Hey guys! Welcome to the second and last chapter of day two of training! I'm super excited that we're getting closer and closer to the Games, but for now, I hope you enjoy the chapter! Only one more training chapter after this one! (Also please don't mind some of my descriptions of plants in this chapter, I'm definitely not the greatest at it)

Indigo Whitesand, 17

District Eleven Female

Indigo was enjoying the calm environment that the lunch table she was sitting at had. It was only occupied by herself and Agri, so there wasn't anyone else there, interrupting their peaceful meal.

The array of options that they were provided with was very impressive to Indigo, but she was also a little bit put off by it. Those fruit sauces and jellies could have been made with the fruit that she and her colleagues had picked before this whole situation had happened. All it did was make her think about how unfair it was that the Capitol had access and control over everything the districts and their population worked hard to produce.

At least she might have gotten to eat some of those fruits. Usually, it was just sent off to the Capitol and the only thing that they were provided with was a measly pay that could barely buy enough mushy grain to last the month. But truly, she was thankful for those that had helped to provide them with the food that sat in front of her, especially since she knew what the hard labor was like.

Scraping the last bit of food left on her plate together, Indigo took a final bite and then set her silverware and napkin on top of her plate. She would take it to the dirty dishes window when the bell rang for the end of lunch. For now, she was planning on talking with Agri about what he wanted to do in the second-to-last training session.

"So I was thinking that we could do some plant identification since we haven't been to that station much," Indigo told her district partner after he'd taken his own last bite of food.

"Yeah, I'd agree with you on that one, Indigo," Agri drawled.

Indigo smiled brightly at his response. It was very good that they were getting along, and it was even better that they would have a lot of wise survival knowledge after today. It would do them good in the arena.

All of a sudden, the bell for lunch rang and the tributes all scurried up to turn in their plates so that they could get back to training as soon as possible. With it being fairly chaotic, the Elevens stayed at the back of the crowd, waiting for everyone else to go before they turned in their own dishes. Once they did that, the pair followed the dwindling crowd of tributes through the door to the training room.

Most tributes had already made their way to the stations that they wanted to start out the second and final afternoon session at, and it seemed that Indigo and Agri were the last to make their way to their station of choice.

Luckily enough, there was only one other person at the plants station. The boy seemed as if he wanted to be isolated, so the pair just left him alone. They were just going to focus on learning plants themselves, not trying desperately to talk to another person that didn't want to.

First off, the instructor handed them several packets of material on both poisonous and safe plants.

He told them, "To start off, you two can look at these for a bit and then see if you can remember some of them on the electronic test."

"Thanks, sounds good," Agri replied.

The two found a spot at the opposite side of the station that the other boy was at and then took a seat. Indigo had skimmed over it when the instructor had just given the packets to them, but now she was looking at them in a lot more depth. Her strategy was to find a memorable way to identify each plant, that way she wouldn't mix any up.

One would think that someone from an outlier district, especially the one that involved plants would know a thing or two about plants, but Indigo really just didn't have the time to. All she did was pick fruit, then come home and do chores, go to sleep for a few measly hours, then repeat. If only she could have had the time to do so, it could have given her a leg up not having to learn all of this only a few days before the Games themselves.

Alas, the first plant of many for her to learn was the chickweed. It had almost fuzzy hairs on it with large rounded leaves that pointed at the end and interesting-looking white flowers that were almost thin looking? She was fairly confident that it was pretty memorable, so she moved on to the next plant.

This time, she was looking at one in the poisonous packet: the baneberry. It had a thick stem with leaves that almost looked like feathers that were hairy on the underside of it. In addition to this, the plant had a cone shaped cluster of either red or white berries that were extremely poisonous.

It felt kind of like muscle memory as she went through each of the packets, noticing key aspects of plants that would help her remember their identity. Hopefully Agri was having the same luck of finding ways to remember plants that she was. He was a really nice guy and Indigo was glad that he was her ally.

Indigo had confidence that in time, she would be able to remember a good many of these plants. She trusted her memory of critically important things, and perhaps she would find some time to do other things than learn what plants to eat or not.

Goldena Powers, 15

District One Female

Goldena was feeling absolutely fantastic at the moment. She'd proven that she was meant to be part of the Career pack (although if you asked her, she shouldn't have had to do so) and now the others were finally respecting her talents. Honestly, it really shouldn't have needed to be such a hassle. If she'd been the one to volunteer from a Career district with that many other girls as competition, wouldn't they think that earning the spot would have been enough to know that she had the skills to be involved with them.

Well, the past was the past, and now she was getting the opportunity to observe the rest of the tributes alongside a group of similarly talented tributes like her. Except of course, their ages weren't too similar to hers. That would be the one thing that would rise to her advantage when it came to the interviews and trying to get sponsors. The rest of the pack were just normal Careers, all in their last year of eligibility. Goldena was more unique and she was going to be the one to grab all of those undecided sponsors with her youth, talents, and confidence.

She'd draw all of those special gifts in when the tributes were in the arena and the Careers would regret ever even considering the fact that she wasn't good enough to be one of them. Perhaps if she wanted to be polite and if they begged nicely, she might share a little bit of her gifts with them.

"Hey Powers, come on! We're heading to the next station," shouted Ruga.

"Alright, I'm coming!"

Ruga was perhaps the least aggravating of the four other Careers in the pack in her opinion. Sure, he was a bit strange at times, but he'd also been on her side in the debate about her since the first word had been spoken on the subject. As for Goneril, his district partner, Goldena wasn't a huge fan of her. She'd been the one on the exact opposite side of Ruga and ever since the general consensus about Goldena's status as a member of the pack had been decided, she'd been ignoring her entirely.

The other two boys, Sublime and Kasai, really hadn't said much about the matter when it had come up, so Goldena didn't mind them much either. The pair just really didn't talk a lot like the Twos did. Those two weren't the best at staying quiet whether they wanted to say something or not. No opinion shared among the pack could go without criticism and an argument in favor of the other side of that opinion.

Following the rest of the Careers to the spears station, Goldena grabbed a spear off the rack once she stopped in front of a target dummy and the lane for throwing at it. From what she'd easily noticed over the last few sessions of training, this was also Goneril's chosen weapon. Kasai and Sublime both preferred a bow and Ruga, being the odd duck out, used a large axe.

Usually, there was an even spread of using either melee or long distance weapons among the pack, but this year's pack was rather heavy on the long distance weapons. However, that didn't mean that they would be any worse than the packs that had come before them. It would be insulting to even think that, so Goldena shoved that little thought to the trash can in the back of her brain, hoping it would never emerge again.

All the while that Goldena had been thinking, Goneril had taken the opportunity to show off with her signature weapon. The spear that she'd just thrown was still vibrating back and forth with the force that it had been thrown into the target with, and not surprisingly, it was pretty much a bullseye being only about half an inch away from directly being in the center of the small red circle at the exact center of the chest target on the dummy.

"Nice throw Goneril," Ruga smirked, "Can you do better, Powers?"

"Of course," Goldena confidently replied back.

She started her throwing motion once her audience stepped back to give her some space and let it go at exactly the right moment. It hit the target with a satisfying noise and upon looking at it, Goldena realized that she'd hit the target just slightly farther into the bullseye than Goneril had.

A confident smirk made its way onto her face at the realization that she'd performed better than her older counterpart, and she knew that it likely wouldn't fade off of her face until much later that night. This alone would be considered an accomplishment, but amidst the pride, Goldena knew that she didn't need to gloat about it too much, or she would have an ally that was very cross with her.

Goldena didn't want to have someone out for her blood before the Games even started, and her actions causing a dysfunctional Career pack would just send all of the people considering sponsoring her packing very quickly.

"Good job Goneril. How about we do a few more rounds of practice before we go and do something else."

"Thank you, Goldena. That sounds like a good idea," the girl mumbled back to her.

It was pretty clear how Goneril felt about her, but Goldena wasn't going to treat anyone differently based on what they thought of her. She was planning on killing the older girl with kindness.

Milo Kirk, 16

District Six Male

Milo felt like a bit of an odd one out as the girls started up a bit of a conversation about themselves. Sure, it was nice to have allies like them, but it made it a bit awkward when it came to chatting about things that Milo had no interest in or clue about. He just left that to Reverie and Anne and went on to awkwardly piddle around at the station that they were at.

If it had been a year ago, he would have been trying his hardest to try and relate himself to their conversation as well, but he'd learned his lesson from acting this way. He just tried too hard, and it hurt him rather than helped him. Due to this, Milo had realized the hard way that it was just better to leave himself out of the situation than to try and forcibly place himself in it.

So for now, it would just be standing around oddly while the pair of girls that made up the other part of his alliance chatted. From what he'd heard in the time that the conversation had started to when he'd given them some space (which wasn't too much time), it had started when one of the girls had mentioned her dad. Apparently their fathers were similar somehow. To be honest, Milo had no clue about girls and how they talked to one another, so he was perfectly fine sitting this one out.

"Hey Milo, do you want to visit another station before the session ends this afternoon?" Anne asked him brightly.

"Uhh, sure Anne. Could we possibly visit the hammers station?" he mumbled once he got closer to her and Reverie.

"Yeah, I don't see why not! I hope you don't mind if I'm curious, but is there any particular reason why you want to do that instead of another survival station or an easier weapon?"

"Just because it's kinda similar to what I'm used to using at my job at the factory. I just like want to brush up on it a little while I have a chance to," he said softly.

"Oh okay! It's good that you have sort of a foundation for that skill."

"Yeah," Reverie added in, "it'll definitely be of an advantage to you and our alliance that you have experience with a weapon like that."

Now that their minds were made up on their next destination, the trio made their way over to the hammers station. Their choice sure brought some attention to them, with the Careers and a few other older Outliers laying eyes upon them in order to see why they'd made their way to a weapons station.

Slowly but surely (well, as sure as he could be given how timid he was at the moment), Milo picked up one of the medium sized sledgehammers and looked around for an object to use it on. After a few moments of observing the items stacked up at the station, he chose a pile of a couple cement blocks and took a swing at them.

They broke with a loud smashing noise and a small cloud of dust. The loud noise wasn't loud enough to cover up the audible sounds of a loud gasp or two by the girls though. When he turned back around to face them, Anne looked awed while Reverie just looked like her normal collected self. Although, he could kind of see it in her eyes that she was fairly impressed with his strength.

Unfortunately, his impressive actions had also drawn some rather undesired attention as well. Now, the Careers had all eyes on him, watching to see what he could fully do. He felt like he was roadkill being scoped out by a buzzard. Well, there was actually a pretty good chance that he would be roadkill in the next week or so. What, they only had two more days in the Capitol after this one before the Games would begin.

God, now he was feeling like his decision was a mistake. Milo was sure that what he'd just done had definitely moved him a lot closer to the top of the Careers' target list, and from what he'd seen just from little glances here and there at their training and practice, he would be done for if they came after him. No, his whole alliance would be done for and it would be all his fault. It was all his fault now that the Careers were focusing their attention on him and Reverie and Anne, and it was just because he'd wanted to see if he could actually make himself look strong and not pathetic.

He was even more pathetic now, with his stupid choices and the new target on his back and his allies' backs. What was he going to do now? For starters, not draw any more attention to himself and his alliance, obviously. Next, he was just to advise that they spent the rest of their time in a survival station in the corner, avoiding peering eyes and observant tributes. If they didn't have a good view of him, they wouldn't know everything about him. Besides, hammers really weren't a popular weapon that the Capitol provided during the Games.

A weapon like that would most likely come from a sponsor gift, and with the way that Milo was planning on fixing his mistakes, he wasn't planning on getting many of those, especially with items like that. The goal would probably be to only try to earn sponsor gifts of food or water, not being too popular in order to enrage any of the other tributes.

Milo just needed to lay low and everything would be fine from here on out.

Zeno Capricci, 17

District Three Male

Zeno was exhausted after the busy last few days that he'd been put through. Yesterday, he'd grabbed all of the booklets on plants that he could get a hold on at the time, and he'd been spending a lot of his time just peering through them. It was easy enough for him to remember the small things like that, so he'd made a lot of progress in the large packet of what he was able to eat and what he wasn't.

He was spending his spare time on memorizing those things for a couple of reasons. One being the fact that the plants station was a popular one this year; Zeno wasn't a huge fan of having too many people around him, plus he needed peace and quiet for his brain to work to its full potential. The silent setting of his room in Three's apartment was a great place to try and absorb all of that necessary material. The second reason was the fact that he wanted to use that precious training time to really focus on perfecting his strengths, namely creating traps.

He'd been at the traps station for the last couple of sessions, working quietly on his own in a shadowy corner. A few other tributes had come to the station as well in the last session or two, but Zeno was the only person to have visited it for more than one session. He hadn't started off at this station, choosing to instead go to the camouflage station and try to learn how to hide himself while the Seven pair took the traps station first. That was one group that he didn't want to have many interactions with, only because the Seven girl was very loud and Zeno didn't really want to associate himself with that chaos.

Also, Zeno had been carefully observing the rest of the tributes as much as he could, trying to find some of their weaker points and who to look out for once they were all dropped into the arena. So far, he was planning on keeping distance from the Careers, the Four girl who hadn't joined the normal alliance for that slot, the Eight girl who seemed just as trained as a Career, and probably the alliance of the Sevens and the younger tributes. He was also planning on not interacting with the alliance of the boys from Five and Nine, simply because it wouldn't bode well for him if he was seen talking with the two tributes that obviously despised the Capitol.

Suddenly, the bell that signaled the end of the training session rang out and Zeno let out a little huff of annoyance. Did the session really have to go by that fast. He didn't remember the one this morning flying by quite so quickly, but then again, he was the person that often let hours just fly by while he worked on just one little detail. Time to go look over some more plants, he supposed.

Standing up, Zeno made his way over to the steadily forming line of tributes by the large doors that led to the hallway containing the elevators. There were only two of them, surprising for the Capitol, but then again, this was for kids that killed and died for the Capitol's entertainment. It was barbaric, and it needed to end. However, there first needed to be a change in the way that the Capitol saw things, so maybe Zeno could be the one to make that happen.

As he was led through the hallway and into one of the two elevators, Zeno couldn't help but think about what had possibly happened to his notebook. He'd given it up to the Peacekeepers to see if he was allowed to have it as his token in the arena, but he hadn't gotten it back. They must have rejected it, so what had they done with it after they'd deemed it unacceptable as a token. Did they send it back to his house or to his parents? Did they destroy it? The contents of that notebook had been written down during hours worth of pondering ideas and wanting to solve Panem's problems, and Zeno wasn't too happy about not knowing where it ended up.

At least he'd gotten his escort to get him a new notebook that he could write ideas in during his time in the Capitol. This strange new part of Panem ended up being a gold mine of ideas for him to take note of, and the notebook was almost halfway full already. Perhaps he could do some more pondering in a different setting than his bedroom tonight. Maybe a change in scenery would help the creative juices flow even more than they already were.

The rest of the night passed quickly, with Zeno eating his simple dinner as fast as he could so that he could have more time to come up with project ideas. Everyone else in the apartment turned in soon after dinner concluded, and once the last light underneath their doors had turned off, Zeno padded softly off to the elevators. He was curious as to what else was on the floor that the lunch room and the training room were on, and maybe it contained a small study room or library for him to write in.

Upon further inspection once he stepped off of the elevator and walked down the hall, there was one door that was unlocked. When Zeno opened it and turned the lights on, it was to his delight that he discovered that the room was indeed a library. Dusty texts filled dozens of bookshelves and once he rounded a corner, Zeno saw a desk that he wanted to sit at for his writing time.

It wasn't soon after he'd flipped to the page that he'd been on when he'd stopped working the previous time and uncapped his pen when Zeno saw someone out of the corner of his eye. It startled him, and Zeno couldn't really think of another tribute that might have come down here to do something similar to what Zeno wanted to do. Except, it wasn't a tribute. It was a woman, and a familiar one at that. Zeno had only seen her before on the television, from a news report about the upcoming Games. This was the Head Gamemaker, Levana Miroslava.

"Hello Zeno," she said mysteriously.

"Uhm, hello there Ms. Miroslava," he replied, confused as to why she was here talking to him. He couldn't be that important, could he?

"It's nice to finally meet the person that came up with all of these ideas."

At first, Zeno was confused as to what she meant, but as she raised her arm to show him the item that she was holding, it all made sense. It was his old notebook.

Alliances:

The Dysfunctional Career Pack - Goldena, Sublime, Goneril, Ruga, Kasai

The Survivalists - Reverie, Anne, Milo

The Long-Lost Besties - Taraji, Kassi

The Capitol Haters - Zain, Elias

Val, the Grump, and Val's Adopted Children - Val, Vince, Billy, Oscar

The Agriculture Buddies - Indigo, Agri

The Loners - Zeno, Naymena, Georgette, Natalia

And Training Day Two is officially complete now! Now we only have five more chapters before the Games start, and that includes only one more training chapter! I'm very excited for this and I hope you guys are too. Also, I hope you enjoyed reading, as I really enjoyed writing this chapter! I'll see you in the next one!