A/N: We're over 500 reviews, so special thanks go to allonsydney, PrincessLyoka, RealFiction, Klicker'andKash, beauthg and krikanalo for reviewing the last chapter! It's a massive milestone, and I guess it shows just how far we've come with the story :)

I hope you all enjoy today's chapter, the last of the bloodbath deaths :)

P.S. If anyone's wondering, there are many references to songs from Green Day's 2009 album '21st Century Breakdown' because it was the music I was listening to when I first read the Hunger Games Trilogy last November. Most of the songs on the album remind me of some scene or character, so I'm working most of them into this story in the chapters relating directly to the original trilogy (Chapters 74-99) :)


"We are the class of, the class of Thirteen

Born in the era of humility."

- Billie-Joe Armstrong, 2009.


The 75th Annual Hunger Games (The Third Quarter Quell) - Day 1, 10.00 am

Holly Thorpe (34), District 9 Female (victor of the 59th Annual Hunger Games)

Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown (2009)


The 75th Annual Hunger Games begin for real as the gong rings out across the arena, and all hell breaks loose.

I stand still on my plate as tributes fly into the water all around, scared out of my mind. It's been sixteen years since I last entered the arena, and my situation couldn't be further from the arena I found myself in last time around.

My beloved corridors and alleyways are gone; replaced with a vast expanse of water. The shelter of the buildings has been taken from me, replaced by a hot, humid atmosphere with no sign of rain clouds. The tributes are different; there are no innocent children here, just cold, calculating, ruthless killers.

I was a killer myself, once. When I thought that my life mattered more than my dignity. Such times are behind me, and I no longer whether I made the right decisions in the arena. Since returning from the Capitol a changed woman, I've never looked back on my time in the Games.

Not until these Games.

Forcing us through the old motions, I feel like my frightened eighteen-year-old self from the days leading up to the arena sixteen years ago for the 59th Games. Helpless. Lost. Alone. Of course, my fortunes took a turn for the better after I entered the arena, using my naturally-given skills to the best of my ability, and making the most of what I had. I knew what was expected of me.

It's an odd feeling, killing a person. Once you're over the initial shock of performing whatever brutal act is needed to finish the person off, it's often a bad time to sit back and think. That person, whoever they are - let's take the boy from District 4 whose throat I slit in the arena - will have made thousands of decisions, thousands of actions to have ended up where he was at that time, dragged backwards into a storeroom with nobody to answer his timid pleas for help. It wasn't just his decisions, too. It'll be choices made for him by his friends, family, maybe even a girlfriend back home. All of them added to his character. Even more recently, his mentor, stylist and allies in the arena. All of them had made him grow from a boy into his own person.

But all I saw was a boy with a spear, and I killed him. I made everything that all of those he knew had done for him count for nothing.

After that, it wasn't fun, like the Careers think that it is, or satisfying, as I had originally thought when I knew I was one tribute closer to home. The last few kills were just nasty jobs that I had to do. There was no alternative. I'd left my innocence way behind me by that stage. So I pushed all my doubts to the back of my mind and soldiered on, until I woke up in the Capitol after the explosion that wiped out the boy from District 3.

However you want to put it, I've seem enough death for a lifetime.

I'm startled back to reality as the first cries of pain of the bloodbath ring out across the water. I try to look away but I find it impossible to, despite how horrible the images that I am greeted with are. I really thought that things would be different this year. Surely some of the other victors, maybe Toby or Chaff, would be as sick of violence as I am? Apparently not, as I watch them both scramble away from the cornucopia, still putting up a fight, although admitted not towards each other at this time. Weren't half of us friends? Aren't Enobaria and the Adlingtons fighting each other? They might be in the same alliance for now, but I'm sure that all bonds will be severed when it is a matter of life and death. Even Cashmere and Gloss will have to turn against each other, or face the consequences.

Imagine having to fight your own twin brother.

I shake my head, trying to rid such despicable thoughts from my mind. I try to remember last night at the interviews, where nearly all of us dared to make our own protest against Snow and the Capitol for staging these Games. After all, we've all done everything that the Capitol has asked from us, and more. When we held our hands together in unison during the anthem last night, I genuinely felt as if many of us might attempt to be peaceful in the arena. The two men whose hands I held are split on this matter. Woof seems resigned to fate, making no attempt at violence as he stands still on his pedestal as I do, whereas my district partner Marcel has run in towards the cornucopia, ready to fight. Unlike many of our number, he's young enough to put up a fight, and so far he's managed it. I guess the arena brings out the worst in some people. If he wins, his sins will be forgotten - rewarded, even - just as mine were sixteen summers ago. For some people, that - and the promise of a prolonged life, albeit one as a murderer - is incentive enough to fight in the Games.

But I'm not going to play anymore.

Looking in towards the cornucopia I watch some of the victors fall, a few of them my friends. After killing in the arena, the Games were always different to watch at home, somehow more real. But nothing prepared me to watch another human die before my eyes. Having killed before, even just watching Blake Carlton's decapitated body lie limp on the sand makes me feel so disgusted that I stare into the waves for at least a minute. I imagine this must be what it was like for the children of those first few Games, when the districts' punishment was actually justifiable, to a degree, of course. Those children who had grown up with war and death. Those children to whom the Games were just reminders of the traumas of their past. Those who watched their families die and their homes go up in smoke. The Games taught by example; making sure that the districts never forgot the evils of the Dark Days. It taught them to learn from the mistakes of Thirteen, the rebel leaders.

Now, the Dark Days are the lesser evil; the Games have grown larger and more hated than the war that begun it all. It has outserved its purpose.

And yet the Games go on.

I actually thought that yesterday may have been the start of something. I'm not sure what, but a way of telling the Capitol that the districts do not condone their actions. That the Games are only serving to antagonise the Capitol in the districts' eyes. But now that lives are on the line, we all play the Capitol's game like everyone else.

But I've had enough. I'm sick of fighting. I'm sick of death. And I'm sick of the Hunger Games.

It may not be much of a protest, but it's something. Maybe I will be remembered for it, and not forgotten like the hundreds of nameless children who have died in the Capitol's arenas during the last seventy-five years.

Slowly I lower myself down so that I am sitting on the pedestal that brought me into the arena, the metal hot beneath me. I dangle my legs into the water and look towards the cornucopia. Let the Careers take me. I don't want to be a part of this cruel world anymore.


A/N: If you enjoyed this chapter, please review! Constructive criticism is welcomed :)

On another note, school is proving to be more challenging than ever, and so my time to write has been limited so far this week. Despite announcing the two community projects, I doubt I'll be publishing them until this weekend (7th-8th September), unfortunately.

Hopefully you all understand my situation.

GM97 :)