```confetti,,, { blitzshot }

Confetti.

Bruce Johnwayne, eighteen and now beyond reaping, hadn't given much thought to the Seventy-Second Hunger Games before the confetti. At least, not since wondering if he ought to raise his hand for Andesite Obsidian, to spare the boy another year, to spare District Two the embarrassment of the first last-place finish since —

his ears burned.

But even if he was a stupid sonofabitch, aren't you, Brucie? the Johnwayne was a selfish coward who'd had the dumb luck to learn all of his lessons about the Hunger Games vicariously. He didn't belong in the arena.

He didn't belong under the hot sun, sweating bullets through his shirt. He wasn't meant to square off with a giant insect, wasn't meant to take cuts at someone named Shim. Wasn't meant to get a first-hand view of pincers prising elbow from arm.

It fit the day. The confetti fit, too. If there was one day out of the year — one day out of the last half decade — that Dan Johnwayne deserved a place in Bruce's memory, it was Day Five. His birthday, some twenty-four years ago. His death day, an even five.

Bruce knew better than to think that Cowboy Dan ever had so much as a single balloon or an ounce of confetti in celebration of his birthday. There was the one year — ten, twelve years ago, maybe — he'd watched Elya sneak up on her brother, two-eyes filled with devilish glee, only to snap a dented party hat filled with dead spiders onto his head. That was the Dan Johnwayne sort of birthday festivity. Insects, dead and alive, were somehow more appropriate than a hail of colored paper scraps.

The commentators clarified: the confetti was certainly because it was the Gamemakers' twenty-fourth birthday.

But the massacre is because it's Dan's. Bruce didn't care if he was the only one in the country who thought so.