. My hatred towards so many things—I use that well.
The arrow flies, whizzing through the air, owning the air. Three lines, so stupid and dramatic that it's silly, are screamed: "Kayla, no!" "Girls…go right now!" "Calypso, let's go!"
The younger ones are off in a flash, and I'm fine with that. The older one, Kayla apparently, braves the arrow. She stands straight and tall before turning to run, narrowing her eyes slightly, and I have to throw my head back and laugh. The predictability of these tributes doomed to die gives no light to the dark world. There's no way to uncorrupt the corruptness, but I know the pitiful, small beings who will get nowhere need hope to cling to like sad, pathetic little children, and when I see the predictability that even those who aren't as intelligent in the workings of the more primitive humans' minds can guess, I know that there isn't hope for them. If the Gamemakers, who have smaller IQs than my brainless finger would have if it itself had an IQ, can figure this out, can plan the Games accordingly, then humankind is doomed to go extinct or go as wild as the wildlife we're prohibited from venturing away from the districts to see.
They say they want our country to thrive, the Capitol authority figures. The citizens are airheads to believe that. Is thriving living in districts that are sometimes smaller than our arenas? Is thriving living entirely in an area equal to twenty large arenas, thirty or thirty-five fair-sized ones, or maybe fifty small ones? Is thriving keeping our creativity in unless creativity fits the job description of our district? Is thriving sending most everyone into unimaginable, irrational depression that outdoes any amount of will forced down our throats by the Capitol?
Depression, I believe, is irrational, because there's nothing we can do. There is no justice. There is no crime, because without justice there cannot be crime. There is no mercy. There is no cruelty, because without mercy there cannot be cruelty. There is not total elation—in the districts, at least. Not even in the Career districts. Therefore, there cannot be depression because it can't exist without a counterpart to balance it: total elation. Things are as they are. Extremes are unnecessary figures placed by early humans with hope that now are meaningless and only give a false feeling of hope.
Because the opposite of hope could be giving up. And there is giving up in this world, and there is hope. Both can exist. I will give hope, even if it is falsely used, to the primitive minds out there.
The arrow sent from my bow brings the girl down. She collapses with her false hope and her predictable false bravery. I run over to her and plan how I might go about this. As I run, a few ideas come to mind as to what I should say to her, but I like telling her what she did wrong and why she's laying on the ground in pain. Because of me, and because of her stupidity, she will die here today.
"Hello," I snarl in a low voice, kneeling over her. I place my knee over her stomach and she lets out a huff. "How are you today?" She grunts. "Me too." I narrow my eyes. "You do know why you're about to die, don't you?" I ask her slowly and menacingly. "You do know why you're pitifully lying in a helpless heap underneath me, waiting for the pain? Because I will make it painful—for your mistakes.
"You see—what is your name?"
She snaps, "You want to know…your prey's name?" Her voice is weak. "I will not give you that satisfaction, then. I'll let you live knowing that you never even knew my name."
"Well, then. You see, dear, you're brain is fatally flawed. In simple terms, you're fucking stupid. Did you really think you could live, trying to defy the Capitol with a glare? Did you really think you could beat me by doing it?" I snarl, digging my knee harder into her. The life is draining from her eyes and it seems to fuel me with anger. "Are the people of the districts so stupid nowadays that they think by looking at the people who are going to kill them angrily will blow up everything evil in there lives? Well, you are!" I mimic her voice cruelly: "'Girls, go right now!' Please! You idiot."
And with that, down goes the axe into her neck.
Tributes whose names are in bold are alive:
D1- (Luxuries)
1. Gleam Diode, 18, female. Megalor9
2. Adelina Summerfield, 17, female. CapitolRules
3. Daphne Summerfield, 17, female. CapitolRules
D2- (Masonry)
1. Azaleigh Rommel, 16, female. Araka-chan
2. Beck Ferrari, 18, male. WhyNotDream
3. Stonesia "Stone" Zhunder, 16, female. XOXOFutureFame
D3- (Technology)
1. Forrest Montgomery, 17, WhyNotDream
2. Calypso Oswald, 14, female. WhyNotDream
3. Rylan "Ry" Ashmore, 14, male. the epic bookworm
D4- (Fishing)
1. Vixen Payne, 17, female. jblonde123
2. Nelly Carter, 13, female. Bowserboy129
3. Jackson Brothel, 17, male. Araka-chan
D5- (Power)
1. Anya Saitov, 18, female. the epic bookworm
2. Allegra Ride, 12, female. WhyNotDream
3. Tenne Bradhe, 18, male. BlueYoshGuy
D6- (Transportation)
1. Dante Kyanide, 17, male. Megalor9
2. Cade Allens, 17, male. bijtjen
3. Phoenix Grant, 18, male. the epic bookworm
D7- (Lumber)
1. Decon Crow, 17, male. Bowserboy129
2. Jaelyn "Jae" Nicole Analetto, 15, female. SpunkyFun
3. Damien Andrews, 16, male. Jammerock2000
D8- (Textiles)
1. Damon Grey, 18, male. sportygirl123
2. Dan Axton, 17, male. Jammerock2000
3. Alicia Ludwig, 13, female. the epic bookworm
D9- (Grain)
1. Asher Lightwood, 17, male. Rikachan101
2. Aeris Lockhart, 15, female. Rikachan101
3. Fiona Ryder, 17, female. sportygirl123
D10- (Livestock)
1. Nick DiLaurnetis, 16, male. CallingMeFakeWontMakeYouReal
2. Jak Crenshaw, 17, male. Jammerock2000
3. Leo Rivers, 16, male. WhyNotDream
D11- (Agriculture)
1. Skylar Mitchell, 14, female. Jammerock2000
2. Kayla Baker, 16, female. Jammerock2000
3. Sage Birr, 17, male. the epic bookworm
D12- (Mining)
1. Krumr Strongthews, 18, male. CapitolRules
2. Carlyn Hansen, 17, female. CapitolRules
3. Astrid Levine, 15/16, female. CallingMeFakeWontMakeYouReal