AUTHOR'S NOTES: I'm sure this was also a hotly anticipated chapter as well considering that we all know the victor of this year's games, and so the element of mystery and surprise is eliminated. Despite that, I hope that I can do Finnick Odair some justice as we show off a lot of what we already knew about his games. After this, it only leaves two more canon victors before we finish that and venture into the AU. For those who might think that it becomes less exciting after that, I can promise you that it only gets more intense after the Quarter Quell without losing the 'atmosphere' of the previous Hunger Games. Also, I promised a long time ago that there was at least one game that a 12-year-old won in, so there's that to look forward to as we..
In the meantime... Finnick Odair. Happy Reading!

The 65th Annual Hunger Games

After the back-to-back victories of the previous two years of Hunger Games, District 1 had a pair of highly competent mentors to help train their tributes even more than the district's training centers did. On the other hand, that was not enough to deter the likes of District 2, whose victor count was still nearly as high; nor did it deter the wily citizens of District 3, whose smarts and cunning tactics often earned them spots as allies of the career tributes.

And then there was District 4. Even by the time of the 65th Annual Hunger Games, no one really knew where to place them. Sometimes they behaved like careers, volunteering and joining up with them. Other times they were more cold and cunning like the tributes of District 3 or District 5; and sometimes, albeit very rarely, they were bloodbath fodder.

They were certainly not going to be such this year though. Delphine James and Finnick Odair were both volunteer tributes, behaving much like standard career tributes from the other districts. They both had their reasons for volunteering, although neither one would openly say what those reasons were. They preferred a sense of mystery. However, similar to Song and Azama, the wily tributes that emerged from District 3 that year, they did not wind up joining the career pack like a lot of people (including the careers themselves) had assumed they would.

However, neither did they form their own alliance against Districts 1 and 2. They hardly even formed alliances with each other.

None of them scored too remarkably—at least not in comparison to some other years. The careers took home 9s and 10s, Finnick and Song took 8s, and Azama and Delphine both earned 7s. Sometimes, the easiest way to get ignored in the games was to score moderately: scoring low often made a tribute a target for the stronger ones; scoring high made tributes get sponsored more often and sometimes had other tributes teaming up to take the one in question down. Scoring right in the middle was just as easy a way to be ignored as being the middle child was.

Finnick was far from ignored, however. Considered to be the best-looking tribute that year despite his age, he was showered with sponsor gifts hardly a day after the games had kicked off. 10 kids had died in the bloodbath, with Finnick and the District 3 pair being responsible for a combined total of 5 of them. While there were a few tools or provisions, most of the supplies were weapons. Finnick was particularly destructive because he had managed to snag a trident, which he practically used as an extension of his throwing arm. As he vanished into the jungle-like wilderness of the arena, he knew that he and this trident would go far.

The arena that year was also designed to his advantage (by luck of course), being full of dense palm jungles, white sandy beaches and cerulean blue ocean waves. He used vines from the jungles to weave nets to catch fish, which were ample in the shallow waters, and as he pulled in another decent haul of fish to keep himself fed for another day or two, he realized something else. If these nets were large and strong enough to catch fish, perhaps with a little tweaking he could use them to catch and trap other tributes. If he succeeded here, all it would take would be a quick jab or throw of his trident to take them down. He found a little place away from everyone else to work on this technique and perfect it.

Unbeknownst to the other tributes, a day later Finnick was sponsored the most glorious gift seen in Hunger Games history. It was a trident, much like the one he had been using for the first few days, but this one was a various combination of gold and silver (in color at least) and was arguably the most expensive gift anyone had ever sent a tribute. Smirking, the boy knew exactly what to do with it.

In the meantime, he laid low and worked on nets and traps to rig the arena up with. His traps weren't designed to be lethal the way Song and Azama's were, but more just to immobilize his prey so he could use his trident to finish them off.

To make matters even more advantageous for him, he was basically ignored by the other tributes for the next several days. Delphine took most of the heat by pursuing other tributes aggressively, and managed to kill one of them as well as one of the careers from District 1, over the next few days. Azama and Song were both nefarious with their hazardous traps that also claimed the lives of 2 or 3 tributes, but Finnick himself laid fairly low for the next few days.

It was only around day 9 that he truly emerged, now armed with nets and his trusty trident. Sponsor gifts, practically showered upon him due to his good looks, had allowed him to remain hidden in one part of the jungle for several days as he built nets and traps. It was not that he had pretended to be weak as much as he had simply pretended to be subtle and forgettable. Most people in the Capitol only recognized him for his good looks, and any tribute could testify that being good-looking was not by any means a saving grace or a key to victory… unless they got some wicked-cool sponsor gifts.

Unfortunately for the other tributes, this was exactly what happened to Finnick Odair. Armed with that golden trident, he went on the offensive, chasing other tributes into his net traps or using them to slow his targets down, where he began offing them one by one. Even Song and Azama realized that they had been targeting the wrong tributes this entire time, and as Finnck speared one and then the other, there was no correcting the error of their ways at this point.

True to the nature of District 4, Finnick remained elusive and difficult to track, and his erratic, evasive methods made him that much more slippery and tricky to kill. No one could really tell when he was about to strike, and it almost seemed that even he wasn't sure who he'd run into next, but any time he saw another tribute, out went the next and then into the victim's body went the golden trident. This effective strategy of his was helping him sweep the field.

Day 10 was the final day of the 65th games, as Finnick used his time-honored strategy to close in on his final enemy. Armed with nets and his trusty golden trident, which went down as one of the most expensive sponsor gifts in Hunger Games history (even decades later), he eliminated the distance between himself and his target, and finally took out the last career tribute and end the conflict. With a stroke of luck in the form of a suitable arena, coupled with his incredible sponsor gifts and his own wit and cunning, Finnick Odair became the 5th victor from District 4, and the 65th victor of the Hunger Games.

Of course, being a Capitol favourite was not just being rewarded with fancy items and then escaping the games scot-free. While Finnick was mentally stable, having volunteered to do exactly what he had done in the arena, the Capitolites had sponsored him to ensure his survival for reasons of their own. He was also the youngest victor thus far to win the games, beating out youngsters like Alice and Leto by a couple weeks or months. He joined the two of them as only the 3rd 14-year-old to win the games—and all over simplistic career-style move of volunteering. He stacked later irony into this trick by admitting he lied about volunteering—even now that he had survived the Hunger Games, he refused to tell anyone why he had done it, and to what end.

He was not the first victor to be prostituted out to citizens of the Capitol. Many of the better-looking ones were chosen for these roles, and those who refused were often punished severely (and psychologically). Not Finnick though. He went right along with it, but asked for secrets instead of money. He had served his time in the arena as a wily tribute, and that had not suddenly just vanished after the games. No, true to the nature of District 4 as a wildcard, He knew a great deal of the outside world, even if the outside world knew very little of the true nature of District 4…

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)
53HG: Brutus Gunn (#10, District 2)
54HG: Tiffany Waxler (#2, District 10)
55HG: Zak Dreggite (#4, District 4)
56HG: Zoroka Chandaki (#9, District 1)
57HG: Cecelia Sanchez (#4, District 8)
58HG: Meili Meisha (#5, District 6)
59HG: Zhin Lyautey (#6, District 3)
60HG: Lucas Drazen (#10, District 1)
61HG: Kara Petersen (#5, District 7)
62HG: Enobaria Taos (#11, District 2)
63HG: Gloss Zianja (#11, District 1)
64HG: Cashmere Zianja (#12, District 1)
65HG: Finnick Odair (#5, District 4)