The gleaming steam engine locomotive dominates the town square. Banners stream from the buildings, compliments of the capital. The buildings in this nicer part of district 6 are made from old cinder block station houses, watch towers, industrial complexes and warehouses where 'wealthier citizens' can live and run businesses. Engineers, locomotive captains, heads of mechanics shops. There's even some markets inside of the warehouses, places where merchants can sell food, clothing, boots, and tools, either new or refurbished. One large gray warehouse bares the sign 'Apothecaria.' There's even some food stalls attached to bicycles or built into the trunks of pick up trucks so that working people can buy a cheap, worker's lunch during midday break. But the locomotive dominates the square, beautiful and polished and black against the red iron of rust and the pale gray of the cinder blocks. It isn't an uncommon sight to spy a few rail-yard workers or mechanics siting on the steps leading up to it or standing by it, eating their lunch of thick bread stuffed with various meets, maybe apples or other available fruits, and dark tea. 

     However, on this day instead of the laughs of comradery of working people relieved by a midday break, the locomotive was guarded by two peacekeepers in white armor with their semis in hand. Peace keepers also perched atop the buildings, looking down like vultures waiting to swoop in for a kill. Ropes cordoned off the sections of the square where people were to stand. Adults and small children, and fourteen special squares for the potential tributes, divided by age and sex. People already filing in, parents staying with their kids as long as possible or hurrying off to the viewing area because they couldn't stand it. Everyone wears their best on Reaping day, in case its the last time that they see their kid. Not a work apron nor welding mask nor pair of leather gloves is in sight. Instead everyone appear in their cleanest and least tattered clothes. Long hair is brushed and braided, and those with fancier or flashier things such as conductor's watches or driver's hats show off as much as they can. Food stalls stay perched to start selling as soon as the reaping is over; those who don't have their children picked usually want to stick around since Reaping Day is a day off, after all. Lower ranking peacekeepers busy themselves with setting up a microphone and small platform in front of the locomotive and the officials from the capital stand by, appearing as though they fear touching any locals. They are there to appear on tv and to smile and pretend to be charmed by the 'local customs.'

At high noon, after all the Reaping age children have been signed in and finish being herded to their respective area, the cameras come online and district 6 is live on the air.

(Somewhere in that crowd, another youth stands in line: just as certain as Hopper that today will not be her day.)

      Upon the small makeshift podium before the black locomotive, a strange woman stands before the crowd of dull faces. Daintily, she rises from her seat and approaches the microphone. She appears a head shorter and almost skeletal compared to the broad bodies of laborers before her. Her face is scrunched and tiny, with a thin line of blue lip stick that does her lips no favors, and long, cat-like blue eye liner to match. She appears in her late thirties, and her skin doesn't sag so much as peel away from her tight cheeks as if it could be brushed off with the slightest touch. Her outfit is a three piece suit in a deep and shiny green cut in with blue to match her lips. Her hair is done up in a black/purple pompadour. Upon her head, disturbingly gazing down at the crowd of potential tributes, is the body of a stuffed bird, eyes bloodshot and with wings spread and beak open in a silent scream. But even the horror upon her head doesn't distract from the fright of her hands. The woman's arms are short and end in tiny hands that appear far too small even for someone of her stature, however, her long nails give them an unnatural illusion of length. These nails are at least two inches long, straight and claw like up to the tips. They are painted a sick, nauseous shade of green, with tiny black rhinestones glued to the ends. This gives her hands the appearance of talons. 

Standing before the mic, she begins to speak with the inflection of one from the capital, but with a more raspy voice. She sounds not like she's thirsty, but like she is dying of thirst. "Welcome, my name is Euphemia Hossenfeffer. Thank you for your cooperation in the fifteenth annual Hunger Games. May the odds be ever in your favor. I would like to first welcome Detta Gagnon to the stage."

The crowd sighs in relief for a moment free of her quiet hissing, and instead turn their eyes to the sole victor and mentor of their district, Detta Gagnon. Tall and solemn, her relaxed demeanor and courteous nod are all it takes for her to have the crowd on her side. The people of the district know that every year she does what she can to help their tributes. They do not hold their lack of winners against her.

Letting out a panting sigh, as if strained from the mere act of breathing, Euphemia holds up her hands in front of herself and leans in close to the mic. Her eyes appear strangely wide all of a sudden, as she says, "ladies first." Quickly, the fearful woman approaches the large bowl full of names as if sneaking up to it, ready to pounce. But she doesn't use any flounce or ceremony for the act of choosing itself, instead opting for a quick plunge, grabbing a piece of paper promptly and stalking back to the microphone. 

"Deena Fryeet," she announces into the mic, wrinkling her eyebrows as she struggles to get the pronunciation correct.

Detta leans in, peering over Euphemia's shoulder to read the name on the card. She stands nearly a food taller than her companion on the stage, so it isn't a difficult maneuver.

"Dhina Freight." She hisses a correction into the announcer's ear, keeping her voice low so it isn't picked up by the microphone.

"Dina Freight," says Euphemia, attempting to roll the r fancily but only succeeding to make it sound like a cough. 

It doesn't sink in right away.

First she distantly thinks 'that poor girl' the same way she does every year.

And then she thinks, a little less distantly, 'hey that girl's name sounds sort of like mine'?

And then the crowd around her is parting, and everyone is looking at her, and the reality of the situation hits her all at once.

She steps out of line and approaches the platform.

Without an apology or an acknowledgment, Euphemia approaches the bowl on the boy tribute side, quickly grabbing up a name and reading it into the microphone.

"Hooper Graunt."

The boys side begin the same looking about, trying to decipher who among them it is. There is an unspeakably relief felt by all children in district 6 when the name called on Reaping day sounds nothing like their own. There's always a stiff, scared body that gets noticed by the others in their age group. This time was no different, as the thirteen year old boys slowly turn and look at the boy whose name was called.

[Developer's Note: In future iterations of the Hunger Games, include pronunciation guide alongside names of prospective tributes.]

Hopper slowly becomes aware of the fact that his name had been called, and it was gotten wrong. His cheeks begin burning red as the other thirteen year old boys start to turn toward him. Feelings of humiliation washing over him, Hopper's gaze stays low. Most tributes walk slowly, stunned with fear. In this case the boy was feeling stunned, yes. However, Hopper also feels an intense burning hatred as well, and something drives him forward toward the platform. 

Rushing up on the microphone, red still spreading across his face, Hopper grabs the mic from Euphemia and yells into the mouth piece "my name is Hopper Grant." However, instead of cheering or clapping, the whole crowd ducks and groan as a high pitched, loud ring from the speakers tears through the air. The ringing only lasts for a minute, however, and the boy stubbornly repeats 'Hopper Grant,' to the pained crowds.

A peacekeeper quickly pulls him back as Euphemia straightens out her ruffled clothing, cocking her head at the audacious boy. 

"Well yes it is," she hisses, looking at the boy with a slight tremble of anger. Turning back to the microphone, the slight woman puts on a saccharine smile and whispers into the microphone, "Our tributes." She holds the children's hands as high up as she can, digging in her nails on Hopper's wrist. Only a few people clap..

(Detta cringes wordlessly at the boy tribute's outburst.)

Dhina barely registers it.

She's in her own world right now. A quiet, small world.

Someone--the announcer?--takes her hand and yanks her out of her mental cloister. She once again registers the presence of her ranshackle hometown, of the somber crowd, of the bored peacekeeprs lined up in their spotless white.

She searches the crowd for her parents' faces and makes eye contact, because That Is The Sort Of Thing You Are Supposed To Do.

She doesn't feel much anything.

The next place that Hopper finds himself is sitting on a low bed inside of a Station Agent's house. The mayor is a station agent, so for all that Hopper knew, he might have been inside of the mayor's house. The hard wooden furniture was simple pine with felt covering the seats of the chairs and small bench which served as a couch. There were windows on all of the walls of the square building and Hopper looks out at the train station on one side and the town square on the other. In one corner sits a glorious grandfather clock, beautifully gilded and ticking away. In the opposite corner of the room, a wood-burning stove and cupboard. A table with a hand-knit doily atop it as a decoration with two low chairs pushed in sit by a window and a loft with feather cushions for sleeping on hover above. Hopper can only describe this house as very domesticated.

Outside of the station house his father worked in, this is the nicest building Hopper had ever set foot in. He sits perched on the edge of the bench in this quaint little space, being filled with a sensation of being pulled back and fourth between his feelings and this little room, making him feel nauseous. An empty feeling in his left hand eats at his mind, and quickly and without thinking he darts for a chifferobe, throwing open the bottom drawer and quickly finding a sock. Stuffing it inside his back pocket, Hopper is taken by surprise as the door to the stairwell opens and he sees his mother and sisters walking in, who spot him there on his knees.

"Hopper!" his mother says tensely, " please don't cry." She says this with a touch of concern but mostly with the bluntness she always uses when correcting her children, reaching down and pulling him back up to his feet. Instinctively, he throws his arms around her and for a moment she hugs him back, and then his sisters join in. He listens as his mom makes him sit down and explains that he has to smile for the cameras, and to mention his family while on the air, and that he will 'be okay.' That's the phrase she keeps using. Her soft but firm instructions are inturrupted, however, as Hopper begins to look around and asks, "where's Pete?"

"He wouldn't come," says his older sister simply, mirroring her mother's efficiency and firmness. "Scared they would take him too."

This sets Hopper over the edge and he starts crying severely, snot pouring from his nose and pulling at his skin with his hands. His mom watches and then kneels down, wiping his face with her embroidered handkerchief. When he finally stops, she delicately refolds the handkerchief and hugs him one last time and says, "I'll ask them if your father can leave work to say goodbye." Hopper knows then that his mother, who had always been so strong, was breaking inside. She had never actually used her handkerchief before.

With that the peacekeepers come back inside and pull the family away, leaving Hopper back where he was, sitting perched on the edge of the bench. 

Half an hour later, his father is pushed into the room, sweaty and covered in grease from operating the machinery of the station house. He doesn't speak. Hasn't since the capital cut his tongue out fifteen years before.  Instead, he lays a large hand on Hopper's shoulder and stares at him with intensely blue eyes, sweat and tears gathering in his curly beard.

That is what Hopper remembers as he boards the capital train.

The gleaming capital train sits in the grand central station of district 6, ten cars long. This train is pulled by the latest in electric locomotives. A pale steam wafts across the platform, rising from the smoke stack of the train, but this is only for show. Wax burning inside of a furnace at the front of the train to give off the appearance of smoke, as a sort of decoration. The train is a pale silver in color, and against the afternoon sun it's almost painful to gaze upon.

The first car serves as a work space for navigation and oversight, and the second for the crew of the train to live in while on board. These cars are lovely and homey, but not particularly luxurious, and off limits to the newest tributes. The third car is for the chaperone, Euphemia, so that she has her own space to retire to. This car doesn't look odd from the outside, but inside is decorated from floor to ceiling in animal skins, taxidermy, and skeletons. Euphemia never travels without them.

The next car is divided into two different spaces, half of it serving as Detta's private suite. This suite has a hallway cutting it down the middle, as do all of the cars, so that the bedroom is on one side of the hallway, and the bathroom on the other. These little hallways serve as walkways so that one can traverse the train without violating anyone's privacy. The second half of the car is a full gym, complete with tread mills, weight training, stationary bikes, and other exercise machines. The designers of the space didn't want to say it, but most of the workout equipment on the train is spaced far too close together to be completely safe, especially on a moving train. The next is a spa car, with steam boxes, a massage area, and even a Jacuzzi. After this is the kitchen car, where all of the meals are to be prepared for the tributes, chaperones, mentor's, and staff. 

The next couldn't be anything else but the dinning car. This lovely space featured an antique crystal chandelier hanging over a rich red dinning table. The places lay set already, with silver plates and chalices ready to be filled with wine. Once through this car, one has to pass through Dhina's car, through the hallway which cuts down the middle. Inside of her room, a plush feather mattress sits on a Mahogany frame and a screen covers the entire opposite wall, so that the resident tribute can enjoy a media experience like nothing that they had ever had before. Once out of this car is the lounge and bar. plump plum colored chairs, couches, and ottomons are scattered throughout the room, with tables lined with treats of various types already laid out for the tributes found in between. small plates of cakes and tarts, sweets, sandwiches, and hors d'oruvres cover the low tables and sit atop the bar. Behind the bar, which is made from black ebony wood, the entire wall holds bottles of liquor in every shape and color imaginable. There is also an espresso machine for making coffee beverages. 

The final car of the train is the suite of the male tribute. 

He boards, entering at the door to the lounge car. It is not empty. 

Dhina is greedily availing herself of the aforementioned comestibles.

She glances up at Hopper as he enters, but doesn't rise from her meal.

Hopper takes a long time to board the train, as he insists on taking time to examine the outside  the actual wheels on the tracks, which appear to be chrome. Something he only ever saw on capital trains. When he finally boards, he enters into a rich  bar car, and he immediately wants to examine the walls for ladders or the walls for breaks, instead, it appears as though he is inside of a fancy capital club, like one he had seen on the tv once before. His search as stopped in its tracks almost immediately, though, as he notices the other tribute sitting in a chair with a large plate of the offered refreshments sitting in front of her. She's a year ahead of him in school, so it isn't like he knows her, Still, he's seen her around, so he figures that he ought to say something so that things don't get awkward.

He immediately says the first thing that comes to mind, which is, "how can you eat at a time like this?"

"How can you not?"

She jabs her arm out in his direction, holding a plate of pastries just below his nose.

"We're hungry and we're about to die. May as well fix at least one of those things."

"I don't know about you," says Hopper stepping back. "my family aren't elevator operators. So we get to eat everyday."

She puts the plate down.

"Good for you."

At this Hopper looks away, and then in order to avoid having to respond, shoves the nearest pastry into his mouth.

"So what do you do, anyway? Something with trains, I'm guessing, given how you're dressed."

"My father runs the electrical grid for grand central. I was being trained to run it before I got picked," says Hopper, puffing out his chest and trying to sound proud. "The old electric controls for tracks in district 6 are the last of their kind in the whole of Panem. Replacing them would be too complicated, so instead a new, highly trained specialist takes over when the old one retires. That's been my family business for nearly sixty years. How about y'all? Pushing buttons?"

"Ayup. Real good at pushing buttons. Sometimes we make the elevators go up. Sometimes we make them go do. Gripping work."

"Kay, well I am going to find our mentor. I actually want to have a plan going in. See you later, button masher."

Wordlessly, she points at the door leading towards the front of the train.

Hopper quickly finds Detta working out in the gym, lifting weights at the bench. 

"What's our strategy?" "How does this work?" "How do you grapple with someone with a sword?"

His questions at first are practical, as he follows her from one car to the next. She ignores him as he tries to engage her with these inquiry, however, and makes her way from the gym to the bar car to have a drink. 

His questions quickly begin to devolve though, as she sips her gin and tonic he finally steps over the line. Pointing at her metal prosthetic hand, which she had done her best to conceal, he excitedly asks, "how did you lose your arm"

At this the tall woman pauses from her drink, and there is a moment of awkward silence before a bell chimes and the words 'dinner is served' ring over the intercom.

The dinner is nicer than either of the tributes had ever had before. Pea and bacon soup, a salad of shredded root vegetables, roasted venison with  potatoes and mushrooms, smoked cheese with brown bread and grapes, and to finish, generous slices of blackberry pie with cream. The meal comes in courses, brought in from the kitchen car by stiff lipped staff who are silent as they present each new dish. Two chilled pitcher's of wine are brought in, and the tributes are given a choice between a dry red or a blackberry wine. 

This is eaten by candlelight, the chandelier casting ominous shadows across the faces of those dinning. The food is consumed quickly by the tributes, who take generous portions of what is offered. Euphemia eats delicate bites, while Detta eats a normal amount for someone her height. No one complains about the food.

As the pea soup is being served, Hopper watches Detta intently, trying to look cool and casual. Once the servers leave and the wine is poured (both tributes pick the blackberry wine), Hopper leans back in his chair and with a raised eyebrow, once again asks, "so how did you lose that arm?"

"The first Hunger Games, they gave the tributes too much food and too many tools and too much room to roam around in. Nobody fought each other. Things stretched out for months before children started dropping of disease."

If she's going to answer obnoxious questions, she may as well make it a history lesson. This kid sure needs it.

"The second games, they overcompensated in the other direction. Twenty four children, no food, a ring of fire blocking out all routes of escape, and a single machete." She lays her prosthetic forelimb down on the table between them. It thuds heavily. "I didn't end up being the one holding the machete."

Hopper sips his soup rather stupidly and watches Detta with a blank expression. He isn't sure how to respond as she goes on, talking about the games. Once a year, for school, his class has to watch one of the previous year's hunger games. For reasons he doesn't understand, his school never airs the second games, even though their district had won.

Despite his curiosity, his mother never let him watch it. His father wouldn't have it, either. 

Hopper was one to seek to satisfy curiosity. If there is an interesting looking piece of machinery being built, he has to figure out what it is. If there is a secret going around school Hopper will find it. His desire to find knowledge knows no bounds, even if he doesn't know what to do with it. 

However, for the first time in Hopper's life, he regrets his curiosity.

“So how’d you win, then?”

The next course is delivered while this question hangs in the air. The chopped up root vegetables are crunchy and covered with a vinegar sauce and chopped walnuts. The two tributes are distracted momentarily from their questions as they curiously taste the strange dish. Dhina shrugs and just digs in, while Hopper shudders and then picks at his curiously before properly settling into it. 

Detta watches the two in amusement, and then answers.

"I'd gotten one of my arms pretty badly mangled in an industrial accident a few years beforehand. I threw it into the way when he came at me, and the Machete got stuck on the steel plate in my forearm. The other tributes saw this, and mobbed him. I got knocked to the ground, arm torn open, left for dead. I crawled over to the wall of fire and cauterized the wound."

"Steel forearm plate. How'd someone from District Six afford surgery like that?"

"Someone from the capital took an interest in me. Covered my medical bills. I volunteered for the games to get out of their pocket."

"So that explains how you survived, but how'd you win? One arm. Zero machetes. Doesn't sound like the odds were in your favor."

"The steel plate in my forearm tapered to a point at one end. I extracted it, waited until there was just one other tribute left standing, and then used it as a shiv."

Hopper starts coughing and a server pats him on the back as the boy tribute almost chokes on some vegetable matter, his eyes going wide as he clears his throat and stares at Detta. Other servers place the venison on the table and cut each diner a piece.

The same server stands by Hopper with some water as the boy sputters; it is their job to get the tributes to the capital alive. 

"What..?." he gasps, tears welling up in his eyes. "You did what now? That is so... so cool."

What an obnoxiously endearing youth. She is not sure whether she wants to ruffle his hair or stab him in his sleep.

"Yes. It was pretty cool. About a decade later, I finally stopped having nightmares."

Hopper pretends to pay attention to the venison and potatoes for a moment, but is too excited to pay attention to his food for long.

"So what did it feel like when you knew that you had won? What was it like coming home a victor?"

“I think you might be getting a little ahead of yourself there.”

Hopper doesn't know what to say once again, and the sound of more food being brought in luckily breaks the silence. A platter of smoked cheese with grapes and pieces of brown bread cut at a weird angle being wheeled in and left so that the dinners can enjoy it as they please.

Hopper is barely tucked into his venison, and his stomach is already fuller than usual, so he slows down and eats a few of the mushrooms while he thinks of what to say next. 

"So which of us do you think has a better chance?" 

“You’re bigger, stronger, and you grew up learning a less useless trade. Before you opened your mouth, I figured you as a much more promising tribute.”

”Now, though? I’m less sure.”

This last statement from Detta kills the conversation, and the tributes focus on their food. After the dessert is finished, each is escorted back to their private suites and is left to themselves.

The sound of the train doesn't lull the tributes to sleep, despite what is normally said about sleeping on trains. The night lasts seemingly forever.

The next morning, the table in the dinning car is laden with steak and kidney pie, pancakes with fruit compote, scones with butter or jam or marmalade, and thin slices of smoked pork. 

Hopper shows up late for breakfast, and upon entering the dinning car, the other occupants wretch as his scent hits them. This was due to him having found the complementary cologne. He reeks of sesame oil, animal musk, and sea water. 

The ensuing conversation is terse and backhanded, and it holds the tributes attention to such an extent that they don't even realize when they arrive. The train stops in the capital station.

The sounds and smells of machinery are not too foreign to former denizens of district six, but the glittering lights and sweeping architecture beyond certainly are!

Dhina has seen pictures before, but it’s different in person. “...so big?”

The tributes are taken from the train with armed peacekeepers as their guides. The crowd has to be held back, as the tributes make their way off of the train with their escort and mentor. 

The people of the capital seem so strange to the tributes. They've seen videos, and the strange fashions, music, etc. TV and news exist in their district, so the sight of furs from large animals such as bears or wolves used as cloaks or shoals isn't a surprise to them. Nor are the feather hats or dark makeup which has become popular, although most of the dead things warn aren't nearly as identifiable as the full stuffed fox perched atop Euphemia's hat. 

What is jaring, however, is the fact that there seems to be a sort of district six fan club waiting for them. Having to be held back are middle age capital citizens and their children, the adults having been young when Detta won at the second games, these people grew up seeing her as a kind of action hero. This itself isn't so surprising, each victor has their followers, and the same sentiment about Detta is held in district six. But it never occurred to either of the tributes that dressing up and role playing, or collecting memorabilia from certain games would be a pass time, more or less a popular one. But there are families present in matching train conductor outfits, made of finer material than anyone from district six could ever afford, of course. There are signs with rings of fire to represent the arena, and even small children dressed up in little train costumes. But most disturbing of all, there are people holding up and waving plastic versions of the sharpened metal prosthetic that Detta had used to win. 

A reporter comes out from the crowd and asks Detta "who are you wearing?" This garners Detta's characteristic silence, which make the audience roar with laughter. 

The  tributes walk slowly as they are led along by the peacekeepers "Come now," says Euphemia, gesturing toward a tower. "we need to get you two cleaned up." As she says this, she pinches her nose and frowns at Hopper.

Hopper sits in a large tub like a cat that is being forced to take a bath, because this is approximately what he is doing. As soon as he arrived in the preparation center, his beauty team force him to undress, scrub him down, make him shower, wax off all of his body hair (there isn't much), and then finally let him relax in the tub. 

He grips his knees to his chest tightly, eyeing his beauty team suspiciously. One of them wears a leather apron and gloves as if working with livestock, her hair died jet black and tied back tightly in a bun. The other two are twins who are closer to au naturale, working topless in loose fitting, suede briefs as their only clothing. Both men have their heads shaved and wear intense amount of smokey eyeliner. 

As the woman begins to pick up and move his clothes from where they were left on the floor, Hopper stands up, holding out his hand in a stop gesture. "Wait," he says, not wanting to have the woman take his clothes. "May I keep them?" he asks.

"They're going to be washed and sent up to your room, yes," she sneers, and then glances down so that Hopper gets the message. 

"Hopper then realizes that he has exposed himself to these strange people, and immediately sits back down in the warm, soppy water. He just wants his goddamn sock.

Dhina has no words for the adults grooming her.

She doesn't even let herself make sounds during the more painful bits.

(Beauty has a surprising amount of painful bits.)

She endures, and then she is clean, and then she is 'pretty' and then it is over.

In the large prep room, each tribute is being cleaned up before going to see their personal stylist. The tributes with their beauty teams are each given a large curtained off space so that the tributes, either naked or partially so, can be bathed and waxed and made some form of acceptable. Sounds of running water, hair ripping out from waxing, clippers, filling of nails, and other sounds fill the air. 

The intense nervousness of tributes being made up for the slaughter lingers above everyone's heads in a way that is familiar to the beauty teams now. 

But this intensity is suddenly broken with the sound of a loud, pained yelp. Out of one of the curtained off areas, the sound of someone stumbling out into the middle ground is then heard, and beauticians peak out to take a glance. But nobody gets a chance to see what happened, as the worker who came out is quickly ushered out of sight by white uniformed peacekeepers. 

Did another tribute just attack a beautician?

Dhina can sympathize with that sentiment, but is certainly not disposed to such viciousness herself.

The thin paper robe that Hopper is wearing doesn't protect him from either the cold room or the inquisitive gaze of his stylist, whom he immediately designates as 'the squirrel.' Her actual name he didn't notice in the slightest, nor does he care to ask again. He just fixes his eyes at the opposite wall as she takes measurements and paws through a panel of colors in a booklet like a rodent digging in the ground, looking for something buried. 

Hopper soon finds himself given undergarments to wear as his full standing measurements are taken. This process he find tedious, but after what feels to the boy like an eternity, he is finally fully dressed for the tribute parade.

"Don't you just love it?" inquires his stylist, grabbing him by the shoulders and smiling down at him, clearly feeling pleased by her own cleverness.

The boy standing in the mirror doesn't look like Hopper, he thinks. His shoes are designed to make him appear an inch taller, and his hair is combed back in a way that he never would have done himself. Hopper never verbally protested throughout the whole process, except for when the squirrel had insisted upon using contact lenses to change his eye color, which Hopper had to be held down for. His eyes are now a weird shade of violate, having previously been an unimpressive brown. But its the formal-ness of his dress that really puts him off. A full conductor's outfit with a polished hat, a vest, white gloves, and a conductor's watch. He doesn't really recognize himself dressed in this manner. It occurs to him that he would have worn a uniform like this had his name not been picked, but as these thoughts hit him he quickly tries to push them away. Thinking about such things is too painful. 

A train conductor's outfit? If only Dhina Freight could be so lucky.

In keeping with the longstanding capital tradition of oversexing things that should not be sexed, Dhina finds herself wearing a sort of Sexy Elevator Operator's Uniform.

For fuck's sake.

Seriously?

The tributes wait while their horses and chariots are being led outside into the human corral where they stand. A few stylists occasionally make adjustments to a costume or fuss around a bit, but for the most part the tributes stand around and try not to look too embarrassed. 

The costumes are everything from elegant to ridiculous, as has become usual for these events. Some of the costumes have become the norm or expected, such as district twelve either dressing their tributes as sexy coal minors or as lumps of coal, the later being the case this year. But then there's also district one, which is usually the most elegant. This year doesn't disappoint, as their male tribute wears a leather kilt with brass bands and bracelets to represent the fine leather goods that come out of the luxury district, while the girl tribute is in a white mink dress and a headpiece with so many onyx gems that she looks visibly uncomfortable trying to hold her head up. 

The horses are being brought out from the stable and being harnessed into their chariots, and some of the tributes, the younger ones especially, pet the horses to distract themselves. 

A few other stand out costumes include a cowgirl and a raging bull getup from district ten, livestock. A ball of yarn with the front crocheted into the shape of a sexy Adonis-esq chest. This would have been tacky enough, except the boy wearing it was only twelve and looked more like he was nine; clearly the stylist had come up with this idea before the reaping. The much older girl who stands next to him smiling broadly and feeding sugar cubes to the blue-roan, beribboned Clydesdales that are to pull their chariot is much better dressed. Her entire outfit is blindingly silver, with a crown of silver wrapping around her head and bits of silver woven into her ornately braided hair. At first glance one might wonder what this has to do with district eight, textiles. But if one looks closer at her outfit, it becomes apparent that her entire gown is made up of sewing needles. Dull, of course, but this is not apparent unless looked at up close. She is the picture of a beautiful tribute. 

The district four tributes are a stark contrast. The girl tribute has been lowered into a giant mermaid tail on the chariot, leaving almost no room for the boy, who is dressed as a simple fisherman. Her ornate costume includes real scales that cover her breasts in a dark pattern, and her face is covered in smokey dark make up and her dark hair flows behind her. Unfortunately, this outfit makes her look about thirty, with too much makeup and the dark siren like get up far too engulfing too the point that it is obvious she is a young girl in an adult costume. The male tribute, on the other hand, in his simple overalls, fishing rod, and straw hat, looks like a teenager dressed as a child. Its not a good look.

There was the usual competition between the two stylists from district seven, who every year for the past five promise not to antagonize each other with their costumes. Every year they break it, of course, with one or the other dressing their tribute like a lumberjack and the other like a tree. This year the rivals had outdone themselves, with the girl dressed as chunks of wood pulp to barely cover her flat chest and privates, and the boy as a paper presser, with a sexy leather apron and a paper mold to hold up as a prop. The two stylists stand off to the side, arguing about how if one dresses their tribute up as something inanimate, the other cannot dress their tribute like someone or something that destroys it. It is the same argument every year.

A few stragglers are brought out of the prep building, including a sexy elevator operator. She is led to a chariot where two sleek, silver horses are being hitched up. Next to the chariot, as if he were overseeing the operation, stood a well dressed train conductor, his head held up at attention.

"What... Are you wearing?" demands Hopper, getting an eyeful of his fellow district tribute's costume.

Dhina takes her place beside him.

She feels vulnerable and disoriented and she just wishes that people would stop looking at her.

But that's not about to happen. She can hear the crowd waiting further down the road, roaring their approval as the District 1 chariot wheels out onto the stretch.

She can't be unseen. So she'll be funny instead. She can do funny, right? Put on a wry tone, roll her eyes, use some excessively big words for things?

"Capital folk seem to have some highly misleading impressions about my ancestral vocation."

There. Nailed it.

Hopper wants to say something and tries to open his mouth, but he is frozen by Dhina's retort and so he stands with one hand raised as if to make a point. 

Luckily, a strange noise coming from the stable catches his attention, and both Hopper and Dhina look around, curious.

A disturbance from inside the stable catches many of the tributes and their stylists off guard. Heads turn and peacekeepers are quickly called in so as to keep the tributes from investigating the noise themselves. They try to keep things going as scheduled, but the handler in charge of signaling for when the tribute carriages are to go is holding everyone up, except district two, who he waves on through in order to make space for the next carriage

"What is going on?" demands the squirrel, trying to get a view into the stable while attempting to straighten Hopper's hat at the same time. However, her attempts at getting a glimpse at the commotion is foiled by a wall of peacekeepers who block out the view of the stable and hurry the rest of the tributes onto their carriages without letting them see.

In a few moments someone is led out and brought to the back of the lineup, from the sound of it. None of the other tributes are allowed to turn around and look. Instead things are gotten back on course and after a nearly five minute lead for districts one and two, district three is allowed to progress through the tunnel and into the public eye. 

[Developer's Note: In future iterations of the Hunger Games, assemble tributes at their chariots half an hour before the parade begins and Do Not allow the lead chariot to enter the tunnel unless all tributes are accounted for.]

Everything here is weird and uncomfortable and ominous and WHY ARE HORSES SO BIG this whole setup with the parade tunnel is really setting Dhina on edge.

She watches the District 3 chariot depart. Then the District 4 chariot.

The District 5 chariot, still containing only its female tribute, gets pulled aside though? And so, all too suddenly, it is Hopper and Dhina’s turn.

The chariot is wheeled out through the tunnel and all of a sudden a loud roar meets the ears of the tributes. The sound is deafening, and the flashes of cameras and the bright lights are all too much. The music swells and the Panem Anthem blares over loud speakers, and a spotlight points at the tributes.

Don't throw up is what Hopper tells himself as he gets his first glimpse of what awaits outside of the tunnel. The music is painful and it seems too big and overwhelming. But then he remembers what his mother told him. 

'smile for the cameras.' 

Hopper forces a grin and raises one hand in a tentative, polite wave. When the spotlight hits their chariot, the boy's grin becomes genuine and he starts smiling from ear to ear. 

The music comes to a crescendo and Hopper raises his arms above his head and lets out a loud 'wohoo!..." The crowd cheers and... laughs. Hopper doesn't notice this, however. He is too lost in the moment and the sound of the cheers and applause. The boy likes the spotlight.

The girl does not like the spotlight.

The chariots reach the circle where they line up, each pulled by a team of well trained horses whose color or other attribute match the district thematically. The images of each tribute is blown up on giant screens for all of the capital to see. The missing tribute from district five wasn't on his screen, however. He was ducked down so that only the top of his costume, that being the tower of an electric plant, was visible. This left his female counterpart, a twelve year old girl wearing a dress with wide petticoats and a radiation symbol on her chest to look like a nuclear reactor cooling tower, to stand and wave awkwardly, trying not to stare down at whatever he was doing. The blaring music slowly dies down at the end of the Panem Anthem and from a giant podium raised high above the stands, the president comes forward to give his speech. 

This president is first term, a forty-five year old, ferret-like man who is known to wear ties of mink fur and be much more competent in planning than his demeanor suggests. He stands at the podium running his long fingers through his silver-dyed hair and  adjusts his note cards before speaking into the microphone. 

"Welcome tributes, to the 15th annual Hunger Games, our nation's reconciliation for attempted treachery by rebels from the thirteen districts. We thank you for your bravery and your sacrifice in your participation in this event, and may the odds be ever in your favor." He pauses and allows the crowds to cheer. After a minute of applause and cameras flashing, the president continues. "As a token to our tributes in my first year as president, I wish to grant an act of mercy to our brave tributes. During the first few games, the tributes were on their own. After five years we begun allowing supplies to be dropped in at 'feasts,' held at the cornucopia. At year ten, we decided that those supplies could be air dropped in based on the wishes of donors who wanted more action. However, this year, we wish to implement a new way in which patrons to the game can participate. And so now from this time forward, citizens who wish to 'sponsor' a tribute may pay to have specific items sent to the tribute of their choosing."

This proclamation stirs the citizens and there is applause and much murmuring; this goes on for several minutes until the president raises his hand once again.

"So I say once again, may the odds be ever in your favor."

The  chariots regroup in front of the training center.

[Developer's Note: One of the shortcomings of earlier iterations of the Hunger Games was a lack of investment on the part of the districts. This stemmed largely from the lack of interactivity. They could watch their tribute on a screen and root for them if they wanted, but it didn't really feel like something they could impact the outcome of. But this will no no longer be the case!

By giving districts a chance to buy advantages for their tributes, we create a sense of investment and responsibility. If their children die while under-equipped in the arena, it now feels like something they could have done something to change if they'd been willing to.

Naturally, this will deepen guilt within and animosity between districts, and this is the primary purpose of this rules revision. The significant potential wealth transfer from the district sponsors to the capital is just a tangential bonus.]

She knows she is hardly the first person to think this, but 'may the odds be ever in your favor' is a really dumb thing to say simultaneously to a bunch of people that will be mutually attempting to kill each other.

Dhina keeps her thoughts to herself as the chariots rattle along to the end of the parade route.

Hopper is still smiling and waving as the chariot approaches the training center, genuinely feeling excited to have just been in a parade. When the chariot comes to a stop he hops off and takes a bow, and the cameras eat it up. The flashes are blinding but the boy doesn't care, the adrenaline pumping through his blood making him feel wreckless 

After a minute of photos, escorts and mentors come to collect their tributes. The reporters make way for Euphemia and Detta, who approach the chariot with purpose.

Hopper's jubilance dies down when he sees Euphemia come close, and whinces when she puts one of her hands on his shoulder.

"Inside. Both of you."

Without additional fanfare, she ushers the children towards the training center.

The boy tribute from District 4 is already in the building, but the girl tribute--struggling to walk in her mermaid-tail dress--is lagging behind.

She tries to pick up the pace when she notices Detta, Dhina and Hopper about to overtake her.

She trips.

Hopper sees the girl in the mermaid dress trip, and no wonder, the fin is solid at the base but she had been pulled out of this part; the base was left on the chariot. The dress held her legs tightly together and made walking nearly impossible. 

Upon seeing her fall the boy breaks out of Euphemia's grip and bolts up to her, quickly taking her hand and pulling her up to face himself. "You ok?" he asks, breathlessly. She pants slightly, and but then both youths attention is caught by the flashing of the cameras.

“Thank you.”

She doesn’t look at the cameras.

”My name’s Emily.”

"I'm Hopper. District 6. Transportation," says the boy, allowing her to put an arm around his shoulder to help her balance  as they make their way into the training center.

The cameras follow behind them, stopping at the door as the tributes cross the threshold into the training center lobby.

“Well. I guess a little transportation is just what I need right now?”

Detta holds the door open for the three children, then enters the training center herself once they’re all inside.

"It seems that you do. Elevator Operator? The door." He states this flatly, smiling at Emily and giving Dhina a side lowered glance. 

Dhina flatly refuses to get the upcoming elevator door.

Fortunately, Emily is competent for handling this herself! It’s just walking that’s giving her trouble presently.

”So. Where are we?”

“This is where tributes train to survive.”

“Oh.”

"Awesome," says Hopper, smiling and helping Emily into the elevator. "What floor, miss?" he asks.

“Third, I believe.”

The small group land in a briefing room where the other tributes with their stylists, escorts, and handlers, are quickly getting them out of their costumes talking excitedly about the new development.

Euphemia seems a bit reluctant as she brings Emily back to her stylist, as if she were handing over a valuable asset. She frowns as she watches them cross the room to the district four bench. 

"Detta, you really should bring up strategy with these two. With our new rule I believe the odds might not be so unforgiving, as is the usual case from your district." She breathes these words out seethingly, biting at the words quietly as they pass from her teeth. Without looking up, she grabs a pad from her literal bear head purse, and begins pursing her lips as she scans the news.

“Strategy.”

She’s tried a lot of strategies for keeping other District 6 tributes alive over the years, and none of them have panned out particularly well.

”Before we dig into that, I should see what the two of you have to work with.”

Dhina walks over to a display panel for one of the training machines and pushes a button on it.

Then pushes another button.

Then pushes a third button with especially exaggerated dexterity.

Hopper practically laughs out loud and walks over to a shelf of smaller weapons, realizing his strength is low but his precision is high. He picks up a small-ish hammer mallet and a few throwing knives. He sets the flat-bunted knives blade first into a panel wood so that they stand up like railroad spikes. He then proceeds to swing the mallet and hit each knife on the head, driving them into the wood panel. It takes him quite a bit of effort and he is sweating profusely by the exertion, but he lands each blow and drives the knives slightly deeper into the wood each time. 

His class in school did a hour long work-shift after lunch every day in school, and he had been driving in railroad spikes since he was ten. It was always his job because he hit the nail on the head every time.

Dropping the mallet and looking away, he looks up at Detta and says, "...and you should see what I can do with an electrical grid."

"That is not what I meant!" protests Euphemia through gritted teeth. She holds up her pad for Detta to see, scrolling down on the touch screen with her finger tips. Its a miracle she doesn't scratch the screen due to her sharp, now blood red nails.

"The District six fan club is 'blowing up,' as the children say. Headlines about the 'chivalrous, purple eyed train conductor' from district six is getting people's attention. Obviously not nearly the amount of attention as the more popular districts, but for one that hasn't had a win in more than a decade, you need this attention. Especially with the addition of sponsors. You have a fan club Detta, use it!" Her tirade comes out as a series of hisses and squeaks, but Euphemia puts her hands on her hips and some of the other tributes are starring at the frightful woman. She has a point.

“I’ll meet with some of my contacts tonight and see if the next few days have publicity opportunities.”

The tributes are given ground rules after they have regrouped with their escorts and are instructed to come down to the third floor for training for the next three days, and that day four will be for individual assessment and scores. Day five will be prep and their final interview that night, and the next morning they go into the arena. 

The rules for the training center are as follows:

no fighting with other tributes

no leaving the training center

no private interviews unless approved of by all parties involved in their district tribute team

and a few other basic rules about not damaging things or stealing. 

They are instructed on how the games will work, how when they are in the arena, they can't leave their platforms until the gong sounds or else they will get blown up right then and their. How only one out of the twenty three of them will come out alive. They are wished that the odds will be ever in their favor.

The tributes then make their way up to their various suites, one district per floor. The district six floor has a fountain in the center and a long dinning table next to it, with a sitting area to the right. The people in charge really paid attention to detail when it came to making the tributes feel at home, and so all of the decorations were themed after trains and cars. No elevators, however. 

Dinner was almost ready when the district six tributes reached their suite, and the two youths were sternly instructed by Euphemia to change into some of the clothes provided and to not throw their costumes on the floor. Fifteen minutes later the tributes were back at the main table in fresh clothes, being served raw oysters on the half shell as an appetizer, as the servant called it. 

"Girl. Dhiiiina, you really think there's nothing you can do to at least be less of a throw away in the arena?" mewled Euphemia thirstily before tipping up a shell and letting an oyster slide down her dry throat.

"The average tribute dies on the first day." Dhina doesn't look up from her food. "I don't have delusions of being above average."

Euphemia purses her lips and turns to the next course of a clear beef consomme, acting as if she hadn't heard the impertinent girl. "I will set up an interview for both of you with one of the local channels tomorrow morning before training begins. They are doing a fluff piece on the districts with the highest tribute mortality rates. It will play in district six, your parents can watch it," she offers this in a way that doesn't seem in the least conciliatory, but more like she has decided that with these new rules she will put more effort in because her job of delivering and marketing the tributes now has some even ground underneath it.

"So, let's go over the things that you two should and shouldn't say. Number one, it is generally well known in the capital that the light skinned phenotype from district six has purple eyes." her ridiculous statement actually manages to pull Hopper away from his soup, and he blinks his eyes repeatedly, the purple contact lenses still in place.

"What?" he asks, gesturing at his eyes with one finger. "Is this why that squ-... lady put these things in my eyes?"

He blinks repeatedly, letting the idea sink in. He always thought that a lot of tributes over the years looked a little... off. He had assumed it had been fear or maybe just the lighting, but the concept that the capital thought people from the districts had distinct looks was just weird.

Dhina is vaguely curious as to what her own 'phenotype' qualifies as, but not enough to pose the question.

She keeps quiet, intent on knowing the rest of Euphemia's rules (she can't effectively break the rules, after all, if she doesn't know what they are).

"So keep quiet about those 'things in your eyes,' as you put it," says Euphemia, biting down on her soup spoon as if to chew off the end. 

"The main thing to keep in mind, is to be happy that you are here. Smile, say you're proud of your district, miss your family, but that you are glad to have been picked," she lets this sink in as the next course comes in, a roast goose stuffed with blackberries with a side of parsnips. She smiles as the servant removes the head and places it in the middle of the table for a decoration, before cutting her a thin slice of the crisp meat.

"You are happy to be here. It's okay to be scared to die, but you are confident and want your family to see you and you love the capital and its ok to rave about the food but don't talk about food or lack thereof in your district. Period." With this she sinks her knife into her goose and cuts herself a delicate bite, the berry juice dripping from the crisp flesh like blood.

And now she knows what her captors' sore spots are.

Excellent.

"I should get going soon, if you still want me to scout out publicity opportunities."

The rest of the dinner, which Detta missed due to her newfound mission, consisted of a spinach salad dotted with edible flowers, beef pate on wafer thin crackers, and for dessert, a huge plate of strawberries dipped in chocolate of every kind and covered in different types of crushed nuts. The tributes eat this meal heartily, because why shouldn't they at this point?

Detta, meanwhile, makes her way through the training center and up the elevator to the penthouse. She isn't a prisoner here like the tributes, on the contrary, she can go anywhere. But the victor knows that her best chances of finding people to 'sponser' her tributes is to go where the highest betting, most high stakes people retreat for the games: The Cornucopia. The door to the elevator opens and she find herself in a large room with black marble floors and low lounging tables scattered about. A fire burns in a pit off to the side near where the doors lead out to a balcony that looks over the whole of the capital. The theme of this bar is of the games itself, with souvenirs from the previous games mounted into the walls or else set up on stands. But the real stand out is the giant bar that takes up an entire half of the room itself. It is shaped like the cornucopia of the games and inside bar tenders stand behind the bar mixing spirits and poring beverages for the various people hanging around tonight. 

The patrons of The Cornucopia are comprised of victors, inverses, gamblers, game makers, district fan club presidents, and a few people who are simply bored or rich or both. 

Detta looks around the bar and confidently approaches, one of the bar tenders looking up and smiling. "Miss Gagnon, what can I do for you this evening?" 

“Drinks for a long night.”

She doesn’t need to say more than that.

This place’s whole gimmick is being a premier destination for victors of the games, which means the staff go out of their way to know their dozen-odd star customers and cater carefully to their needs.

When Detta asks for a long night, she’s saying she has business to conduct and would like to stay something approximating sober for the duration of her stay. When she asks for a short night, they bring out the hard liquor and pour it fast ‘till she’s too messed up to remember... whatever it is she’s trying not to remember that particular day.

And tonight’s for business, not forgetting. She takes a seat out by the balcony and waits.

The victor waits, quietly sipping a glass of red wine, tart and full bodied. The view is as heinously exquisite as ever, a lovely city with lights dancing as people celebrate the games. She has seen it every year since she was eighteen, and now she sits here and waits once again, only this time she actually waits for something instead of just the passing of time.

She didn't have to wait long

"Hello miss Detta?" asked a level voice from behind her

Meanwhile, a scared Hopper goes through his drawers until he finds where his prep team had stored his clothes. He quickly locates the sock he stole from the station master's house and hurries back to bed, trying not to make a sound.

A few minutes later when he was finished, he petted the sock in his hands. "Emily," he whispers into his pillow.

She glances over her shoulder.

Most former tributes don't much like being snuck up on, so whoever just solicited her either really knows what they’re doing or really does not know what they’re doing.

Either’ll do.

”Care to join me?”

"It would seem that the odds are different now, for everyone. There will come a time when they once again truly do favor my people. But for now you are allowed to have your fun, Detta. So, I must now ask: why should I sponsor one of your district six brats instead of one of the ones from districts one and two. These kids have been better fed, like the capital, and two of them even specifically trained before volunteering. So, what do your children have that me and others from district one don't?"

Just who the hell does this guy think he is?

Where the hell does he think is?

"Beg pardon, you seem to have gotten a little ahead of me here. I've only just now offered you a seat." She waves her hand at the place across the table from her. "Reckon it's a little early for us to start talking about kids?"

"My apologies, I was merely commenting that the stakes have certainly turned, now haven't they?" 

The strange man offers his hand, smiling crookedly. 

She places a couple metal fingers into his outstretched palm.

"Perhaps you'll have to explain in more detail; I'm a bit of a brute, slow on the uptake. What exactly are your stakes?"

"the investment in tributes. Specifically, betting on tributes. I usually place my money on one or two. However, with sponsors it seems there are certain pay offs from eyeing less...well prepared districts, as it were." he says this with a toothy grin, his weird black eyes running up and down Detta as if she were a meal. "I professionally gamble on tributes, and I have never backed the wrong horse before."

"Really? How many games have you bet on so far? Not all fourteen I imagine."

She draws her fingers back, then slackens her shoulder and lets her prosthetic arm clunk down hard on the table between them.

"Because you say you've only ever bet on winning horses, and I doubt you backed me."

"No, I started at the fifth. Ten years I've been betting, although I think its getting boring to always pick the winner."

“I understand. You want to take bigger risks and take a shot at bigger rewards. My tribute Dhina, for instance, will probably have some of the longest odds in Hunger Games history. An upset win for her could make a prescient gambler very, very rich.”

"Tell me about the girl. I've been hearing absolutely nothing about her. The district six fan club is eating up that boy and posting pictures of him helping that poor stupid thing from district four on every one of their insipid fan pages and websites. I, however, am looking for a dark horse."

“She’s smart. Smart enough to know that smarts alone won’t count for much out of the field. Her success odds, right now, are near zero but if someone guaranteed her material support... I think she’d be smart enough to take the games a lot more seriously, then, and I also think she’d be smart enough not to *let on* she was taking things more seriously until the games actually began. A perfect dark horse if there ever was one.”

"Interesting indeed, her behavior does make her a challenge to market. I will supply her with water and food in the arena. No weapons, those she won't need if she's as smart as you say. Especially considering what's in store this year," the devilish man leaves with a grin on his face, happy to have left behind confusion in his wake..

What a dick.

She leans back, gazes out across the city, and motions for one of the servers to bring her another drink.

The tributes are dragged off the stage in the impromptu studio which was set up for their early interview. The camera man was signalling to cut away and the producers were rubbing their temples in frustration, worried about the image of their show.

 Back stage, Euphemia holds the two district six tributes by the shoulders, peering at them with her sharp, dry gaze. "Hopper, you were so poised and good. You're parents will be proud," she squeaks, letting go of his shoulder and pulling out her touch screen from her bag. She leaves her other hand on Dhina's shoulder, however, sinking in her long nails slowly. "You, on the other hand," she hisses, not even looking up from the device. "That was the single worst interview the capital has ever seen. Not even the censors can make that look good." 

She lets go of Dhina and begins to scroll down the screen, fixing her eyes as she reads. "So tell me, girl. What were you thinking?"

“Oh. I dunno. Guess I get nervous when I’m on camera?”

"You cried and begged to go home! I specifically told you not to. Why, what is wrong with you? Trying to get a sponsor to send you a suicide pill by being the least likable tribute of all time?" her hissing speech would have looked ludicrous if she wasn't starring deeply at Dhina as if she were a slug that had crawled onto her pointy shoe. Instead, she looks terrifying. "You did the exact opposite of what I told you to do. Child, this is difficult to accept, but I am supposed to make you look good and acceptable. Many in the capital think of the districts as savage. Your un-lady like posture, your nose picking and especially your statements about having no food back home are not palatable." With this the fruitful Euphemia turns away, letting out a long sigh as she scrolls through her wireless device and chews her lip in frustration.

Her lipstick is so red that it looks like her lips are bleeding already, when a loud scream from behind the curtains startles her and she bites down hard. She pushes the two tributes aside and checks, squeaking in a choking dry voice, "security! Subdue him!" She then frantically grabs the two tributes by the backs of their heads so that they can't turn around and pulls them with her out of the room.

"Time for breakfast, and then you can speak to Detta before training." she insists, pulling them with her into the elevator.

Breakfast is black and white pudding, steak and eggs, current jam, clotted cream, rye toast, and green apples. 

Hopper sits and sips black coffee like he would back home. Its his favorite drink, and reminds him of who he has to be someday, if he lives. He doesn't know half of what is on his plate at any given time, if he were honest. But he will behave, he tells himself. Behave and people will love the 'district six gentlemen,' and he will get sponsors. 

He repeats this in his mind as he quickly corrects himself from eating a spoonful of clotted cream straight  from the jar to spreading it on his toast. "I really enjoyed that interview," he says, leaning back with a piece of toast in hand. He would have gone on in this vain but instead his attention is pulled to Detta coming out from her room into the dining area. She looks weary. 

“Morning.”

“What kept you up so late?”

“A wasted effort, apparently.”

"What makes you say that, miss Detta?" asks the boy meekly as he stands and pours the victor a cup of coffee. Definitely a suck up.

Detta sighs, picks up a plate from the table and starts forking food up onto it.

"It's nothing. Rough night, obnoxious people... all stuff I can handle."

She glances across the table at District 6's other tribute.

"Dhina, we should have a talk after breakfast."

"Yeah?"

"About the interview you gave, and a few other things along those lines."

"Sure."

"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.

Over the next hour Hopper, Dhina, and Emily study the edible plants in the most common arena habitats. The trainer goes over the plants very carefully, making sure that the tributes concentrate and are able to describe the edible nuts, berries, leaves, and roots before having them repeatedly attempt to pick them out from among similar looking plants. "mimicry," the trainer calls it, when an edible plant looks very similar to an poisonous one. "Helps them avoid being eaten."

Before long, lunch is called, and the small group make their way to a buffet area with many small tables. 

Hopper and Emily sit down with Dhina with trays loaded with food and begin eating, the boy making a point of passing around the bread basket to his two companions. Emily and Hopper make small talk about their districts while Dhina eats quietly. This goes on for a few minutes, when a quiet voice interrupts the conversation. 

"Excuse me?" asks a tiny brown haired girl with blue eyes and a mousy demeanor. "May I sit with you?" There's a communal shrug and the shy girl sits down and quietly tucks into her soup, appearing more and more anxious as time goes by. After a few minutes of this awkwardness all three of the other tributes at the table are starring at her, questioningly. 

"I'm sorry," she whispers, extremely unsure of how to handle the attention. "You see... the other boy from my district..." 

There's suddenly a loud crashing noise from the gym area, like a large structure was demolished. All of the tributes in the dinning room stand up and quickly run to investigate what could have possibly made that noise. 

The scene that lays before them is of the obstacle course in ruins. The climbing tower turned over onto the jumps and tunnels, the water tank spilled out, and the moving pieces all jammed up so that they break more and more as they twist and turn against the various weapons deeply wedged inside. Then all of a sudden a small fire breaks out on one and the sprinklers start, soaking all of the tributes.

[Developer's Note: In future iterations of the Hunger Games, we should have a system of deterrents for tributes involving punishments less severe than death. Many children have caught on to the fact that we cannot kill them before the games actually start, and this realization has in some cases fueled highly undesirable behavior.]

"Woah."

Emily sounds scared.

"Woah."

Dhina sounds sort of impressed.

Hopper looks about timidly, trying to avoid the appearance of fear. He gets an eye of the other tributes reactions as they step back and take in the whole scene. Some of the 'careers' seem almost impressed, one of the boys nodding his head in approval. The others either seem bored, entertained, or freaked out. 

He catches himself, decides this is the time to continue with his persona. It's not much, but he holds his hands out on either side of his body and steps backward, pushing Dhina, Emily, and the district five girl back. 

He looks up just enough to catch a game maker's eye. It's a brief moment but Hopper is pleased with the impression he's made.

Stepping back with the girl tributes, Hopper suggests that they go finish lunch.  

"My hero."

As pointless as tagging along with Hopper feels, it's not really like Dhina has got anything else competing for her attention right now.

(What are you going to do, Dhina? Learn to use a sword in the next three days? Ha!)

And so she'll follow him back to the lunch table as suggested.

"So what is your name, miss?" asks Hopper, pulling out a chair for the district five girl.

"Electra Smithe," she says shyly, sitting down and glancing at Dhina. It's clear she doesn't want to talk, but prefers to hide inside of herself and keep away from her district counterpart, wherever he is.

She be getting along with Dhina, sullen thing," thinks Hopper, keeping up his stupid grin while passing Electra the bread basket.

The rest of the day is spent alternating between learning survival skills and working on terrain skills. Instead of using the obstacle course, however, instead they practiced dodging balls tossed at them, and being tested by having the whether suddenly shift so as to gauge the tributes reactions. This goes on until around five in the evening when the tributes are given back to the mentor's to look over the progress and make suggestions or work on strategy.

As the mentors wander down into the training rooms, Detta is pulled off to the side before she can be seen by anyone else. 

"Detta," Euphemia attempts to whisper, standing on her toes to get her mouth as close to the victor's ear as she can. Her words feel dry and cracked, but Detta listens, knowing this is important to the lives of her tributes. "I have some news about one of the things the tributes will face inside of the arena."

“Can this wait until nightfall?”

"Fine," hisses Euphemia. The woman slinks away, no one having noticed her presence or Detta's absence. 

The mentor's go over the beginnings of strategy, with each team either picking angles for marketing or talking about skills, speaking in low voices and watching the other's carefully. Detta just listens as Hopper rambles on the events of the day, nodding as he goes on about how pleased the game makers are. Dhina stays quiet.

Hopper continues his description of progress and training all through dinner. He still manages to eat almost everything, and Euphemia frowns as he slurps up his onion soup. The next courses are a platter of small game birds with gooseberry sauce, prime rib with garlic spinach and roasted parsnip, a salad of shredded broccoli, tomatoes and chopped almonds. Neither tribute can manage to get down the cheese course, a green cheese Euphemia calls 'Stilton'. Instead the kids nibble on the delectable nutty crackers and dried figs until dessert is served, a multi layered pudding of triffle. 

The tributes are sent to their rooms immediately after dinner, and Euphemia let's out a deep breath in weariness. This has the effect of looking like the tiny woman might deflate, as she shrinks down upon such a strong exhale. 

Then, shaking her head, she looks Detta straight in the eye and glares. She only says two words, "Pick one."

The boy's hapless. Foolhardy.

But the girl seems to have already decided she's dead.

"I need more time."

Hoppers feels caged up in his room, and can't stand that he is ushered off to bed as soon as dinner is over. He wants to see the city, the beautiful buildings and the people. He is horrified by the entire situation, but also finds it slightly...intriguing. These capital people can have whatever they want. He wonders what he will do if he makes it out of that arena alive. 

The boy knows that he isn't a fighter, but he figures on finding food and water and using his skills to build shelter and hunker down. He plays with buttons while he imagines what he would do after the games. Maybe he would live in a big fancy house and design trains or electrical boards and have a beautiful wife-

Hopper realizes that he will never get to be with Emily after the arena because there will be no Emily. He can't stand the thought of never getting to touch her, or the most intimate thing he gets involving her is naming his skeet sock after her. 

Fuck, he thinks, angry that this is his fate. I don't want to go through life always wondering...

At that moment he gets up, straightens up a few things, and begins searching through the drawers of the bathroom. Quickly he finds a pack of condoms and a bottle of lube. Shaking, he takes them to the bed, and then very quietly makes his way to the door. He opens it, listening as he snakes his head around and looks about for signs that he might be caught, but Detta and Euphemia are sitting at the dining room table still. He slinks along the wall, hiding behind the furniture and makes his way to the elevator, so intent on making it that he doesn't even hear what either of the women are saying. 

He gets to the elevator and the door opens, he quickly pushes the button and the doors close.

A few minutes later Hopper is coming back up with Emily at his side, anxious and cheeks flushed as the two of them once again sneak past the grown ups at the table. He leads her to the door, getting even more anxious when he notices the smile on her face.

Once inside with the lights dimmed, something else occurs to the boy before anything else happens. He pulls the sock out of his drawer, open the door, covers the knob with the sock, and then closes the door behind him.

“Alright. If we have to make a decision right now?” They do. Detts has put off deciding for too long already. “Hopper. We should go with Hopper.”

The two women make their way to the hallway where the tributes bedrooms are located and hurry to Hopper's room. But when they reach the door, they notice the sock on the door handle. Euphemia puts her ear to the door and frowns, her face crinkling up like tissue paper. 

"He's taking my advice to enjoy his time here, as it were." She says this in what can only be described as both a snarl and a whisper, and quickly walks over to Dhina's room before Detta has the chance to say anything. 

"Girl, get out of bed. No, no need to get dressed, this has to do with your survival," Detta hears the older woman say from the other room and quickly hurries Dhinah into the hallway in her night gown. Unfortunately, the effect of causing Hopper's door to open, Emily peering out red faced and wrapped in a blanket. Seeing this Euphemia hands Dhina off to Detta and reaches for Emily, catching her and then calling, "boy, get out here."

Hopper shows his red face with a look of disgust at the people interrupting, mad that he can't even have privacy. Euphemia huffs, looking at the three youths and says "Well, now it's a party, as they say. I was told by my informant that the more tributes we inform, the more likely we are to get caught, but at this point I don't care. All that can happen to me is I get demoted to district seven or worse, and they blow these kids up right away. Let's just take them all downstairs, Detta," Her hisses and squeaks get the message across disturbingly well, and before anyone else can say anything her glare has already shut down any requests to put on more clothes.

"Let's go," she says, digging her claws into the kids shoulders as they head to the elevator.

Detts scans the ceiling overhead, hoping Euphemia didn’t just have that little rant within earshot of a surveillance device.

She seems, on the whole, a lot more concerned about Information security than her would-be co-conspirator and that state of affairs does her nerves no favors.

Emily is too wrapped up being mortified to even fully register what the adults are saying.

She squeaks, though, when Euphemia’s cold hard nails close around her.

Dhina, meanwhile, is hanging on every word. This (the clandestine nighttime meeting, not her co-tribute’s ill conceived rutting) is the most interesting thing that’s happened since she arrived at The Capital and she’s going to give it her full attention.

The Feeling of Euphemia's claws sinking into Hopper's flesh pulls him back to reality but before he can say anything, the boy catches the harsh woman's glance and clamps his mouth shut for once.

He allows himself to be taken into the elevator and the party descend, ready to see what awaits them. 

The elevator goes down below the training center, several stories underground. The scared, half naked boy don't know what awaits them as the elevator sink lower and lower beneath the earth, and struggles to keep the sheet he clutches pulled up tightly with his hands.

When the elevator comes to a stop, Euphemia pulls a small key out of the mouth of the stuffed weasel that is wrapped around her head, and inserts it into a slot in the door. The entire elevator turns around in place, making the group momentarily lose balance. This surprise jolts Hopper such that he almost drops his sheet, prompting him to exclaim, "Fuck, what the fuck?" He adjusts his makeshift garment and glares at Euphemia, when suddenly the doors open. 

"What are we doing here, Euphemia," the boy begs, at this point afraid for his life. When Euphemia finally let's go of the children's shoulder's and steps forward, saying in a lowered voice as she enters what appears to be a laboratory, "I am putting the odds in your favor, you ungrateful brats."

"How?" asks Hopper, when he notices a young woman with a clip board sitting on a counter top, nibbling on a pen. 

"Hey."

She stuffs the badly chewed-up writing implement through the hole in top of the board's clip and glances Hooper's way.

"I was wondering when you lot would show up."

"Who's this?" asks Hopper, looking around the large laboratory and at the strange girl. She doesn't look capital due to her imperfect features and glasses. Either she's district but useful, or she just doesn't care.

“You don’t know?”

She swivels around on the counter to face Euphemia, clutches her clipboard to her chest and arches an eyebrow.

“Who are these kids?”

"They're the new interns!" exclaims Euphemia, smiling so wide it looked like her face would flake away at the seams. 

A strange silence filled the space of the lab as the small group were examined by the young scientist. This awkwardness was broken, however, with the sound of a harsh growel coming from what seemed to be a cage behind a curtain.

Using this interruption of the awkward as a good jumping off point, Euphemia waved her hands in a gesture which look like she's trying to fend off an attacker with her claws. "They're not prepared, as expected. Silly interns," she says, tapping Emily's shoulder to excuse the poor girl's extreme state of undress.

Well. Okay. Apparently this is happening now.

Emily takes a deep breath and reminds herself that her present abject mortification is almost certainly not the worst thing that's going to happen to her this week.

"This is Chryssi Echidna," Detta fills the awkward silence by giving the children a proper introduction to their host. "She designs the monsters used in the Games."

"That's hardly the most important work I'm involved in. My genome restoration work could give a second chance to countless ailing biomes, and my work in neurological engineering could advance thinking itself."

Chryssi exhales through her teeth and shuts her eyes partway as though belaboring a point to infants.

"And on the side, yes, I make a few monsters. It pays the bills."

"Monsters?" asks Hopper, biting at his lips. "Are we allowed to see them?" he asks this tentatively, hopeful that maybe he will get a leg up here. 

He steps forward and offers his hand to Chryssi, ready to attempt to flatter. "I'm Hopper, Nice to meet you, Dr. Echidna."

She looks him over. The thing in the cage behind her snarls.

”And you’re an intern, huh?” She takes his index and middle finger in her palm and gives a light shake. “Suuure.”

Hopper grins excitedly but his excitement quickly turns to shock and fear when the curtain blocking off the cage from view gets ripped down from the ceiling, revealing some sort of large mammal. 

Hopper jumps back several feet, dropping the sheet he covers himself with and scrambling back at the sight of the animal in the cage.

The creature is like a huge bear, giant hunched shoulders and the face... the fur tapers out on the face, the skin clings so close to the bones that it takes more than one glance to register that the bare skill isn't exposed. The eyes are nearly black, making the sockets appear vacant and dead. The creature tears at the curtain which had previously covered its cage. A nameplate is welded to the bars of the cage underneath the lock. It reads 'BUG BEAR.'

"What... Is that?" demands Hopper, completely losing his composure.

"RRrrrarrrrgghghrrrr!!"

It throws the full weight of its body against the bars. Its cages screeches against the tile floor.

Detta steps forward and taps the cage with her metal arm. The monster snarls again.

"It seems too aggressive. How do you know it won't kill all the tributes as soon as it's released? That'd make for rather poor television."

"I grafted on Formicidae territorial instincts. It'll keep to established pheromone trails. Unless this years kids are slow on the uptake, it's unlikely to get more than three or four kills before they figure out how to avoid its movements."

"That's good to know."

Hopper gets back on his feet, ready to play at the intern again, despite being secretly glad that he had already emptied his bladder before any of this went down. 

"How could this guy help ailing biomes, kill the wild dogs?"

“The megafauna I revived for bioreclamation purposes are already out in the wild. The more data I can gather on them before they’re requisitioned for the games, the further along we’ll be.”

“The reason the Bug Bear is still here is because, unlike the others, it has literally no purpose besides tearing children’s throats out?”

"So what else have you got?" asks Hopper, scared but determined to press forward.

Dr. Echidna gives them a tour of her lab, explaining gene splicing, cloning, and other forms of bio-manipulation the tributes know nothing about. She is reluctant to take them back to see any of the other monsters. She instead shows them plans for biomes around the rest of the North American continent that could be restored through the introduction of these creatures. 

Once they finish the tour, Euphemia asks what the interns can do for her leading up to the games. Dr. Echidna begins rummaging and hands a coffee mug to Dhina and sends her to get coffee, and then absentmindedly gives Emily some paperwork and explains its a thank you speech to the tributes for the games funding her research, and how she needs it proof read. Coffee in hand, paperwork handed over, and the curtain put back over Bug Bear, the young scientist gives an absentminded goodbye, before reminding them that she had ordered an expresso machine weeks prior. Hopper has literally no idea what this is, but he gives a final thumbs up, accidentally dropping his sheet one last time as the elevator doors close behind them. 

"You don't think she actually believes..."

"Maybe she does. Maybe she's just playing dumb because she knows she won't get into any trouble that way."

"Regardless, you'd better fetch her that coffee."

"Right."

Dhina gives a 'nothing really makes sense anymore' shrug and ducks into a break room.

(She does in fact know how coffee machines work. Perks of her useless professional background, she supposes.)

"what can I do?" asks Hopper, feeling useless.

Euphemia hurries the children with their little tasks and then says goodnight. She rushes them out, determined to end the interaction before they get in trouble. She stops the elevator and makes Emily get off at her floor, wrinkling her nose as Hopper reaches out for Emily's hand as she gets off. 

"Hopper," she mutters, in a way that makes it hard for the boy to tell if she's actually speaking to him. "You should spare yourself pain and make this only about sympathy from sponsors. Be the little gentlemen from district six. Don't... and I detest the language of the youth, but I shall use it: 'catch feelings."

The boy is silent, all in the group are. When the elevator reaches the district six floor the group get off and Euphemia walks the kids back to their rooms and shuts them in, with a reminder that they have training the next day.

The awful woman really has her claws full.

Up bright and early at the dining room table, Hopper enjoys a plate of breakfast pies of bacon and mushrooms, cherry pie, and mince meats. He is still a little bit shaken by what he had seen the night before, but pretends to be steady as Dhina enters the room and he stands up, pulling out a chair for her. 

He is determined to keep up this act all the time now, despite his annoyance at the general apathy at this useless girl. "Good morning," he yawns, sitting back down and reaching for his cup of tea. "We've got pie... and training in thirty minutes."

Well, she’ll prioritize the pie, then.

Life’s too short for anything else.

Between bites: “Ggmrnnninng.”

Hopper smiles stupidly between bites, savoring the buttery crusts. "So I was thinking... now that we have an idea of what's waiting for us, now we can start thinking of strategy." He says this as he refills his plate with a slice of onion pie and a piece of lemon meringue.

“Oh?”

Obviously, it’s somewhat unlikely that both of them will survive long enough to enact anything that could be called a strategy together.

It’s equally as obvious that, if they did both survive, they’d be obligated to kill each other eventually. Dhina sees no advantage, therefore, to blurting our any plans she might have.

If Hopper wants to, though? She’s hardly going to stop him.

“Please do tell me what you’ve got in mind?”

"So here's my plan so far," says Hopper, pushing his plate back and stretching out. "I say join the 'careers.' Get them to kill everyone else, and then, have our friend 'bug bear' kill them!" He picks up an entire mini mincemeat pie and shoves it in his mouth, licking his lips and grinning broadly. "What do you say to that?"

"Okay. There are a breathtaking number of holes in that plan, but I think maybe the one to start with is the part where we can't become careers without going back in time and then training for our entire lives?"

"No, I mean join them! convince them that an alliance would be beneficial," says Hopper, rolling his eyes. "Convince them we have skills that are useful. Like we help them forage and find food, while they hunt for other tributes." He didn't understand why this was so hard to understand. He got up, throwing down his napkin onto his empty plate.

"Detta says the careers didn't make alliances last year, not even with each other. Which makes sense. Their top priority is killing each other, and they don't have to hunt or forage--they can just get food from the cornucopia or by stealing it from weaker tributes."

"You can't expect them to behave differently this year unless they're given different incentives."

"Incentives, Dhina? In the arena people will do whatever they can to survive. If they think an alliance is a good idea, that raises the odds for us. I'm going to tell them I know what's waiting for us in the arena, but I won't tell them everything. They'll be scrambling to get me on their team."

That... he might not be on completely the wrong track with that. It's a stupid longshot, sure, but it's not like a city-slicking train jockey like Hopper is going to have better odds going it alone.

(Then why do you keep thinking no no no?)

She still hates this plan. She still hates.

"You can't help the careers. It's... it's..."

"It's what? It increases the odds of survival. It's not helping them if the goal is for them to wind up dead!" Hopper practically shouts, getting pretty pissed off at this point. "only one can win in the end. I intend to live, so I'm not helping them, and neither are you if you try as well. We're using them."

Dhina freezes up, startled by Hopper's sudden aggression.

For several seconds, she finds herself unable to put words together.

Hopper steps back, realizing he really scared the girl. 

"Dhina, I'm sorry," he begins, worried that he might have irreparably harmed one of his last remaining connections to home. "I don't want to die here. Fighting back is the only thing I can do. Every little thing, every bit of intel, every sponsor, every alliance counts for getting me home. I'm willing to do what it takes to put the odds in my favor. Are you?"

“I don’t think there’s much I can do to change my odds...”

Wheels turn in Dhina’s head.

”But maybe I could help improve yours? I’d rather see you win than one of those nasty career tributes.”

"Really?" asks Hopper, taken aback. "I was just hoping you wouldn't be such a pushover... no offense. You would help me?" The boy is quite surprised by the turn in this former doormat of a tribute, but is curious to see if she will really help him. 

"Here, have the rest of the lemon meringue. It is to die for," says Hopper, pushing half a pie across to Dhina.

She eats the crusty confection slowly.

It'll take more time to sort all her thoughts out, but she feels that she's on the right track... or, at least, that she's on a track for the first time since getting here.

"I would. It'd be neat if Detta weren't the only tribute of ours to ever survive."

The tributes go downstairs for their second day of training. The gym has the obstacle course set up once again, only this time, with the legs weighted down with slabs of concrete so that nothing can knock it down. 

The district six kids rejoin Emily and survey the room, noticing the district two careers practicing their archery, the girl from one learning how to escape a head lock, and the boy from one about to start on the obstacle course.

"So how are we going to get the careers to believe that we have valuable intel, without letting them on too much?" asks Hopper, trying to only allow the two girls to hear him. "We need to be more  valuable to them alive than dead."

Two girls?

Oh.

There’s Emily, arriving from the elevator corridor...

“Hrrrmm.”

She ducks over the back of Dhina’s chair and gives the younger tribute’s shoulders a quick squeeze before circling the table and settling in beside Hopper.

”What’s this about ‘more valuable alive than dead’?”

"I think we can team up with the careers, convince them to off everyone else for us. We have valuable information about what is waiting for us in the arena now," Hopper whispers, stretching in an over exaggerated manner. Better limber up.

There is no part of that plan Emily likes the sound of.

She doesn’t want to grovel with one of the more bloodthirsty tributes for protection.

She doesn’t want her kinspeople to see her on live broadcast acting in such a craven fashion.

She especially doesn’t want to hand over information to the career tributes that makes them even more likely to emerge on top in the end.

She tells Hopper as much.

Hopper sighs, frustrated that he cannot win this lovely girl over to his plan. "There can only be one winner, I guess."

He offers her his hand shyly, as if to offer a truce on this one. "See you tonight on the roof, then?"

Only one winner.

"There are four of them." Dhina speaks up. "Four careers this year. Up from two last year..."

She thinks through the tidbits Detta has told her about the past couple games' tributes.

"But only one of them can win. And they know it. And they won't trust each other."

"Well. There's another reason not to try teaming up with them, if we needed one."

"No, it's good."

Dhina carries the remainder of the pie along with her to training center, stuffing the last crumbs of it into her mouth in between uncertain words.

"Y'see, there's three of us. If we each paired off with one of the careers... and then none of them cover each other's backs..."

"Then what? What's your endgame? You think you'd last longer working one on one with those butchers than you would on our own?"

"Listen, let's just try to get them on our side first and foremost. After that we can focus on"- at that moment, something cut off Hopper, as the lights went off and a loud screech was heard. 

The lights went out, and sense the training room didn't have any windows, the room was in complete darkness. Suddenly, all the tributes begun to scramble, unsure of what to do. 

The words 'halt!' and 'stop!' were heard from peacekeepers, attempting to make everyone stay calm and wait until the lights were back on.

It took several minutes. 

When the lights came back on, the tributes were either sitting huddled together on the ground, standing stoic like the careers, or in the case of the district six team, standing all together with their faces near to one another.

Another holler was heard, and all of the tributes turned to see who was screaming. On the ground was a young scientist, blond with glasses in an overly large lab coat, trying desperately to reassemble a sheet of paper that had been torn into dozens of tiny pieces. 

"What the hell was that?"

"No idea," says Hopper, trying to figure out what to do next. Taking a deep breath, he walks over to Chryssi, getting down on his knees to help her pick up the pieces of her speech. "Anything I can get you, Dr. Echidna. Coffee?"

She nods, and Hopper hollers over his shoulder, "Dhina, go grab a coffee from the lunch table." Then, he helps her to stand back up, giving her some space. "You can say anything," he tells her, indicating her speech to the tributes.

“Don’t touch me!”

Chryssi pulls away when Hopper tries to help her to her feet.

She’s shaking.

“What happened?”

(Dhina takes a second to roll her eyes before going to fetch a cup of coffee.)

Dr. Echidna has given up on retrieving the last scraps of paper from the floor and has gone for her phone instead.

”I was attacked.” She turns aside to speak into the receiver. “Some brute. I don’t know. The lights were out...”

Hopper begins to shuffle through the scraps of paper and attempts to assemble them, hoping to do this small thing for the girl scientist. Suddenly, he notices a small scrap of paper with words in bold letters which reads track cars E contai- but the paper cut off right there. Before he could search any more for the rest of the clue, a Peacekeeper comes and drags him back to where the other tributes are standing. 

The white uniformed officers allow Dhina to finish bringing Dr. Echidna her drink, but then corral her back with the other tributes. 

Standing close to his fellow tribute, Hopper leans over and whispers to Dhina, "I found another clue about what's in the arena."

“Quiet.” She hisses back a couple brief syllables, watching the nearest peacekeeper from the corner of her eye. “Later.”

The tributes stand still as the peacekeepers search the area for the attacker, and Euphemia comes in to collect district six for lunch instead of letting them eat in the training area. Before exiting the gym she risks a quick glance at Dr. Echidna, asking in her frightening eyes if the poor girl is ok. 

Once outside in the main hallway she pins both tributes to the wall. She looks them over with her murderous gaze, crinkling her brow so tightly it looked like it may crack. "Do not get us caught," she mouths, barely audibly to the two children. 

After an indescribably delicious lunch the kids are sent back down to the training area and made to sit with the other tributes with peacekeepers standing by. Dr. Echidna stands in front of the tributes, new papers in her hands, her hair still ruffled and a little bit twitchy from the caffeine, but ready to give her speech.