AUTHOR'S NOTES: And after a few delays due to the Golden Age and pre-planning whatnots and why-fors, here we finally get to meet our good friend Chaff. we don't know much about what he did apart from losing an arm and otherwise having a very powerful fighting style, but hopefully I can do him some justice for delaying his games. Putting him this year would actually make him within a year or a few months of Haymitch, and they're reportedly good drinking buddies.
Whatever the case, Happy Reading!

The 52nd Annual Hunger Games

With the thrilling and somewhat controversial Quarter Quell a couple years behind them, the Capitol was still hard at work to make sure that the games that followed in the wake of the Quell and the 'Golden Age' were not too repetitive and not too boring for the (Capitol) audiences. They had their work cut out for them, but a fresh new staff in the wake of the retired members from the previous years meant that they had a clean slate to work with and a slew of fresh new ideas to try.

And thus, the 52nd Annual Hunger Games was born. After less than a decade, it seemed District 11 would cast a repeat on Panem of what they did only a few years before. Esmeralda Lee and Chaff Mitchell were both volunteers that year: the former volunteering in place of a 12-year-old, and the latter volunteering in place of a cousin, incidentally. Both of them were bold and wild; not necessarily as terrifying as tributes from recent games like Fenris, Zefira, Zadok, or Liberty, but still bold and courageous enough to put up a fight.

Their main opposition this year, of course, would come from the careers: Peter Glitz and Tiamo Velor from District 1; while Marco Stone and Susan Hidalgo volunteered to represent District 2. While they all looked intimidating and perhaps even a little daunting on television, for hardy farmhands like Chaff and Esmeralda, they figured they could make the best of their situation and fight them off. Time would tell as to their success, and they hoped to prove themselves in the training center first. From there they aimed to attract sponsors with high training scores and displays of combat prowess in the arena itself. The only variable from there would be the landscape of the arena.

Unsurprisingly, the careers all scored high, with the District 1 pair both scoring 11s and the District 2 pair scoring 10s. Esmeralda and Chaff were no repeats of Rye and Sagittaria, the two volunteers from year 44 that had both scored 11s, but Esmeralda's 8 and Chaff's 9 were nothing to sneeze at. While they had specialized in blades and sickles as opposed to the axes, swords, and spears that the career tributes all took up, District 11 was crafty and resourceful enough to make do with whatever they were given.

When they finally caught their first glimpse of the arena though, they knew they were in for a treat. What appeared to be a red, hostile desert was stretched out in every direction. For a district that specialized in agriculture. This hostile landscape was likely more suited towards the careers. The masons of District 2 lived surrounded by rocks in the desert, and their northern neighbors in District 1 were in similar circumstances. Chaff also watched for the District 5 pair, knowing they lived in the desert southwest of Panem as well.

However, Esmeralda's eyes were on the prize, and Chaff noticed her fixation as the timer counted down from 60 to the deaths of probably at least half a dozen of the kids standing in this semicircle. He immediately saw what she was focused on, however: sickles, and lots of them. Similar to the year where there had only been weirdly shaped maces and clubs, this year there seemed to be nothing at the cornucopia except scythes and sickles, which meant food would likely be somewhere out in the desert.

Chaff and Esmeralda knew that the safer option would be to flee while the going was good, but they were both too bold and reckless to take the sissy way out. They knew that if they could get their hands on some of those weapons that they would wreak havoc at the cornucopia, and so that was exactly what they did. Seizing sickles in both hands, they went to town on the other tributes, with their combined kill counts accounting for 6 of the 11 tributes that died that morning. This feat, while ruthless, established the District 11 pair as a formidable threat as the careers seized weapons of their own and fled to find sustenance and supplies. Esmeralda and Chaff headed in the opposite direction to scout out the arena.

It did not take long for them to realize what was at work here. While the arena was far from being level, what with rock formations, buttes, mesas, and plateaus ever present to mix things up, there were fields and ditches that made it seem like there was some idiot that had constructed farms out in the middle of this unforgiving shrub-ridden rocky desert. Further exploration found wells of water as well as a certain pattern to the plots of fields in the desert. Esmeralda used this pattern to track down and kill the boy from District 10 that had survived the bloodbath.

The next few days were spent farming as they bided their time. The sickles proved useful for this endeavor, making harvesting food much easier.

6 days in and it was clear that the games were going to end too quickly. By this time, only 6 tributes remained, and even as they battled against Chaff and Esmeralda, they appeared to be losing. Before either side could kill each other, the Capitol sent a huge storm to break them apart, and thus the two alliances were split in three different ways, with Peter and Susan being forced southwest, Marco and Tiamo being forced southeast, and Esmeralda and Chaff being forced north. Despite being separated and thus safe from harm, Esmeralda had been poisoned by one of the careers' weapons, and despite the medicine she had been sponsored, there was nothing that could save her, and so she gave up the ghost before the 7th evening, where her face appeared in the sky.

Tiamo also wound up dying of natural causes (unless Marco betrayed her) on day 8, while Chaff rested and recuperated. He knew that tomorrow he aimed to go on the offensive, with the hopes of taking down the remaining three careers.

Morning came and that was exactly what he did. Seizing both of his sickles and filling up on the food one last time, he carved a warpath through the arena, catching Peter and Susan both off guard. Their cannons woke up Marco, who heard noises in Chaff's direction. These were actually technically caused by the Capitol, who knew that it was time to lure the remaining two tributes together. Chaff's sickles were faster, but Marco was defensive enough with his scythe that neither boy was able to so quickly land a strike on the other. Steel clashed against steel, and sparks flew between the two of them both figuratively and literally. The real game-changed happened after Marco managed to lop off Chaff's arm at the elbow, rending him a one-handed fighter instead of a dual-wielder. However, similar to Viridi Kuro from years ago, Chaff didn't let this faze him, and he simply amped up his offensive. Despite blood spilling everywhere, he successfully managed to trip Marco up before swinging his sickle hard enough that it decapitated Marco and ended the games. Despite missing an arm, Chaff Mitchell became the 5th victor from District 11, and the 52nd victor of the Hunger Games.

While occasionally a tribute lost a limb or other part of them, it was rare for them to become victors. Chaff broke that mold, and also refused to accept a prosthetic limb to replace the one he lost, and so his arm was merely a stump from then on out. It didn't stop him from being able to hold a whiskey bottle, and like many victors before him, the drink was his friend. It was one of the many brutal truths of the Hunger Games, but as a brutal fighter himself, Chaff wasn't too choked up about it. He had merely done what he felt anyone would do in his situation.

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)
34HG: Price Emerson (#6, District 1)
35HG: Leto Irizari (#7, District 2)
36HG: Jackson Kjelle (#5, District 5)
37HG: Zerviah Hawke (#3, District 6)
38HG: Wiress Plummer (#4, District 3)
39HG: Nephi Lott (#3, District 4)
40HG: Miriam Luxio (#7, District 1)
41HG: Marcelina Kovac (#6, District 5)
42HG: Niles Lincoln (#8, District 2)
43HG: Blight McKay (#4, District 7)
44HG: Sagittaria Svenja (#4, District 11)
45HG: Dezna Meraxa (#4, District 6)
46HG: Alice DeSiete (#3, District 8)
47HG: Aurum Zianja (#8, District 1)
48HG: Layla Aranai (#9, District 2)
49HG: Chip Sangster (#5, District 3)
50HG: Haymitch Abernathy (#2, District 12)
51HG: Derrick James (#7, District 5)
52HG: Chaff Mitchell (#5, District 11)