Chapter 19: Fungus and Muttations

Day 12 of the Games, 1:00 pm arena time:

Amanda, Blaze, and Susanna felt the earth shake. Sea water begins to flow in around their ankles and was rising fast. They panicked! They knew exactly what this was; the island was sinking into the sea. They looked this way and that, desperate for a way off the island.

"That way!" said Blaze pointing in the direction of the bridge that headed east to the next island.

They waded at running speed through the knee high water for about a minute until they got to the bridge. They crossed it and were on dry land again. They watched as the island on the other side of the canal went lower and lower into the choppy waters until the tips of the tree tops were swallowed up by the salt water.

"Well!" said Susanna exasperated, "Let's see what perils the Gamemakers have in store for us on this island!"

They turned to face the island that they were standing on. They then realized that they were facing the most weird and bizarre environment that they had ever seen.

"Okay?" said Blaze in confusion, "Have we just stepped onto an alien planet?"

"I get what you are saying." said Susanna in a voice of oddly frightened amusement. "I have seen some weird and unusual things on the Hunger Games over the years, but the Gamemakers have really out done themselves this time."

There were trees but most of them were very oddly shaped. There were the most unusual flowers that they had ever seen, that were bigger than cars. But the most unusual thing was the giant mushrooms. The mushrooms were as tall as trees, and their stems as thick as tree trunks. There were also a lot of other giant plants and different kinds of giant fungi that they couldn't even name. Then there were the sounds? Behind the trees and mushrooms they heard the scuttling of creatures that they thought had more than four legs. They heard what sounded like a loud menacing gurgle in an animal's throat. An odd sort of crunching sound that they didn't think they couldn't place. The list of things that their five senses picked up went on and on.

"I got a bad feeling about this place." said Blaze with concern in his voice.

"It feels kind of ominous." said Susanna.

"Perhaps we should just avoid this place entirely?" suggested Amanda. "We have to get off this island."

Blaze looked behind them and saw that there was nowhere to go back to.

"Maybe we should stay on the beach and make our way around the island until we find another bridge?" suggested Blaze.

In the Gamemakers control room:

Plutarch Heavensbee listened to their conversation on the television.

"Drive them off the beach and into the jungle." commanded Plutarch.

One of the men at his station console tapped a few buttons in a sequence, and a small hologram of a giant squid appeared in front of him.

He tapped the touch screen on his console twice and the hologram of the squid broke into a thousand pixels and then flew to a small spot on the giant map. Then the pixels were reformed, the image of the giant squid reappeared, and was then blown up.

Back on the west beach of island D2, the alien planet habitat, the group was making their way around to the south bridge that would lead to island D3. It was at that moment a giant tentacle reached out of the water and grabbed hold of Susanna's leg and slowly started pulling her into the water. Susanna fell to the ground on her back and was being dragged.

With practiced, second nature instinct from years of her father's battle training, she reflexively pulled Martha Filmer's knife, bent forward and stabbed the tentacle, but it did not relinquish her.

Susanna panicked and screamed.

"HELP ME! HELP MEEEEE!"

The pink haired granddaughter of President Snow ran forward, pulled the titanium sword from the sheath on her back, slammed the double edged blade down on the tentacle, and it came clean off.

The stump failed and wiggled in the air as the owner of the tentacle rose out of the water. It was a giant squid, bigger that a house, with tentacles over twenty meters long, and as thick as a man's thigh. The three Hunger Games Tributes looked at it with fear and awe.

"RUN!" shouted Blaze. "Into the jungle!"

The girls didn't question and started for the mushroom trees.

Another tentacle came at Amanda and she cut that one off too, and then she kept going.

Once they got into about six feet past the tree line, a force field appeared behind them and when the squid tried to reach them it was stopped by the force field. They breathed a little easy when they knew the, what must so obviously be a Gamemaker's laboratory grown sea monster, couldn't get at them now.

"Okay, I have always been a fan of District 4 calamari, but I'll admit I never thought it would try and eat me!" said Susanna humorously, the fact that they had escaped alive making everything seem a lot more funny now.

They saw behind the force field of the giant squid with two bleeding tentacles stumps retreat back into the water. They then took a look at their surroundings and then suddenly they felt that ominous feeling of the alien planet again.

"I'm starting to think that the Gamemakers didn't activate the force field to keep the squid out. I got a feeling that the force field is intended to keep us in." surmised Blaze.

"Most likely the Gamemakers are trying to force us to confront another tribute, is my guess?" said Amanda.

"Then let's do it." said Blaze. "It's gotta happen eventually, and plus, the sooner all of the tributes are gone, the sooner one of us can go home."

They then began walking southeast in the direction of the south bridge of the island that Blaze had christened 'The Alien Planet'.

They continued to listen to the weird sounds all around them, everything from odd squeaks, to strange growls. They saw a number of funny colored lizards crawling this way and that, and weird sort of birds that looked more like stingrays that were sort of gliding high above the trees like flying squirrels. And then there was the smell, the smell was not woody and earthy like most of the other forests had smelled, the smell of this place… the three of them actually couldn't quite place the smell, it was like no smell they had ever smelled before, it was not completely unpleasant like let's say a rotting toilet sewer or landfill of moldy food, but at the same time it was not a smell that they would want to fill their house with, like using a scented candle. Amanda tried to place the smell, her closest possible comparison was the waxy stink of fun Nickelodeon gel that they would buy at toy stores.

The air was humid. The temperature appeared to be neither too hot nor too cold, but close to a standard room temperature. The ground appeared to be dry, but seemed to squish under their boots as they walked down the path.

Susanna then looked sideways at the girl with the pink hair who was holding a sword.

"Thank you." said Susanna with a solemn tone of gratitude. "Thank you for saving my life."

Amanda looked at Susanna with a somber look on her face.

"You would have done the same for me." Amanda smiled and winked.

They continued walking for another 10 minutes until they heard the most unusual sound. It sounded like a combination of a belch and a growl. Then out from behind the giant mushrooms ahead of them came three of the most unusual creatures that they had ever seen. They looked like a combination of a gorilla and a praying mantis. Parts of them were scaly, while other parts of them were fur, they were blue in color, one arm appeared to be a normal arm with five fingers while the other arm appeared to be a large curved sword. They then started running at them. Susanna held her knife, while Blaze readied his spear, but before the creatures could reach them, Amanda drew a throwing knife and threw it and it stuck right in the face of one of the creatures quickly followed by a second and then a third. All three of the creatures fell to the ground and twitched for a few seconds until they then lay there dead. Amanda walked over and retrieved her throwing knives from the three faces of the creatures.

"Amanda?" said Susanna sounding curious but impressed. "That was… pretty good!"

"Thank you." said Amanda, grateful of the praise.

"What a minute, that knife throwing skill?" said Susanna curiously. "Is that what you showed the Gamemakers that got you that 10?"

"It contributed, if that's what you mean?" said Amanda.

They continued to walk on. They were all getting a little hungry. They had run out of the non-perishables two days ago. All of their food in the last 48 hours had been either fresh fruit or fresh meat. Amanda had been examining the plants as they had been going along, she was unable to identify any of them and had no idea if they were poisonous or edible. A month of the study of poisonous plants in the Training Center and all that knowledge was now useless. It was then that a Silver parachute landed on the ground right in front of them. Blaze walked forward and picked it up. When he opened the box he found that it was a small handheld electronic device with a small screen on it and a long thick needle sticking out of it like a meat thermometer.

All three of them looked at it with confusion.

"Why would a sponsor send us a meat thermometer?" asked Blaze.

"I don't think that it is a meat thermometer." Amanda had a slight recollection in her memory, while she was at the poisonous plants station, there were a number of gadgets that were meant to assist in the detection of poisons, but she had not focused on the technology, merely the academic knowledge behind the plants themselves.

She took the device and she went over to one of the giant tree sized mushrooms. She stuck the thick needle into the mushroom and on the tiny little screen read the words 'NON-TOXIC'.

She cut out a chunk of the giant mushroom and took a bite. She chewed and swallowed. Did not taste like mushroom. In fact it did not taste like anything that she had ever tasted before. But it did not taste bad, had good texture, was easy to chew, and as long as it was non-toxic she felt that she should trust to eat it. And so the three of them indulged themselves in a feast of bland alien mushroom.

With their bellies full of the strange food they continued on towards the south bridge.

In the Gamemakers control room:

"Sir," said one of the Gamemakers, "they continue moving towards the south bridge of the island."

Plutarch Heavensbee looked at the giant hologram of the arena and noticed the position of their blips on the island.

"Can you veer them 70 degrees to the northeast?" requested Plutarch.

The Gamemaker acknowledged the Head Gamemaker by taping a few buttons on his console. Ten small holograms of what appeared to be reptilian wolves appeared in front of him, each wolf had six legs, and several tentacles on its back.

Back in the arena on the island they heard the deep growling sounds of wolves. Out from behind some giant alien flowers came the most bizarre pack of wolves that they had ever seen, no fur, reptilian, six legs, and covered in tentacles on its back. The wolf pack attacked. Amanda pulled out several knives and released a volley, throwing the knives one at a time in quick succession. Several of the wolves let out puppy barks of pain and fell to the ground. Blaze whacked and stabbed with his spear killing a few more but not before he took several bites. Susanna slashed with her knife and kicked some of them, killing a few but also received several bites. Amanda threw some more knives killing a few more and slashed at the ones closest to her with her sword. once all of the wolves were dead they were tired and bleeding. But there respites was short-lived, for a moment later another 15 wolves appeared out of nowhere. This time they chose flight rather than fight. The 3 Hunger Games tributes ran in the opposite direction away from the wolves. They ran as fast as they could, but yet interestingly the wolves did not run faster, they ran at equivalent speed to the tributes and only for several minutes, when the wolves stopped and followed them no further.

Susanna was not naive.

"We must have been going in the wrong direction," said Susanna, "they are definitely trying to herd us towards a certain location."

"The Gamemakers are not going to let us go in the direction of the south bridge." said Amanda. "Let's find the tribute that their driving us towards, and kill him so that they'll let us off this island."

"Who do you think it could be anyway?" asked Blaze.

"Well that depends. Who is left?" asked Susanna.

They all tried to count backwards in their heads of the faces that they had seen in the sky so far.

"David Crane, Dennis Green, Beverly O'Malley, Barney Simpson, and Irene Avion, and then the three of us." said Amanda.

"Minus the cannon that we heard earlier today, though it could have been any one of them. I guess will find out tonight." said Blaze. He looked around at the alien planet that was surrounding them with a look of disappointment on the face. "If we are still alive by tonight."

They walked on in the direction that they knew the Gamemakers wanted them to go in, for a few more minutes, then Blaze decided to speak after he had been deep in thought for a while.

"You know guys, I've been wondering? How exactly did the Gamemakers control the minds of the Mutts?"

It was Amanda that spoke up.

"Radio Controlled Brain Implant." said Amanda.

Amanda then began a long-winded explanation about what her grandfather had told her about the Gamemakers high tech breeding laboratories. Each Mutt was required for accelerated growth rate in the giant liquid filled glass containers in the laboratories, each Mutt took several days to several weeks to grow, depending on what kind of Mutt they were. In the 74th Games, when Katniss, Peeta, and Cato were attacked by the wolf-like creatures with the razor-sharp claws that resembled the other 21 tributes, underground beneath the arena they were held in suspended animation in their liquid filled tubes at 99% completion. Just before the Gamemakers release them, the remaining 1% of incompletion was only a slight modification to make the unfinished Mutts resemble the dead tributes.

For a human, basically, a single human cell will contain the exact blueprint on how to create another human. Basically humans have 10 toes, 10 fingers, every other limb, the workings of the nervous system, and everything else about the person. Now inside the belly of a pregnant woman, how does the embryo go from a single cell into a full human, a very, very complex creature? The answer is, it's the genetic makeup of our DNA, it contains a blueprint on everything about the human anatomy. And that goes the same for every other life form on Earth. Now, the Gamemakers have the technology to basically write and create the perfect and precise genetic blueprint of any kind of creature that they want.

Amanda went on, believing both her companions and the audience would find this interesting.

Basically, they can create any kind of Mutt out of anything that their imagination can come up with. Now, you're all familiar with the Mockingjay fiasco during the war 78 years ago, before the first Hunger Games. They created the Jabberjays, but they were basically just a slightly modified version of a Mockingbird. When the Jabberjays proved useless, they were released into the wild expecting to die off, and of course at the time the Capitol had no idea that the Jabberjays would interbreed with native mockingbirds. So to prevent another 'figurative Mockingjay' from ever happening again, they programmed three safety measures into the genetic structure of all future Muttations.

Number one, sterility; all of the Muttations are completely incapable of producing offspring, so they can't interbreed with any native animal.

Number two, short lifetimes; their genetic makeup has them automatically die only a few months after they're fully grown in the laboratory.

And number three, failsafe; that is where the 'Radio Controlled Brain Implant' comes in, the brains of all laboratory grown Muttations are a blank slate, the mutations brains will not work without the implant, if for any reason the implant should malfunction or stop working, the creature's heart and lungs would stop on the spot. The implant is also only short range, if the implant goes out of range of the Gamemakers radio signal, then the implant automatically shuts down. The implant also will make the Mutt only do what the Gamemakers control room tells them to do.

Susanna and Blaze looked at her with interest.

"How did you all that?" asked Blaze.

"My grandfather explained the whole thing to me when I was younger." said Amanda.

Blaze had many more questions but he decided to let it rest for now. It was a little while later when the three tributes reached the center of the island when they came to a large clearing. Along the edge of the clearing were weapons. Racks upon racks of weapons of all different kinds; knives, clubs, maces, bows and arrows, throwing knives, swords, whips, tridents, battle staffs, spears, javelins, axes, spiked hammers, the works!

"Now this is what we should have had at the cornucopia on day one!" said Blaze as he flexed his muscles after picking up a long handled spiked hammer.

Susanna wrapped around her waist a belt that was full of knives, and then picked up a 7 foot battle staff.

Amanda replenished her throwing knives and then took an extra set for good measure, and then took a sword in a scabbard with a belt attached to it, and wrapped around her waist.

At the opposite end of the clearing, Irene Avion stumbled into the clearing, a bleeding gash on her face and several other bleeding gashes on her arms, other than that her wounds were not severe. She quickly noticed the cache of weapons all around her, quickly pocketed several knives, and then grabbed a Trident. She then noticed her competition at the far end of the clearing. She was about to leave when suddenly the tree line of the clearing was surrounded by a force field locking all four of the tributes inside.

A hologram of Claudius Templesmith then appeared in the middle of the clearing. Just like the other message, this was a recording.

"Congratulations Hunger Games Tribute! This cache of weapons is all yours, compliments of the Gamemakers! You are presently locked inside this clearing, you may walk free if you can pass the Gamemakers test of physical strength and fighting skill! Good luck! Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!"

Then from other paths leading into the clearing came 50 of the half mantis half gorilla-like creatures, only they seemed to be able to step through the force field from the outside.

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