Kamau Kariuki, Res D2M

It wasn't a great feeling, being one of the younger Tributes in the arena. It was weird enough being in here with my mom, but I'd mostly made peace with that. At least it wasn't one of the only Career Games, I supposed

At the jiggle of the doorknob, both Mom and I sat up. We both crept over to the wall, pressing our ears against it. Such forthright approach could only mean a Career, but how many? It would have a major effect on our countermeasures.

"Go away!" I said, pitching my voice upwards and throwing a bit of pathetic sniffling into it. I just HAD to hit puberty late, didn't I? Early enough for the growth spurt, but late enough that my voice still cracked.

The movement at the doorknob stopped as our attackers reacted. "Look, kid," Jynx's voice came. "I know it sucks, but there's no other way."Just one, then. Unless Jynx had gotten an ally somewhere along the way, but I couldn't hear anyone beside him.

I shuffled over to the door, moving loudly so Mom could get into position behind me. I unlocked the door and pulled it in a little, hiding behind it like a shy little kid afraid of getting killed. When I saw Jynx's foot come through the door, I threw my weight into it, Mom rushing in behind me. Jynx screamed as the tiny scalpel bits we'd embedded in the door stabbed into him, not deeply but still painfully. He stumbled backwards and fell hard against the wall, and against the tips we'd embedded there as well. Finally He pitched forward and landed on her hands and knees, smacking her palms directly onto the slightly larger tips we'd embedded between the tiles- not long enough to puncture a shoe, but long enough to stick into Jynx's bare arms.

Mom burst out of the door, her bow aimed downwards. Even as Jynx rolled and tumbled on the floor, trying to stand but slipping on the knives ripping into the palms of his hands, she aimed and fired. The arrow punched through the top of Jynx's head, coming out just under his hairline. I looked away as he fell face-first into the knife tips, and I noticed Mom did, too. She must have been as relieved as I was that his cannon sounded before the impact.

"I guess we'll have to move," I said. There was no way we'd be able to clean the blood entirely, especially not on a white floor.

Mom tugged Jynx's backpack free and opened it. She reached inside and came out with a bottle.

"Panacea. Good for one injury or illness," she read. She looked down at Jynx's body. "Kind of ironic, I guess."


Diamond Stark- Res D1M

When I was little, my parents always told me not to stick swabs too far into my ears. Tell the truth, I'd been to scared to use the at all. I used to have horrible visions of pushing the swab just a little too far and not knowing I was about to hit my eardrum until it popped like ripped paper. I'd had a lot of ear infections as a kid, and I knew how excruciating ear pain could be. When the siren went off, I'd felt it coming before it happened. I felt the pressure, and then the tight, shrill pain, and then… pop. Like someone put a pencil in my ear and hit it with a baseball bat.

It sounded like there was snow covering everything. It was the only thought that pierced through the agony. There was a muffled echoing wrongness around me as I clawed my backpack open. I uncorked the bottle and poured some liquid into my left ear. Even as I was pouring into the other, the pain in the first ear was already fading. With the increasing clarity of my thoughts as the pain ebbed, I wondered what exactly was in the bottle. It couldn't possibly really cure everything. That would make Capitolites immortal. One liquid couldn't have infinitely varied effects. My best guess was that the liquid was only for show and that the bottle also contained nanobots that could be remotely programmed to effect all sorts of results.

As soon as I could hear myself, I swore. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been so angry. I wasn't showing it- it wouldn't do any good, and it would just make me look unstable- but I was livid. Careers trained and volunteered. We put our lives on the line and because of that, we got the advantage. That was the deal. But now the Capitol was handing out game-breaking prizes to just anyone. If North had decided to take the risk, there was a real chance she might have killed me. As it was, I'd burned what was more or less a get-out-of-death-free card. There was no way around it- I couldn't survive the Arena deaf, though that one kid was surprisingly resilient. The cessation of the knifing pain in my ears almost made it worth it. Wasted, though. The panacea would have been life or death in an ambush or a drawn-out fight. I'd hoped to carry it with me all the way to the endgame. Instead I'd burned through it just days after the feast, and to an outlier who hadn't even attacked me.

I took a deep breath and forced myself to think. Clearly, the feast had completely upended the paradigm. Understanding its effects and predicting the other gifts would be the secret to remaining alive. I continued down the hall until I found an office, then sat behind the desk and got a sheet of paper.

Known feast prizes:
Grenade. I'd only seen the one, but it was possible there were more.

Handgun. I hadn't seen it, but I'd heard it after I'd left the feast. Firearm? Some other weapon that sounded much louder than the handgun. A rifle, maybe? Chainsaw- Tyler

Pepper spray- Maxson

Taser- Flint

All things I'd seen before I'd left the feast. I conjured up the feast in my mind, trying to recall what names I'd seen on the bags.

Zibby- chemicals and science equipment, undoubtedly.

Majesty- A weapon, perhaps?

Emmeline- Also chemicals?

Tuesday- I had no idea. I barely knew anything about her.

I looked at my list and sighed. There was so much information I still didn't have. I suspected what was left was far worse.


Lyon Cartier- The Poseidon Adventure D1M

It was depressing how easy it was now. I felt like a cheat, following the heat traces to whoever was next in my path. I'd almost wanted to celebrate when Dominique had heard a tiny sound from me and had managed to lose me down a maze of hallways. She'd been through so much. I still hadn't forgotten how she'd been wearing a torn piece of black cloth tied around her hair. I hadn't been able to see if the ring was still on her finger.

At the Academy, we really should have more stringent psychological examinations. I didn't think I was depressed, but it was more and more clear I wasn't at my best. I saw now- far too late- that it was dangerous for me not to have allies. If I didn't have a social outlet, I was alone with my own thoughts, which tended to the melancholy and introspective. I was capable of being a Career, though I didn't think I was the best Career, but alone like this, in an Arena that would likely last multiple more weeks, my thoughts were starting to catch up with me. If I'd been in a smaller arena I would be distracted by constant fights and action. With so much downtime and so much silence, I was starting to meander down paths that wouldn't lead to any good.

I'd always been interested in philosophy. One of the things I'd been most drawn to was the concept of the self against the context of society. I'd been blown away by the clarity and simplicity of stoicism, and I used to daydream sometimes about running away to the woods somewhere and seeing if I could really be self-reliant. But were the Careers really the self-reliant ones in all this? We had the Academy at our back, and trained instructors, and the entire power structure of our nation. The outliers were the ones who came here with nothing. If they won, wasn't that a lot more impressive than when we did?

It was a strange heat trail I was following. It seemed like someone had been randomly touching things and… rubbing the walls? Maybe whoever it was was wounded. I didn't see any blood on the floor. Maybe they'd sustained a head injury, perhaps in the feast.

"You're gonna run it out." The voice came from ahead of me, from a section of the basement with a doorless opening into the corridor.

"Nu-uh. It has a gauge right here and it's barely gone down. I've been watching," another voice said. Based on the echoes, the two girls seemed to be somewhere in the middle of the room. Down the hall there were more rooms, and then a turn leading to another hall. I could certainly get at least one of them. The other might be able to get away, but I'd do my best.

Katrina gasped as I walked through the opening to the room they were in. There was some machinery in one corner, but the room was mostly empty below the pipes running across the ceiling. It looked like it might have been used to park the machines that cleaned the floors.

Behind Katrina, Ferrari scowled. She tried to move past Katrina and come forward, but Katrina stopped her with an arm. It moved me, the simple protective gesture.

"I'm sorry," I said as I walked forward. "I'll try to make it quick."

"Me, too," Ferrari said. Katrina stepped aside and I remembered too late Ferrari's most defining personality. Ferrari never shrank from a fight. The only reason she'd let Katrina stand in front of her was to get me closer without seeing what she was holding.

A jet of flame shot out from the nozzle in Ferrari's hand. I put up my arms, but I knew it made no difference. Kevlar stops bullets. It wouldn't stop a flamethrower. This one also had some sort of coating agent added, since my skin went up like paper. It was just like I'd read. After a single instant of indescribable pain, the worst thing was the searing lack of oxygen in my lungs. Decades-past memories of school drills took over and I dropped to the floor. The cold cement didn't quench the flame, though I imagined I got some sliver of relief from its coolness.

As Ferrari approached me, I first noticed I was screaming. She bent and picked up my dropped sword. I might have been able to evade her, but I couldn't see it as anything but the best way. Too late I'd remembered that I didn't want to be self-sufficient. I wanted to be alive.


Zebulon Charles- Wandering Souls D12M

"Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

"Wow, never heard that one before. Yes," I answered.

"Is it alive?" Sky asked.

"No," I answered.

I launched myself forward before my brain had even processed the sound. Sky's reaction, slightly more logical but at the same time far sillier than mine, was to remain in place, therefore not making any noise to attract hunters, but also to clutch her chest like an old lady having a heart attack. We both sat spellbound for a minute, glancing at each other to confirm we'd heard right. It sounded like scratching.

"It's a dead guy," Sky whispered. "It's a dead guy mutt."

I crept across the room to where we'd been sitting against the wall of the examination room, then slowly approached the door. Something was already outside and trying to get it, so it either knew we were here or was coming in either way. Best to at least know what we were dealing. The crack in the wall was too small to shoot an arrow through. Staying out of shorter bladed weapon range, I peeked through.

"What is it?" Sky asked.

"It's a mutt," I said. "An actual mutt."

Perhaps "mutt" wasn't entirely accurate, since the dog looked like a pretty classical golden retriever. It had glossy fur and a friendly sort of face as it scratched lightly at the door, not violently but in a "let me in" sort of way.

"What, like a dog?" Sky whispered, crawling over to look.

I stifled a laugh. "It's a therapy dog," I said. Capitolites preferred their arenas to have wildlife. What else would possibly be in a hospital but a therapy dog.

"Oh no, I've seen way too many horror movies. That is not a dog," Sky whispered.

"Yeah, no duh," I whispered back. "Let's just hope it goes away."

The dog scratched at the door a few more times. It waited patiently for a moment, and then the doggy grin vanished. It went unnaturally still. It wedged its paw against the bottom crack of the door. I looked down at saw a spreading mass of golden rubbery ooze.

I scrambled after Sky as she darted across the room and climbed onto the bed. I climbed up after her as the golden ooze seeped under the door and formed itself into a featureless blob. It slowly pushed itself back into a dog shape, snout popping out and legs differentiating. When it face was back, it looked at us with that same dog smile. It trotted across the room toward us.

"No no no no! Bad dog!" Sky yelled, making shooting motions with her arms. The dog stretched towards us, and then it just kept stretching. Like a expanding accordion its neck and shoulders elongated toward us, still keeping that stupid dog smile. Sky and I scrunched against the wall and the dog's stretching seemed to fail a few feet short of us. I kicked out at its face, feeling bizarrely guilty when its jaw bent sideways horribly. I felt less guilty when I saw the writhing tentacles in its mouth.

"Oh my god! Oh my god!" Sky screamed. She clambered up the side of the tall cabinet beside the bed. Climbing partially on me and partially by friction with the wall, she perched herself on top of it. I followed after as the dog circled around the bed to the cabinet's base. It started to melt into a blob again, pushing itself up the cabinet as thin tentacles slid out of its amorphous mass. My stomach jumped into my throat at the disgusting worminess.

I tore off my backpack, wrenching my shoulder in my haste and in the constricted space against the wall. I took out one of the caltrops I'd gotten in the feast. The instructions said the poison was near-instantly fatal. Would it even work against a blob? If it didn't, I had half a mind to use another one on myself.

I dropped a caltrop onto the blob. When the spike hit the rubbery mass, it yelped like an entirely normal dog that had gotten kicked. The tentacles vibrated in the air for a second, looking somehow like the spasmodic movements of a killed insect. The ooze climbing the cabinet fell back into the dog's larger central mass. Bits of it flowed out haphazardly for a moment. Then it sucked back in to one solid ball. It formed itself back into a dog and looked up at me with a tragic expression. It whimpered once and laid its head down.

"That's messed up," I said. They didn't need to make it all guilt-trippy like that. "That's messed up."


67th place: Jynx Susurrus- Shot by Wangari

For this death I needed someone either alone or in a pair, and they had to be a Career, since an outlier wouldn't try to get in to where someone is hiding. Of a few candidates, Jynx fit the bill, mostly since he didn't have body armor. He's always good to see again, and I hope we see him next time. This just didn't turn out to be his Games.

66th place: Lyon Cartier- Flamethrowed by Ferrari

Ferrari was merciful enough to stab him, but she would want the kill to be listed as a flamethrower. Lyon is the reverse of Jynx where I knew he would die soon and worked to find how, instead of having a death and finding a person. Lyon was prone to intellectualizing and moodiness, which didn't bode well for this long and involved Games. Without his cousin to balance him out, he got caught up in the morality and ethics of the Games, which would have eventually led to him hesitating or being distracted. He couldn't have foreseen Ferrari having a flamethrower. He may or may not have gotten there in time to see her, but if he did, he definitely assumed she would have used anything dramatic she got, since she is extremely dramatic. He didn't calculate that she was willing to restrain herself in order to not worry Katrina. All that brainpower and he lacked that one vital piece of information. Sux.

A lot of people don't like seeing dogs get hurt, so let me just make very clear that was a mutt, not a dog. There isn't much inspiration for mutts in a hospital, since they generally don't like dirty animals in their sterile building, but I got the idea for a therapy dog just as I was trying to figure out what Zebulon would do in his POV. Since this is the Hunger Games, it couldn't be a nice normal dog. Instead it had to be a horrible The Thing dog-creature.