a comet named icarus | umber & eulalie

It was strange to think that even now, after nearly a century of doing this, there were still things about the Hunger Games the rest of the world knew nothing about. Umber wouldn't have considered himself a fan of the Games by any means, but even so he felt like he knew most everything a typical person from District Twelve would know about them: tributes, arena, pageantry, mutts, death, victor. He knew there would be a parade and that he'd have to wear some ridiculous clothing. He knew there'd be an interview before they left for the arena. He knew he'd be given a training score, even. But who ever heard of a Training Skills Assessment?

The way the trainer explained it, Umber and every other tribute in the Training Center was going to be evaluated on every single station available to them. Not just blades and hand-to-hand and plant identification, but there were several on the list he had no idea were even an option to learn about, like bloodlust- how the hell were they going to score the tributes on something like that? He wasn't excited to try and find out. In fact, if Umber could've skipped this day entirely, he would've. The last thing he needed was yet another aspect of the competition reminding him that he was a step behind basically everyone he was competing against.

Everyone was set up in a sort of rotation. There was an announcer's box in the center of the room and a woman with sharp cheekbones and a straight nose would call out names and assigned stations every few moments. They started him out on the first aid station, ironically one of the few he wouldn't be an absolute embarrassment in. He wasn't an expert by any means- his family dealt the absolution of death, not its prevention- but he knew they were called forceps and not scissors, and it was scalpel, not knife, and he knew swelling, increase in temperature, and irritation around the area probably meant infection. He knew how to dress a wound and knew to keep weight off an injured leg so it could heal faster, and to elevate it when the opportunity was there. But when it came time for him to sew up a gaping wound in a mannequin's neck, the sticky fake blood kept gunking up his fingers and making the needle and thread too slippery to gain any real purchase on. When the buzzer sounded, he looked up to see he'd been awarded an 81.

This gave him some relief, actually. 81 wasn't too bad!

After that, he was sent to the Pickup station, where the entire assessment was trying to snatch items when they came by on a conveyer belt without being detected by the trainers who pretended to spar nearby. He did well enough until his arms were full, but then he got too greedy and the careful balance he'd placed the items in grew too precarious and the upper half of his stacked tower crashed down around him. The trainers both fully stopped the spar and looked over at him, one with a comically puzzled expression on his face. Umber felt himself begin to blush, and then moments later his score flashed onto the screen: 52. Okay, that was... worse. Not good but at least it could've been worse?

For the third rotation, Umber was called to the charisma station. The setup here was a table, with three trainers sitting behind it gawking at him like he was an animal in a zoo. The girl in the middle was in the middle of explaining that this portion would function sort of like a lightning round interview- they were going to ask questions and Umber was to say the first thing that came to his mind. But before she could even finish explaining, a ruckus elsewhere in the room seemed to be drawing everyone's attention. Umber looked over to see several of the other tributes and trainers peering over at a station with targets lined up at its base, where Eulalie Blake had just finished throwing three knives directly into the bullseye of the target. She smirked, proud of her stellar performance, while the tributes standing closest to her seemed to avoid eye contact.

"That was an impressive display of your skills, Miss Blake," the trainer said, with a strange tension present in his voice, "Unfortunately, we are practicing archery at this time, not throwing knives. I'll have to score you an 85."

A collective gasp from the room and the girl alike. She seemed to be genuinely offended as the gears began spinning in her head and, perhaps for the first time in her privileged life, she had to figure out a way to deal with hearing she was wrong about something. He hated the careers so much! This was just further proof that the only advantage they had was the Capitol's sympathy. In his opinion, an 85 for an archery score was way too high for someone who hadn't even touched a bow during the evaluation. This girl was using completely different weapons and still passing by with a B-, but Umber couldn't stack twelve cardboard boxes on top of each other while carrying them and it was an automatic F. He ground his teeth.

"What?! An eighty-five? You're joking."

Oh, and she had the audacity to be angry about it. The entire room watched with held breath as the girl continued to defend herself. The trainers sitting behind the charisma table seemed to have forgotten all about Umber in the moment, so he huffed and rolled his eyes. From the corner of his field of vision, he noticed there was no one sitting at the announcer's table and an idea began to plant in his head. They didn't notice him on their own, fine. He would make them.

The girl was still droning on and on about how amazing her performance was as Umber took a seat behind the table- "I displayed several different techniques." For a moment, he considered turning back, but he couldn't stop himself. He pressed the big red button and leaned down so that his mouth was right next to the microphone.

"Well maybe you should try doing one of 'em right!"

For a moment, everyone was confused. Then once everyone saw him sitting in the seat, the energy began to shift. The room erupted in laughter.