Malachai Zakros, District One

Malachai has brown hair that never seems to stay in place. It is always messy, with a ruffled appearance. He keeps it short, ending at his ears. It appears a bit longer sometimes due to its messiness. His hazel eyes at times can appear to be a subtled shade of green. It has been known to look different colors. At times his eyes look a darker brown, and other times they are undoubtedly green. His father and gradfather both had hazel eyes as well, and their eyes also appeared to change color at times.

He has a square jaw that is usally lined with stubble. He has broad shoulders and well-defined muscles from years of exercise and training. At 5' 7", he may seem tall to some people. If asked, he would tell you that he thinks he has an average height.

Malachai has chronic back pain, caused by lumbar degenerative disc disease. he has pain in his lower back almost constantly, and it is worsened when he bends over or twists his body. Picking things up, especially if they're heavy, is the worst. This condition also occasionally causes pain in his legs. This doesn't happen very often, probably only once or twice every week. The condtion is the result of an injury he recieved when he was twenty.

Malachai is a hard worker. He doesn't give up on something until he's given it his all. He believes that doing your best is all you ask of a person. He pushes other people to do their best, as well. He's quite good at motivating people. Some people, of course, don't find him very motivating. They just find him annoying. He can be seen as annoying to some people, because of the way he always seems so positive. It is possible to get annoyed with how much he tries to get people to do their best. Because honestly, people just want to be lazy sometimes.

The people he is close to find him very trustworthy, and often come to him for advice. The advice he gives is not always what people want to hear, but he tells them anyways. He doesn't like to hide the truth with pretty words. Malachai doesn't like it when other people try to make the truth less than what it is, so he trys not to do this. However, this also means that people are sometimes offended by directness.

Malachai is kind to anyone when he first meets them, even if they are unkind to him at first. He tries not to judge people before he knows a little bit about them. If somone's rude to him on the street, they may just be having a bad day. That's no reason to mean back. he'll be polite and smile, and try not to let whatever happened bother him. He doesn't get angered easily. The things that anger him the most are people who don't believe in themselves, and people who give up before they try. If he encounters one such person, he will most likely try to motivate them to do better. Once again, this suceeds to annoy some people rather than help.

He likes to help out teenagers and young adults as much as he can, because he knows life is difficult at that age. He will let anyone who has problems talk to him, and if possible, he will try to help them fix their problems.

Malachai was a Career from the very start. When he was very young, he started training. At first, he did it jut to please his father, who trained Careers. But as time went on, he realized that he loved improving as he worked. Most of all, though, he loved helping other people get better. He never wanted to be in the Hunger Games as other tributes did. He had plans to take over for his father as soon as he was old enough. However, there was one small thing that got in the way: love.

Her name was Erietta. She was a fellow Career, and she, too, did not want to be in the Hunger Games. She had only become a Career at the age of sixteen to anger her parents. They wanted her to marry some man and ba a housewife. Malachai, also sixteen at the time, fell in live with her free spirit. They were together only two months when Erietta found out she was pregnant. Her parents disowned her, and she moved in with Malachai and his father. The three of them were quite a happy family. Their baby girl was born healthy, and they named her Hannah. Shortly after her birth, Erietta and Malachai got married. They were only seventeen, but they loved each other. They believed they could not be touched by the things that touch other people and tear them apart.

No one could have predicted what happened to Erietta. She died one afternoon of a heart defect no one knew she had. Malachai and his father were left to take care of baby Hannah alone. When Malachai turned eighteen, and the danger of the Reaping had passed, he joined his father in training Careers. Six months later, his father died of a heart attack. It was vey hard for Malachai to cope with the loss of two of the people he loved most in the world. The large Zakros mansion, which he had inherited upon his father's death, seemed now tobe more empty than ever before. Malachai was able to cope with his father's death by doing what the two of them had always loved: training Careers.

When Malachai was twenty, he was wrestling with a Career for part of his training. He twisted his back wrong, and since then has had chronic back pain. He finally had to go to the doctor, where he was diagnosed with lumbar degeneartive disc disease. While he could still train Careers, he would no longer be able to do the physical demonstrations he once had. He takes medication for his back, but it doesn't work very well. Having this disease bothers him, but he knows he can't change it. He wishes his back could be normal, so he could train Careers properly. But more importantly, so he can hold his daughter and play with her the way he's supposed to.

Recently, Malachai has begun to rent out the empty rooms in his home, openeing them up to young adults. He wants to help them in whatever way he can, and if provding them a home is the way to do so, then so be it.