A/N: So sorry for the long wait! This chapter is pretty much written by SouthKentishTown, with an odd word or so done by me :P Anyway, hope you enjoy!
My breathing is slow, controlled, as I lodge the mock katana beneath my opponent's head, and decapitate him in one strike.
Around me, unlike in District 1, there is no scattering of applause or well-meant jibes. Instead, there is a silence as the training module dissolves back into the ground as a mass of crudely pieced together pixels.
I hate to waste time.
Re-sheathing my weapon, I stride back towards the podium and reset the module. The computerised mechanism whirs once more, groaning under the strain of reproducing yet another hologram for me to dispatch. Slowly, pixel-by-pixel, it recreates the makeshift outline of a human being, and I steady myself for another onslaught.
Standing in the centre of the training room, the air is cold against the sheen of sweat that covers my skin, and I suppress a brief shiver that threatens to unsettle my calm. Drawing my clumsy wooden approximation of a blade, I picture Magent's words as I steel my nerves.
We were sure-fire bets, he'd said, money and donations should be pouring in from every corner of the Capitol to support us, and yet, as he'd said those words, there had been an air of nervousness about him, an edge to his tone that was uncharacteristically clipped. I had dismissed it that night, as I'd slunk off into the darkness to nurse a fresh set of bruises and burning muscles, content to lie awake and stare at Ruby's face until exhaustion overtook me.
But now they disturb me, and my fingers dance distractedly across the hilt. Shaking myself, I force my eyes close, shoving all the images and the sounds out of my thoughts.
When I open them again, my opponent is ready, and so am I.
The learning programme on the training software is terrrible in comparison to my District, dating back to the last years of the war, and my flurry of blows soon outpace the predictable parries of the module.
It strikes me from the left, I dodge. A blow threatens my right, I block. Deflecting a thrust, I kick the ground out from beneath it. Within a few moves, the image melds back into the ground once more.
Again, there is no applause.
Everyone is too absorbed in their own training to care – and it grates on me. The very first day I'd walked in here and beat the training module, and I'd held the whole room in the rapturous applause that I deserved. All except for the two from District 3, but I've come to dismiss the two freaks with their little box… After all, not all of them can be made of the same material as I am.
Now, however, is a different matter. While I can stand being ignored by the outcasts and am indifferent to the two clandestine tributes from District 12, the fact that the hard-eyed girl from District 4 doesn't even stoop to acknowledge my victory irritates me.
I stride back to the podium, and reset the training module.
This time, I'll make them stare. Dropping the katana back into its stand, I grasp the hilt of the heaviest axe I can wield and swing it above my head. It drops to the floor with a noticeable thunk, and the other tributes begin to murmur.
Good. Now that I have their attention…
The programme scarcely has time to form before a harpoon shatters it back into pixels. Spinning around, I glare at the intruder.
The hard-eyed girl from District 4 stands there, her smile grim and her shoulders heaving from the visible effort. But I don't doubt her strength, not when she is standing across the other side of the training room, and the clumsy wooden harpoon is lodged en pointe in the floor in front of me.
"I think we've seen enough of you roughing up pixel face." She sneers. "How about a real challenge?"
My breathing turns shallow, and I can hear the excitable thrum of blood as it rushes past my ears. At last, finally, someone has broken the uneasy truce that surrounds us. My hands curl into tight, white fists as I answer:
"Show me someone who can match me and I'll consider."
The room falls silent apart from the rhythmic tinkering of the two fools and their box. From my left, there is a smattering of uneasy laughter.
"What did you say?" She takes a step forward, then another, bristling with indignation.
"You heard me."
Her strides are long, brisk, even, and within a handful she stands opposite me, her hot breath catching on my neck as we stare each other down. She is shorter than me, but only by enough for the imperious arch of her eyebrows to measure up to my eye level, and as we glare across the divide, grey eyes onto black, I am under no illusion that height gives me any advantages.
"Do you even know who I am? I've been on those seas since I was born, I've seen more storms than you've mansions, Diamond girl. Luxury goods - ? No. The sea makes us strong, and if you think you're better than me you've got another thing coming."
Her words, hissed between teeth, cause my heart to thunder, and my mind leaps to only one possible response. I punch her, and my fist strikes her squarely in her chin.
She scarcely recoils a half-metre before striking me back, her hands finding purchase in my stomach. Our fight is brutal, graceless, and nothing like how I imagined it. There is a rawness to the way we fight – my nails grazing her arms, her knee striking my shin. Pain floods across my body, every bruise awakens to the noise of my back slamming into the floor.
I refuse to surrender, I scrabble, undignified, dragging her onto the ground besides me as I try to regain the upper hand.
Bu I am tired. Nights haunted by the faces of old friends have caught up with me, and with each blow I land she strikes me for three, forcing me onto my back, my throat exposed to her attacks. This is how we end, her straddling my chest, elbow lodged at my windpipe.
If she so chose, she could bring her arm down and suffocate me. The Peacekeepers refuse to let her have her victory, and they charge into the room, hauling us apart.
Both of our breaths are short, quick, uneven as we dragged away from each other, black eyes still boring into grey. Around us, the rest of the tributes are scattered back to their former tasks, and the training room returns to the way it was.