I've been slow since I'm going back to Sierra Leone in five days so I've been packing and getting paperwork and stuff. I'll still be writing there (I'll be there a month) so don't worry.

Cactus Cleo- District Seven male (18)

I expected some sponsor gifts by now. I killed someone in the Bloodbath, didn't I? I gave them their Games and their entertainment? The least they could do was send along some food or maybe a blanket so I didn't have to sleep on the ground. It was evening on the second day and not one little parachute had appeared in the sky. Clearly some people thought this was all a joke.

Maybe it was arrogant, going toward the garden. It might be crawling with Careers. Then again, they didn't need the food. They might think everyone else would go there, but they might just as well think everyone would go to the pond instead, since water is more important than food. Some of us weren't smart enough to know that, though. And some of us weren't smart enough to know that you could get water from lots of foods. If that garden had cucumbers, for example, I was in the clear. Or I'd just harvest dew like I had been. It was cleaner than pond water anyway.

I knelt in the grass at the edge of the garden, waiting to see if anyone was there before I came out. I didn't see any cucumbers or anything particularly juicy. Morning dew it was, then. I was never much of a pea fan, but the carrots looked good. It seemed like a strange choice to have a row of birdhouse gourds at the end. I didn't think most of us even knew what a birdhouse gourd was. I wondered if it was a mean joke or just a coincidence that the Gamemakers chose morning glories for the trellis. I was almost certainly the only one of us who knew that morning glory seeds were hallucinogenic. Also super toxic, and the high wasn't even good, so I wasn't going to mess with them.

I was still pondering the flowers when one of the birdhouse gourds started to shake. I backed into the grass so I could only barely see whoever was coming out. I didn't recognize the boy from the back of his head, but I did recognize he wasn't a Career. It wasn't hard to decide what to do. I didn't want anyone else in my garden, and maybe two kills would be enough for some recompense. I crept in the grass after the boy, skirting around the garden as he took a straight path out into the grass ahead of me. He seemed to have no idea I was there, since he was cautious but didn't seem alarmed.

The boy stopped in a nondescript patch of tall grass. His hands went to his pants and I realized why he'd come out from his gourd. I didn't want to deal with unfortunate anatomy and fluids slinging everywhere as he struggled, so I moved quickly.

Trydan Briod- District Five male (17)

I didn't see the glint of metal until the axe was already swinging at me. I jumped to the side quickly enough that it missed my face, but Cactus' momentum smashed him into me hard enough I fell backwards. He landed on top of me, knocking the breath out of me so hard I couldn't get in a breath to scream. Cactus immediately calculated that he didn't have enough distance to get the angle for a big swing, so instead he pushed himself onto his side and punched me in the nose. Everything glitched for a second as blood flowed into my mouth.

"Trayne!" I yelled. I saw the shift in Cactus' expression at me having an ally who was probably very close by. I grabbed for the handle of Cactus' axe to stall for time as I took in another breath.

"Trydan!" Trayne's yell came from near the edge of the garden. I had no idea how our gourd house's acoustics would muffle my call. Maybe Trayne would come right to us. Maybe the tall, seamless grass would hide us for the very few seconds it took to kill someone.

Cactus must have thought the same, since as I took in another breath to call Trayne, he put out an arm and leaned down on it, choking me. He crooked his arm around my throat by the elbow and flopped to the side, sliding sideways off me and pulling me almost on top of him with my neck tucked into his elbow. Almost immediately there was a panicky crushing sensation. I could still breathe, but something was very wrong.

This is how I die. Nothing in my old life mattered. I'd thought there were things in my life that were important. My job. Doing the best I could. Always improving. I saw now that there was nothing in the world besides life and death. I wasn't an inspector, or a Five boy, or any of the things that humans prided ourselves on. I was a sack of warm meat and in a very few moments I would be cold meat. My grave would molder and crack and in time, there would be nothing.

My hand was wedged under Cactus' arm as I tried to pry it loose and stop the horrible crushing. The world started to shimmer at the edges and I knew that choking was a lot faster than I thought. If I punched Cactus and he didn't move, that would be it. I shoved up my free hand and hooked my thumb as hard as I could into his eye. My stomach spasmed at the sensation- I expected to feel it pop- and I almost wanted to cry at the far less horrible SQUELCH it made as I felt the eye squish around my thumb. It lasted only an instant, since Cactus huffed out a breath as he reeled back.

I didn't know what happened. The world filtered back in one sense at a time. There was blood in my mouth. A lot of blood- more than would be from my nose. My hand clenched a fistful of Cactus' hair. It was very warm. The day hadn't seemed so warm a minute ago.

"Trydan!"

The grass split, revealing Trayne. I was about to tell him about Cactus, to ask him for help, when I finally felt the weight on my chest. I looked down at Cactus' limp head lying beside me. He looked so surprised, his clouded eyes wide. The blood was so bright red it looked fake. But somehow none of it surprised me. It played in my head then, the moments I'd been too frantic to think. I remembered grabbing Cactus by the hair. Pulling him down as I sat up. How I'd wanted him dead dead dead and the fastest way my brain could pull up was my teeth in his throat.

"Oh my god, you tore his throat out. That's awesome."

He said it like I'd scored a goal in a soccer game. His face was bright, like this was something anyone could ever want to see again.

"No it's not!" I yelled. I'd been about to tell him to be quieter, but it ripped right out of me. "He's dead!" I swept an arm at Cactus' body as I pushed out from under him. "I killed him! He's a human being and I killed him!" I opened my mouth and tried to wipe the blood from it, though I knew it was already in me. It was Cactus' life and it was smeared in my mouth. "I hate this!"

I hated that I was crying. All my life I knew the most important thing was to stay orderly and controlled. Now I was kneeling in the dirt, mud forming on my damp fingers clawed into the ground, blood matting my hair, heaving for breath around sobs.

"Hey, hey…" Trayne crouched down by me. "Hey, man. He was trying to kill you."

"I don't want to talk about it." I shoved myself up to my feet. "Let's go." Cactus' body was hidden by the grass after only a few steps. It was gone. He was gone. There was nothing to talk about. I just wanted to go.

Shep Howard- District Ten male (18)

A stand of bushes could be the perfect place for me. The shrubs were close enough together that they would provide cover if anyone came near. I could even wander around them for awhile and figure out their layout, and then it would be like a maze I could duck into. They would provide shelter, and plenty of dew, and surely there were some edible plants in there somewhere. Some of the shrubs might have been edible on their own. I was calling them "shrubs" based on their size compared to me, but from an absolute standpoint, they were like six inches tall. I wasn't sure what kind of plants they were.

I was right about one thing, at least. There was plenty of clover inside the thicket. It seemed much more coarse and strong-flavored in my new tiny size. I'd have to be careful not to get any grass cuts. It would be pretty stupid to drop into a perfect arena for me and then die of an infection. I wondered, as I chewed, if my poop would turn green if I ate nothing at all but plants. Probably not, I decided, or vegans would have mentioned it by now.

The second night in the Games wasn't terrible, honestly. There was already enough shelter from the bushes that I didn't have to do much to make myself a home. I found a bush with low branches that hid me if I crawled underneath them. I wandered about until I found some soft moss and made myself a little bed with it. It would have been chilly otherwise, but not so chilly that I thought anyone would freeze to death. Probably right, since there was only one cannon that entire day. From my perspective, it was almost like camping.

It really was the perfect arena. I didn't even have to worry about finding a water bottle. This was the only outdoor arena I could think of where that would be the case. Water was simply everywhere. There was so much water, in fact, that just getting out of bed knocked a few drops of dew onto me so that I had to shake it off with annoyance. Every day would bring fresh dew, so we didn't even need a bottle. I got plenty just by scooping dewdrops off stalks of grass and drinking them like weird giant jellies. I knew about surface tension and all, but it was still weird being able to hold a handful of water.

I reached up and pulled down a stalk of grass, aiming for a dewdrop overhead. As the grass came down, taking a few other blades with it, it revealed a girl standing past it. She had brown hair and wide green eyes- one had a scar running around it, I noticed.

The girl saw me just as I saw her. I wondered if I looked as scared as she did. I wasn't scared, exactly. In a strange way, I felt philosophical. I COULD KILL HER, I thought. I was a lot bigger than she was. She didn't look like a warrior- from her expression, it was clear she was also thinking that I could kill her. That wasn't what I meant, though. I could kill her. No one would stop me. All across the country, there were people watching their televisions. They were cheering. They were leaning forward in their seats, expecting to watch a murder. I could kill her and no one would stop me. I could kill her and people would praise me.

"Oh, excuse me," I said. I smiled, cutting it short when I wondered if it might look sarcastic. The girl didn't move. I supposed she was wondering if I'd chase her if she ran.

"I'm camped nearby." Maybe it wasn't a good idea to tell her. It didn't have to mean anything, though. I could find another place without any trouble. I'd see how this went and if I needed to I'd just move on.

"You seen the Careers?" the girl's voice sounded so normal. She sounded like a normal teen girl who might as easily have asked if I was coming to a party.

"I haven't seen them since the Bloodbath," I said. I tried to make a joke. "Tell me if you do, huh?"

I couldn't believe the girl smiled. "You too," she said. It wasn't really all a joke. I wondered if she was thinking the same as I was- that if we camped near each other, if the other got attacked, we'd hear the screams and be able to escape.

"Don't mind me, then," I said. "I'll stay out of your way."

"Don't let the crickets bite," the girl said.

"Oh, there's crickets around here?"

"When it's rainy," she said. She gave me an ominous smile "You'll find out."

16th place: Cactus Cleo- throat torn out by Trydan

Cactus' submitter scuttled him, so good thing I set Val up to kill people and we still have at least one killer. I went with Trydan because he and Trayne had just gotten a POV so people would definitely think this meant he died. Ha ha nope it was a prank bro. Cactus will be dearly missed by... idk maybe Leo will be sad, I'm honestly not sure. He didn't really have much chance in life, being raised by that guy, but he did some good in caring for plants. He'll be grass soon enough, which is probably a comfort to him.

SIZING INFO: I saw in the reviews that the scale of this arena is confusing. Yeah it totally is, you're not wrong. There are so many possibilities for a giant arena like this, and so many possibilities at different scales, but I don't really have time to make a dozen giant arenas with different scales for different stories. Since I'll probably only do one giant arena like this, I fudge the scale sometimes so I can use different cool ideas and features. In general, though, the Tributes are about 1/4 inch tall. This arena mostly takes inspiration from Honey I Shrunk the Kids and that's the size of the kids in the movie. But it changes a lot so kinda just squint.