"Why would you want to do that? asked Hopper indignantly, beaming to talk about his interview. "You saw the interview, right?" He wanted to stand up and yell that he was doing everything right, but kept calm, deciding that this might simply be that Dhina was going to be punished. "I talked about my family's profession as train conductors, and how smart people in the district grow vine plants up the sides of our homes, and how my favorite food here is the blackberry pie because it reminds me of my mom's blackberry tart which she makes once a year on New Years." he says this with a piece of rare steak hanging off of the edge of his fork, a bit of egg yoke threatening to drip down onto the silken tablecloth. "I gave a steller interview," he finally says, putting the piece of meat into his mouth and laying his hands on the table in veiled frustration. 

While Hopper is making his rant, Euphemia scrolls through her tablet, biting her lip as she does. When Hopper sits down, she stands up and cocks her head to the side, unnerved by something. "Detta," she whispers, laying down her tablet and picking up her coffee. "I stand corrected about my earlier statements. Someone else gave the worst interview. Children, please leave the room while we discuss this," she motions for them to leave, nodding her head as the kids reluctantly pick up their plates. They take their food and scamper from the room.

“Do you even hear yourself, when you talk?”

Dhina gives Hopper a sidelong glance on the way back to their rooms.

"What do you mean? My slight embellishment of my family's trade?" he asks, leaving manners behind and scooping up eggs and sausage on his toast. 

With one more sideways glance as if to ask Dhina what was on her mind, he takes a bite of his toast and goes into his bedroom. There, he finishes eating and takes a shower, going heavy on the cologne once again when he gets out. Hopper spends a fair amount of time in front of the mirror before putting on a track suite and sneakers that have a big number six on them. He takes one last glance at himself before heading out and meeting with Dhina and Detta, following them into the elevator to begin his training.

The training area is divided by survival skills and combat. The combat area has trainers who can assist with learning hand to hand combat skills; every type of low tech weapon imaginable sits there. An entire rack of swords and knives of every variety, spears of varying lengths, bows and arrows, even slings throwing knives and scimitars. There are targets shaped like people made of burlap and easily cut-able materials, some propped up on stands, others dangling off of the walls or popping in out and of hiding spots. Target practice. 

The survival side has many more instructors, of all sorts of varieties. They teach everything from hunting to camouflage to knit tying. There's a first aid instruction section where you can learn how to burn wounds closed or how to survive an emergency self limb amputation. The tributes are advised to divide their time evenly between the stations, and to leave the game makers alone and let them watch, and not to fight with each other. Then the tributes are released and allowed to begin their first day of training. 

The district six tributes each go their own ways, Hopper going to the combat side to examine the blunt instruments, Dhina wandering over to survival to see if she can learn to identify edible plants.  

Hopper curiously examines the bludgeons and hammers, curious to see what he can properly handle. He picks up the small hammer from when he had shown off with the knives, wishing he had some proper railroad spikes, because then he could have gotten a heavier tool and been less precise. Putting that one back, he decidedly picks up a proper bludgeon but finds even as he lifts it that it will fall out of his hands, and swiftly returns the thing before he's properly removed it from the shelf. 

don't let them see you struggle with anything, he tells himself, shaking his head as he picks up a less heavy bludgeon and gets the feel of it in his hands. I can do this, he tells himself, approaching a training dummy. Railroad spikes and people are basically the same thing.

After knocking around dummies for about twenty minutes, during which time he had to be corrected on posture three times after almost pulling muscles and one incident where the bludgeon nearly flew out of his hands and into another tribute, he returned the bludgeon to its rack, exhausted. Wiping the sweat from his brow and realizing that all the rich food and past few days without exercise had put him a bit out of shape already, he turns, ready to find a less grueling activity. As he approaches the survival training area, he notices that pretty district four girl again. "Hello miss Emily," he says, trying to hide being out of breath.

“Hello.”

"So what skills were you planning to work on? I was thinking of learning to make fire. Care to join me?" he offers his arm and gestures toward the fire starting area.

“Sure.”

She puts down what she was working on—a makeshift net—and takes his arm.

She has a delicate touch.

"So why were you weaving a net? fishing is your district's industry, isn't it?" asks Hopper, helping Emily to the floor in front of the fire starting materials and picking up a flint. He hands her one as well and the two of them watch for a moment as the instructor shows them how take flammable materials and use the flint to light them. Each tribute attempts to copy.

“It is. I know a lot about fishing techniques, but not so much about making fishing equipment, so I’m studying—”

A spark flies into her kindling and kicks up a tiny pillar of smoke. She ducks down to tend to it.

"That's cool," says Hopper, wrinkling his nose as he struggles to get a handle on his flint. After a few minutes he succeeds on the flint and moves on to stripping a wire of insulation with pliers, attaching it to a battery, and using it to light some steel wool. He laughs maniacally and passes the pliers to Emily and says "I used to try and do stuff like that as a little kid, but my mom wouldn't let me. Now my survival depends on how well I can master it." He starts feeding bits of dried leaves into the little spark he's set and blowing on it as Emily attempts to copy what he did, when both tributes look up to notice one of the game makers starring at them, taking notes.

Almost as soon as the game maker notices he's being watched watching the tributes, he finishes his notes and wanders off to go judge someone else.

"What do you think they even judge us for? Why all the testing and the watching and judging and training?" asks Hopper, really unsure why they aren't just thrown in the arena cold. 

"They want us to get good at fighting each other. That's the whole point of these games."

Emily leans in to speak to Hopper, not quite whispering but not letting her voice carry far either.

"What is it, Emily?" asks Hopper, his eyes going wide in excitement as he leans in to the girl.

“Look at them.”

She leans back a bit now, guiding Hopper’s gaze towards a pair of tributes—one from District 1, the other from District 2—who currently spar with holographic enemies on the far side of the training center. Their movements are precise and deadly.

”They call themselves ‘careers’.” Emily says that last word like it’s a curse. “They’ve been training for this, practically since the first Hunger Games aired.”

"What?!" exclaims Hopper, biting his lips as he eyes the tributes. "Is that even legal?"

The two pairs in question appear to be skilled fighters. One stocky boy with sandy hair from district one appearing lethal with a spear, the tawny girl tribute from the pair utilizing obstacles to dodge jabs from a holographic sword and get in jabs with a pair of round scythes. The pair from two, meanwhile, hone their skills of archery together, each landing one bulls eye after another in sync with each other.

Do..." mutters Hopper, drawing a deep breath as he takes it all in "Did any of them volunteer?"

“All four of them did.” Emily grimaces. “There’s no rule against it.”

[Developer's Note: Do not under any circumstances make career tributes against the rules. Do keep a close eye on career training facilities to ensure they contain no subversive elements but, so long as their aggression remains focused on opposing districts’ tributes, their proliferation will bring about a stronger Panem.]

For a moment Hopper's eye catches that of the stocky boy's from district one, and a shudder runs through him. He turns back toward Emily and take her by the hand, not wanting to show his lovely new companion how scared he is. "Come on, let's go learn how to find food or identify poisonous plants, or maybe climb around on that thing." He says this and gestures to a obstacle course that is still being set up by some capital people, meant to train in navigating dangerous terrain. 

He leads Emily past the contraption and toward the edible plant identification area, where Dhina is training. 

"What's in the kitchen, Dhina?" asks Hopper, grinning gladly that he has something to distract him from the new and terrifying revelation.

Dhina holds up two fistfuls of berries.

”Well here, we have some death.” She shakes her left hand.

”And over here?” She opens her right hand to show off a pile of differently colored berries. “We have even more death?”

Hopper looks at her seriously, inspecting the berries in her hands. They do not look anything like the berries his mother grew on the side of their home. One looked like round little red berries, the other like blue berries only much tinier. "Yeah, I think you should stick to recognizable plants," the boy mutters, shrugging. 

"Emily, what do you know about poisonous plants. Don't you come from swampy coastline?" he says this so innocently that only Dhina picks up on the fact that he is showing off.

That’s okay. Dhina can roll her eyes all day if need be. She has So Much ocular endurance.

“I do, yes.”

She ducks down and examines a few of the plants more closely.

”I recognize these three. Not sure if any of the rest even grow where I’m from.”

"Okay, let's try to memorize as many unfamiliar edible plants as possible, and that way we can avoid any outside of the one's we absolutely know. Is that a viable strategy?" Hopper asks the trainer, who smiles and nods, glad to have a tribute who clearly knows how to train for survival.