Richard Franklin- Swing Vote D5M
"All right, who's the strongest, meanest person here I need to take a punch from to see how tough they are?" I asked, looking up from my plate of roast beef and mashed potatoes.
"Rapture, maybe?" Nene said, not looking up from her plate of noodles and peas, each ingredient weirdly separated so they weren't touching each other.
I looked over at the legendary Rapture and good sense got the better of me. "Urgh. I think he might just kill me."
"Jayden's pretty tough, since she just beats people to death." Tabitha deftly tossed a grape into the air and caught it in her mouth with a flourish.
I looked over at Jayden, who was at a table with several other Careers. I couldn't see what she was eating, but with her sleeveless shirt I could see how very impressively rippled her arm muscles were. She even had that weird line super buff people get on the backs of their shoulders. Math was never my strong suit, but I didn't like the numbers I was getting when I mentally added her fist to my face.
It was Elle who rescued me, pausing as she speared flaccid pieces of lettuce with a fork. "What if this time, instead of getting punched by everyone to see how strong they are, we just watch them train?"
I appreciated her logic, as well as her tactful use of "we", as though all of us had been picking fights and not just me. I sighed with showy reluctance, leaning back in my chair. "I guess we can try that," I said.
Margo set upon a dummy, scratching and biting at it with weird feral noises as a few of her allies watched with equal parts amusement and confusion. I was glad I hadn't picked her, since when I picked a fight, getting my face eaten had until now not been on my mind. Beside her, Tulsi and Chantal chatted, occasionally looking over at us pointedly.
"Oh no, they're planning something," Elle said.
"I got this," I said. Finally, a chance for me to take action. I sauntered toward the water fountain behind them, my eyes on it so they would not know I was actually being sneaky and trying to get close enough to hear them. As I passed by, I strained my ears and was delighted to hear Tulsi saying something.
"They keep staring at us. Weirdos."
Elle Phant- Swing Vote D8F
It wasn't exactly a rewatching party. None of us had any desire to see the tapes of our first Games. I just wanted to know what had happened, since I spent most of it dead and all.
"We lost Zara with you in the Bloodbath," Richard started it off. We all got silent for a minute, awkwardly thinking of the friend we barely knew and privately wondering why she hadn't been picked. Had everyone really forgotten her that much?
"Pretty cool there were guns, though," Nene commented.
"Hey, one killed her!" Richard protested.
"Oops." Nene looked at me with great strain. "I am sorry you died."
"No problem," I said.
"Then we all found a house to stake out," Tabitha went on. "We set up a bunch of booby traps and stuff. Everything was pretty normal until Brock and Talise snuck in through the basement."
"Ooh, this is where it gets really cool. Irina clobbered Talise with a big heavy pan and almost killed her. Brock was fighting Skada and it turned out he had a pistol but Irina grabbed it right at the last second like a badass and it shot off half her hand but still got Skada but didn't kill her," Richard said all in one breath.
Irina took off her fake fingers. "Pretty cool party trick," she said.
"I just remembered a gun killed me too so maybe it's not so bad I think they're cool," Nene broke in.
"We fixed Skada with some cocaine they had lying around and after she got high for a while she was fine," Tabitha said. The question about Skada had already been addressed, when Irina mentioned they "never found the body", then hummed "Stars and Stripes Forever", which only a circus person would know was a signal something more was going on.
"After that we ran out to a Native camp to get farther from the Careers, but a bunch of wolves attacked Tabitha. I saved her but I died all heroically after killing like fifteen of them," Richard went on.
"Then Skada blew up the Careers and died," Tabitha said pointedly.
"Gosh, what sort of cool death did you have?" I asked Nene.
"Alice just headshotted me from half a mile away. Rude and boring," Nene said.
"She shot me too," Lester said.
"Ooh, here's the really cool part," Tabitha leaned in. "Alice broke in but she was out of bullets but she had a knife so she stabbed me."
"I don't like this part," Irina said fretfully.
"So Irina just started going ham on Alice. She ran off but Irina went after her and- this is the gross part- she freaking choked her to death. She was all 'I killed her, so now you can win', but while I was bleeding to death I decided Irina should win so right when she said that I super dramatically died. It was like so noble and tragic and everyone was crying, like I couldn't see it but I could tell everyone in Panem was crying," Tabitha finished the story.
"Sounds like an adventure." Sounded like a tragic, crazy adventure that I hadn't been part of. Part of me was like Tabitha, looking forward to the one I'd be part of. More of me was like Irina, looking more at exactly what that adventure would cost.
Tabitha Sparks- Swing Vote D3F
As far as I was concerned, this was a bonus round for me. I hadn't expected to come back and was pretty much happy with how I died, even if it was sad. I had a fun life, clowning around and being silly. Nothing lasts forever, not even a clown. But if I got this second chance and got more time to be silly, I wasn't going to be all morbid about it. I'd died once. I knew it wasn't that bad, though it did hurt a lot. Hopefully this time I'd get blown up or drink really fast poison or something else that would go quicker.
The only morbid question on my mind was my allies. I definitely didn't want to watch them die, but they seemed to want to watch me die even less. That meant I had to stay alive as long as I could, which was a difficult task for someone so entirely non-scary as me. Mostly I was worried about the Bloodbath. Like Zara and Elle had showed, there was just so little control. Someone could be gone before we even saw them. It could just as well be me, no matter how much my allies wanted to protect me. I'd be able to see the humor in it, but I wasn't sure about them.
There was one other thing on my mind. It took a while to find a way to see Irina alone, but I finally managed it by telling Acee I had a super secret message for her. She probably didn't believe me, but she set up a meeting to ostensibly set up our secret sub-alliance without telling anyone else.
"What's up, Skraps?" Irina asked as she sat down at the conference table.
"I suppose you guessed I don't really want to double-cross everyone," I said. "Actually, I wanted to ask about Lester. How could they not have picked him?"
Lester and I had been more than just friends. All of us were more than friends, but Lester was like my real brother. It was so much harder for him to bond with people than it was for me, but he'd been open with me. I felt like I'd lost one of my legs, going on without Lester.
"I knew you'd ask eventually." Irina sagged a little, putting on that weathered expression she got when we heard one of the cats had to be put down. "I thought he might have told you, but also he might not have. I wasn't sure."
"He didn't want to, did he." Lester's life hadn't been like mine. Where the world always seemed fun and welcoming to me, things had been harder for Lester. He had sad periods sometimes, just for no reason, and so many things in his life that weighed him down.
Irina wiped at a tear. "He told me out in the camp, a little after Richard died. He said to me, "Irina, if any of us wins, it will be you or Skraps. If she wins, I'll come back if she wants me. But if it's anyone you... we had a good run. Do what you can to stop them." She seemed lost in the memories, more with him than in the room with me.
Sometimes even happy people cry. It was worth it, crying for Lester. "We made his life as good as we could, didn't we?" I asked when I could speak again.
"We sure did," she said. "And in the end, that's what it is. It's his life. He decided to accept that, and all we can do is treasure our memories."
Nene Palmer- Swing Vote D6F
Maybe it was silly, taking etiquette classes. It was just, I already knew a bit about fighting and stuff like that, and between the rest of my allies, we had most of the skills we needed for the Games. But sponsors were always such a big part of the Games, and I also just wanted to make sure I didn't do something really mean by accident and get them to kick me out. So I went to my escort Ovid, who was delighted to hear I wanted to "become civilized".
"The art of conversation is one of the highest and noblest endeavors," he said proudly. "A good conversationalist can make or break a party, and make everyone feel included."
Included? Perfect. I wanted to have a nice, happy group of friends who all fit together.
"Let's start with some role-playing. 'Hi, I'm Ovid. Nice to meet you.'"
"Hi, Ovid. What do you like to do?" I responded.
"It's expected that you give your name, too. Nice job asking about my interests, though," Ovid said.
"Hi, Ovid. I'm Nene. Do you like mountains?" I tried again.
"Better, but that's a bit of a random question. Why mountains?" Ovid asked.
"I just really love mountains. I like the ones that are higher than 8000 meters. At that high, the air is so thin brain cells are constantly dying. It's very hard to stay above that but some people are just weirdly good at it. Most people these days don't like to use supplemental oxygen because it's viewed as cheating. The most determined ones climb mountains alpine-style, which means you never stop at camps like most climbers and just go all in one rush-"
Ovid politely held up a hand, and only then did I notice he'd been losing interest. "I see you really like mountains, but a conversation is supposed to be back and forth. Try saying one thing and then letting the other person say something."
I considered some options. "Have you read any good books lately?"
"Great question! I read a lot of magazines. I like the fashion ones the most. What kind of fashion do you like?" Ovid asked.
"I think fashion is-" Just in time, I caught myself and reflected that saying "boring" might be rude. I quickly searched for something nice. "I kind of like wedding dresses. Not the tight ones, though."
"Oh, more of a ball gown sort of girl? Denissierre has some lovely new selections in that style," Ovid said.
"Did you wear a wedding dress?" I wasn't even thinking of the exercise anymore. I was just curious.
"Oh, I'm not married. I just like rings," Ovid said, stretching out his finger to show off the big onyx and ruby ring on it. "I'm more of a mermaid dress person, myself."
There was so much for me to learn. I had no idea people walked around in dresses like mermaids. Seemed to me like it would be hard to walk with just the one leg, but what did I know about fashion?