i. first blood / 80 a.d.d
"Let the Eightieth Annual Hunger Games begin!"
The gong rings, and Reika Matsumoto knows that all eyes are on her.
(They call Reika the prototype — District Three's first trained Volunteer. Everyone he's met has told her that he's crazy, that Liana's also crazy for enabling him.
"Go back to retirement, grandma," Reika remembers Enobaria laughing at her mentor.
He feels the need to prove her wrong, show that Three is capable of crafting killers as ruthless as Two's.)
("You will kill somebody in the bloodbath," Liana told Reika again and again. "Show that you belong here."
It seemed easy then, but not so much now.
An entire legacy rests on her shoulders. Now's not the time for morals.)
Briefly, he scans her surroundings. There's a machete sticking out of the cornucopia like it's tempting her to grab it. In fact, the Gamemaker's probably put it there for that exact reason.
Everybody's watching Reika.
(His parents used to give her everything she wanted, but no money can guarantee her victory. He needs to do something. Kill and maim, just like she rehearsed, if she wants to be worth anything in this world.)
She slips a bit on the snowy arena floors as she dives for the machete, ice brushing up on the dress he's been forced into. Reika doesn't have the privilege of voicing disappointment, not like the trainees from One, Two, and Four.
(Maybe this would've been a bit easier if Valence went through with volunteering alongside her instead of being a pussy bitch, but the more Reika thinks about it, he never really liked that guy.)
(The coward deserves to rot at home, watching as Reika proves that she never needed him in order to succeed.)
Machete in hand, Reika charges after the first Tribute she sees, a maybe-sixteen-year-old boy with a seven on his shoulder.
She turns off everything in her brain when his weapon makes contact with the boy's abdomen, tearing through his flesh as if he was never alive in the first place.
The first death in the Eightieth Games. The first drop of blood in District Three's new legacy.
my friend sunnyjustice on tumblr made an october prompt list about careers, and i'm using it as an opportunity to flesh out the career victors in my verse since there's a lot of them LMAO. if you want to participate, it's going to be fun! not much else for me to say rn but happy october!