AUTHOR'S NOTES: Apparently it's a common 'fanon' that Johanna won the 67th Hunger Games. I was actually unaware of that entirely, and similar to the 38th Hunger Games, I had this chapter planned out before I knew who Augustus Braun was (and similarly, thought that a district winning three times in a 4-year period was ridiculous). Anyhoo... we get another legacy victor here, and Johanna will show her face right after Annie, so there's that to look forward to in the coming week or two.
Either way, Happy Reading!

The 67th Annual Hunger Games

While most years it never really amounted to anything worthwhile, every now and again the rumor that the children of a victor were more likely to be dragged back into the games than their mundane peers would resurface. It was usually fairly difficult to tell considering how few of the victors actually had children due to how broken and unstable they and their minds were. However, this rumor resurfaced again during the 67th Annual Hunger Games thanks to the wiles of a charismatic victor named Sagittaria Svenja. She was not only a district favourite in her home of District 11, but also a Capitol favourite, and so when her two eldest children returned to the reapings again, the crowds were on edge.

A girl named Bethany DuLange was chosen to represent District 11 that year, and the crowds gasped as Sagittaria's eldest son, Varric, was also brought to the stage. Similar to other years when relatives of victors were chosen, Sagittaria elected to accompany Chaff as a mentor, which would also in turn help both tributes get equal support from mentors that year.

Despite Sagittaria's obvious and justified bias, she was still kind and welcoming to Bethany, just as Chaff was to Varric, and both of them wanted to see one of their tributes come home, as any good mentor did. They were no careers, but they were still the 5th-highest district in terms of victor production, and they planned to keep their reputation that way. Winning this year would tie them with District 3, notorious for producing wily tributes, and this year it seemed no different what with Asami Chang and Mateo Wright as a pair of volunteers, no less.

Of course, it was hardly a surprise when District 1's Jasper and Elspeth recruited them. While it was uncommon for District 3 to produce volunteers, any time they did, they had always thus far joined the career pack. Naturally, James and Sapphire from District 2 were in on the career pack alliance just as well. Even District 12 looked like it had potential. The strapping young man looked much healthier than most of the kids that came from there, and while his partner was definitely skinny and kind of scraggly, she was feared far more than her partner because of her dark red face paint—many people knew at this point that "Painted Tributes" had quite the sinister reputation regardless of when or if they even won the games or not.

The odds were stacked much heavier against Varric than they had been for his mother, but he and Bethany stayed confident throughout the week of training, all the way down to when the training scores were released after the private sessions on the final evening.

Unsurprisingly, the tributes from Districts 1, 2, and 3 all scored predictably high, with 9s, 10s, and 11s all around. Bethany and Varric were both satisfied with their 9s, although raised an eyebrow when the little painted girl from District 12 scored an 11. The real eye-opener for everyone however, was when Silas and Iona from District 4 both scored perfect 12s. It threw a lot of issues into question, since not even the careers had expected that to happen, and unlike Mateo and Asami, the pair from District 4 did not show any interest in joining the career alliance.

Varric decide to use the final evening before the games as the last chance to get in their good graces. He might not have been quite as charismatic as his mother, but considering how high she set the bar, Varric was still very charming. He proposed an alliance, which Silas accepted and got Iona to nod in agreement on. It was an unusual alliance, but both sides appeared to have an agenda that benefitted from this partnership, and so it went into the games on surprisingly stable grounds.

Unlike the previous year, the arena for this year was hotter and more humid, hinting at a jungle-like environment outside of the cornucopia clearing. Ten tributes, including the strapping District 12 boy, both tributes from District 10, and a mixture of tributes from Districts 5-9, had to die before they could be sure though, and thus the bloodbath came and went only minutes after the gong had sounded.

The careers took control of the cornucopia, including its ample supplies and weapons. An oddity this year was that while there were a few weapons, many of them were just jagged shards of metal similar to a hunger games a few decades ago. For the tributes of District 4 and District 11, this hardly mattered; tributes from District 11 were used to improvising and making do with what they had, while tributes from District 4 were almost always very difficult to predict one way or the other.

While the rest of the 1st night went by without any further deaths, someone rigged one of the jungle trees to explode somehow, killing another tribute. None of the participants in the games knew it yet, but those who were watching from their homes or from the Capitol saw that Rinka Valdez, the conniving painted District 12 girl, had used some of the materials from the arena to create some type of bombs.

Silas and Iona bushwhacked their way through the jungle using the larger metal shards as machetes, also displaying rather impressive dexterity by also disarming traps or other dangers as they went. It was only after they confronted the career pack late on Day 5 that things started to turn ugly. Silas speared Elspeth that evening, and the alliance woke up with the other careers on their tails. District 4's tributes ran fast, but Varric and Bethany were faster. Silas lost his life to James, but his partner Iona avenged him by slaying Jasper and injuring James.

Bethany, perhaps feeling some moral obligation to help her allies, turned back to fight them. Varric positioned himself in some bushes, using the cover as a vantage point. He thought of his mother and of Rye Grove, the boy she had had to slay to end the games. He did not want to have to do that to Bethany. The two alliances made camp near each other, but neither one wanted to make the first move at night when there were traps being built.

Mateo's first blunder was taunting his enemies after he had speared Bethany early in the afternoon of Day 8. He hardly finished taunting when he found a knife lodged in his forehead courtesy of Varric. Iona clashed with Sapphire and James, killing the later and mortally wounding the former as she lay dying from poisons on Sapphire's blade. The two alliances had been decimated, leaving only Varric from the outer districts and Asami from the careers. Neither one was really sure where the other had gone; so coincidentally, they went opposite ways, which also helped them to recuperate from the attacks and massacres of the previous couple of days.

Day 10 saw only five tributes remaining, and Asami took out one of them the following evening. The other remaining tribute died the next night at the hands of Rinka's bombs, leaving only the three of them: Asami, Rinka, and Varric.

During the downtime as the two girls had hunted the remaining two boys, Varric had spent his time building an elaborate bolt-shooting weapon similar to the crossbow his mother had built decades ago. However, instead of arrows or bolts, it shot the metal shards from the cornucopia, producing a much deadlier effect (if his hunting kills were anything to go by). Now he wanted to try it one on of the last tributes—and he knew which one to go for.

Unfortunately for him, Rinka had other plans, raiding Varric's camp and essentially blowing up all of his supplies except the weapon that he kept close to him. However, all of his reserve ammunition had been among his camp supplies, and so he only had about 4 or 5 shots left on the thing unless he found more of those shards.

However, the odds shifted in Varric's favour near the final days of the games. Apparently Asami was also fed up with Rinka's pyrotechnical explosives and wanted her gone, and so she went on the warpath to take that renegade tribute down. Such was usually the case for Painted Tributes, but even after Asami overpowered her in a fight on Day 14, Rinka was still remembered as another of those dangerously skilled saboteurs that would do arguably well on a battlefield rather than a death arena.

While he considered himself at least a somewhat honourable young man, Varric didn't exactly want a fair fight with Asami when he confronted her, and so the moment he saw her approaching, he pointed his weapon at her and fired one of his metal shards. It caught her so off-guard that she froze, staggering back, and allowing him to shoot her again. This time she died, and thus the games were over. Varric had done what his district had hoped he would, becoming the 6th victor from District 11, and the 67th victor of the Hunger Games.

He gave genuine and heartfelt condolences for Bethany when he returned home (as well as on the last stop of his victory tour), and like his mother, whom he strongly took after in both behavior and mannerisms, he gave even his enemies a respectful farewell during his victory tour, and ultimately became a rather well-liked individual when all was said and done. Whether or not the rumor regarding a victor's children being more likely to get dragged into the games was true or not, Varric was alive and well, proving that sometimes a victor really could be the child of another victor—and should he have children and one of them got reaped, he would do everything in his power to bring them back home.

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)
66HG: Elroy Trujillo (#12, District 2)
67HG: Varric Svenja (#6, District 11)