Not Just Your Toy (153rd Hunger Games)

A fanfiction of mine, in-progress.

Prologue= Of course, they're still in action after 153 years; everyone's best efforts, and life goes on as normal. Normal being constantly doubtful that you'll live another year, for most of us in Panem, but not for me. Living in uptown District 2, I've always been comfortable with myself, learning skills I might need - like knife-throwing, and stealth, both of which I think my prowess at is commendable. One of the only problems here is that people clamour to volunteer for the Games - if you don't want to compete there's almost always someone who does - last year the monstrous boy who volunteered didn't let the escort touch a single slip of paper in that bowl. We're very much in the Capitol's pocket, but we're well off for it; not like District 12, where they're poor and undernourished, and when a reaping occurs you could literally hear the crickets.

Now, I'm not your typical sob story - I don't have a family member to volunteer for or fawn over and coddle, or whisper sweet nothings to. Who would need that, anyway? Apathetic as I am, it seems to me to be little more than a burden. Two people a year doesn't seem like a huge sacrifice for our food and riches, and our masonry work is our trade-off for the rest of the year. It's not unreasonable, but people still protest about it - in my opinion, it's merely a waste of their own breath, climbing this high up the Capitol's risky mountain slope. Protest against it just a little more, darling, and the rock may crumble away under your feet. That's why a lot of people hold their tongue. and you should too. Even the grace period met its end when Katniss Everdeen was tried and executed by a new President twenty years after her victory - and who was this new President?

Nobody other than President Coriolanus' Snow's little granddaughter. Although it's not right for me to call her little, since she's my senior. In all the old tapes, she was the young girl in the little black dress with the plastic smile, standing meekly at the edge of the frame. Nobody knew what she would become in the face of her grandfather's death; even if they claimed to, they couldn't have. It was discovered that he was her legal guardian, and his death had affected her very adversely. Just waiting for the right moment to lash out. And in that way, I understand her - poised to strike in the face of death, whether it's yours or someone else's. You just want to ruin them, and there's a place and a time for that. So you wait, and you wait, and when they stop watching their back, your whip scores across it in a fiery mark. And in that way, I admire her.

People say you shouldn't admire people like President Snow, people like President Snow's granddaughter; but I can't help it. You aren't given power, you seize it - seize your opportunity with both hands. Sometimes you've been hunting it like a bloodhound for months already - you need to learn when opportunity knocks on the door, and when it's just you wishing it would. What I've learned is, when you want something, you have to take out your competition like a sniper in the woods. And if someone offers you rotten deer meat - make sure they take the first bite of jerky. That's what you need to be successful, not submissive, or rather, a matador, not a doormat - and I simply cannot respect someone who is unable to tell the difference between the two. Like most of my former family for example, that leads neatly on to my next point - the reason why I'm going to these misnomer 'Games.' Death is no game, and we are not just toys that are part of the game. We're skilfully placed pawns, and it's your call whether it's the same thing by definition.

If you, in whichever other district you find yourself (unfortunately) living in, think you've got it bad - try pyromania on for size, won't you? Heck, I'd be glad to be rid of it, so if you want to give it a chance then be my guest. Flames have this effortless captivation; it's something about the glowing reds and oranges, protecting the deep blue sapphire hiding within the flickering shield. It's something about the way they dance in a light wind - untamed, roaming over everything that dares block its way, consuming it and leaving it a mass of smoldering ash.

As a child, I used to steal my father's lighter that he used for his cigars, which was always left in the second drawer of their bedroom when he went away to work for the day. It's wrong, and I should never have done it - but the damn thing had a magnetic field, drawing me, a hopeless soul, toward its macabre entertainments. Naturally, it all started off small - fingers flicking the lighter on again, off again - and then extended to burning paper, etcetera etcetera. You can see the pattern now, yes? Inevitably, this led to people in padded rooms figuring out how to "fix me." I find that to be a bit of an impossibility when I was never broken in the first place; some people I once knew may have begged to differ.

It went too far when I set fire to the building my parents were in; it was never intentional, but of course the problem in this day and age was if you did it, you were shot. If you didn't mean it, you were shot. If you were framed, you were shot. And this was where the only benefit of going to a psychologist came into play. They thought with my instincts, knife-throwing skills, fire-making and speed, that I would be an excellent tribute to represent District 2. So the offered me guaranteed reaping, or a firing squad. In the latter, I'm definitely dead, whereas with the former I have a one in twenty-four chance of living. I'll take the one in twenty-four, of course - who wouldn't? If I lose, I die a martyr for Panem's sacrifice. If I win, my name's in history forever. It sounds like a win-win situation to me, but that might just be the way I look at things.

The Firestarter is ready for almost-death. One= Once you've been up for the death-game lottery five years, it becomes little more than a chore to walk to the square - slouched, but in your best dress because of the slim chance you might have to go to the Capitol. No matter how we present ourselves, I feel, they see us as pigs for slaughter. So, even though my own reaping is inevitable, I turn up to the square in a pair of blue jeans, headphones, a slogan t-shirt and white trainers already scuffed. My raven black hair falls loosely about my soldiers, and not one cosmetic product has touched me. I don't give a damn what they think of me, if you couldn't tell; I'm already letting them dress me up like a freaky Roman doll for the tribute parade. That said, I don't see why I should turn up in a pretty heartbreaking red dress (which, take note, I don't own) if they're to change me anyway. Make sense?