District Six
Adrienne Quintus's POV
"Hey Adrienne!" I heard a boy to my right shout towards me. "I'll give you three coins if you suck my dick! God knows you need it you fucking whore!"
I felt my anger explode as he spoke those words. I grinded my teeth in anger while turning around to face whoever had shouted at me.
I turned around to see some of my classmates, and his friends of both genders laughing.
They always did that, they called me a fucking whore because of my whore mother. They thought that because of her, that I was going to follow in her footsteps. I tried to show everyone that I wasn't like that, but nothing I do could make them think differently. That's all they thought of me, because my mother was a whore, I was going to be one as well. And they seemed to like nothing more then to pick on people.
I hated them for that. I hated them for making fun of me, for making my life harder then it already was, I just hated them!
"How about I cut it off instead!" I shouted angrily to the leader as I charged towards him.
I gave them no warnings. Normally I'd give them one warning to stop, or maybe two if I was in a good mood, but not today. My mother was still mad about the client she had last night, and she took it out on me by throwing things at me. Nothing much, since we don't really have too many objects in our house, but it still pissed me off that she'd take her anger out on me and throw what little possessions we had since she spends most of her earnings on drugs and booze instead of trying to improve our lifestyle.
The kids who were laughing at me quickly fell silent before they started to run away from me. They were bullies, nothing more, they'd talk the talk but never walk the walk when things went down.
There was six of them, four boys and two girls, they outnumbered me, but they were still too cowardly to face me.
I chased them down the street, slowly gaining on them until they turned into an alleyway between two middle class homes. I turned into the alleyway after them, only to see a flash of bright colours appear in front of me as pain washed over my face before I felt the cold, wet, hard ground that was more like thin mud hit the back of my body.
A sneak attack! Shit!
"Get her!" The boy I had been after shouted, before I started to feel them attack me, hitting all my body parts with either their feet or fists. All I could do was thrash around, hoping to give each of my attackers at least one good hit. I wasn't afraid of getting hurt, I was afraid that they were going to hurt me badly and that I wasn't going to give them anything in return.
"Fuck off!" I shouted to them as I kicked and punched wildly. "Fuck off fuck off fuck off fuck off!"
"Hey! Peacekeepers! Over here!" I heard a girl's voice shout from outside my circle of attackers. She wasn't one of them, she was outside of the ally.
"Oh shit!" One of the girl attackers shouted before the group of attackers ran in the opposite direction of the girl shouting peacekeeper. My attackers may of been running away, but not without leaving trampling over me, giving me one last attack in their retreat.
I sighed in relief as I watched them run away from me. I was in pain, but I quickly got to my feet and grabbed a fist sized rock from the mud like ground and threw it towards the fleeing cowards as hard as I could, hitting one of the girls in the back before she gave a high pitched squeal. That squeal made me feel better.
"Adrienne," I heard the girl behind me say, recognizing her voice now that I wasn't being attacked by six teenagers. "Are you alright?"
I turned around to face my friend, Taylor, and told her
"Yeah, I'm fine, had them on the run till I slipped." It was mostly true.
"Can't believe those jerks," Taylor with with clear annoyance in her voice. "They think that they can say and do whatever they want to you just because. You know." She quietly said the last two words.
"Don't worry about them," I told my friend. "The only thing they have is strength numbers, they have to be in a group to be strong, because alone, they're nothing."
"Yeah." My friend said while smiling. "You and I and Maria alone are better then twenty of them put together."
"You said it. Speaking of which, where is Maria?"
My question was answered by a girl running around the corner with a white t-shirt, white pants that were muddy on the bottom of the legs, and a pair of cheap black sunglasses while holding a lead pipe. Maria looked like a peacekeeper who couldn't afford the real peacekeeper gear.
"Get away from the girl or I swear I'll-" Maria said in her best authority voice that was nothing like a real peacekeeper's before she stopped speaking and saw that there was only Taylor and I in front of her.
I looked at Maria up and down and couldn't help but snicker at her lame attempt to look and sound like a peacekeeper.
"Nice get up, ." I laughed. It wasn't too long before I heard Taylor laughing, before Maria started to laugh.
I was happy to have friends like Maria and Taylor, just like me, they would do just about anything for their friends, even if it meant badly impersonating a peacekeeper.
Colten Mullican's POV
Did I remember to do everything before I left? I think so, everything looked done when I left the house. Nah, everything's fine, I'm sure of it, I double checked just to make sure, I don't want Amy and Kyle to take away my food privileges. But it's hard to make everything perfect when everything's so high up.
No, stop thinking about that Colten, you did fine, everything is good, and when you get back from the reapings, everything'll be good. Amy and Kyle are good people, even if they aren't my real parents and they treat me almost like a slave. At least they took me in, unlike some other people.
I sighed as I walked down to the district square for the reapings, feeling the wet mud seep through the thin shoes that Kyle gave me. Darn rain, why'd you have to rain the night before the reapings and make it all muddy when I absolutely had to go outside?
Oh well, could be worse, at least I have a house to go back to, unlike some of the other people in this district.
I heard footsteps splash behind me, and before I could turn around, I felt a boot hit me in the the back, causing me to fall face first into the mud. I heard laugher behind me before I heard a boy say to me
"Sorry there, I thought you were a ball, not a dwarf." Two voices howled with laughter before they walked off towards the square. I picked myself up before brushing off as much mud as I could off my clothes and face.
Damn it. Just what I needed to make my day complete. Couldn't I go one day without someone making fun of me being only three feet tall? That's all people see when they look at me, my size, and that causes me to either ignore me or make fun of me. Telling them to stop making fun of me or telling them to stop judging me by my size only makes it worse, in fact, that's what got me kicked out of my old home and into Amy and Kyle's home.
People don't give me a chance to show them the real me, hell, they don't even talk to me unless it's to make fun of me, or in Amy and Kyle's case, to give me an order.
I reach one of the the booths to sign into the reapings, and I can barley see the Capital attendant who's working the one I'm in front of.
"Name?" She asks calmly, not even looking at me.
"Colton Mullican." I answer.
"Age?"
"Sixteen."
"Tesserae?"
"No thanks."
"Take your place." She tells me before I head over to the center of the square, only to discover that the place looks different from last year. There are still kids standing together in their age groups, but instead of standing out in the open, there are black steel cages that look more like prison cells then a place to keep teenage kids inside, unless their psychopaths of course. What were they were for? I wondered that as I went into the cage that was labeled: 16.
I hated being in this cage, it brought up some bad memories. At least I wasn't the only one in front of an audience this time.
Adrienne Quintus's POV
The only thing that annoyed me more then the kids making fun of me, was that those same kids were making fun of my friends, just because they were around me.
"There goes the slut and her slutty friends."
"How much do you think it costs for a foursome?"
"Their mothers must be so proud of their little whores."
The only things that stopped me from taking a swing at those assholes was the fact that there was more then a hundred of them all packed in one convenient place, there were real peacekeepers with real guns, and most of all, because I didn't want my friends to get hurt. They don't deserve to get hurt because of my fights.
I as I walked to my age section, I wondered why we didn't have to sign out name on a piece of paper that was going into the reaping bowl, but that thought disappeared as I saw the black steel cages in front of me.
What the hell? I wondered what they were for as I walked into the one marked: 16.
"Nice of you to join us, slut." A girl behind me taunted, before I turned around and smashed my forehead onto her nose before blood exploded from the point of impact. I didn't have to worry about my friends getting hurt anymore, they had both recently turned seventeen and were in another cage.
The girl I head butted screamed out in pain as she cupped her bloody nose with her hands. The other girls looked like they were going to attack me, but they didn't dare do anything now that the peacekeepers were watching us. Lucky for me that I had no blood on my forehead, otherwise they may have shot me on the spot.
I laughed at the bloody nosed girl before I heard the escort start to talk in the microphone upstage. I turned around to face our green skinned escort.
"As you know, the quarter quell for this year hasn't been announced, but it was kept secret for a reason. Too keep everything fair, the reading of the card was kept a secret from everyone but the president. But you shall all now know what the reading of the card was. I'm not going to bore you with repeating what President Blizzard read, but to put it in short terms, the districts must offer volunteers this year."
Volunteers, what a laugh, the only ones who volunteer are careers, good luck getting someone to volunteer in the other districts.
"And because we know that most of you won't even think of volunteering," the escort said, with a surprising level of sadness. "The president's putting a twist on the reapings, and due to the raising Panem population as well, some of you will have to be..." I heard the escort start to chock up on the last word. "Exterminated."
What? Did I just hear her right? Exterminated?
Thoughts wrapped around me head before I heard our escort sadly call out. "Eighteen."
A few seconds later, I heard the sound of glass break followed by high pitched screams. All of it was behind me. I turned to see what was happening to the eighteen year olds behind me, only to see an inferno that covered everything within the cage. The girls inside there were screaming as they tried to put out the fire that had engulfed their bodies.
It was horrible seeing those girls helplessly try to claw their way out of their scorching deathtrap, their bodies on fire, to hear their screams for help, but as horrible as it was, I couldn't look away.
I heard the screams and cries of other people, but they were nothing like the burning bodies of dead girls walking.
The screams of the girls died down as they fell down and finally died after what seemed like forever, but the crackle of the flames and the stench of burnt flesh was still strong in the air. Cries of family members and friends and random strangers were also in the air. "Any..." The escort sobbed as she tried to finish her sentence. "Any. Volunteers?"
I looked at the charred remains of the girls in the cage marked eighteen, and I made my decision.
"I volunteer!" I shouted. "I volunteer!"
Seconds later, a peacekeeper unlocked the cage door and let me out before closing the door and locking it.
I made my way to the stage, but had to pass the remains of the eighteen year olds. The stench of their death even stronger near them then it had been two cages back, and the sight of their blackened bodies was horrifying.
They didn't deserve this. I mean, I thought about killing some of them because they made fun of me, but they really didn't deserve to die, not like that. They didn't deserve to die at all.
"Name?" The escort asked when I got on stage.
"Adrienne Quintus." I told her, still looking at the bodies of the dead.
"Thank you, Adrienne." She said before she walked over to the boy's reaping bowl, which only had seven slips of paper."
I couldn't help but feel sad, because more undeserving kids were going to die before this reaping's over. "Thirteen."
Colten Mullican's POV
The sound of those thirteen year olds screaming fill the square as their bodies were burnt to a crisp.
I look away from the inferno as I think about how this isn't possible. For as long as I've known, the reapings were never like this, they pick a name, they ask for volunteers, then they ship you off to the Capital. This wasn't how it was supposed to work.
"Volunteers?" Our escort asks, holding back sobs.
"I volunteer!" I shout before a peacekeeper unlocks my cage, pulls me out, and locks the cage once again.
As I'm walking to the stage, I think about the kids who'd be dead if I didn't volunteer. I'd probably be next, and even though I'm a small target for the flames, I'd still be in the line of fire. No pun intended.
I also don't want to see them suffer, being burned alive is a horrible way to go.
"Name?" My escort asks when I get up to the stage.
"Colten Mullican." I tell her.
"Thanks, Colten." She says before she tells me to shake hands with my district partner.
I know her, she's the slut of District Six, but that's all I know about her. I don't know if what the people say about her is true, but that's all I have to go on other then that she has blond highlights in her dark hair and that her skin is the colour of bronze.
It's hard to look up at her since she's not looking at me, but at the charred bodies of the deceased, but her dark golden eyes seem to chance shades with every angle.
Her black shirt with large white text that read: AC/DC and she had blue jeans with holes at the knees, both of her clothing items were dirty with mud. In fact, her hair and parts of her body also had some mud on them.
Makes me think of my looks a little. Unlike her where everything stands out, I'm just normal besides my height. Shaggy brown hair and light blue eyes. Normal.
I release her hand before looking back to District Six and think of all the times that I wanted to prove myself. I kept on thinking that if maybe I volunteer for the games I'd be proving to the district that I was more then just someone three feet tall.
I wanted to go into these games before the peacekeepers started torching little kids, but because of the fire making, it only made me more sure to volunteer.
If this was a normal reapings, would I of been happy that I volunteered? Would the other kids of been surprised that I volunteered? Would I finally of gotten some respect?
I think I got all three. I saved other kids and I actually volunteered.
I wonder what the other kids are thinking now? I wonder what my real parents think of me now.
A/N: Well, the District Six reapings are now up. Fiddlegirl, yet again I got something from your reapings, I'm doing something different for every district. Hope you don't mind...again.
Hmmm... How'd I do? I'm not used to doing reapings, but this is what this fic's supposed to help me with.
We need more guy tributes.