AUTHOR'S NOTES: Happy New Year! With the holidays out of the way, I should resume a more regular updating schedule for this once again, especially as we near Chapter 35, which I have had prepared for quite some time now. Anyhoo... enter Seeder, another canon victor. All we know about her is thatshe won by being able to go without food the longest, but I'm certain that there's more to that, especially with District 11's fighting spirit and resilience. This is the way I figured it went down.
Happy Reading!

The 33rd Annual Hunger Games

The Hunger Games were not just about death and brutal murder, despite that that seemed to be what the Capitol highlighted during most of the reruns and arena footages. Sometimes, the games were about hunger, or sometimes even about survival. Sometimes this was stepped up a notch, to the point where surviving the harsh arena hazards became more prevalent than trying to seek and destroy the other tributes.

This became apparent during the 33rd Annual Hunger Games. The District 1 pair were as arrogant and confident as any other career tributes that had come down this path before them, and their scores of 11 and 10 respectively meant they would be formidable opponents. Their comrades from District 2 were hardly different.

On the other hand, District 11 was set to become a pair of renegades similar to Viridi Kuro from the previous year. Josh Gerry and Seeder Howell were a hardy pair of farmhands from the orchards of '11, with a bit of strength behind their resolve. Another pair of tributes that made a scene that year were Hull Stanford and Kelly Reuben, both of whom appeared to be drug addicts of some kind.

Upon being greeted by the arena, it was hard to tell who would last and who would not. 9 tributes died in the bloodbath, none of which were careers. The cornucopia would be uninhabited this year, after the careers picked it clean of any weapons or supplies. The biggest difference, however, was that there was no food in any of the backpacks or crates. The arena seemed like the kind of place that would have ample amounts of food, but the careers were not worried much for the early phases of the games. The forested regions surrounding them would likely have game, and the fields up north would likely have nuts or seeds or something of the sort.

Water seemed to be fairly abundant at first, but soon the career pack went on a hunt to try and get themselves some food.

Josh and Seeder, being from an impoverished district that was well-acquainted with starvation and hunger, was doing just fine. Seeder had found a brook carving its way through the field, and she was living mostly off of fruit and nuts, with a pair of jagged black daggers at her side. Her strategy was to camp out here, and this strategy worked for at least 5 days, during which time Josh and two other tributes were killed, and the District 6 pair went ballistic in a morphling withdrawal, killing each other.

However, the career pack, while famished, was still fairly strong, even if they were complaining about the lack of food-related sponsor gifts. Said gifts were frequent enough to make kids from Districts 9, 11, and 12 jealous, but still not nearly as much as what the strapping kids from the rich career districts were used to. They did not find the seeds and nuts to be very satisfactory the way Seeder did.

A girl from District 10 was unfortunate enough to find herself on the receiving end of Seeder's dagger on day 6, and two of the careers were so starving that by day 9, they had gone delusional and attacked their friends, who had put them down. Seeder decided to set out and confront the remaining two. She was in no way eating like a queen, but she was eating more or less the same way she had back home, and so her body did not notice anything out of the ordinary except a slight distaste for the same fruits she had been eating for the last week and a half.

Day 10 saw her creek running dry, and so instead of returning to camp, Seeder sought out the last two careers as another cannon went off, bringing the number of alive tributes down to herself and 6 other tributes. Insanity was setting in for most of the tributes, but Seeder kept a level head and remained either oblivious, unaffected by it, or some combination of both.

To her surprise, it did not take much to trigger the District 2 pair's sense of dementia (or that's what they thought it was from how hungry they believed they were), and while Seeder danced between them to avoid becoming a kabob, they attacked each other instead with vigor. It was a surprising and almost comical sight, but after several minutes of this elusive fighting style, the last two career tributes lay dead in the forest as Seeder tried to single out the remaining tributes.

Unfortunately, there was a pair of tributes from District 7 that had been living in the forest for the last couple of weeks. Built like careers, they were a hardy pair that were built like—and ate like—lumberjacks. Seeder knew that in a direct confrontation, they would slaughter her. She waited a couple more days in hopes that the other tributes would start to die off, and sure enough, day 11 reduced the number of survivors to 4, while day 12 reduced it to 3. Day 13 came and Seeder knew she was being hunted. Day 14 came and she was found. However, the confrontation was nothing like she had suspected. If anything, they were more crazed rather than trying to kill her—they were mad enough for food that they had almost turned on each other and resorted to cannibalism. Seeder was the only level-headed one, and as such, it was her swordplay (dagger play) that wound up besting the girl first and then the boy a few moments later. Breathing heavily and soaked in sprayed flecks of blood, Seeder stood over their corpses as the Gamemakers announced her victory. Seeder was the 3rd victor from District 11, and the 33rd victor of the Hunger Games overall.

Despite the craziness she had seen from hunger and frenzied tributes, Seeder remained fairly calm and quiet just as before. She did not like loud noises, but ate a lot healthier and more regularly as a victor than she did prior to the games. She was one of the few that did not turn to drugs or alcohol after her victory, and it was a trend that she wished to continue as she began mentoring tributes for District 11…

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)
24HG: Olivia Thurman (#1, District 9)
25HG: Laurel Fox (#1, District 12)
26HG: Daron Armstrong (#5, District 2)
27HG: Cobalt Evans (#5, District 1)
28HG: Lyme Golding (#6, District 2)
29HG: Ash LosDias (#3, District 7)
30HG: Challis Worth (#2, District 8)
31HG: Beetee Latier (#3, District 3)
32HG: Fletch Crossley (#4, District 5)
33HG: Seeder Howell (#3, District 11)