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#10

District 11 Female
Name: Cherri Dame
Age: 15
Training Score: 6
Odds of Victory: 20-1
Fact: She once got arrested and whipped for building a TV. That was a District 3 job, not a District 11 job.

All Cherri wanted in life was for her loved ones to be safe.

Thankfully, being born to one of the scant few well off families in her district, it wasn't too hard to ensure the safety of her two little brothers.

Of course, even if she could be said to be rich - at least by the standards of District 11 - this didn't apply to the rest of her district. Certainly not her friends. Well off or not, all youths went to the same schools and it was there that Cherri had her friends… poor friends.

Homelessness could kill as easily as a sword. Who needed to worry about a career tribute ending your life when you had starvation looming over you every day, dawn to dusk?

So, Cherri kept herself busy by helping in any way she could. Slipping her friends some caps whenever she could that her parents wouldn't miss, handing out bread to those who lived on the streets, using skills she gained from observation to repair fractured housing and more besides. It was the best that she could do, but it just wasn't enough.

It was, by design, not enough. The Capitol, the peacekeepers, the mayor, none would ever allow for the district to have enough. Not when they wanted to have their population as downtrodden and miserable as possible.

Cherri's care grew, enough so for her to want all of those in her district to be safe and having enough to get by.

Once, just once, Cherri had outright asked the mayor, who had been visiting the school that day, how it made any sense to starve and deprive the workforce and how, if anything, this would actually be wholly counterproductive to all of the Capitol's goals and needs.

The mayor had gibbered uselessly, unable to come up with an answer to this.

Well, none aside eventually ordering for Cherri to be taken outside for a whipping for potential conspiracy 'or something'.

This didn't stop Cherri's resolve to help others. Indeed, it only strengthened it. It showed her just how much effort would be needed to make things even a little better.

It showed her she would have to be subtle and clever about it lest the powers that be learn of how she dared to make sure the workforce didn't starve.

Try as she did, it was never enough. For each person she fed, the peacekeepers stole the food of another three. For each home she was able to fix, the mayor ordered two more to be broken apart lest the residents feel a bit too calm and comfortable.

But this didn't stop her. It just made her try harder.

The mayor, having kept an eye on her since her question to him, came to see she was never going to stop trying to make the district better and bring potential relief to the populace. The same populace he and others above him had taken careful measures to emotionally crush.

All it took was making a phone call to one of those above him within the Capitol and asking permission to set up a soft fix for the next reaping. He received approval near-instantly.

So it was that Cherri became the female tribute for District 11 at the 28th reaping, alongside a terrified twelve year old boy. Shaken as she was, she saw it as more than a death sentence.

She saw an opportunity. As a victor, she had a real means to help people across her district. With the fortune a victor was given, it would be all too easy to make starvation a thing of the past. All she had to do was win the Games.

It was all too clear to her how hard it was going to be to be the last tribute standing.

It was none clear to her at all how, on the off chance she won, any attempts to help others would be harshly blocked by the Capitol.

With nothing to do but play the Games, or die, Cherri chose to play them. She threw herself into training to learn all the skills she would need, gain the muscle she would need, obtain the score that would ensure she had a steady stream of sponsors.

Whenever her body screamed its protest and her muscles burned, she only had to think of those back home who she could help if she won. That gave her whatever boost she needed to keep training and keep trying.

It gave her the courage to wholly ignore everything the careers did and said. It even gave her the bravery to mock the prissy girl from District 1.

"You're pathetic," Cherri had sneered at her. "Training for years and needing a whole gang to torment starving children? Who raised you?"

It made her feel as ready as she possibly could for something such as the arena.

'I'll come back',' she told Caesar at the interviews. 'When I do, my sector of District Eleven will never go hungry again. No sectors will!'

Of course, no matter what she did, there was one person from her district she would never be able to save. Chestnut, her tiny and fearful district partner. Either Cherri would win and Chestnut would die or both would die. She'd never dare say it, but Cherri didn't think her district partner had a chance to win.

She did, at least, know there was one thing she could do. She could prevent him from dying alone. She could help him survive the first day. She could ensure he made it through the first five minutes.

They allied on the night before the Games and worked out a plan. Cherri would gather all of the supplies, while Chestnut would flee and remain somewhere nearby to wait for her. If she didn't make it, or was running late, he was to keep moving and bunker down somewhere he could conceal himself from sight.

Of course, that might not matter at all. Not if the arena wasn't something they could excel at.

As Cherri rose into the arena she softly cursed. Like almost all residents of District 11, she had no idea how to swim. She'd also never seen a beach before either.

Not unless the arena for the Twentieth Games counted whenever a rerun was shown.

There was nothing else for it. Cherri would have to suck it up, run in and do the best she could.

It was that or die.

It was luck alone that Chestnut hadn't been launched far away from her. Just two spaces to her left with only the boy from 10 between them. It was easy to get his attention and gesture further up the beach. He wiped away his tears as best as he could, nodding and turning to face the direction he would be running off. That being done, Cherri turned to the cornucopia and focused hard on working out a plan.

So very focused was Cherri that, when one of the other tributes blew themselves up before the countdown was even over, she was among the scant few to be unaffected. By the time the gong went off she'd picked out the exact supplies she wanted and what seemed to be the best route to take to both get them and get away with them.

Chestnut began his retreat further up the beach while Cherri began her rush to the cornucopia. Some tributes began to fight closer to the launch plates, while others ran to the cornucopia as well or got into fights closer to it.

Cherri heard screams and wails behind her.

She heard a horribly fleshly slicing somewhere off to her distant left.

She did her best to ignore it, pivoting from where the boy from 5 seemed set to face off against the boy from 6 over some supplies. She arrived at the cyan backpack she'd seen from afar and quickly grabbed it up, taking a double sided knife from its side pocket.

Now came the hardest part - escaping.

Already several tributes were dead. In the instant she scanned the clearing she could see the girl from 10 and boy from 12 were dead. Near the girl from 4 laid two dead tributes.

The girl from 12 was alive, but missing a leg and screaming bloody murder.

The boy from 1 was alive, and had split off from his district partner to confront Cherri. He wasted no time in slashing his scimitar towards her. He'd swung too early, a moment before Cherri was properly in killing range. Cherri had just enough time to step out of the way of the blade.

She had barely enough time to stab the handsome boy in the shoulder and hurl him to the ground with all of the energy she could muster.

Down he fell into a pool of blood from another tribute. Cherri, on impulse more than any sort of strategy, followed up by kicking sand into his eyes.

"You stupid bitch!" the boy from 1 screamed, wildly flailing his scimitar to prevent her from moving in for the kill.

Cherri was already running off before he could get back up and make a second attempt at killing her. She hurried away, leaping over the gutted corpse of the boy from 12, jumping over the weakly moaning girl from 12 and skidding around the unmoving remains of the girl from 10 as she passed the launch plates.

She began to sprint up the beach, only for her attention to be drawn to the rocky hills leading further inland away from the cornucopia.

The boy from 10 was on his knees, wailing and sobbing. It was just as he'd done for all of training, even moreso after he'd scored a mere 1. His interview had been nothing aside from even more sobbing.

Cherri knew Chesnut was waiting for her, but her desire to help the weak and innocent won in moments. There was room in her alliance for another young boy.

Better to help this boy than leave him as the latest defenceless fodder for the career tributes.

"Hey, are you OK?" Cherri asked as she approached, her weapon lowered. "Come with me."

"...With you…?" the boy choked out.

"Yeah, with me. With Chestnut," Cherri said, gently. "We'll survive longer together. C'mon. Please?"

Cherri stepped up close, offering her hand to the smaller boy.

The boy wiped away some of his tears and smiled.

It took Cherri half a second to realise it was a truly devilish smile.

It took the boy not even a quarter of that time to slash with his knife, the one thing he had claimed from the bloodbath right in front of his launch plate.

Cherri collapsed, choking and wheezing horribly as her throat, slit one side to the other, gushed blood upon the rocks. The boy from 10 laughed as he stood up, swiping up Cherri's double sided knife.

"Thanks, but I'd rather do this my way," the boy from 10 snickered.

He tried to take Cherri's backpack off of her, but her struggling, helpless choking and frantic dying movements made it a hard task. Huffing in annoyance, the boy from 10 used his knife to stab Cherri in her back over and over until she finally went still.

"Dumb girl," the boy from 10 muttered.

Finally claiming the backpack of goodies, the boy from 10 jogged up the rest of the rocky hills and off to the fields leading deeper into the island with a weapon in each hand.

Cherri was left behind, her kindness rewarded with a slit throat and death.

Such were the way things were in Panem, both in the Capitol and out.

Nice guys finished last… or fifteenth as Cherri had done.

Tribute Deceased
Ranking: 15th
Cause of Death: Stabbed repeatedly with a knife (by Mako)
Time Lasted: 1 minute and 51 seconds
The odds weren't in her favour.