A/N: Thanks to richards25, Burningbrightforyou, FScSeG0403 and charliesunshine for reviewing!
Also, thanks for plenty of arena ideas! The next ten arenas should be rather original now :)
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this chapter :)
"Kill me if you dare
Hold my head up everywhere
Keep myself right on this train
I'm the underdog
Live my life on a lullaby
Keep myself riding on this train."
- Tom Meighan, 2009.
The 30th Annual Hunger Games
Ruby Peters (18), District 1 Female
Kasabian - Underdog (2009)
I'm amazed that the Games were even held this year, after everything that's gone on. In the aftermath of last year's Hunger Games, which were considered a bit of a downer by the Capitol audience, there was the public humiliation for the Head Gamemaker, who was sacked for undisclosed reasons. It took four months for Tiberius Greenwood to be named as the successor, and by that time, the Victory Tour was almost upon us. Surely there wouldn't be time to finish this year's arena?
To make matters worse, President Shawcross passed away in May aged 97, just nine weeks from the reaping, under suspicious circumstances. But now, in only the fourth week of the reign of President Coriolanus Snow, the Hunger Games are continuing as normal. I'm sure that all the districts had the same hopes as District 1, that with the President gone, maybe the Games would have come to an end. But it seems like Snow has even less interest in stopping the Hunger Games than the Games' creator.
And here I am, in the arena for the 30th Games. The war with the Capitol started thirty-six years ago? Surely the districts have suffered enough? But before I can hope for the end of the Games, I have to make sure I reach the end of these Games. After all, if I don't, I'll be dead.
Even before I entered the arena, I was at a disadvantage. I tried to make sure that I didn't show all my abilities to the Gamemakers in the private sessions, so that I wasn't going to be singled out as a target once the Games begin. I made sure not to show them my stealth; my biggest strength. However, not only was I not singled out, my score was almost too low for the Careers to still offer me a place in their alliance. I only scored a seven.
But I know that I'm worth at least a ten, and that's all that really matters. The others don't know it; they just see me as a weakling amongst the allies. An underdog. They know I've got something up my sleeve when I abandoned them on day four. I can't use stealth within a group of six lumbering, heavy-footed Careers, so I made sure to distance myself from them as soon as possible. In the alliance, they would only see me as a weakling, as I wouldn't be able to use my strengths, and I would no doubt end up as the first one that the other Careers would turn on.
The arena seems really odd to me. A bowl-shaped arena, with high, snowy, rocky mountains around all sides, with the thin woods that cling to the sides of the hills offering the only form of shelter in the arena. In the centre, for possibly two miles around the cornucopia, there is a flat layer of ice, possibly two hundred feet thick. Some tributes, who think themselves to be good runners or great at moving around on the slippery ice, keep to this large open space, making sure to keep a hundred metres between themselves and the thin woods, so that if a tribute makes a charge at them, they have enough notice to make an escape successfully.
However, from my own quick expeditions onto the ice, I know that the ice is clear, and that you can look down to what is beneath it.
Under the ice, there is only a lava lake.
You can notice its effects on the arena as the days pass. Each day, the layer of ice moves twenty feet down the slopes of the mountains as the lava lake takes its effect. In a week's time, ninety percent of the arena will be fire as the last segments of ice melt. It's as though the whole Games are on a timer, with the Gamemakers calling to us "you will kill each other within a week, or burn."
I don't know if my strategy will allow me to finish everyone else off within a week, but I'll have to give it my best shot; it's the only choice I have.
Seven days later, when the ice layer was virtually gone, eight tributes were still alive, including five Careers. When, four hours before the final ice layer melted, the Careers realised what was going to happen, they turned on each other in the middle of the ice. Four were killed off, and the only surviving Career, the boy from Four, was so heavily injured that he was unable to escape from the ice field before the lava reached him.
The three remaining tributes who had stuck to the mountains (Ruby, the District 3 Female and the boy from Eight) were then forced higher and higher as the Gamemakers proceeded to raise the levels of the lava lake until nearly all of the arena was submerged in the flames. The boy from eight fell first, and the girl from Three was taken down when she attempted to climb a tree to escape the advancing flames. However, the fact that wood burns was her downfall, and the flames climbed the tree trunk to bring about her downfall.
Blind luck was Ruby's key to success; the mountain that she clambered up to escape the lava was much easier to climb that the mountains that the other two tributes attempted to climb.
A/N: I'm really not sure on this one, the main points in this are that Panem is going through a time of change, which culminated in President Snow's rise to power.
Still, let me know what you think, and please review! As ever, I'm welcoming constructive criticism :)
I don't know if I'll be able to do many more daily updates, school starts again next week, but I guess I'll just have to see how much time I have on my hands :)
