ENZO CHARMONT- Persi Caraway

I learned something about myself when I killed them both. I learned it didn't bother me at all. Even if it hadn't been the Games, I think it wouldn't have bothered me. Enzo and Clover were alive and now they were dead. They weren't me and they weren't my siblings. Everyone else, I didn't care about. I could do anything to them and it wouldn't bother me.

CLOVER NGUYEN- Persi Caraway

He'd had so many good ideas. If I'd thought about it, I would have asked more about them before I killed him. They would come in handy for someone like me.

Nubu Sanders- District Twelve mentor

The horrors didn't stop for a mentor. I watched a little girl break a sleeping boy's head into pieces and walk away without another look. If Enzo or Josie has lived, they would have shared my fate: watching children kill each other year after year after year.

District Twelve

One street kid dies, another takes their place. In a month no one remembered Josie. Someone else's little hands were grabbing the jewelry and cosmetics she would have been stealing to resell. Enzo's parents joined that mournfully welcoming group of those who have lost a child. Between sickness, hunger and cold, the Games families didn't make up ten percent of it.

Trayne Treadwell-Lang- District Six male (17)

Amberlynn sat a few feet away from me, both of us facing the other as we worked with the dirt. Trydan had managed to start a fire with some nerd science about friction, which opened a whole new realm of food possibilities to us. He said we could use it to roast chunks of potato. That was all well and good, but FRIED potato was even better. We didn't have anything in the way of pots or pans, though. My second great idea of the day was that we could make some out of clay and bake them over our fire.

"But what if the dirt around here has no clay?" Trydan had asked.

Honestly, I hadn't known that dirt and clay were different things, or at least that not all dirt had at least a little clay in it. I wasn't alone, at least- Amberlynn said the same thing before I had a chance. It was worth a shot, anyway. Maybe even if it wasn't clay it would bake a little. People made mud containers, didn't they?

Amberlynn looked over my shoulder at the smoke rising from the hole we'd cut in the ceiling of our house to vent the smoke. Only Kallik and Val were left of the quasi-Career pack, and we were pretty sure Val left as soon as Octavia died. Either one on their own was dangerous but might take off once they saw there were three of us. The fire would let us cook food, it would warm up the chilly nights, and a burning log in the face wasn't fun if someone were to attack us.

"It's like a cute little household," she said. We'd made the same joke before she'd arrived. It was hard to ignore the implications of two people living in the same house and sleeping right next to each other every night. It was because we were cold and didn't necessitate a relationship, but it didn't preclude one.

Oh, right. Boyfriend.

Well, no harm thinking but not doing. Trydan might be a bit hard to live with long-term anyway. I could definitely guess he had far higher cleaning standards than I did. I could just picture him scolding me about a "disgusting" kitchen after I'd just cleaned and thought it looked fine. But no one could blame a guy for thinking that if you had to be stuck in a death match with someone, it sucked a little less if your ally was cool and had handsome long hair. I wondered if he thought I was cute too and smirked just a little.

"So are you two together?" Amberlynn asked. I'd have thought I'd given myself away, but she was looking intently down at the skillet she was trying to mold.

"No, Trydan just broke up and he's not looking yet," I said. "That and the whole Hunger Games thing."

"We're probably all gonna die. Might as well pair up and have fun," Amberlynn said.

"In the Arena? With an audience? Kinky," I said. Probably she meant in some secluded area, but you never knew where the cameras were. I was pretty sure they had some tiny drones that could follow you anywhere.

Amberlynn looked up cheekily. "I was a party planner back home. People get crazy sometimes."

"Maybe…" I joked. "I'll put my sock outside the door so you know."

Amberlynn looked over my shoulder again and I saw Trydan standing in the doorway of our house. He ambled over to a row of plants I'd thought were weeds at first. Turned out they were onion tops. Trydan tugged at one of the long tubular leaves and popped off a fist-sized strip. Potatoes and onions were even better than potatoes.

It wasn't going to last. It wasn't even a jinx to say it. It was just cold truth it wouldn't last. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the day would come. It wasn't today, though. Today we were making pots. Today we had potatoes and onions and our little household and judging by the firmness of the bowl I was molding, I was pretty sure we even had clay.

Shep Howard- District Ten male (17)

There were nine of us left. It was the part of the Games where people back home could keep us all in their heads and we're starting to wonder who was going to be the one who made it. Public relations people and media types were starting to put together our stories to best be able to celebrate whoever won. Some were obvious. Kallik, the resilient minority who wanted to give back to her people. Val, the tragic bereaved brother. Poor plucky impoverished Persi providing for her family.

And me? What was my story? They could make me a simple country boy starry-eyed with city sights. I'd want to throw up if they did. I lived in the country. That didn't mean it was all I thought about. There was a library in Ten, stupid as the Capitol thought we were. If any of them had ever bothered to ask, they would know my favorite book was East of Eden, not Little House on the Prairie (not that there was anything wrong with that one). And even if I did spend my entire life out on the land? There was more science in a farm than most Capitolites used in their life. My family knew how to test the acidity of the soil and its moisture retention. We could ease a lamb out of its mother feet-first or sideways or in a hundred other ways that would have killed it if there wasn't an expert around. I wasn't just a farm boy, was what I was getting at. But I was to them. I knew they thought I was a throwaway and I knew it decreased my odds. A handsome boy like Val or a good-hearted girl like Lana would get favors from rich Capitol sponsors. I was just another one they were waiting to watch die.

A particularly forceful gnat stung my side. I swatted at it, but my hand jerked halfway to my cheek. I'd seen a cricket here the size of a dog. Even a gnat would be bird- sized. It was no insect that was still wedged into my skin.

I shot to my feet from where I'd been sitting with my back against a dandelion stalk. I pulled the dart out and looked at it calmly. It didn't make a difference, did it? If I panicked? Whatever was on the dart was inside me already. I wondered if I had seconds or minutes left.

Another dart blurred in the corner of my vision. My eyelid snapped down faster than I could think and it glanced off my eyelid and brow. I bent down like I was taking cover and grabbed a fist-sized rock. I threw it in the direction that the dart had come from. It vanished into the thick grass and then there was a grunt.

I thought the poison would take effect before I even found my attacker, but I still felt unaffected when I came into a small clearing and saw Val. He was bent over with one hand on his knee for support and the other on his bleeding forehead. He saw me coming and put out his bloody hand to signal me to pause. I couldn't believe the nerve when he smiled.

"Hey, man, I was just messing with you," he said, like this was all some casual joke. "There wasn't even anything on there."

Oh my God, he's telling the truth. I still felt fine, other than a tiny sting from the impact. More than that, though, why the second shot? Maybe to get a bigger dose, but he'd aimed for the eye. That wasn't business. It was pleasure. He'd known it wouldn't kill me. He'd been shooting at my eye for fun like a hellion little kid throws rocks at birds.

"What's the matter with you?!" I rushed forward at Val, who was still dazed from the rock to his head. He was still smiling like a maniac- like an imp?- when I hit him. The impact bowled him onto his back in the dirt. I kicked him in the face and he finally stopped smiling.

"It was just a joke!' he whined, his teeth bloody. "You're killing me!"

"Damn right I'm killing you!" I shouted. Adrenaline was shooting through me from both the certainty of death and then the sudden realization that I was going to live. I had no doubts that Val WOULD HAVE poisoned the dart if he'd had any poison. He hadn't, but he was just as happy to cause pain for no sake other than causing pain. He was a threat even outside of the arena, and here he was far too dangerous to spare.

Val's arm flashed out. I thought he was going to beg for mercy again, but then a needling pain flared iny second toe. I jerked my foot back, reading the dart from Val's grip. He took his chance to get to his feet while I was regaining my balance and flee like the coward he was.

I let him go. Someone as sadistic as him would get himself killed eventually picking on someone stronger- Kallik, maybe. I didn't want to risk another fight and I didn't want to get dirt and debris in my wound, especially if it was a deep puncture. I carefully peeled off my shoe and sock, trying not to drag anything into the wound. I'd gotten lucky, though. Val had been trying to nail my foot to the ground, but the thick shoe material had resisted him. The needle had penetrated it, but it had bent in the effort. Instead of a deep puncture, it had dragged a painful but not too deep trench out of the side of my second toe. I'd still want to keep it clean and keep an eye on it, but there was far less risk of tetanus than otherwise. And that was another thing about backwoods farm boys. We know puncture

wounds and rusty nails are deadly. So we keep our tetanus shots up-to-date.

A lot happened recently so I didn't have anything planned. I had some free time though so I wrote a few casual POVs to catch up on people who haven't been in focus lately.