Hello everyone and welcome to the first part of day two of training! I'm really excited to be at this point in time with this excellent batch of tributes and I'm also really looking forward to what's to come (especially the Games). Anyways, I'm proud to present morning two of training and I hope you enjoy reading!

Ruga Palaemor, 18

District Two Male

Ruga was on the brink of annoyance with the many ordeals going on in the Career pack. He still needed to meet with the group to discuss whether or not the girl from One should be accepted into the pack, and to top that off, he still needed to convince the rest of the pack that he would be a better leader than his district partner. God, it was hard to be respectful towards her when she was getting all on his nerves with that self-righteous attitude of hers. Goneril just needed to understand that it ultimately was his destiny to be the leader of the Career pack, and then, after he won, he would become the first Grand Inquisitor for the entire Peacekeeping Force of Panem.

He would be the one to go down in history, and he wasn't about to let anyone, especially Goneril, get in his way. Eventually, Ruga would make her regret the fact that she was vying against him to lead the Career pack, and he was looking forward to the satisfaction he would feel when that happened. However, that would come at a much later time, and Ruga didn't need to waste thought on something so far in the future. For now, he just needed to review the skills that Goldena had shown the pack yesterday and decide what his opinion was on her. Then, he would think up his spiel to convince the Careers that he would be a much better leader than the girl that had volunteered alongside him.

Oh he was cooking up his plans just nicely in the back of his brain as he waited for said girl to descend the few stairs from her quarters into the main room of District Two's apartment. Ruga would begin pondering the youngest pack member's fate once he had another mind to bounce his opinion off of (he would have another tough bone to pick with her if she didn't agree with him).

At last, after several minutes of him just lounging lazily on the large couch in the center of the room, Goneril emerged from her room looking rather straight-faced and ready for the day. When she spotted him, her face changed slightly. If he wasn't looking right at her expression, Ruga wouldn't have noticed, but he knew what he was looking for. In fact, that was precisely what he'd wanted her to do. Irritating her was just so funny, and Ruga just couldn't help it.

Sure, their mentor had scolded him for doing things only for the purpose of annoying her, but Ruga truly didn't care what his mentor thought. If Ruga had the skills to be chosen as the male volunteer from Two, then he knew what he was doing and why he was doing it. No egotistical man (in his thirties, yet trying to appear as if he was near Ruga's age) was about to boss him around. When he won the Hunger Games, nobody would even dare to try telling him what to do. And if they did, they wouldn't exist long enough to even see if their attempt had worked or not.

Standing up as Goneril passed him where he'd been sitting on the couch, Ruga stretched his arms up to the ceiling with a loud yawn and smirked as he heard the small sound of disapproval from her. Little miss priss needed to learn that she couldn't control anything except for her when it came to him. Quickly enough, Ruga sidled alongside her on her speedy journey to the elevator and boarded just after she did.

The elevator ride was quiet; neither of the pair spoke the entire journey (even though it was pretty short), instead saving their words for when the entire Career pack met up at the Training Center. They'd soon gather to determine how many members that they would end up having this year and then perhaps a leader would be awarded.

Soon enough, the harmonious ding of the elevator signaled to its occupants that they had reached their destination and could now exit. The pair did just so, stepping out onto the polished gray surface of the floor of the Training Center lobby. It seemed as if they weren't the first tributes to have the idea to be early though, both of the Ones and Kasai were present and standing near one of the large double doors that lead into the actual room with all of the training stations.

That was a good thing. Now they'd have some additional time to discuss their decision on Goldena's status in the pack without having to cut into too much of the time that they'd been allotted for training.

"Good, you two are here. Now we can get onto finalizing our choice about Goldena here," Kasai stated coolly.

Nodding to him, Ruga replied, "Of course. Now Goldena, would you mind finding a spot over there somewhere to be while we talk some things over privately?"

"Yeah, no problem. Just call me over when you need me," came the girl's respectfully bubbly response.

It was a good sign that she was acting how she was. Personally, Ruga thought that she would be a fairly decent addition to the pack, but he wasn't quite sure how the others felt about her since they were all so good at hiding how they felt. For the three stations that she'd shown her skills at yesterday, Ruga had a few observations on her performance that he felt that he needed to share in order to defend his opinion (only if he had to, of course).

Firstly, the girl had chosen to go to the knives station. A rather common pick among most Careers, but any semblance of excellent aptitude at the station was always a benefit to the tribute with that level of skill. Goldena actually performed pretty well at that station, in Ruga's opinion. She got near bullseye shots for almost every knife she threw (with an exception of one or two that strayed a little farther from the target yet still hit the dummy). It was fine enough for him, plus she'd also had two more stations to prove even more of her skills at that point.

Next up was climbing. She did fairly well at this station too, although Ruga did notice that after she accidentally glanced down at the ground when she was about fifteen feet in the air, she was very hesitant and almost timid-looking on her way back down. How interesting; maybe it was caused by a potential fear of heights. That would constitute for a ding in her case, but it would be very minor considering that his fellow Careers were more focused on the strength, coordination, and skill that went into something like climbing.

Lastly, she'd chosen to exhibit her talent at the spear station. Fascinating. As a matter of the fact, it seemed as if every Career except for Ruga preferred long range weapons. Seems like he would be the only one who would succeed in close combat. Excellent. It would be a wonderful advantage for him when it came the time to separate himself from the competition.

As they were discussing what they wanted to do, Ruga felt rather satisfied at the chatter going on. So far, the opinions of the other Careers were lining up with his and it was looking like Ruga was going to end up getting his way. Marvelous. They wrapped it up fairly quick, not really debating about anything, but Ruga had one more thing to add before he broke the news to Goldena.

"Don't forget, we can also use her as sort of a shield and tell her that it's so she can fully prove herself as a Career. Well, not really a shield. More like the person who goes in the suspicious looking places first," he smirked.

The others had a good laugh about he'd just said, and they carried on a different conversation as Ruga sauntered over to Goldena to inform her of their decision.

"Well kid, it looks like you're in."

Oscar Gamero, 12

District Ten Male

Oscar really wasn't ready for another day of standing terrified in a corner, trying to learn some skills that could potentially help him survive just a slight bit longer. Honestly, he kinda felt that it was pointless, after all, survival skills wouldn't help him if he got attacked by any other tribute. Everyone, including him, knew that he was probably going to be the first to die, but Oscar wasn't ready to die. He was only twelve.

With each and every second that passed during training, Oscar came closer and closer to his ultimate fate: death at the hands of another teenager. It was so horrible, the Capitol forcing kids to kill each other just because the people that had come long before them killed Capitolites during the rebellion. Wasn't that how war worked in the first place? Surely more kids had been killed in the Hunger Games by now than the amount that died in the war.

His rather depressing thoughts were interrupted by the large doors to the training room clanking open. It was official now, day two of training had started. This time, Oscar wanted to head over to the knot tying station. He'd visited the fishhook making station yesterday morning since nobody was there, then he'd gone to the fire starting station in the afternoon since it had been occupied in the morning.

However, just because he was only going to stations that were empty didn't mean that Oscar didn't want allies. He just didn't want to be that awkward little boy that just walked up to everyone, asking them if they would keep him alive in the arena. That really just didn't seem like a good strategy, so hopefully someone would take pity on him, the small, sad-looking boy, and come up to him and ask if he wanted to be their ally.

God, he really hoped someone would do that by today. If he didn't have an ally after the morning session tomorrow, he was screwed. After training, tributes didn't have many more opportunities to interact, with only the time that they spent waiting for their private sessions and interviews to talk to each other more. Fate already wasn't on his side, so he really needed someone to come talk to him now, when it was certain that there would be time to talk.

Oscar spent the next hour or so mindlessly winding wire around a tiny fishhook, only paying attention just enough so not to cut himself on the sharp end of it. It was boring, but it was the only survival station that had been empty after he'd taken a look around the room. Maybe it would help him with something? The subject of it was simple enough, but Oscar still preferred the peace of gathering food, not murdering innocent animals when you could find other sources of food just as easily. It was so mean, and Oscar wasn't a huge fan of killing a fish, but he'd rather kill an unfamiliar animal than starve to death.

"Hey there," someone drawled above him.

It startled Oscar, who hadn't even seen anyone approach the station amidst his mindless staring at the floor. Looking up, he noticed that it was the boy from Eight, who was the only other kid under the age of fifteen in the Games this year. Hopefully he wanted to be Oscar's ally, he could really use one right about now.

"Hi," Oscar squeaked in response, "I'm Oscar."

Offering him a kind smile, the boy sat down near him and replied, "Name's Billy. I just came on over here since you looked like you needed an ally. We may both be younger than everyone else, but that doesn't mean that they're better than us."

"Really? That would be awesome! Thank you!"

"Of course little dude. Us outlier kids have gotta stick together."

With his newfound ally, Oscar suddenly felt as if he'd just gotten a huge burst of energy. What was that thing that the rich people in Ten always talked about, serotonin maybe? It was whatever rushed into your brain when you were really happy, and that's exactly how he felt right now. He had someone that could help him deal with this terrible situation, and Oscar was incredibly thankful for whatever part of fate had been involved.

It must have looked like he was getting a little emotional over the fact that Billy was his ally now, because the boy in question came over and gave him a hug.

"Don't worry, we can get through this together, I promise. It'll all end up being okay."

Smiling into the slightly older boy's shirt, Oscar said, "This really just means a lot to me, thank you so much again. I'm usually all alone on the farm because nobody likes hanging around me, so this is the first time that anyone's actually wanted to talk with me for more than a second. Normally, I just get yelled at to do something."

"Well that's just terrible, and I'm glad that's changed because of me. I'll be here for you whenever you need to talk, Oscar."

Nobody had ever been this nice to him except for his animals, but apparently according to other people, they didn't count. He finally had his first real friend, and Oscar felt confident that Betsy would have approved of him too.

Zain Bhavini-Ekstorm, 17

District Five Male

"Well, what do you want to do?" Zain asked his protege.

Elias responded quietly, still staring off in the distance at the Careers, "I guess we can see if we can get the hand to hand station or one of the simpler weapons stations to ourselves, then we can go from there."

"Sounds like a plan."

From what Zain was seeing right now, the two weapons stations that were vacant were the sais station and (thankfully) the hand to hand combat station. They could probably fit in time at both stations if they remained destitute like they were, and when asked, Elias agreed with him on the fact that he wanted to go to both stations. The practice would be good for them and the skills would be useful when it came time in the arena.

The only real issue that came with the boys' desire to learn new skills was the fact that they'd need to be taught some things by the instructor, who happened to be from the Capitol. God, Zain hated those people and based on Elias' face at the sight of one of the odd trainers, he also had the same opinion. At least there was someone in the world that understood how Zain felt.

If you really asked him, he was pretty solid on the fact that those people that had fallen victim deserved it. After all, didn't they look forward to the murder of twenty three (well now it was twenty one) kids annually? It was so barbaric, yet they called him the monster. The Games had been going on for almost eight decades, and he was the worst human being in existence for killing what, a couple more people than only one Hunger Games would bury.

They were so ridiculous, with their dumb sounding names and their stupid looking outfits and their annoying obsession of looking the same age for as long as possible. If only the tables were switched. Those rotten Capitolites wouldn't survive half an hour in the districts. Zain could bet that none of them had worked a minute in their lives, let alone even thought once about maybe having a little less money than they did.

"Cmon Elias, let's go over to the sais and do some practice on some dummies. It can't be too hard to figure out on our own."

"Sounds good to me. We don't need anything from that Capitol instructor."

The pair made their way over to the station in question and upon reaching it, they picked up a pair of blades each. The trainer tried to catch them and rattle off his little script about how to use the weapons, but both of the boys shrugged him off with a disgusted look and made their way on over to the practice dummies. They didn't need him for anything, and they weren't about to get help from someone from the Capitol. It just went so far against what their opinion was, and ignoring things like that was how they would keep that appearance and opinion.

The sais were actually pretty easy to hold, lightweight and ergonomical. It was pretty strange to have them in his hands though, simply because he'd never held a weapon like this before. Truthfully, he still preferred the indirectness of poison. Plus, it helped him to feel less like there was blood on his hands. Well, also because poison usually didn't expose blood like when someone was stabbed.

However, it didn't matter how people died now. The Hunger Games was all about murdering for survival, so did it really count? The Capitol certainly didn't think so, but that just made Zain more hesitant. He didn't want to support the Capitol in any way. Perhaps he could survive another way. Then, the Capitol would really regret how they did things. The Hunger Games shouldn't have even started, and Zain hated everyone and everything that was involved. Let them roll in their graves about his disrespect.

Taking that aggression that his opinions made him feel, Zain plunged one of his sais into the abdomen of the dummy in front of him. He felt, satisfied, now. It felt good to have an outlet for his anger. If only that outlet could be the Capitol. Perhaps it could be motivation to survive the Games. Yes, that would be the ultimate satisfactory situation, survival and revenge on the Capitol.

He wasn't stupid though. Zain could tell that he was one of the most, if not the most, hated tributes this year, with the boy next to him as one of the others. It was really obvious that the Capitol wanted him gone, after all, that's why they'd gone to the trouble to rig the Reaping. They'd do anything they could to get him buried in the rough soil of Five back home, but Zain wasn't going to let them win that easily. It took more than just hate to kill someone, and Zain felt that he had what it took to survive their Games.

Zain was planning on making them regret what they'd done to him, and they were going to end up being the ones that were sorry, not him. They just needed to wait and see what he had in him. Not to mention the other member of his duo, who Zain was pretty sure hated the Capitol even more than him, and that was an extremely rare feat. The pair was going to prove to each and every one of those spoiled brats that they couldn't just keep abusing their power.

Vincent "Vince" Wright, 18

District Seven Male

Vince was exhausted following his sister around everywhere she ran off to. It was like the moment she arrived at her intended destination, she found another place she wanted to go. How had his parents dealt with this? Then again, Valerie seemed as if she'd gotten more hyper as she grew older. At this point, he felt like he was growing older a lot faster than he should because of Valerie's urge to drag him everywhere (he really didn't appreciate it, but he wasn't terrible enough as to ruin his sister's fun).

This time, his sister had tugged him eagerly over to the fishhook making station, which was currently occupied by two other tributes. When they got closer, Vince saw that it was the two youngest tributes in the Games this year. The boy from Eight, Billy, was fourteen and the boy from Ten, Oscar, was twelve. It was pretty obvious to everyone, including Vince, that they wouldn't make it very far.

"Hi there! We saw that you two were over here on your own and we wanted to come join you! Is that alright?" Valerie asked them eagerly. (Vince grumbled at this and was promptly kicked in the shin by his sister.)

Great. Now his naive little sister was trying to add people to their group (which was already perfectly fine and fully occupied by the pair of them). These boys would just be dead weight, offering no strengths to further the group except for kindness, which wasn't something that won the Hunger Games. Murder and perseverance won the Hunger Games, and it was clear that these boys had no idea what those were.

But there was no point in trying to convince his sister otherwise now. Once she found something she wanted to do, she didn't give up on it until she got exactly what she wanted, item or outcome. At least she was dedicated, he had to give her that. Perhaps these children could help her learn the lesson of how the Capitol treated the districts. They sent twenty one kids to die each year, and only the strongest among them would survive. Any young child reaped for the Hunger Games was just a guaranteed death among the twenty one that occurred.

".. and this is Vince, my older brother! Don't mind him, he's normally grumpy like this."

Letting out a sigh, Vince waved reluctantly at the two kids in front of him and waited for them to introduce themselves (even if he already knew their names).

"Well, hello. I'm Billy and this is Oscar," the older one said.

The younger one offered a small smile and a wave to go along with it and exclaimed, "Today is just our lucky day isn't it, Billy! Now we both have three allies!"

Hearing another loud sigh, Valerie once again grabbed him by the arm and dragged him to the side, letting the two younger boys continue on in their chatter for a moment.

"Oh come on Vince! They're just so small, they won't survive without our help. Please please, pretty please. I promise that I won't risk my safety if the situation gets too bad."

Vince raised an eyebrow at that. It didn't sound like Valerie at all, and it was extremely likely that she was just saying that to get him to agree with her that Oscar and Billy could be their allies.

"Really? I'm not stupid, Valerie. I know how you get. You would be the first person to step in front of an arrow or a sword for one of those kids and I'm not going to let you risk your life like that."

"I pinky swear that I won't. Will you believe that?"

Pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger, Vince knew that if he didn't agree with his sister, she would just keep pestering him until he said yes. He was just so tired of her constant talking to him, so he figured that he might as well just let her. It was usually what happened anyway, so why waste extra energy on arguing with her.

"I suppose so. Go ahead, break the news to the young ones."

Valerie gasped out loud at this, drawing the attention of the children that Vince had mentioned. Well, he was glad she'd found a way to be happy in an otherwise gloomy situation.

"Really!? Ohmygod you're the best Vince!" Valerie shrieked, squeezing him in a tight hug for a moment before jetting off to go tell the exciting news to her new friends.

He made his way over to the excited huddle of teens at a medium pace, not sprinting over like Valerie had, yet not walking too slow as for his sister to call him geriatric again (seriously, why?).

"Thanks, man. I really appreciate that y'all'd be our allies," said Billy.

"Yeah, no problem," Vince mumbled.

Plunking down beside him, Valerie exclaimed, "I'm so excited for this! Are you guys?"

"As excited as one can be for the Hunger Games, Valerie."

"Well duh Vince."

"I guess so," Oscar cut in quietly, "I mean it isn't the best situation, but I'm glad to have a friend before everything becomes terrible."

"Yeah! I mean, that's half of what allies are: your friends. And then the other half is a person that protects you and helps you, which is also fairly similar to a friend."

Vince supposed that his sister did kind of have a point with her statement, but also, he'd never been that good at friends. He usually just minded his own business and did everything that was needed to keep himself and Valerie afloat. She was the only person that he would ever call a friend. He'd spent most of his teenage life taking care of his sister and he wasn't about to stop that now. Vince was planning on defending her until the last second.

He really didn't want to think about it, but Vince knew that only one of them could make it out of the arena alive, and it wasn't going to be him. He was going to win his sister the victory and she was going to be the one with the tale of how she survived.

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

Wow, I wrote this a lot faster than I initially thought that I would, but I'm glad I did. I had a really fun time writing this chapter, and now we're only six chapters away from the Games! I hope you guys enjoyed reading, and I'll see you in the next one! (Also, I hope you guys are enjoying the alliance names!)