AUTHOR'S NOTES: The quell approaches, and two districts are still without a victor! Will that change, or will they have to wait a bit longer? Time will tell. In the meantime, here's another chapter.
Happy Reading!

The 23rd Annual Hunger Games

Loyalty to the Capitol was one of those things that was rewarded with favors and other such things, and so the growing disparities of incomes between districts was one of the signs of that. The poorer districts like '8, '11 and '12 were the more jaded and rebellious ones, while the richer districts like '5, '2, and '1 were much more loyal to their Capitol overseers.

The amount of wealth a district and its people had was one of the major factors in how well its tributes did in the Hunger Games, if current trends were anything to go by. Another one was survivability, which explained the victors that were emerging from districts like 11 and 7, but ultimately, there were too many variables for anyone to correctly predict who would do good or badly in the games, and thus the gambling business the Capitol ran surrounding the Hunger Games remained a lucrative business based on guessing games.

The 23rd Annual Hunger Games was no exception to this. Camilla Raven, a weathered farmer from District 9, was setting up to be a formidable opponent. She had already allied herself with her partner, Harrington Bell, where the two of them proved competent with swords and sickles.

Of course, that was not about to deter the careers. This year they did not seem to have a formal alliance, but that just meant they wouldn't be travelling in a pack. If anything, it made them that much more dangerous.

This year, District 5 was counted among the career pack, considering themselves allies with them all the same. Mako Irion and Ivette Coronado were fighters, and the latter had actually volunteered no less. District 5 easily produced the most volunteers apart from Districts 1 and 2 (who, unlike the other districts, actually fought for who *got* to volunteer), and was tailed by District 4, and then District 3.

The arena this year had all of the makings for a District 9 victor, which would put them on the map. They and District 12 were the only districts without any victors after 23 years, after all. Still, when the tributes rose to their pedestals surrounding the cornucopia, they found themselves surrounded by vast fields of wheat and other grasses. It was clear that there would not be any food at the cornucopia this year.

Sure enough, there was no food, and very little else besides weapons and a few first aid kids. This was going to be one of those arenas that was potentially troublesome for the careers, since controlling the cornucopia would be meaningless this year.

If this was to be the case though, it was not going to be in the bloodbath. Both tributes from Districts 12 and 10 were slain, as were the tributes from district 7, and one from districts 4, 3, 6, and 8—bringing the fatality rate for the bloodbath this year up to ten.

The fields surrounding them were not just grass and wheat. There were at least a few cornfields and bean fields, and the District 11 kids took full advantage of this area, finding a suitable hiding place and waiting it out.

The water did not come until later in the afternoon when it rained. Every few hours it would rain for about 30 minutes or an hour, and then stop for another 4-5 hours. For a while, it became a game of survival, since it was hard to find tributes when the grass was so tall it went over their heads. Surprisingly, even the career tributes from Districts 1 and 2 began to die off, both from difficulty surviving, and being out of their element. They couldn't win every year.

It was not surprising to see Districts 9 and 11 thriving in this atmosphere, but the fact that both tributes from District 5 were still alive and kicking 8 days later was something that many people considered impressive. In fact, the Capitol was impressed enough that both Mako and Ivette were sponsored electrical weapons that they knew how to wield and utilize to their fullest potential, given that they were from the district that powered all of Panem.

District 11 managed to attack them both, and even slew Mako, forcing Ivette to flee with little more than her sponsored weapon and the one she had snatched from Mako's corpse before her enemies could properly reach it. These two assailants were taken down by Harrington and Camilla in a two-day battle in the wheat field and the fringes of the cornfield. It was made more 'epic' by the rain and the lightning that the Capitol triggered around them for more dramatic effect.

By the 10th day, it was down to three tributes: Harrington, Ivette, and Camilla. The pair from District 9 agreed to split up to find Ivette, in the possible hopes that she would kill one of them so they would not have to turn on each other. Unlike the careers, the reaped tributes were almost never happy with the notion of killing someone else from their district. However, Ivette managed to use her cunning to draw them back together in a roundabout way, and using those sponsored weapons at the right time was the secret to her success.

It was raining again, and so everything was wet. She fired the electrical charges up and launched them at the nearest wet objects, striking her adversaries in a powerful blast of electricity that fried them almost immediately. This ending was much less sudden than some of the other ones, since this one had been one that several people—including the sponsors that had provided District 5 with those weapons—had seen coming from at least a day ago. Whatever the case, the little girl from District 5 had broken a decade-and-a-half long victor drought on her district with her victory here. Ivette had just become the 3rd victor from District 5, and the 23rd victor of the Hunger Games.

Ivette's victory had technically been considered a career victory given her affiliation with them early in the games, and her similarly ruthless means-to-an-end attitude that she had kept with her for the entirety of the time. It was unlikely that District 5 was about to start building training centers and joining the career tributes on a yearly basis, but they were certainly a powerful and mysterious force that was not to be taken lightly…

VICTORS BY YEAR:
1HG: Fukaya Kerezaki (#1, District 5)
2HG: Lucy Takamatzu (#1, District 11)
3HG: Naseru Litzak (#1, District 3)
4HG: Naisha Szasz (#1, District 2)
5HG: Jade Prima (#1, District 1)
6HG: Cedar Hardin (#1, District 7)
7HG: Susan Jackman (#2, District 5)
8HG: Malcolm Reed (#1, District 6)
9HG: Mags Cohen (#1, District 4)
10HG: Faren Dragmire (#2, District 1)
11HG: Maius Karuha (#2, District 2)
12HG: Iunius Karuha (#3, District 2)
13HG: Hilda White (#1, District 10)
14HG: Minali Otoyome (#2, District 3)
15HG: Willow James (#3, District 1)
16HG: Lark Chandnea (#2, District 11)
17HG: Woof Casino (#1, District 8)
18HG: Leah Holden (#2, District 7)
19HG: Zeruda Mezkiel (#2, District 6)
20HG: Muscida Lee (#2, District 4)
21HG: Kada Lahka (#4, District 2)
22HG: Gleam DiFronzo (#4, District 1)
23HG: Ivette Coronado (#3, District 5)