Marcella Brynlee

"I'll never stop dreaming that one day we can be a real family, together, all of us laughing and talking, loving and understanding, not looking at the past but only the future." -LaToya Jackson

Marcella Brynlee is a tribute who belongs to FrostyFire. Please refrain from using this tribute without permission. If you do wish to use this tribute, you can leave a message asking. Marcella lives in District Three and her district partner is Benoit Crescenda. The two do not need to be submitted into Hunger Games together, or in a special order.

Basic Information
Name: Marcella Brynlee

Age: Seventeen

District: Three (Five, Seven)

Gender: Female

Personality: Marcella, unlike most tributes from District Three, isn't insanely smart. Instead, she's the type of girl who is shy and nice towards people once you first meet them, but as you get to learn her more, you realize that she's selfless and faithful and a great friend. After being bullied ever since she was a child, she learned how to toughen up, instead of letting the bully take the better of her. She does have a somewhat bellicose side, where she gets into fights every so often, but she usually ends up victorious at the end, using all the anger and sadness she built up and letting it flow out onto the person she is fighting. Marcella doesn't like showing her emotions, since she believes they're just opening up a possibility of being deceived, so she doesn't cry nor yell in front of others. Volunteering for a friend takes a lot of guts, but Marcella truly believes that friendship is the key to survival, and with Rowan and her siblings back home, she will stop at nothing to become victorious.

Weapons: Living in District Three didn't open up many possibilities for learning any weapons. While she might have possibly been able to learn a techncial approach to the Hunger Games with traps, she's learned that she's better when taking an assaulting approach, since distant, technical, and surprise attacks all seem to be hard for her to master. Her main weapon she uses is a katana, which is a skinnier sword which Marcella can easily slash through a tribute without a second's hesitation. However, she tends to swing much harder than needed, so a tribute dodging the attack could possibly use the moment to their advantage, but she's able to regain quickly, and once it cuts through the body, you're as good as dead. A much simpler weapon she uses is a knife, since they're pretty easy to master. Combined with her physical strength, she's able to use knives to kill someone after she pins them to the ground, making a deadly combination between her strength and a knife.

Appearance: Although Marcella is physically strong, her appearance doesn't seem to show it, as she's very skinny, but this is just an illusion. Her long, black hair goes all the way down to the middle of her back, and she usually lets it flow freely, not bothering about pulling it into a ponytail or trying to curl it. She has bright, blue, and unmistakably beautiful eyes, which always seems too bright for her face, especially when she's in a happy mood. Marcella has a pointed chin without chubby cheeks, which contributes to her beautiful appearance. For her age, she's about the average height and weight, but is one of the prettiest girls her age, despite her constant refusal that she's pretty.

Backstory: Marcella, unlike every family in District Three, was born into a large family with her father being a victor of a previous Hunger Games and her mother illegally escaping the arena of the same Hunger Games. The two warned their eleven children not to tell anyone, but as children, they were innocent and didn't know better. However, Marcella's mother was smart enough to change her appearance and name, so, even when her children would tell their friends' parents, they would think they're just silly and unintelligent. She dyed her hair a dark brown color, originally being a dirty blonde, changed her name from Samantha Paragon to Serenity Brynlee, and wears contacts that make her bright, blue eyes seem a dull grey. Nobody questioned if she was really a tribute in a previous Hunger Games who escaped.

Growing up, Marcella began to learn how she wasn't able to tell others about the miracle that happened to her mother, or else she may be severely punished along with the rest of the family. She began being extremely scared that she might die when she heard her little siblings telling their friends about their mother escaping, but their friends would just laugh it off, as if it was a joke. Being the fourth oldest of eleven siblings, and the oldest sister in her family, she was always protecting her little siblings and making sure that they wouldn't reveal their mother's secret, or to make sure that the secret would come across as a joke.

When she turned five, she attended school. At the time, she only had three younger siblings, all a year or two apart, so she wasn't as protective over them as she later became. On the first day of school, she made friends with two girls, Rowan and Junia, and unlike most friendships, they were separated during the course of their lives. Marcella always loved being adventurous, and didn't have a lot of friends because of it. Junia, on the other hand, was really smart, thus making her really popular. Marcella's younger sibling told Junia about their mother escaping the Hunger Games, and Junia started to use the secret to influence people to make fun of Marcella, due to her crazy siblings. Poor Rowan was stuck in the middle, wanting to preserve friendships with both girls, but spending too much energy on it.

For ten years, Junia and her gang started to bully Marcella about her insane siblings, who kept telling Junia secrets about Marcella--how she bites her nails when she's stressed, how her mother escaped the Hunger Games illegally, how Marcella's hair sticks straight up when she wakes up in the morning, how she sometimes chews on her hair when she's really stressed. Eventually, Junia started to bully Marcella's siblings, which made Marcella extremely protective over them. Rowan broke her friendship with Junia, believing that she was, and she quotes, "a son of a bitch."

Having a friend by Marcella's side made Junia extremely upset that she slapped Marcella on the cheek. It seemed like there would be a sissy fight where both girls just slap each other's hands until their nails' break, but Marcella wasn't like that. She tackled Junia to the ground, and elbowed her hard so hard in the gut that she spit up blood right into Marcella's face. Junia screamed as Marcella punched her hard in the face until her eyes were swollen shut, her tooth was on the floor, and she uncontrollably spit out blood from her mouth. This little stunt led to Marcella being suspended, but also Junia being suspended for provoking a fight.

Out of sheer wrath, Junia told a Peacekeeper how Marcella's mother escaped the Hunger Games. At first, they didn't believe her since she was only fifteen years old, but after Junia told them how she dyed her hair a dark brown and wears contacts every morning, something the siblings also told her, they decided to watch Marcella's mother from afar to see if Junia was correct. The caught Marcella's mother, Serenity, dying her hair at a hair parlor, but they thought this was just a coincidence. After seeing her take out her contact, revealing a bright, blue eye, they decided to believe Junia. They looked at previous footage of the Hunger Games and noticed the female from District Three during Marcella's father's Hunger Games had the same, bright, blue eyes, that were so unique that they knew Serenity was the tribute.

By the time the Peacekeepers invaded their house, Marcella's youngest sibling was just a few months old, and she was fifteen years old. The Peacekeepers invaded the house at night, while the family were all asleep. However, upon the sound of the Peacekeepers smashing through windows and knocking down doors, everyone woke up and started to get out of their bedrooms. Marcella's father decided to go towards the noise, but as soon as her rounded the corner to walk down the stairs, a chorus of gunfire was shot and all the siblings started to scream and freak out.

As the Peacekeepers made their way up the stairs, Marcella was almost shot in the leg by one of them, just skimming off of her pajama bottoms, but before they could kill her, her oldest brother pulled her into his bedroom. In his closet, there was a little door on the ceiling that led to the attic, so the two climbed up in the attic and hid while gunfire was shot all throughout the house. Marcella's brother, Darrow, hugged Marcella tightly as tears trickled down her face, before scanning the attic in search of a weapon. He found a weird contraption, the contraption his mother used to make it seem like she was dead, and shot it towards himself, making him collapse to the ground, but he was still alive, just with a slower heart beat to make it seem like he was dead. Marcella later shot herself with the contraption as she heard the Peacekeepers coming towards the attic.

By the morning, the contraption's effects wore off and the two siblings left the attic, in search to find their other siblings. The Peacekeepers never made it to the attic, so the siblings assumed some of their family must be alive if they didn't search everywhere. However, after seeing the body of their parents dead right in the hallway that connects the bedrooms, Darrow collapsed and uncontrollably started crying. Marcella still searched around the house, trying to see how many of her siblings were dead.

She eventually made a list, scribbling all the names of her family on it. She crossed out her parents name, since they were dead, and put a star next to her and Darrow's name, to signify they were alive. She saw her youngest sibling, just months old, brutally killed with too many gunshots to count in his stomach. She saw two of her siblings, the twins, hugging each other in the corner, both brutally beaten up and stabbed to death. Another one of her siblings were shoved into the furnace, being burned to a crisp. However, the other five siblings were no where to be seen, they weren't dead, but they weren't hidden anywhere around the house. Darrow came up with a suspicion that they must have been kidnapped by the Peacekeepers for questioning, but Marcella tried to believe that they fled the house. Either way, they knew their siblings only had a limited amount of time.

Marcella brought Darrow to Rowan's house, hoping that she could temporarily shelter them and possibly help them with finding her siblings. After telling Rowan's parents about what happened to them the previous night, about the Peacekeepers killing her parents and some siblings, and with some of her siblings missing, they allowed the two to stay in their guest room. However, instead of just Rowan helping the two find their siblings, her parents also said that they could help, since they could drive their car around to cover more distance.

After a week of searching, Marcella and Darrow didn't even have the slightest hint to where their siblings may be. However, Marcella came up with a possibility of them fleeing to their grandparent's house, which was only a block away from theirs. They thought about the possibilities of their siblings being there, and they knew that if they were to flee somewhere, it would be to their grandparent's house. The two excitedly ran to their grandparent's house, but stopped abruptly once they saw the house was destroyed, just like theirs.

It took Marcella a lot of courage to take that first step inside the house, finding her grandmother laying dead on the kitchen floor. Walking around the body, she found her grandfather laying dead on the couch. There was a trail of blood leading into their bedroom, which Marcella and Darrow cautiously followed, before seeing one of their siblings dead on the ground with a bullet wound in the back of his head. Written in blood on the wall was a little message for Marcella and Darrow: "Six children left. You'll never be safe, nor who you're with." Scared, the two siblings ran right to Rowan's house.

They knew that staying with Rowan kept her in danger, so they decided that they couldn't stay long. Four of her siblings were somewhere, and now they knew their siblings weren't captured by the Peacekeepers, they were hiding somewhere. The two left Rowan's house before nightfall, leaving a note explaining their situation and asking for forgiveness for putting the family in danger. Rowan's parents were angered that they might be killed for helping the two children, but Rowan wasn't, instead, she kept looking like Marcella asked them.

Marcella and Darrow kept a low profile, and started to take on a criminal lifestyle. The two would sneak into their sibling's friend's houses at night to see if their sibling was hiding somewhere, but it was all useless since they weren't anywhere. After a year of searching, the two grew hopeless. They knew their siblings were probably dead and searching for them was just useless. They settled in the outskirts of District Three, towards a concealed area towards the fence. But then, something spectacular happened.

The two siblings were just leaning against a fence when someone came up to them. The girl had pink hair, all the way down to her butt, with eyes matching the same color. Neither of them knew who the female was before she whispered something into Marcella's ear: "Hello sister." Marcella stared at the girl right in the eye, scanning the girl to see what she meant by being her sister. Suddenly, the girl pulled out contacts in her eyes, revealing a girl with shining sea-green eyes. The eyes were undoubtedly Alana's, Marcella's sister that was a year younger than her. The three started hugging before Alana revealed that she found two more of their siblings, but Ridge, their seven year old brother, was still unknown.

Alana told the two siblings how she fled the house with Irene, Pearl, and Arden, three of their siblings, and made their way to their grandparent's house. After staying a few nights, the house was attacked by Peacekeepers and Alana, Irene, and Pearl were able to escape, but Arden was trapped while trying to jump through the window in their grandparent's bedroom. The three then found their way to the outskirts of District Three, where a family took them in and helped change their appearance. Now, they pretend to run a daycare, when really, they're searching for their siblings.

A few months after searching, the siblings grew hopeless about finding Ridge. Rowan, her old friend, was still searching for Marcella's siblings, and encouraged Marcella to return home every so often so the two could catch up, but after reuniting with her family, she completely forgot about Rowan. Alana, who has been attending school under a different alias when she isn't "running a daycare," has already told Marcella about Junia, Marcella's rival, having a large crowd of "friends" surrounding her every day and listening to her every command, including on picking on Rowan. After hearing that, Marcella couldn't even stand to be around Rowan, knowing that she cast all those terrible things upon her. But something changed.

Upon searching her house again, in an attempt to find any clues about Ridge's whereabouts, she found herself walking to Rowan's house, only to stop in fear from seeing the house completely destroyed. She ran towards the house, searching for Rowan's corpse, but she only saw Rowan's parents. She collapsed on the floor, crying about bringing only bad to people she really cares about. Someone tapped her shoulder and she stiffened up, before turning to see Rowan.

A warm embrace wasn't enough to express Marcella's relief that Rowan was still alive, and Rowan caught her up on how she's been pulling pranks on Junia by replacing her make up with a contraption her parents created before they died, which hardens into a sickening brown color only an hour after application. She also revealed how Junia's "minions," the term she used to describe the people who listen to Junia's commands, has been dwindling in numbers ever since a newer, hotter girl transferred to the school, and unlike Junia, doesn't command people to do anything. But that wasn't it, Rowan revealed that she found Ridge, who has been hiding in the remains of her house for a few weeks.

Marcella practically jumped out of her skin when Rowan escorted her through her messy house to where Ridge was hiding. At the time, he was fast asleep, knees pulled to his chest and arms hugging them in order to preserve heat, since it was getting colder at that time of year. Marcella brought Rowan and Ridge back to the other siblings, where the happy reunion was celebrated with hugs and kisses and crying. Everyone was claiming how much older their siblings look, since it was nearly two years since the surviving siblings all met together, and the siblings were finally able to return to a normal lifestyle.

Darrow, since he was already twenty one, was able to buy a small cottage-like house towards the outskirts of District Three, away from where Peacekeepers usually roam around and away from the noisy city. They started to grow a small garden, consisting only of flowers and some tomatoes and peppers, which Pearl, Irene, and Ridge would run through every day playing silly little games, such as tag. Marcella, Alana, and Rowan all shared a bedroom, and loved talking about boys and other teenage things. Above all, though, they would talk about their family, which was a depressing subject, but it was to keep their legacy going. Darlow was able to be the man of the house, going to town occasionally with Marcella to grab essential needs, like food and water. He took up an occupation of painting and sold his artworks for money. Everything seemed to be happy and easy from here on.

However, it wasn't. With the reaping coming up, Rowan had to tell Marcella a secret she's been keeping for four months. The Peacekeepers who invaded her house knew that Rowan was there, but didn't kill her. Instead, they left a little letter, claiming that if she continue helping Marcella's family, she would be sent into a Hunger Games. As a little warning, her parents were killed. She didn't know whether or not the Peacekeepers are still going to force her into the Hunger Games, but whether it was from the Peacekeepers rigging the reaping or from sheer luck, Rowan was reaped. Marcella, knowing that her friend has gone through too much for her to just go away and die, volunteered.

Reasons for Winning: Nobody usually volunteers in District Three without a reason, and the reason Marcella volunteered is the same reason why she wants to win: for her siblings and Rowan. After spending two years searching for four of her siblings who survived the tragic night where Peacekeepers invaded their house, she doesn't want to lose them this early. Rowan risked her own life to try to find the siblings, and even when it meant her being forced into the Hunger Games, she still committed to finding the siblings. Marcella has too many loved ones at home and her life was finally becoming peaceful, and she will stop at nothing to return home to enjoy more time with her true family.

Strengths: Marcella's learned how to stand up for herself after being bullied over the years, and unlike people who try to talk to or avoid the bullies, she attacks them. She's physically strong, able to take down practically any younger tribute, but she hasn't worked out so the Careers might be able to overpower her, but it'll undoubtedly be a struggle. She's also pretty fast and is light with each footstep, making her stealthy. After spending nearly two years searching for her siblings, she picked up both skills since she needed to cover more distance, but also make sure no Peacekeeper notice her. From searching for her siblings as well, she's learned how to hide when there's little areas to hide, since there's been times were she had to squeeze into a trash can to avoid Peacekeepers seeing her.

Weaknesses: While Marcella may be strong and stealthy and fast, she lacks basic needs in surviving the Hunger Games, mainly revolving around nature, since she's lived in District Three her entire life, and even though she may live in the outskirts, there was little nature around. She has no idea how to climb a tree nor swim in a lake, which gets rid of two possible ways of escape. Marcella also has no idea how to hunt, so she relies heavily on what she receives in the cornucopia, since she doesn't really know the difference between edible and poisonous berries. She does recognize some edible berries from others, but would rarily risk it, unless in a desperate situation.

Strategy: Marcella relies heavily upon what she gets in the cornucopia, so her first instinct is to grab a weapon. Her first priority is to grab a katana, if it isn't too far in the cornucpoia, but she could easily settle for a knife as well. She'll grab at least one bag before fleeing the bloodbath. If anyone does provoke a fight, Marcella will fight them, whether they're a Career or not. She'll keep fighting until she kills the other person, before stealing any supplies they have and leaving. During the course of the Hunger Games, she'll be hiding from larger alliances and other tributes. If she does notice another, weaker tribute, she'll attack them by tackling them to the ground and then stabbing them with a knife, or by beheading them with her katana. Whether she attends the feast or not is completely determinant on whether she's in desperate need for supplies or if she'll be fine without it. If she survives to the final battle, she'll try to be one of the first people at the cornucopia or wherever it takes place so that she can have the upper hand in the fight. She'll use everything she has into winning the final battle, whether it means killing a little, innocent twelve year old or having to kill her own district partner.

Typical Alliance: Prefers to ally with another, strong female, preferably sixteen or older.

Height: Five Feet, Seven Inches

Fear: Mastigophobia, fear of punishment. Ever since half of her family was killed by Peacekeepers, who revealed that anyone helping Marcella's family will be punished, Marcella developed the fear of punishment since she didn't want others to be punished because of her, and also didn't want to be punished for trying to survive after the Peacekeepers killed her family.

Token: Silver necklace. Rowan actually gave Marcella the necklace, telling her that it was going to be her token if she was brought into the Hunger Games. Marcella treasures the necklace and uses it to remind her why she wants to get home.

Participated Hunger Games

 * Cyrissa's The Nightmare Games (The 17th Annual Hunger Games)  - Runner-Up (3rd out of 28), killed by lightning, 4 kills (Surorian Chaos, Manta Li, Canary Ash, and Alexis Sanchez)
 * Cupcakes With Flames's 86th Hunger Games  - Unfinished, 1 kill (Shyvana Feuer)

Trivia

 * Marcella's backstory contains 2,620 words with an average of 24 words per sentence.
 * In every Hunger Games she isn't a loner, she coincidentally allies with Corin Greer.