public training sessions!!

(  G E O R G I N A  )

The blue skies are an echo of her soul—serene and clement. She wishes to see it again - to watch the sky spread out across the horizon, to bask in the sun's warmth, to sing the hymns of the wind's whispers. But the training center was not blue - but a deep gray like brewing storm-clouds and tribute's hushed words like the booms of clapping thunder.

Her arms are wrapped around her chest, guarding herself from invisible foes and unsung caterwauls. She adjusts the woolen sweater covering her silver uniform as the cold nips at her fingertips. She gently taps her toes to a rhythm and teeth bite against her lower lip - taut lips and a clenched jaw, time slowly ticking by.

"Georgina Hayward — District Three."

The voice was cold, a mechanical and perpetual voice that sent shivers down her spine. "Good luck," the boy from four remarks with his ashen brown hair spiked and doe-like eyes staring up at her, but even sitting he had an imposing height compared to her. A gentle smiles dances across her lips before her bones slacken and she pivots on her toes, waltzing through the creeping silver doors still with a speckled smile painted across her ivory cheeks.

Georgina's eyes flicker between the faces of the gamemakers, carefully shifting her eyes to not linger too long on a particular one. There was more color in the room, emerald-crusted leaves from faux trees and ruby-red targets lining the edges.

Something gnawed on the strings of her heavy heart when she heard the mewing and soft growls of the mutts. She assumed it was guilt - a guilt that slowed the beat of her heart and dropped it into the lingering pits of her stomach. Georgina quickly turns her head and allows her now quickening heartbeat to drown out melancholic melodies of the beasts behind her.

She doesn't turn to make sure the gamemakers are watching as she snatches the muted canary-yellow rope off the gleaming mercury-grey shelves. The rope slides along the edges of her worn shoulders, neatly tucked into the sides of her veered bones. Her fingers find the loops of coiled wire before letting her fingertips glide across the metallic curves of an axe, cringing at the cold touch.

Twist, turn, tie, the ropes are stiffly wrapped around the galvanized coils. Her fingers loop in and out of the strands, moving at a nimble and volant rhythm. She throws the rope over the polished jet-black poles lining the tops of the training center - cheeks burning a bright-red crimson after she missed the first couple of tosses. The pearlescent blade of the axe is the last thing she hangs.

Her hazel eyes don't tear from stone grey floors before her eyes meet glowing ones. The pangs of her heart return, beating against the brittle linings of her rib-cage.

Click. The steel prison of the glowing-eyed mutt is unbolted and Georgina allows her feet to move farther back. Her breathing quickens and her stature becomes rigid, hands wobbling as she takes out the vermilion, almost blood-red apple that was tucked into the pockets of the glossy, stitched fabric of her uniform.

The mutt's nose turns up at the sight, gently moving toward the saccharine smell of honeysuckle and jasmine. Georgina moves with it's pace until the edges of her back-foot hit the fringes of the galvanized coils. She teeters around the edges before stopping a few inches behind it.

Her heartbeat quickened and she could hear in it her head with rapid beats like thump thump thump. When she heard the click, she knew it was over. Her eyes quickly closed, but it was the sounds that filled her veins with black - guilt. The mutts cries lasted half-a-second before everything became silent once again. But the fragmented wails still echoed in her skull.

She doesn't open her eyes - still clenched tight and as taut as her lips. It was the strident thump of a body hitting the ground in front of her that signaled her trap had worked. Ten years, a decade, of nonpareil teachers and the frayed pages of stolen library books told her - whispered into her ingenuous ears.

She doesn't wait for the dismissal of the gamemakers, pivoting on her toes and muttering a prayer for the life she had taken.

*permission from nyte to use beck <3

Valentine Seuss

She is always interested when a tribute requests the presence of a muttation in their training session. Finally, she was actually able to witness one of these training sessions.

The girl from Three looked more like the type to try and befriend a mutt than fight it, but she supposed that in itself would be somewhat of a feat.

There was a twinge of nervous disappointment as the girl made the trap. The axe, glinting in the light, made her heart sink. She had known that many of these training sessions ended with the mutts dying, but she still felt a tug at her heart as though her own Isadora was the one in the cage. Instead, her small jeweled kitten was tucked in her lap. "You may not want to look, sweetie." Her whispers are only for her cat as the beast is released from its prison, toward its end.

Isadora butts her head against her arm as though taking her advice. She wished that she was able to turn away so easily but she had to watch each of these sessions until the end.

One large, meaty thump and it was over with nothing more than a squeal of pain.

"She has some potential with that." Looking at Capricious and Amethyst she can see the agreement in their faces. Her hand shaking just a touch, she scribbles down a number.

Final score: 7

Absalom Ottrel, D1M

Well below average.

He could hear the echoes of his doctors in childhood, tattooing him with a clinical diagnosis. He had been born without enough oxygen on the brain, and while his physical appearance wasn’t affected, when it came to his perception – measured against the others, he fell far behind.

Funny, that.

As all the other boys and girls in the career district were determined to be the best, their self-awareness became that much more of a burden with each passing year. And while Absalom still had hopes and fears, he never much cared for the need to be the best.

There was a sense of freedom in his diagnosis; he knew exactly who he was, and how he could be different. His sister Sarkine used to tell him that he wasn’t running the same race, but then, that didn’t seem to fit. It more felt like he was watching along the inside of the track, rather than running alongside the rest.

It was that image – the sound of a starting gun, the others running forward and he, at the outside – that set into Absalom’s mind in the waiting room.

He knew he wasn’t going to be the most original, or the toughest. He could crush things, or break them to pieces if that meant getting a solid 6. Plenty of boys had gone and gotten themselves a decent score only to have their heads smashed in the bloodbath. He needed to run his own race, or – maybe just not participate the same way that all the rest of them were trying to do.

Was it exhausting always having something to prove? Or, as he looked out to where the game makers sat, to make them prove themselves? A part of Absalom felt sorry. Sorry that there were twenty-four souls trapped; sorry that there were more left to believe that any of this somehow made them important.

“Absalom Ottrel, District One.” He gave a little bow and set to finding all the training dummies that he could muster. He had one under an arm, and dragged another, easy enough for a brute his size. He formed a pile of them next to a climbing net, so that a solid stack of them twisted their limbs akimbo over one another.

He moved to strap a set of weights at his ankles, and his wrists. Another set in his pockets and taped around his flank. Soon enough the eight-four kilo career had nearly driven up his weight by half. And so he gave a run for them, uninteresting as it was, until he surged at the cargo net, and started to scramble upward.

After twenty feet or so, Absalom halted. The net swayed forward and backward as the boy closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

Maybe he wasn’t a mastermind. Maybe he didn’t want to bloody an avox or shout cruel words at his captors. But he still had a semblance of how to show what he was good at – maybe it would be enough. And if not, well, no matter. There was no way to get better without a solid try.

He fell backward.

Letting go of the rope, his body fell like a shot. He turned hard to face the pile of bodies as he fell, wrists across his face in an ‘x’ as he braced for impact. As he connected with the mannequins, he brought his arms apart, swinging hard with such force, the heads he clipped came clear off. The impact of his body crumpled another few rib cages, and, without missing a beat, he started to slam his fists against the polyurethane skin. He went on like that for a good while, smashing bodies, crushing skulls, until at last the mix of limbs underneath him was more mess than mannequin.

He stood and wiped the sweat from his brow. Without a word, he made his way to the exit, not even bothering to strip off the weight.