Alara Banks- District Four female (17)

After some thought, I knew I didn't want to be in the Careers. I'd considered it, with their weird group and all. I'd looked them over and wondered if I would fit in with my... I don't know, political skills? It just didn't seem worth the risk in the end. They seemed to be a pretty friendly bunch- I already knew Dorian from around town and the others seemed pretty welcoming too- but I thought I had a better chance being a bit more in the background, at least for a while. Beth thought so as well so that made me feel more confident.

I still needed allies, though. If the Arena was a beach I'd be pretty set but anywhere else and I'd need some help. My first thought was to scope out the pairs from Three and Seven- a smart one and a strong one, right? After a moment I realized that might be a little stereotypical. I hated it when people had weird ideas about Four, like all the women smelled like fish or things like that.

After some sneaking around the training room I figured out that Three wasn't for me anyway. Ai was young and vulnerable. It was cold, but I wasn't a charity. Yarrow seemed all right. I couldn't gather much about her other than she seemed friendly. There wasn't enough to merit an approach. Cactus was some sort of weird snob, judging from his bizarre old-fashioned clothes and his imperious tone. Rowena was drifting from one station to another and seemed to have no patience or attention span. That wasn't a good sign.

I hadn't noticed the Ten girl until I saw her at the first aid station. It was a little surprising I hadn't, since she was noticeably muscular. Maybe she worked in the fields? More importantly, she knew first aid. First off, that was a valuable skill, second off, it implied she might be loyal and compassionate enough to help someone even in the Arena.

"Mind if I come?" I asked.

The girl looked up sharply, saw I wasn't with the Careers, and relaxed. "Yeah, come on in," she said.

"Were you a doctor or something back home?" I asked, looking at the split she'd applied to a mannequin.

She smiled. "I was a vet. Well, a vet's assistant, but you know."

"No way!" I wasn't even faking. This was just genuinely interesting. "I always thought that would be so fun. Super hard about the putting pets down and all but super cool."

"I work on farm animals. It's a little easier sometimes. Sheep are cute but not as cute as cats," the girl said.

I couldn't stop my smile. "I have a cat back home. I found her in the gutter and she almost died but I got her." That was something I wasn't afraid to brag about.

"I have a pet sheep named Jewel. Usually we eat the sheep but Jewel gets to die of old age," the girl said. It was then I noticed I still didn't know her name.

"I guess if we're going to talk I should introduce myself," I said. "I'm Alara. I'm from Four but I'm not trained."

"That sucks," the girl said, which cracked me up a little. "I'm Virgo."

"That kinda sucks too," I said. Virgo looked dismayed for an instant and I was rapidly preparing a backpedal before understanding spread across her face.

"Yeah," she said, acknowledging the schoolyard comments a girl named 'Virgo' would get. "They got bored by high school, luckily. Also there's a kid in my class whose last name is no joke 'Butt' and he takes the worst of it."

"Gosh, really makes you feel better about your own life."

Virgo Charleston- District Ten female (18)

"Can I have the vegan version?"

I looked up from where I'd been checking out the lunch options and saw the girl from Six, I thought it was, pointing at a fancy meatball skewer thing.

"Oh, you're a vegan?" It was kind of inspiring how even in the sometimes poverty of Ten people still found ways to live out their principles. I'd known a handful of vegans in my life. One was obnoxious but the rest were normal people who just didn't eat meat.

The girl turned and peeked around the boy in between us, who ignored us as he placed his order. I recognized her as Birdie, the Five girl, by her Latina accent when she responded."Why, are YOU?"

"No, but I'm a vet, so that's the same team," I said.

"You save some and eat others?" Birdie said, wrinkling her nose a little.

"Oh, you're one of those vegans," I said.

Birdie's face softened. "Sorry, sometimes I come on a bit strong. It's just a really passionate topic for me."

"I get it," I said as we both moved to sit down together. "I probably should put more thought into what I eat, but in my defense, the meat I eat is from local farms. I can walk down and see for myself that the animals have fair lives."

"I do think that's a bit more reasonable," Birdie allowed. "I mean, you gotta die someday, and a cared-for animal can live a full life and then-" she mimed a gunshot to the head. "Faster than a rotting wound at least."

"What's Ten like?" Birdie asked abruptly. "Are there lots of trees and hills and stuff?"

"My area's pretty flat," I said. "There are some hills, though."

"A lot of flowers?" Birdie pressed.

"The phlox are out right now," I said. "I dunno if you have them. The pink and purple flowers that grow in a cluster and they're everywhere once they get started?"

"I know what those are, but we don't have them," Birdie said. "Mostly succulents."

"Oh, you have a garden? That's nice to have in a city," I said.

"I actually live in a rural part of Five," Birdie said. "It is mostly city, you're not wrong. I just live in a weird part."

"Oh, on a farm?" I asked.

"Yeah. Just a vegetable farm, lucky for me, since my family is all carnivores," Birdie said.

I smiled. "That's what my friend Gage used to call non-vegans too."

"Glad to see others out there fighting the fight," Birdie said.

"Any pets?" I asked. The way things were going I might ask Alara if we had room for one more. It would be adorable if we all three had cats.

"Yeah, a spiny lizard," Birdie said. "Butch lives outside and he's technically not even a pet but he lets me pet him so I call him one."

"Hey." We looked up and saw Alara heading over. She saw Birdie was with me and raised her eyebrows in a surprised manner.

"Hey, this is Birdie," I said. "From Five? We were just talking about pets."

"Oh, cool," Alara said. "Let me just squeeze in with you. Looks like there's room for one more."

Birdie Seguaro- District Five female (14)

Everyone said the Capitol was paradise but I wasn't convinced. It was a city, for one. Maybe there were suburbs and countryside out farther but I couldn't see them from the roof of the Games building. I could see some parks but that wasn't enough for me. They were like little cages for nature. They were probably very nice and cultivated- though I suspected they were probably too cultivated- but imagine just reaching the end of a park and it ENDS. Back home I could sit behind my house and see grass and dirt all the way out to the horizon. Here it was endless concrete and glass.

It was probably a cliche that I was at the edible plants station. Meenah had already commented that surely I already knew a ton of edible plants. Actually I mostly ate the same selection of plants most days and they were the ones available in Five- a lot of beans, cactus fruits, corn, things like that. I mostly didn't forage for food. It would have been stupid for me not to study more plants. Even if I knew what the Arena would be and what to look for, lots of plants had lookalikes that were poisonous. Back when I was like nine I'd read a book about a kid who fed her friend hemlock instead of parsnips and I still hadn't gotten over it.

Just watch this year's arena be inside, I grumped to myself as I sorted leaves and fruits. At least indoor arenas usually had food set out. I wouldn't have put it past the Capitol to be mad I was a vegan and try to mess with me, but the bright side was that humans couldn't really live without vegetables. Without meat was fine but we pretty much needed vegetables. Even my friends who ate nothing but junk food were mostly eating corn and rice, just in a highly processed form.

OH, this one's poisonous. I read the note under a bowl full of fuzzy pale green leaves. They looked like innocent morning glory leaves, though I'd heard eating a ton of morning glory seeds would make you hallucinate. The thought crossed my mind again that plants could be offensive as well as defensive in the Games. It seemed ugly, poisoning people, but everyone in there was trying to kill me, too.

I peeked under the bowls and sorted out the poisonous ones from the good ones using the red or green dot on the bottoms. After a moment I had a semicircle of deadly plants gathered around me. I cross-referenced the notes and tried to pick out the quickest ones. Even if a slow death wasn't that useful in the Games, I also just didn't want to hurt people more than I needed to. Oleander, I read, could kill a person in less than an hour. That seemed slow when you first thought of it, but most plant poisonings were ingested. It just plain takes time to digest. Once that started, the actual poisoning part was really fast.

It didn't take long for me to decide to kill. I'd always hated the Capitol. I hated them more now seeing how insidious they were. The Games weren't just about us being afraid of them. They were about the Capitol trying to prove we weren't any better than they were. See? they said. You kill too as soon as the conditions are right! I couldn't help but point out one flaw in their reasoning, though. We weren't the ones who made the conditions right.