Dorian Sargasso (18) D4M
Gray was one of my closest friends. Which didn't mean much, with him being the only friend who had ever gotten past the most basic levels of friendship, but it still seemed to mean something. I'd actually ask him about his day and care, and he actually listened to my dreams. We weren't just two people hovering around each other for the sake of not being alone. We were two people who sometimes got actually close to each other for the sake of having company. Not many people in Four ever got that far with me.
"It just seems like so much effort. I've never seen you try that hard," Gray continued. In all honestly, I had tuned himself out a ways back, but his tone meant that I was supposed to actually respond soon. It was the sort of thing that got through my haze, and I took a second to replay the words I had just heard but hadn't bothered processing.
"I mean, I guess I can when I feel like it. I just usually don't." Gray wasn't in the Academy. He didn't know what sort of work I put into training. He just saw me at school always doing exactly the bare minimum to not get kicked out of the Academy, or at parties, where I couldn't be a serious person no matter how hard I tried. Parties were for being ridiculous, which was way more my style.
"You could have gotten scholarships." That was always the sort of thing Gray through about. He got some good scholarships. No Capitol ones - we were all conspiracy theorists about that, anyone, thinking that they were really myths - but plenty to the best schools in Four. He had something more than just fishing in his future. He could own his own company, or be some sort of breeding specialist, or some other smart thing people who got scholarships did. That wasn't me.
"I don't want to go to college," I responded honestly. It wasn't something my level-one friends knew. They all assumed that volunteering was just a choice for glory or honor. They didn't know that I desperately wanted a break. I didn't have it in me to do four more years of school. I didn't have it in me to do twenty years of meaningless labor, riding on my father's curtails and forever under his thumb. I poured all of my heart and soul into volunteering just so I could finally be something other than a Sargasso, raised to inherit the business, raised to always be upper-middle class.
Funny that to do that, I would have to do the one thing my parents wanted most of me. I'd just have to win the Games.
Alara Dory Banks (17) D4F
"Logical fallacy." I waved my opponent off in a carefully-practiced careless gesture, delicately saying they were so beneath me that I didn't even think about reminding them. It was something that took a lot of effort to perfect, but I knew the effect it had on people. I saw it in the slight flinch of the girl I was debating, the way her shoulders shrank just a little bit. "Slippery slope, specifically. Just because we change the way we regulate fishing doesn't inherently mean the Capitol will completely destroy the fishing market. It's a strong attempt at appealing to emotion, but not at all realistic. We have to look at genuine possibilities, not far-fetched ideas of horrible what-ifs. Otherwise, I can think of quite a few what-ifs for everything you've said." My point was equally full of fallacies, but I knew Ariel wouldn't be pointing them out. She was too busy reorienting herself.
"No, I have some really valid points here. In the past, when we changed regulations, markets permanently changed significantly because of the new regulations. It says so here, here, and here," Ariel said, pointing at the cards I couldn't see to read. "I mean, it happened in Ten, with cattle farming changes, and it happened in Two, with new mining regulations. It even happened in Twelve. It's not like this is something undocumented. This is something that's been proven over and over again."
"Just because there are ongoing changes doesn't mean that a market has been completely destroyed. Two is thriving, Ten is doing relatively fine, and Twelve is actually a lot better than it was before the Great Renovation. There are far fewer accidents and work-related injuries. Yes, profits went down marginally for a bit, but after the proven success of the changes, markets actually went up. More people were willing to work in the mines instead of absolutely avoiding it until the last second, and fewer workers were shoved out of the market for prolonged periods of time. It was a good thing in the long run." I pulled most of that out of thin air, but said it with exactly the tone that meant it was unquestionably true. And some of it was. Markets really had gone up. I just didn't know for sure why.
"So sometimes it doesn't go that way. The fact of the matter is, it's undue strain on the Capitol to change this sort of regulation. They'd have to appoint so many new people and put in so much more effort that it wouldn't be worth their time. And the last thing we want to do is stress the Capitol," Ariel retorted, going for one of the easiest methods of shutting a debate down. Make one side anti-Capitol and the other instantly wins.
"Well, I don't think there's such a thing as stressing the Capitol. They can surely handle whatever they want," I replied, feigning complete innocent. "But also, didn't you just say the Capitol would completely destroy the fishing market? Can they or can they not afford this kind of expenditure? Would they or wouldn't they be able to have a significant, even total, effect on the market?"
I won the debate. It didn't really mean anything to me. It wasn't even my turn on the team that night. But I had to fill in Hudson's spot on the team, and I never did anything halfway. I was in everything to win it.