Stronger than Yesterday {Grind

Cause baby you're a firework, come on show 'em what you're worth
make 'em go, oh, oh, oh

It was that time of day, when the sun just began its descent in the sky, scorching the earth with false promises. Duchess made her way through the district square towards the training center, her backpack filled with sweat-sloughing clothes and a few new toys, courtesy of her family. She was pretty sure one of her aunts and uncles. Or maybe a pair of aunts. Really it didn't matter, as long as her family continued to shower her with gifts and bought her time with some of the best trainers in District Two.

Today she would be meeting with Aunt Kobaloi, who was nearly as strange as her name. Old, too, and she actually wasn't related to Duchess at all - not by blood, not by marriage. But she had been training and dating Duchess' uncle when he was a youth and chosen as a tribute. He died in the bloodbath. Kobaloi should have gone instead. No one had mourned him too seriously, as far as Duchess could tell. In fact she probably would never had heard of him, it hadn't been so apparent that Kobaloi couldn't possibly be related to anyone else in the blond Grant clan with her red-brown hair and wicked smile. There was no doubt she was insane; rumor was that she didn't cry at all when her lover died, but rather went into a screaming rage. Duchess didn't find that so hard to believe now. It seemed almost daily that Kobaloi lost her tenuous grasp on relatively and yelled obscenities at her.

For all her imbalance, Duchess could ask for no better trainer. Kobaloi, like all of the Grants, obsessed over the Games, which is probably while her grandparents had unofficially adopted her that one fateful summer. She knew every past winner, could babble on for hours about their strategies, about the arenas. Most of it didn't make any sense to Duchess as she had a way of slurring her words and looking up at the ceiling. But when Kobaloi took up arms against Duchess, then the learning truly began.

Duchess changed in the lockers, slipped out of her school clothes into a skin tight jumpsuit of a rusty orange hue. It was by her least favorite outfit; while the clingyness of it should make it flattering, the color undid all that good by just making her a beacon. Kobaloi insisted though, and so Duchess zipped it up, grabbed the gifts, and headed into the training arena.

The day proved to be a busy one, the arena filled with Careers going through their usual routines. Duchess picked a spot along the farthest wall, deposited her backpack and began the long slow process of stretching. Deep down she knew that this actually didn't help her very much; she had always been limber. But the chance to move her body, to express with it, to demonstrate the reach of her arms, the arch of her back, that was worth every second. Because even Duchess wasn't fooled by the strength training and the running; she would never be the strongest person in the arena, but she damn well had better be the prettiest.

In the jumpsuit nothing is left to the imagination. Her breasts press against it, her hips yawning against the cloth. Kobaloi is late but that's not unusual; she comes and goes as she pleases. When she is done with her five minute warm up, Duchess bends down and touches the handle of her pick, her weapon. She leaves it though in favor if examining who is in the training arena today. She spots a boy she recognizes but doesn't know, someone younger but equally ambitious. She had heard he cut his thumb off at some point, or was it only the tip?

Duchess waltzed right up to his training station, eyes full of him. "Really working up a sweat there, hmm?" Her pink glossed lips pressed together on the last word, drawing attention to the quirk of her smile. She has wrapped her hair loosely behind her, in something not quite a ponytail, not quite a knot. It forms a halo around her face. "Duchess Grant," she extends a hand to him, hopes he recognizes her family's name. Two tributes over the course of the Games would not have gone unnoticed, even if neither had won.