BIRDIE SEGUARO- Alara Dory Banks

I wondered if they'd Reaped her on purpose. A girl that indomitable in her morals was no friend of the Capitol.

DORIAN SARGASSO- Kallik

It saved me from having to kill him later.

ROBBIE EMMERS- Amberlynn Hyde

He was the boy who'd wanted to save all those young Tributes. I remembered seeing all their faces after the Bloodbath and crying for him.

Amberlynn Hyde- District Nine female (15)

After Taylor's slick arm had slid from my grip, I'd taken off running. All I could think was there might be another frog and it could be me sliding down a throat and… drowning? Dissolving? Suffocating? I didn't want to think about it and I never wanted to see a frog again.

It didn't seem like the Careers had taken over the garden. There weren't many Careers left, when I thought of it. Neither Kallik nor Val had volunteered. Kallik had always seemed like such a nice girl in the Games Building. Without any Careers she had to keep up appearances around, she's probably built herself some kind of traditional shelter and was just trying to hold down the fort. Val had never struck me as the hunting type. He was probably really broken up about Octavia.

Somehow despite everything, it warmed my heart to see the garden. When I was little, it used to be the coolest thing to go visit my grandparents. It was still pretty cool, but they weren't as active anymore now that they were eighty and not seventy. Grandma once told me a story about Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and all their friends visiting a giant's castle. It was so cool hearing about the giant jiggly gelatine trampoline and the meringues that looked just like Donald's duck tail. It was the first thought in my head when I saw the rows of gigantic vegetables.

The bare dirt felt so soft and good under my feet I was tempted to take my shoes off. If I stayed around and it turned out there really wasn't anyone nearby, I just might. I picked out a pea plant and started toward it.

It was more like a tree up close. I'd never seen a pea still in its pod. I probably had in a book sometime at school, I guessed, but I didn't remember it. They looked like the helicopter leaves that twirled around when they fell off trees. It took some tugging to get it loose. I finally had to brace my foot against the stalk and jump back. The guitar-sized pod popped free and I landed on my butt. I stood up to see two boys looking at me from halfway between the pea plant and the big brown pumpkin-looking things. I jumped to my feet, hugging the pea pod to my chest like a baby and checking how far the tall grass was if I needed to run.

"You wanna fight?" I called. I didn't, but it seemed like a good idea to put on a brave face. Wasn't that what they said about wild animals if one attacked you?

"We can't hurt a girl!" One of the boys said, looking at the other. The other boy seemed unsure but didn't attack.

My sense of justice piqued. "Don't not hurt me because I'm a girl! That's sexist."

"I don't want to hurt anybody," the boy who'd spoken before said.

"I don't want to be here at all," said the other.

"We have plenty of peas. You can take some," the first boy said. He had buck teeth, while the other boy had long hair.

"Oh, you're camped here?" I asked. I didn't want to get in anyone's way. I hadn't moved toward the grass though. Maybe they might possibly let me stay with them? It had only been two days since Taylor died and I was already lonely.

"Yeah. I'm Trayne and this is Trydan," the buck-toothed boy said.

"I'm Amberlynn," I said.

"You seem cool," Trayne said. His face brightened. "You wanna-" he stopped himself and looked guiltily at Trydan. He raised a finger. "Can you give us a minute?"

The boys conferred in hushed tones. Clearly Trayne was more welcoming than Trydan, but Trydan didn't seem hostile. He was just more cautious. But Trayne must have won out, since he nodded triumphantly.

They turned back to me. "You wanna come ally with us?"

Lana Mason- District Six female (17)

Of all the Tributes who had gone before me, I wondered how many really thought they had any chance. How many of us had just been going through the motions, our sense of self-preservation forcing us to look for food and water but really just waiting to die? Even a lot of Careers must have been like that after they got here and saw that this wasn't like training. I'd always had pain in my heart for them. No little kid should hear their entire world say that their greatest value in life comes from learning to hurt people. It must burn a hole in their soul and I thought most of them didn't even know what had been stolen from them.

It was too late for all of us now. Careers and non-Careers alike, there were only two ways out of here. There were almost a dozen of us in here and that number would only go down. Every time I heard a cannon I felt a wave of relief. Someone else had died and I was relieved because it was one tiny glimmer that it might not be me. And what did it even matter? One of us will win, we all said. Maybe it will be me. I have a chance. A lot of us didn't, though. We just didn't.

I'd never known that you could mourn for yourself. I suppose I should have. My cousin Tyra had died of cancer when both of us were in fifth grade. Eventually she was so sick that even at that age I'd known she was going to die. I asked her about it once and she said she'd known for a year. She'd said it so matter-of-factly. She was so casual about it I'd thought maybe death wasn't a big deal. I knew better now. By the time I'd asked her, she'd already mourned herself. That was what I was doing now

I would have thought that when I was about to die I would think back on my life, but instead I was thinking about the future. I guess I was looking forward to the life I should have had to look back on. I looked forward, though, to all the things I'd dreamed of and never knew I would never have. Evelyn said we should get married as soon as we turned eighteen. She said my family was horrible to me and she wanted to take me away now. I thought Evelyn was out of my league, but she said I was kind and gentle and exactly the kind of person she wanted to raise a baby with.

I kicked my feet up in the air under the twig that formed the roof of my new home. Every time I thought about the family we talked all the time about starting, it made me want to wiggle with happiness like a little kid. I was going to have th baby, we'd decided- Evelyn had a huge phobia about throwing up. I didn't like it or anything, but I was proud that was something I could do for my family. For the father we wanted to find two boyfriends or husbands. We were going to do it the turkey baster way not the "old-fashioned way". If they wanted a baby too I thought I'd marry have two, but I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure I could give a baby away. We'd see how it turned out after we got married.

My heart went heavy inside me. But we won't find out. I wondered how many of the other Tributes were crying in the night, too. We were afraid and most of us were lonely. What is there to do when there's just no hope?

A streak of white winked in the sky in a gap in the leaves over my head. I smiled despite myself. It was always special to see a falling star. But the white flickered again and I saw I was mistaken. It was a parachute falling down toward me. I landed on the leaves and settled onto two of them. I poked my hand through the leaves to pull it down.

The canister rattled as I turned it upright. Flint, maybe? A bottle of iodine? I unscrewed the top and a little lump of plastic fell into my palm. The little red half-heart had a string through a loop on its top. The smooth middle part had a tiny magnet to let it attach to its other half. It was something you'd normally find two second-grade best friends wearing, but I could see how precious it was. Sponsor gifts were so expensive. Evelyn must have spent an entire paycheck for a useless, from a practical standpoint, gift. But of course it wasn't useless at all. I was holding her love for me, proven by how much she was willing to sacrifice just to say she wished she was with me. I clutched it to my chest before I slipped the string over my head. It was so much easier to hope if there was just one other person who thought hope was there. Maybe Evelyn was just blinded by love, but I at least wanted to try for her.

Persi Caraway- District Eleven female (14)

Enzo didn't look great. He looked like he'd live, but he looked like it would take a long, long time before he was able to run or fight or have any chance of getting out of here. We'd used some of our iodine to wipe his wound and hopefully stave off infection. More accurately, Clover had used some of our iodine. I'd wanted to tell him that we should save it, that Enzo would have to live or die on his own and we couldn't afford it, but it had seemed unwise to air my opinion when my allies felt differently. I resented it, though. I resented the burden Enzo had put on us. I knew he hadn't wanted to get injured but I didn't have the luxury of compassion here. If I didn't get home, my family would be cut apart. My brothers and sisters would go to orphanages or foster care or even the streets, if Eleven cared about them the same way it cared for everyone else. I knew what happened in foster care. I wasn't going to throw five children to abusers and pedophiles for a boy I'd just met.

It was a chilly night. After leaving the nettle thicket, we'd set up in the shelter of a small bush, crawling under the low-growing outer branch to a higher canopy near the trunk where we could stand and not have to bend over. Clover and I had foraged around and found some puffed-out dandelions we used to make beds. It was like something out of a fairy-tale, except for the pale and shivering boy with a slice missing from his side. Enzo hadn't flagged in his good spirits. He was smiling and joking even though his bandages wouldn't let him laugh without pain. It was only when he was sleeping that his face went tight and his arms folded tight on his chest for warmth. Clover had finished his watch not long ago. It was only me and the night.

Hard decisions came with the cold and the darkness. There wasn't room for humanity in the Games. There were the dead and there was the survivor. I'd seen from Kallik that the Games would rot anyone. It would come for Clover eventually. He'd pulled Enzo off the ground back in the nettles. There would come a time when he would regret it. Maybe he already did. I regretted it. Alone in the night, I didn't pretend I didn't regret it. One less person in the Games was one less person who could kill me.

It wasn't what I was about to do that I deliberated over. It was how I would do it. The answer came after a few moments of consideration. I went to Enzo's side and knelt by him. I peeled the edge of his bandage away from his wound. He stirred but didn't wake as the strip of shirt cloth tugged a bit of the scabbed tissue loose. Blood oozed up in the bottom of the wound and started to trickle. I bent close to Enzo's chest as life leaked from him. Only when his breathing went shallow did I turn to Clover.

A cannon would wake Clover. He would jerk upwards and he would check on Enzo. Unless I timed it just right and reattached the bandage before he died, Clover would see it was loose. Maybe he would think it was just an accident, but I didn't want to take that risk. Likewise, I didn't want to risk Enzo waking after what I was about to do to Clover. Both the timing and the method were necessary against two Tributes both far larger than myself.

I braced my hands on the rock I'd been sitting on and wiggled it free of the dirt around it. It was a little larger than a football but light enough I could strain and raise it over my head. I walked to Clover and stood with one foot on either side of my head. I dropped my arms and let gravity rush the rock downwards. When I was too close to miss, I let go.

Clover's cannon sounded immediately, before you could register the damage from the crushing blow and even before the single spasmodic jerk in one leg. His face was hidden entirely under the indifferent stone. I looked at the blood leaking from either side and then I looked down into Enzo's open eyes.

Enzo hadn't risen. His eyes were on me but loosely focused. The blood loss was dulling his cognition as well as his movement. He tried to pull his head upward off the ground and failed. That might not last, though. There was a chance, however small, that his wound would clot again and eventually he would heal.

Enzo's bleary expression changed from confusion to something else as I hooked my fingers under the rock. As it tipped loose I saw the flat plane of Clover's nose against his blood-slick face, both eyes closed but one leaking fluid that reflected the moonlight. Enzo tried again to lift his head as I walked over. He didn't have the strength to speak. One arm slid weakly upwards, palm up, in front of his head in supplication. I stood over him with one foot on either side of his head.

...be a shame if LCS made hers super ridiculously downbeat.

11th place: Clover Nguyen- head smashed by Persi

Clover got shafted by virtue (vice?) of me wanting Persi to kill her allies in cold blood. He had a ton going for him and is the type to win one of my normal stories, but as you've guessed, this is a weird one. Clover got robbed in-universe and out, since he was a clever and adaptable guy in a very creatively ripe Arena.

10th place: Enzo Charmont- head smashed by Persi

What a bright, fun Tribute Enzo was. It's all the more bitter he died helplessly begging Persi not to go down this path. He should have been able to light some more fires. It was all he asked.

I've been waiting for this chapter title until most people had cottoned on to me. You all know I hate sad stories. This time, though, I had the fun happy SYOT with Survivor. This one time, I thought it was the perfect moment to finally give my more morbid readers their morbid dark desires. Dunno how much I have left in me, especially after Prime Time, but I'll give it all I've got.