A/N: Thanks to RealFiction, ThatHufflepuff, Violagirl23, Kiliflower, RunnergirlI, richards25, I-am-Cashmere-of-district-one and Oxenstierna D. Yuki-Rin for reviewing!

Due to the books I've recently been reading (A Series of Unfortunate Events) having a lot of detailed vocabulary, I imagine that today's chapter will probably be more descriptive than most. Whether that's a good thing or not, I don't know. I guess that the readers should be the ones to decide that!

The song used as inspiration for today's chapter, 'Holiday' by Green Day, stands to make a political point about the Iraq War, telling all the soldiers who signed up for glory that war isn't everything that it's meant to be. In Panem, there's another group of young men, willing to risk their lives in the hope of grasping eternal glory; the Careers.

I hope you enjoy today's chapter :)


"I beg to dream and differ from the hollow lies

This is the dawning of the rest of our lives."

- Billie-Joe Armstrong, 2004.


The 58th Annual Hunger Games

Auriel Hope (18), District 4 Male

Green Day - Holiday (2004)


As the pedestal stops its journey upwards and deposits me into the arena, it takes my eyes a few moments to adapt to my new surroundings.

I laugh out loud when I realise what my environment is before I can help myself.

I'm in the District 4 Training Centre, the place where I have spent the last seven years preparing for these Games.

All these years, Harrow and the other trainers have been teaching me how to prepare for every possible environment that could possibly be the arena. I can't help but find it amusing that I will begin the Hunger Games in my home.

I can't see my district partner, or the cornucopia for that matter, as I stand in the main training hall of the Centre, where I've been learning to fight with Georgie since I was eleven. There are no other tributes in sight, but it doesn't bother me. I'm only dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, so I can assume that the arena is warm, outside this cool, shaded sports hall.

These Hunger Games are going to be easy.

As the gong sounds, I don't run, I just calmly walk back through the sports hall towards the exit near the front of the building, allowing me to walk along a corridor from which I can observe the land outside.

Surprisingly, there is no District 4 outside the Training Centre. In front of the building, there is only a layer of hard-packed dirt that stretches out towards the cornucopia, which is situated over two hundred yards away. Around the golden horn, there are a variety of buildings, all equidistant to it, that look like a variety of homes. By waiting a few moments, I see a few tributes take their first tentative steps from their houses before running to the cornucopia.

I jog along the corridor towards what I know to be the weapons store within our Training Centre, and I'm not surprised to see my district partner trying to hurriedly open the thick oak doors. I help her to pull them open before she steps through first into the small room that I can see is full of assorted weapons which will help us win the Games.

I'm glad that I let her in first.

No sooner has she stepped through the doorway do the large oak doors slam shut behind her, trapping her inside. For a moment I attempt to prise the doors open, but quickly realise that my efforts are futile. Suddenly I hear scuffling coming from inside the room, followed by a long, shrill scream and then nothing.

For a moment, I stand in front of the door expecting to hear a cannon, but then remember that the Games are still in the bloodbath stages and that I will have to wait until the carnage has stopped to find out if my district partner is alive or dead.

Slightly shaken, I leave the weapons room behind me and make my way towards the back of the building as I move purposefully towards the kitchens, where I hope to find an easy source of food.

Approaching this door more cautiously than the last, I twist the handle and then give the door a gentle push, allowing it to swing open slowly.

The door is only half-open when the first kitchen knife comes somersaulting through the air towards my head. I crash to tr floor instinctively, smashing my chin against the cold concrete. Then comes another knife, and another, and I hear at least seven or eight clatter against the concrete behind me. Then there is silence. After what must have been twenty or thirty seconds, I get to my feet and edge slowly towards the open doorway into the kitchens.

Now visibly shaken up, I think I'm starting to understand this arena. The houses, homes and other buildings within the arena must all serve the same purpose as this Training Centre.

Our homes have been recreated in this arena, luring some of us (including myself) into a false sense of security as the Gamemakers have filled our homes with a variety of traps.

I was wrong to ever think that the Games were going to be easy. I had thought that, with my proper training, the trip to the Capitol would be little more than a glorified holiday.

How wrong I was.

I may have thought that there would be little by way of hardships, but I'm only ten minutes into the Games and I can already understand completely why they have such a notorious reputation. This arena has been designed to throw us out of our comfort zone. It has been designed to make us suffer.

Knowing that the fun and games are already over, I step gingerly into the kitchen. The traps from this room have already been spent, but all my complacency has been shaken out of me. It takes me a couple of minutes to assure myself that the room is safe, but there is no benefit of this. All the food is gone. It looks like I have to make my way to the cornucopia after all.

I get out of the Training Centre by breaking a window in the west corridor (I don't want to run into any more traps), and slowly make my way towards the cornucopia. Already I can hear the screams echoing off the cliff walls around the arena, and I can see the red figures lying in the dust; the first victims of the Games.

In the moments it takes for me to reach the cornucopia, I think back to my first weeks at the Training Centre when I was eleven. I think back to all the lies and half-truths that our district's previous victors had told me about the glory and prestige that is gained by entering the Games. How amazing the experience it is; about the excitement and the honour.

And I believed them.

But this isn't a pleasure cruise anymore. This is the Hunger Games, where I must do my job or face the deadly consequences.


The 58th Games were short.

Auriel arrived at the cornucopia as the bloodbath entered its final stages, and he quickly allied with the three other surviving Careers. There was very little actual violence during the Games, as many tributes (especially those from the outlying districts) remained in the homes which they believed to be safe, until the Gamemakers' traps led to their untimely deaths. In the eighteen houses and three training centres that made up the arena, fourteen of the twenty-four tributes died due to Gamemaker traps.

The most violence came on the fifth day, when the Career Alliance disbanded, resulting in the deaths of both tributes from District 2. The final battle, however, was full of excitement, as the male tributes of Districts 1 and 4 chased each other through the expansive maze of corridors that made up the District 2 Training Centre, with Auriel Hope eventually emerging victorious as the victor of the 58th Annual Hunger Games.


A/N: I'm not sure how this one turned out... It's not as descriptive as I expected and I'm unsure on how I wrote a couple of scenes, but thanks to ThatHufflepuff for the arena idea. I appreciate it :)

If you enjoyed the chapter, please review! Can we get to 290 with this chapter? :)