Helios Inferno

Helios Inferno is a career tribute from one of the career districts and a member of the Inferno Family.

Personality
During his exile, Helios was a bitter, impatient, and complex young man, akin to a tragic villain. More than anything, he wanted his place as heir to the mayor title and his father's love. Helios believed, or forced himself to believe, that winning the Games twice would make these wishes come true, making him one of the most determined tributes Panem has ever had. His motivation was focused on him redeeming himself which stood in contrast with other pursuers; Phenix was motivated by political ambition or cruelty.

Helios believed one becomes strong by struggling and fighting for what they want. However, he expressed contradicting mindsets; he did not want good luck because he felt he could control his fate, but also believed he was marked unlucky and that the world was against him. His reaction to the perception of the world always set against him is an iron-willed defiance and inflexible determination. He was clever, yet hot-headed, often letting his temper get the best of him. He seemed averse to the thought of harming others without any motive or benefit. He rarely thinks his situations through, causing him to get in trouble. Said traits were criticized by his uncle, urging Helios to try to control himself and think things through more often.

Helios was able to show mercy, even to his enemies. When fighting a peacekeeper, he decided to spare him unscathed, though the peacekeeper had expressed every intention to hurt Helios.

Dreams
Returning home and earning his father's forgiveness and love. One day becoming the mayor of the district in which he was born.

Fears
Never being able to go home.

Abilities
Helios has developed a masterful skill in swordsmanship, and he specialized in dual wielding swordplay, using a set of dao blades, skills he gained after being trained by the sword master Piandao.

Aside from his swordsmanship, Helios is highly skilled in unarmed combat, able to break apart oncoming spears with his hands and legs, and disarm, subdue or defeat opponents. Helios was able to defeat several armed peacekeepers in rapid succession. Helios is very physically capable, able to almost nonchalantly send a person flying with a single hand and smash through iron shackles with a single kick. He is also quite fast and agile, able to perform great acrobatic feats, such as running across walls, doing mid-air twirls, scaling vertical faces with great efficiency and climbing speed, and jumping large distances to avoid enemy attacks with noticeable agility and free-running skills.

Helios is stealthy and skilled in the art of infiltration, able to sneak into heavily-defended fortresses and conceal himself effectively for long periods of time. Helios is also a skilled tracker.

While not as naturally adept at strategy and academics as his sister, Helios is quite intelligent. Throughout his training for the Games, he proved himself to be a skilled strategist, able to exploit any situation to his advantage. He is also able to form alliances with people with special skills and use them to his advantage.

Early Life
Helios was the first born child of a Zeus Inferno and a Hera Inferno. From a young age, he was disdained by his father, an animosity that began shortly after Helios' birth. As the infant lacked the spark in his eyes that is typical for most career tributes, the Inferno family was unsure if Helios was a fighter at all. Zeus, viewing a non-fighter as firstborn as "shame", planned to cast his son over the district walls. Only when Hera intervened did the Inferno Era give his newborn son a chance. Later on, it turned out that Helios was a fighter, and peace returned to the young family.

The Inferno family made frequent vacations to District 4 in the following years, and Helios would later consider this time the only one when his family was "actually happy". When he was three, Helios saw an eagle hawk attacking a crab while playing at the beach. The little boy immediately rushed to rescue the crab, feeling the urge to help the weak. However, when he had the animal safely in his arms, Helios realized that the hawk would die of hunger without its prey. Unsure which side he should take, the boy was eventually surprised by a wave and carried out into the ocean. Helios almost drowned before he was saved by his father. The little boy spent the remainder of the day in the care of his mother, recovering from the experience while vomiting sea-water. Helios and his family also often watched the Hunger Games. Afterward, Helios and Phenix usually reenacted the final duel of the games at the beach. To his frustration, Helios normally had to take the role of the losing tribute. Nevertheless, Helios happily recalled these memories many years later.

In his early youth, he was also schooled by Apollo Inferno in the art of fighting with dual dao swords.

However, as they got older, Helios and Phenix eventually grew apart and he became the object of his sister Phenix's manipulation, ridicule, and deception. His mother, however, loved and favored him over his sister. Especially Phenix let her brother feel her increasing animosity, as apparent when Helios, Hera, and Phenix walked in the Victor's garden. Helios happily talked with his mother until the boy saw his sister crusing a flower of the garden. He promptly told on her to their mother, as he thought that Phenix's action was wrong. When Hera scolded the girl due to this, she kicked Helios' bottom in retaliation. After sending Phenix to her room, Helios was consoled by his mother. Helios tearfully lamented that he did not understand why Phenix had to be so mean, as he had just did what he thought was the right thing to do.

A few months later, Helios and his family ate together. Phenix soon began to brag about opposing their matirial art master, Mr Maze, calling his techniques "the dumb way" to fight. After hearing this, Zeus agreed with Phenix that the teacher seemed to be incapable and declared to send him to the outer districts as punishment. When the girl expressed her satisfaction about this, Helios objected. The young boy said that Mr Maze was not "a dummy" and proceeded that the teacher just thought that good fighting has to begin with proper forms, but was promptly silenced by his father. Outraged about Helios' behavior, Zeus scolded the boy about daring to lecture his sister on matirial arts. When his father angrily asked Helios how many more fighting forms his sister had already mastered than him, the intimidated boy meekly answered that his sister had mastered four more forms. Zeus continued to recount how he would have almost discarded Helios because he thought that he was a weakling when the boy was born. Finally, Zeus told Helios that Phenix had been born lucky, while he had been lucky to be born, leaving his son completely devastated.

Hera's dissapearence
When Helios was 11 years old, his cousin, Blast, was killed in the Hunger Games. Helios uncle, Spark, devastated by the loss of his only child, abandoned his duties. During an audience with Mayor Chromos Inferno, Zeus showed off Phenix's prodigious fighting skill and knowledge of military strategy, both outstripping Helios'. Chromos was unimpressed by these exercises and demanded Hera and her children leave and Zeus be frank about his reasons for wanting the audience. Phenix and Helios eavesdropped on their conversation as Zeus voiced his desire to be made heir in Spark's place, justifying this course of action by pointing out that Spark's overwhelming grief and subsequent erratic behavior made the date of his return uncertain and he had no remaining heirs to carry on his line. Chromos, however, was outraged and declared angrily that Spark had suffered enough, but Zeus' suffering had just begun.

Frightened, Helios ran away while Phenix stayed to watch. Later, he was in his room trying to sleep when Phenix came in and mockingly told him that Chromos' punishment for Zeus is that Zeus must kill Helios, as he wanted him to know what it felt like to lose a first-born child. Hera, hearing the commotion, came in and took Phenix away, declaring it was time that they talked. Helios, left behind, chanted quietly to himself, "Phenix always lies." Later, he was awakened again, but this time by his mother. She told her sleepy son that everything she had done, she had done to protect him, and instructed him not to forget who he was no matter how much things may change. The next morning, he immediately remembered what transpired the night before and ran frantically through the halls searching for his mother. He found Phenix, who blithely told him Chromos died the previous night and their mother was missing. As she played with his pearl dagger (a gift from his Uncle Spark), she mocked him and noted their mother was not there to make her give it back. Eventually, he found Zeus in the gardens of the palace and demanded to know where his mother was. Zeus did not answer and he hung his head in sorrow. At Chromos' funeral, the mayor-assistant conducting the ceremony named Zeus the new mayor upon Chromos' dying request.

Banishment
Two years later, Spark allowed a persistent, 13-year-old Helios into a war council with Zeus and some of his peacekeepers. The young boy was instructed by his uncle not to speak during the meeting; however, when one peacekeeper outlined a plan to sacrifice an entire division of new recruits in a diversionary maneuver, Helios fiercely spoke out against the peacekeeper 's suggestion, seeing it as a betrayal of the recruits' patriotism. The insubordinate outburst was seen as a grave insult and Zeus demanded the boy participate in a dual. He agreed, unaware of the reality that it was his father and not the peacekeeper whom he had insulted. Upon turning to face his opponent, Helios surprisingly found himself against his father, he immediately became penitent and fell to his knees, refusing to fight and tearfully begging for his father's forgiveness. Zeus declared his refusal a sign of cowardice and another display of disrespect, affirming that he will learn respect, and suffering will be his teacher.

Zeus marked Helios by permanently scarring the left side of his chest, stripped him of his birthright (of becoming the next mayor), and exiled him from his beloved district, declaring that he could return only after having won the Games twice. This ment Helios would have to win the Games once and then wait for a Quater Quill that might and onlt might allow victors to participate. It was a fool's errand by all accounts, but one to which Helios clung desperately as his only hope of regaining his honor and everything he had lost.

Helios spent the next two years in a nabouring district, fruitlessly and desperately training for the Games. Spark accompanied Helios during his exile, and the pair spent more than two years in different districts.