Prowess is Potent // {The Bros}

Vial of hope and a vial of pain
In the light they both looked the same
Poured them out on into the world
On every boy and every girl singing

Alexander Hood —

Surveying the training center in front of her only solidified Alexander's feeling that she should've just stayed in bed that first day. She knew that she wasn't in a fit state to interact with people, having spent the vast majority of her time since getting on the train that took her from District Seven curled up in a little ball. Fetal position. Not crying — bringing forth tears after so many years spent dry-eyed took a certain emotional willpower that, especially under the circumstances, Alexander lacked — but instead just staring unblinkingly at whatever object was in front of her, not seeing it because her eyes were focused on some point far off in the distance that did not exist. Occasionally, sobs of anger and frustration shook her body, but aside from that she was still as a stump, rooted to wherever she sat or lay. She could've stopped breathing entirely and nobody would've noticed.

This catatonia did not measurably subside after opening ceremonies. Her stylist, though reasonable enough, had bluntly informed her that he'd need to notify the higher-ups of her situation. She hadn't had the energy to beg him otherwise. It was probably better that they knew. They needed to know what Alexander herself knew: she couldn't be victor. There was no way she could be victor. This realization, however, did nothing to ease the District Seven into acceptance of her impending death — how could it? It wasn't as if she could relax and drop her masquerade all of a sudden. No, her stylist had dictated that in no circumstance should she let on that she did not belong to the gender she was brought to the Capitol to represent. That wasn't important, though, when compared to the fact that she, unlike the rest of the tributes here, had zero out of twenty-four odds of winning — not even the inkling of hope that fortune might actually favor her, that she might prevail and return to District Seven in a better financial situation than she'd been in when she'd left.

Even the consistent mantra that was drummed through her brain with every beat of her pulse — you're dead, you're dead, you're dead, you're dead — had all the comforting qualities of a blanket made of stone. And when it was loud enough to drown out half the chant, the word on the inflection was still heard over the din — dead… dead… dead…. And while she tried not to dwell on her fate, Alexander still could not help but think of the time when she and her big brother — the real Alex Hood — had snuck into the workshop where one short of two dozen boxes, pine, lay in neat rows, assembled year after year for the few who met the same unlucky end that she herself was about to face. No special care was put into them, yet there was nothing crude about their construction, simply by virtue of her district's craftsmanship. The only vulgarity came from those who hand-selected the corpses to fill it.

There's a good chance that Alexander's thoughts would've kept looping they way they were, had her feet not been hellbent on sluggishly carrying her across the training center so that she could do something utterly useless to a tribute who was about as dead as an uprooted chestnut tree and a fraction of the size. She wrote off combat immediately — the Careers had that covered, and what did it matter if she could defend herself from humans? Dying by the hands of one of her fellows would certainly be preferable to being brutalized by a Capitol muttation, as those were known to play with their food before they made the kill; however, a glance at the brutish District One boy told Alexander that he was probably up for the same. Perhaps it didn't matter.

It was while she was drifting towards the firemaking station — something she reasoned she'd excel at, given her experience with wood — that Alexander was ensnared. For an instant, she kept trying to walk, not realizing that a pair of thin wrists had caught her around the chest. It was the hit — regardless of its non-exploratory nature, something that Alexander was too paranoid to notice — that stopped her dead (you're dead, you're dead, you're dead!) in her tracks, awful frigidity seeping down from her head to her feet. She'd been found out. This soon, found out. And she'd be targeted and killed or maybe just killed — those metal plates 'malfunctioned' from time to time, didn't they? Alexander braced herself for the "Aha!" that never came. Instead: "See there? That girl is a T, E, double N — ten, man. Am I right or am I right? She digs me."

Making sense of the situation, which had turned out drastically different than what Alexander had anticipated, took her a good thirty seconds; formulating a response, another ten. She'd never really spoke much with only guys she interacted with, the other workers at the lumber mill, who mostly ignored her on account of her age; they certainly did not discuss women when she did. Having given the 'critical period' of her youth, so to speak, to her work and her impersonation of Alex, Alexander hadn't really broached the subject of girls from the perspective of either gender. But if she hadn't been caught, she'd definitely have to play along to redeem herself. "Sure she digs you, if you say so," she opened, voice harsh and gritty from the years of sawdust she'd inhaled. Should she offer up another opinion? Probably. "Dunno, I think Four might have her beat." She tried to pass this off with a casual shrug, though the movement was mechanical to begin with, not to mention somewhat restricted by her captor. He steered her over towards two other guys who seemed as eager to take part in this ranking of the female tributes as the first had been to entrap a random passerby; Alexander couldn't help but envy their inherent and effortless masculinity, which far surpassed her own guise.

The captor introduced himself as Aesop Bloom, but Alexander was unable to match a district to him; based on his build, she figured he was more likely in the middle districts, which, barring Seven, weren't entirely labor-intensive from what she could gather. Her inability to place exactly where, however, was unsurprising, considering the near-lifeless state of haze that she'd spent the past few days on — ironically, reflecting on her state of soon-to-be lifelessness. It dawned on her that she ought to be polite enough to give them her name, even if she didn't plan on spending more time than necessary with the trio. "Alexander Hood," she grunted, wishing for whatever reason that her introduction was as memorable or creative as her captor's had been. She could hardly introduce herself as a member of the brothers Hood — not only did it sound too much like some sort of fraternal cult; none of her little siblings even bore the same surname, eternal thanks to their whore of a mother. Eternal thanks to the woman whose bedroom habits brought Alexander — well, Phoebe — into this world so one of the other faces in that very room could take her out of it.

It's the Neon Bible, the Neon Bible
Not much chance for survival
If the Neon Bible is right