The rest of breakfast Haymitch continued to go over what we were going to need to do during training. It was an extensive list and I don't think I remembered much of it. By the time he was done, Effie Trinket had us up out of our seats and rushing to the elevator, claiming we were going to be late if we didn't hurry along. In our haste I watched Jerikan Dashton rushing to get Diane and Trevor to the elevator. They were both sporting matching black uniforms with gold trim and white number thirteens sewn to their uniforms' shoulders and backs.
Effie Trinket pushed me into the elevator, causing me to trip and crash into Diane.
While apologizing to her, I noticed Diane looked so nervous. She looked like a scared little mouse, her head moving this way and that. I had seen Prim acting the same way just before we had to leave for the Reaping yesterday morning. A flash of pain filled me as I thought of my sister and how anxious she probably was for me. I pushed it to the back of my mind, knowing now wasn't the time to dwell on such thoughts. I turned my attention to Diane's partner.
Trevor on the other hand stood tall and stoic. He looked so much different than he had at his reaping. If I hadn't known any better I would swear he was a Career tribute. His aloofness and extreme calm were more than even I could manage, but probably not that hard for a Career to handle pulling off.
The elevator didn't take long to reach the underground floor of the Training Center, opening to a broad room with long metal tables and benches spaced around it. I could tell what this was without Effie Trinket having to explain it to me. It was obviously the dining hall for the tributes and probably the place we'd have to wait in for our individual time with the Gamemakers.
Effie Trinket and Jerikan Dashton walked us to a sliding, grated, metal door that opened to the gymnasium where the training would commence. It was huge and filled with stations of all sizes and racks with an assortment of metal weapons. I walked towards a circular platform where the other 20 tributes stood waiting in their colourful uniforms all bearing the number of their districts on their shoulders and backs.
I looked at the tributes surrounding me and grimaced. Almost all of them, except for the five or six of the younger tributes, were taller than me. Even Peeta was a few inches taller than my height. The Careers not only had height on me but they were more built and well fed compared to any of the other tributes. Even the giant of an eighteen year old from District eleven, Thresh Gunthorn, had not nearly as healthy a build as the Career boys and even the girls. But I wasn't really surprised, since they had been training since they could walk.
But I had something I knew no one else had; real world practice. I knew how to build traps, make fires and snare prey better than them, I was sure. I was also quick on my feet and just as silent. My father had taught me how to hunt for survival not just for killing, and that would be my advantage in the arena.
Once all of us had arrived in the large gymnasium, thirty-five men and women all wearing black uniforms trimmed with white, filed into the area with ten peacekeepers following them. Above us, I could see and hear the richly dressed Gamemakers pouring into the seats of the comfortably furnished viewing platform with a long table covered with extravagant meals and pitchers of, what I assumed to be, rich wines.
So the people who put us here were going to watch us even before the individual sessions. Wish I could knock all of them off their high horses right now. Unfortunately my plans for teaching the Gamemakers a lesson was interrupted by the voice of a tall, dark skinned woman. Her large eyes looked at all of us as her black ponytail swung when she moved.
"In one week twenty-five of you will be dead." She said in a strong voice. Well she certainly was one of those get to the point people. "Only one of you will come out of this alive. Who that person is will depend on which of you pays attention for the next three days. I'm Atala Blackstone, head trainer and though my job is to make sure you all know the necessary skills to make it through the next few days I will most likely fail half of you. But only if you don't do exactly what myself and the other trainers teach you."
She looked us all sharply in the eyes before continuing, "There are only two rules I expect you all to follow. One: no fighting with the other tributes. You'll have plenty of time for that in the Arena. If you do decide to fight with them, the Peacekeepers are here and will make sure you are punished for breaking this rule."
I looked at the Peacekeepers, gulping a bit. I certainly did not want to know what the punishment was. "I will inform you that all the trainers, including myself, are trained Peacekeepers."
She stopped at that, but it wasn't like we needed any incentive to listen to her. "The second rule is that all of you must complete the four compulsory exercises: The gauntlets, the rope course, basic combat, and basic survival. Each one is marked with a green strip by their station. After you have completed each one you will be allowed to begin individual lessons. My advice is not to ignore the survival skills. Everybody wants to grab a weapon, but most of you will die from natural causes. 10% from infection, 20% from dehydration, 5% from lack of food, and 15% from the elements. Exposure can kill as easily as your fellow tributes can."
Atala then spent the next ten minutes reading out the lists of stations the training center had to offer, each one was listed under a category with a different coloured strip for each one. Green for compulsory exercises, blue for survival skills, purple for ranged weapons, red for melee weapons, black for hand to hand combat, white for weights and yellow for sprinting and terrain maneuvering. I knew from what Haymitch had told us that Peeta and I would be training at the blue, and maybe the yellow, stations for the next three days.
"Good luck and may the odds be ever in your favour," Atala finished. A tall male trainer instructed us to form a line in front of the gauntlets for the first compulsory exercise.
And by god it was brutal. The gauntlets were a series of three daunting obstacle courses, probably designed to help tributes prepare for different terrains. To start we had to jump from raised platforms as quickly as we could and to make it difficult the trainers swung padded clubs at us. If you made it past that, you had to get through the next part, where you had to move from metal twisted bars while dangling 15 feet off the ground. It was a terrible fall even with the padded ground. In fact one tribute, Cruis from District 8, I think, fell so hard that he sprained his knee. He had to be given a knee brace to wear for the rest of the day.
That part wasn't even the most dangerous part of the course, that part belonged to the end were you had to climb fifteen more feet vertically into the air and then climb straight down once we reached the other side. Thankfully the climb down was on a bit of an angle so it wasn't as dangerous as the climb up but I had to admit, when my turn came, I almost slipped twice on my way up and three times on my way down. The Capitol had always been a stickler for realism.
Once Peeta and I finished the first compulsory exercise, we made our way over to the blue stations. Starting with knot tying. It wasn't too hard, well for me anyway. The knots the trainer instructed us in how to make were simple like square and figure eight knots, nothing all that complicated to do. Peeta and I didn't spend long there once we had both mastered the basic knots in under forty five minutes. I had figured that Peeta would have a bit more trouble than me learning some of these, but so far he was a quick learner.
We spent the next hour and fifteen minutes until lunch learning how to start fires and make decent shelters out of common materials found in forests and mountain terrains. Despite Haymitch's suggestion, Peeta and I did try to show off a little but I don't think the Gamemakers really cared that our shelter could withstand a large wind or that we made fires in only half the time our trainer did.
Still the Gamemakers paid extremely close attention to us, constantly looking our way whenever the Careers weren't doing something skillful. It creeped me out how tentatively they watched us. Even during lunch when the trainers were readying for the next five hours of training, they were speaking to the ones we spent our first three hours with.
I watched them as closely as they had us while I ate calmly beside Peeta at one of the long metal tables. I eventually got bored of looking at them and gazed around at the rest of the tributes.
Like me and Peeta, most of them sat with their fellow tribute eating the meat filled sandwiches and leafy green salads with baskets of bread rolls. The only tribute not eating with people from just their Districts were the Careers and oddly enough Setus from District Three. I looked to see that his fellow tribute, Cida was sitting with Gunnar and Eunia from District Seven.
Peeta looked up from his sandwich and whispered into my ear when he saw me looking at this odd sight. "Haymitch told me while you were getting more food at breakfast, that lunch is when you see whose allied themselves with who. Bet by the third day there will be a lot more mismatches at the tables."
I smiled, turning my eyes to look at him, almost forgetting that we were in public as the desire just to touch him or lean against him hit me hard in that moment. Peeta cleared his throat as he decided to change the conversation as he quizzed me on where each bread roll came from.
"That one comes from Four right?" I asked as he held up a fish shaped loaf tinted green from flecks of seaweed baked into it.
Peeta nodded. "Yep, you can also find them with chunks of fish too, but it doesn't look like the Capitol added those to the basket." He muttered to himself as he picked up a crescent moon roll dotted with seeds. "Where's this from?"
"District Eleven. The seeds are the give away for that one." Peeta laughed and then held up a roll of rye bread with chunks of meat noticeable through the crust.
"That's from Ten, and they seem to have more meat than bread in their rolls," I joked, my laughing echoing and receiving looks from the other tributes. However, my light laugh died quickly when Peeta picked up an ugly looking drop biscuit.
A lump came to my throat. "That's from home," I said as my eyes teared over the roll. I wiped them away quickly and sat straight. This was just another of the Capitol's tricks to make the tributes miss home and they weren't getting another tear from me.
Peeta stopped with that one, setting the bread back down in the basket and touching my hand lightly, his eyes looked into mine to show that he was sorry for making me cry even for a split second. I shook my head at his unspoken words.
"I'm fine Peeta. We should finish eating." I grabbed my sandwich and started chewing to refrain from saying anymore.
"Everyone please line up by the Rope Course!" Atala's loud voice called out as we all shuffled back into the training centre. She was standing in front of a course that was set up exactly where the gauntlets had been not one hour ago. I had to look up to see the sheer magnitude of the rope course. Ten large beams pointed toward the ceiling of the centre; each were 30 feet high with three platforms at different heights. Every platform was connected by thick rope ladders that looked like tree branches when you looked straight up at them.
The course was designed for climbing trees and maneuvering through the treetops. I was already pretty skilled at climbing trees so this course didn't faze me. I climbed up the rope course all the way to the top and looked down from the platform at the other tributes, trainers, and the Gamemakers. I wasn't the only tribute to make it this high, a few of the Careers tried to but they could only get to the middle height before falling onto one of the safety nets below the course. Peeta had almost made it as high as I got but he lost his grip on the fourth top ladder and fell onto the netting.
The only other tributes that were able to climb to where I was were the young but agile Rue and the stoic faced Eunia. This wasn't a surprise, seeing as they were both from districts were tree climbing was almost genetic. The male tributes from Eleven and Seven, Thresh and Gunnar, had both almost reached the top, climbing higher than the Careers and even Peeta, but Gunnar lost his footing on the third to last ladder and Thresh fell off in the middle of climbing the last ladder.
After an hour of watching the other 21 tributes fail climbing all the way to the top, Rue, Eunia and myself were instructed to climb down one at a time. Eunia went down first, seeing as she had climbed up the course the quickest and would be able to climb down faster than myself or Rue. I went down next, watching my footing as I climbed, so I didn't trip or knock Eunia off the ladder.
Now I'm not sure how it happened or when, but I do remember that one second Rue was beginning her climb down the rope ladder and the next she was dangling from it by the hand, crying out in fear. I looked down and saw why. There was no net under her. The image of Rue, falling to her death, made adrenaline rush through my body. I almost felt like I flew up the ladder, my eyes fixed on the dangling Rue. I knew if I didn't get there in time she would most certainly fall to her death. It was only seconds but those seconds felt like hours. My hand reached out, grabbing Rue's wrist and pulled her up to the platform above us just in time. Any longer and I knew she would have lost her grip.
Both of us were panting from the experience. Unable to talk. We both looked down as we heard the trainers rushing about, they were being yelled at by several Gamemakers for not having better safety equipment in place for the course. As we watched them, I heard a slight, hoarse sound coming from Rue. She was laughing, weakly at first but eventually it was loud and clear. I joined her a few seconds later.
I wasn't really sure if she was laughing at the people below us or if she was trying to calm herself down from the ordeal but whatever the reason, we were laughing, and still laughing as a trainer came up to get us off the platform. He was on a weird kind of elevator, with glass fencing around a third of the platform. He told us that for our own safety we were to take the elevator down with him. Rue and I weakly got up and stepped onto the elevator.
The ride down was slow, to ensure no one fell off the platform. As the trainer busily talked with an unseen person on an earpiece, Rue and I were silent. Well, that is until Rue looked at me and asked, "Can I… can I spend the rest of the day with you?" Her words were a little stuttered at start, but I assumed that was from the recent ordeal.
My answer was simple. "Of course you can."
From that point on Rue followed Peeta and I around wherever we went. I noticed, as we went through the blue striped stations and a few of the easier purple, red and yellow stations, that Rue had similar skills to those I possessed.
She was quick and agile. When we tried some of the yellow stations Rue would beat or almost beat me in the sprinting courses and when faced with terrain courses she was able to maneuver through all plausible terrains, except snow. Rue had found that terrain challenging.
She had good aim. She wanted to try some knife throwing an hour after practicing snaring the rabbits, squirrels, and hares the Capital used for the snaring station. I tried not to show off at that station, calculating my throws so that I never hit any of the desired targets. Rue however held nothing back, aiming and throwing the daggers at many of the fake vital organs on the dummy. I was impressed with her and when I asked her where she had learned that she gave me an interesting answer.
"When you're little in my district you're not allowed to work in the orchards but moms still bring their kids out. To keep busy we throw rocks at fruit to see if we can make them fall. I guess it's not the same as a rock, but I know how to throw things at something to hit where I want it to," she explained, grabbing another dagger and throwing it at the stomach area.
I smiled, with surprise and amusement on my face. "All that from throwing rocks at fruit?"
Rue grinned at me.
After we did about a half hour of knife throwing, I discovered the third skill that Rue and I both possessed. Her knowledge of plants. She passed the test on edible, medicinal and toxic plants with almost a perfect score; similar to the scoring I received.
I guess it wasn't surprising though. Rue came from Eleven, whose main industry was agriculture. Anyone who's been harvesting or has family members who harvest plants most of their life would know the difference between a blueberry and a nightshade berry.
Me, I learned most of my plant knowledge from my mother and the rest I learned from my dad.
Peeta and I decided to try a more simple red station after that. Peeta thought that training with clubs would be safe enough for us to try so we did. Rue however wanted to try more ranged weapons and left towards the purple stations. While I was waiting in line, I heard a ruckus from beside me. Cato, the frightening male tribute for Two, was yelling at Jason, District Six's male tribute.
He was complaining that Jason had stolen his knife; like it really mattered since it wasn't like he had gotten it from the sponsors. It wasn't long before the confrontation got louder and Cato began to shove Jason into the terrain station blocks he had been sitting on.
Soon everyone was watching from Gamemakers to the other tributes, it got so bad that the Peacekeepers had to break the two of them apart. I was honestly surprised they let it go that long, but the Gamemakers loved a good fight scene. As the Peacekeepers pulled Cato away to a room in the back I heard a soft sound coming from above me. A slight smile crossed my face.
There was Rue laying in netting that held up the smaller climbing course, almost fifteen feet in the air. She looked down at the two boys holding Cato's knife in her hands. I looked over at Thresh, Rue's fellow tribute and found him looking up where Rue lay as well, smirking and shaking his head at her. I looked at the floor, still smiling. I was glad that the experience from before hadn't stopped her from climbing again. A sudden whistle sounded in my ears, I turned my head, my thoughts interrupted.
Atala called out the tributes, telling them to go back to their stations as Cato threatened Jason that he would kill him in the arena; that he would be the first to die. He then added that he didn't know who he was messing with.
Peeta whispered into my ear, "Focus on the training stations Katniss. Ignore those idiots," he told me. I nodded, returning to watch for my turn.
After that incident the trainers had us finish our final stations for the day - which for me and Peeta was the clubs - and return back to our floors for dinner and sleep.
I sighed when I saw Effie Trinket waiting for us by one of the two glass elevators. "Come, come now dears, dinner is ready for you both."