Beetee Latier- District Three (18)
Everything is a weapon.
That's what Acee was always telling me. But I wasn't smart like she was. I couldn't see how a pencil, a bed sheet, a lemon, and a fork could become a rocket. I was smart in my own way. I saw the messages buried in a line of zeroes and ones. I could hear wires and cathodes telling me what they wanted to become, and putting them together was like tying my shoes.
I could see all the machinery in the tube around me as I rose. I felt the servos grinding underfoot as they lifted me into the air tooth by tooth. As the timer appeared in the sky, I could look past it and see the switch tapping a circuit open and shut to signal each passing second. When I saw the Arena, I knew what I needed to do.
I caught my District partner and ally's eye. Galvani was obviously thinking the same thing I was: metal. Anything metal we could find, we needed. The Cornucopia was floating atop a muddy, soupy swamp. Irregular patches of marshy ground interrupted the mire. I searched the detritus around the Cornucopia for any glint of the metal we could use to take all our opponents down at once. In this Arena, even a dropped flashlight could mean death. My eyes fell on a gleaming dagger next to a coil of heaven-sent wire. Galvana and I tensed to grab it as the seconds counted down.
When the gong rang, I pushed off the platform and dove into the waist-deep water. The rest of us were divided between swimming and wading, and with the lesser resistance of my dive, I was among the first to the supplies. Galvani, who was across the circle from me, reached the coil at almost the same moment I did. I grabbed the sword as she took the coil. Mud and water flew through the air as the others started to fight.
An arrow flew into her back and she fell forward across the coil, pressing it underneath the water even with its buoyant casing. I pushed it up and examined her as she lay across it. She was limp, and her breath was so shallow I could barely discern it in the chaos and the screaming. There was nothing I could do, and I knew she'd want me to be prudent. I eased the coil from her weak grasp, took the knife, and ducked under the water.
There were ten cannons that first day. None of them belonged to the Careers. I started to form my plan and its all-important schedule. When a battle was fought was as important as how a battle was fought. If I attacked the Careers too early, even if I won, one of the other strong Tributes might come for me. It was important to wait until there were fewer opponents left to fight. But if I waited too long, the Careers would fracture and split. I wouldn't be able to attack all of them at once, and the remainder would be far stronger than I was.
When there were six of us left, then I would make my move. They wouldn't want to split before they'd thinned the crowd more than that. Until then, I'd hide and stay alive. Finding water would be easy in this Arena. Purifying it would be easy for me. I knew a couple of edible water plants, and frogs would be both plentiful and easy to catch.
Acee was right. Anything could be a weapon, and everything was a weapon. My weapons were time, planning, and a coil of wire.
Beetee and Seeder don't need descriptions, since they're from the books.