and off they go [ivan, 91st games reactions]

As head trainer, Ivan watched every movement of the tributes carefully while they were in the training center, studying to see if he could mentally bet on who would win. He wasn't allowed to actually bet, since he trained a good amount of them, but he liked to see if he could guess correctly.

There was the Garner girl, whose name gave him hope. She turned out to be far less impressive than he cousin counterpart so far, though, at least in the training center. Then again, Flynn wasn't all that impressive until he reached the arena, either, if you asked Ivan. Perhaps she'd prove herself in there, but he wasn't counting on it.

Cain seemed like a good possibility, at least at first, if his brother's performance a couple of years ago was anything to go on, but again, just because a relative might've done well in the Games doesn't guarantee a successor would. That, and his training score was quite low: a mere two was all he'd gotten. Then again, Ivan had underestimated tributes based on their scores before and been proven quite wrong about their abilities in the end.

Cordelia, Lux, Derecho and Willem all seemed like solid options as high-scoring career tributes. They were probably the tributes that most people in the Capitol would be betting on, though, and Ivan typically went against the crowd. Perhaps it would be someone more in the middle or bottom of the pack.

Carly Volkov seemed a solid option. She'd scored as high as Lux, tying for the highest scoring tribute this time around. It was quite impressive, being from a lower or middle district and scoring that well. Charleston Gallows wasn't far behind as a lower district tribute scoring well, either.

For some reason, one tribute in particular really stood out to him, though. There was one who just gave him a gut feeling: Kassia Simons. It just seemed... right.

Come the bloodbath, however, Ivan's gut feeling was proven to be quite wrong instead. She was the second one downed during the fight at the cornucopia: shit. There went his hopes of being immediately right. She'd stayed in too long and gotten herself killed. Damn it.

He thought she would've known better.

After the bloodbath, later in the first day, yet another tribute Ivan had been mentally banking on fell as well. Cain O'Malley was downed, and so far, Ivan's predictions weren't looking so good. Perhaps they'd turn themselves around sooner rather than later.

-----

407 words