Floyd was alone. Truthfully, it had probably always been this way. Even back home there was never really anyone there for her, never really anyone she could express herself to. But at least there had been people. Now there was no one. No one but her and the wind. Maybe if she hadn't been so hell bent on killing the twins she wouldn't have killed her district partners and only friends. If you could call someone who would kill you gladly a 'friend'.
"What is my purpose?" Floyd murmured to herself as she walked slowly through the ruined city. "What am I supposed to do?"
The wind was her only answer.
"Do I even have a purpose?" Her whispery voice cracked.
She had never broken down before, never been allowed to. It has always been training, training, training. She could still hear her instructor's voice in her head.
Your purpose is to win. Without the Games you are nothing.
"I was always nothing."
Floyd found the words pop out of her mouth. She gritted her teeth and kept walking. The only noise the the gentle whirring of a camera as it followed her progress. She stopped walking and stared into it.
"You." She said to the camera. It was dull, lifeless and blank. But she was talking to the Capitol, to the game makers, to her district.
"You create monsters." She continued. " You seize innocence and twist it into something broken, something emotionless. You turn us into remorseless machines."
She imagined the Game makers in the capitol frantically trying to shut the camera down. She moved closer just as the camera swung upwards as an attempt not to broadcast her words live. She grabbed it and forced it onto her face.
"You stripped me of love, of my childhood. Of happiness and innocence."
She brought her voice down so it was barely audible and spoke slowly.
"You had no right. Cruelty is always punished."
As the last syllable rolled off her tongue, Floyd felt a sharp pain in her neck and she fell to the floor.
Your purpose is to win. Without the Games you are nothing.
You're wrong, Floyd thought as her mind became increasingly foggy. I just fulfilled my purpose.
She felt herself slip away.
"I wunder how Boris and Lim are doin'," Persuliosianio asked Pea and Aleisha.
It was a beautiful evening in the Capitol and the District 7 team were eating an early supper on the verandah in full view of their holographic TV with the Hunger Games streaming live. Pea was busy stuffing his face with food so Aleisha answered instead by blinking at him. Persulioisianio was rather taken aback at her response.
"Whaddaya mean 'who are Boris and Lim'?" he asked in his signature indecipherable accent.
Aleisha blinked harder. The faint voice of Morris could be heard protesting angrily far away.
"I'm talking aboot yer tributes!"
More blinks.
"Ya know, the children from Seven who're sent to their deaths?"
"Blink."
Persuliosianio sighed. "The kids that followed you randomly for an entire week!"
"Blink!"
"Wait, have you just been saying 'blink'?"
"...blink…"
Persuliosianio gasped in surprise. "YOU CAN ACTUALLY TALK?!"
Aleisha glared at the perky escort. "What do you mean 'I can actually talk'?! Did everyone just forget how I said like 3 lines at the beginning of all this? Also weren't we district nine? I can't even remember."
"Well, yes, anyway," Persuliosianio tried to get back on topic. "How are your tributes going?"
Pea, who had finished eating, began to shift around his chair uncomfortably so much that he started spinning on it.
"Well you see, we kind of forgot about them and started watching Floyd." he admitted, still spinning.
"That's a shame." the escort replied.
As Pea casually got thrown off his chair, he responded "But she's so interesting! She's got character, flair, skills, ten toes, and an actual shot of winning. She's got everything our tributes don't have."
As if to prove his point, the TV switched over to Floyd Sprinkles. The camera captured an aesthetic wide shot of her walking through the ruined city as her purple mane trailed behind her in the wind. Despite the confident front she put earlier in the games she was now vulnerable, talking to herself like a madman. Floyd even broke down crying one tear, and Aleisha began to uncomfortably spin in her chair from all that emotion.
Suddenly, the Career marched towards the camera and began to throttle its neck, saying such nonsense as "You seize innocence" and " Cruelty is always punished."
Just as unexpectedly, the feed shifted to the Studio where Caesar and that other guy with the ugly hair was commentating.
"HAHA!" he roared, trying to cover up that rebellious speech. "THAT GIRL IS HIL-AIRRRR-RIOUS!"
He mustered the biggest toothy grin he could as an awkward silence settled in.
That other guy gave up and slammed his head onto the table muttering, "There's totally going to be another rebellion isn't there."
The feed then switched over to Snow propaganda. However, no one was listening to Snow rant about how many puns he could make with his name. Instead, Pea, Aleisha and Persulioisanio were meditating of that host guy.
A rebellion? Conspiracies like that was strictly forbidden and punishable by death.
But then the three men remembered Floyd's words and realised that a rebellion was possibly worth fighting for.
Maybe Floyd raised a valid point… they all collectively thought.
"JINX!" Pea, Aleisha and Persuliosianio yelled. "JINX AGAIN!" they giggled like dim three year olds.
The cannon sounded. Boris and Morris jumped.
"I wonder who that was." Boris said.
"Probably Lim," Morris said.
"Idiot I am right here."
Mr Cat cried internally and reassessed whether his motives were worth this excruciating pain. Luckily for him, his plan was to come to fruition before he had finished his assessment.
Boris stopped suddenly, jerking Morris backwards and making her trip over their foot and spine-plant.
"OW! You absolute spleen-scruncher! Why'd you stop?"
Lim looked in the direction Boris was gazing.
"Is that… a cactus hedge maze?"
"Food!" Boris exclaimed with delight. "Cactus is a delicacy in Africanistan you know."
"That's not even a real place" Lim retorted crossly.
"I think we should change his name to Limdumb Wood," Boris said to Morris. "We've clearly said that this is a fiction, so anywhere can be a real place."
"FIRST RULE." Morris said.
Lim exhaled hard through his nostrils, and wisely (for once) ignored the twins. Mr Cat watched the whole exchange impatiently, taking the time to form some hairballs in the back of his throat. He decided that now would be the opportune moment to equip them, and projectile vomited them in rapid succession at the three district nine tributes. Boris and Morris shrieked in disgust, and Lim was so repulsed that he exclaimed ":0" in a thick Texan drawl.
"Good," sniped Mr Cat. "Now that I have your attention, may I passive aggressively point out that there's an entrance to the maze 10 metres in front of your faces?"
Sick of dialogue, the characters merely decided to enter the maze.
Inside the maze, the tributes and Mr Cat found themselves surrounded by thousands of prickly spikes.
"Huh. Just like your personality Morris."
"Go eat a cactus Boris."
Lim just sighed in frustration in the background. "That insult doesn't even make sense!"
Amidst constant bickering, the unlikely quartet (or trio? Are Boris and Morris the same person? "NO!") headed towards the centre of the maze. The atmosphere was darkening, and the mood became gloomy and suspenseful. In a nutshell, anticipation was building. One second the group was still walking through the maze, and the next they were confronted by a colossal cactus. The cactus overshadowed the entire maze, and it its base sat a plastic door. Mr Cat sauntered through the cat flap, pausing in the middle to flick his tail in a beckoning gesture. The twins glanced at each other and headed inside, but Lim hesitated.
"Wait are we really just going to walk into a giant cactus? What if they are careers lurking in there? This could easily be a trap set up by Floyd."
An awkward silence accompanied Lim's query. Sighing, he realised that the twins didn't give a fig so he just followed them inside.
The cactus was more spacious than it looked from the outside. Mr Cat had disappeared, so the twins and Lim just spent a few minutes looking around what appeared to be a generic living room. Then several things happened: a gleeful, grandmotherish laugh emanated from the depths of the cactus; the kettle started to boil; Lim fainted for no reason, and the twins just acted as spectators. The Hunger Games vibe had completely gone out the door.