The rest of my first night in the Capitol is a blur. Shortly after the chariot ride Glimmer and I are escorted to posh apartments in the training center, a gigantic building in which we’ll spend nearly all of our time for the next few days until the night before the actual Hunger Games.
We eat a filling dinner during which the members of our team congratulate us and lavish praise on us for our truly exemplary performance. I’d wager they rate our performance above even that of “The Girl On Fire”, Katniss herself. I’ll be the first to admit that we couldn’t truly upstage her, but we certainly came close with our revelation that we were a couple to the people of the Capitol.
Once the dinner is finished avoxes come and eat away the plates. As soon as I finish dinner I go to bed, in an ornate apartment, and pass the night by meditating. The time I spend meditating, a talent I have been developing since the very same night that I clashed against the three teens in the courtyard of my school, allows me to gain a more meta understanding of my future growth.
When I meditate I do not simply zone out, I actually get the ability to peer into myself and to see more of the powers that I “possess” that are in a state beyond my reach. These abilities are invariably supernatural ones that relate to the “Alt-forms” I will have earned the very instant that I free myself from Panem and enter the wider omniverse.
I will be undergoing a few more apotheosises before I free myself from the shackles of this supernatural-less universe. One of the apotheosises I will undergo will occur when I end a life, and that apotheosis will finally allow me to gain access to truly supernatural abilities. As I kill more people, presumably during the Hunger Games, how many of my abilities I can access will increase in number, until I bring Katniss to her knees and end her life.
The instant that Katniss dies, or that the Hunger Games ends and I am the victor, whichever occurs later, time will freeze and I will be free to explore my warehouse while Ghriza prepares me for my next destination.
During that time I will have the ability to transform into my alt-forms for the very first time. According to Ghriza the breadth of alt-forms I possess will afford me a degree of safety that allows me to be brave in my next setting, provided I succeed in this particular challenge. She bestowed me with this kindness to make up for my lack of meta-knowledge of the next place I’ll be visiting. Some of the perks my alt-forms possess have already slowly begun to bleed through and affect me even now.
One example of those perks comes from a setting known as “Lords Of The Night” and the perk itself is called “Red in Tooth and Claw”. It is a favorite of mine that I only unlocked a few days ago, it brutally empowers my unarmed attacks even further, allowing me to equal any mundane weapon with my own two hands.
I slowly explore the vast array of perks that stir within me. In the depths of the mind-space where my powers dwell, I am able to read through them with ease, and it is where I am the most connected to the creature I could become in the future.
My passive senses are keen to the point that they are beyond peak-human. And yet none of them are fully supernatural, just yet. At least aside from the sole exception of "Soulseer", which is a fully supernatural ability that was, rather mysteriously, the first of my supernatural abilities to fully awaken. I do not have the ability to tap into “Magic” just yet, nor can I do things with my mind that should be impossible, like reading someone else’s mind, or even moving objects with it, and yet I know that that is coming.
In the depths of the mental sanctum where I can see the sort of being, I will become I can see that my fully unsealed self will be able to do things like reading minds and throw objects with the raw power of my mind. I also see that I will be able to utter words of power that can alter reality itself, and use magic to do things like hurl fireballs at people. All I need to do is not die here, and make it to wherever my next setting is.
Before I know it I find myself roused back to the waking world by the gentle stirring of an avox. Avoxes are the captured, tortured, and maimed traitors captured by the Capitol and mentally reprogrammed by the dark sciences of oppressive scientists. The one who pulls me out of my meditative state is a blonde man who gently but firmly pulls me out of my meditation and gestures to the door. On the door rests a strange, plain bodysuit that a single usage of “Observation” tells me is the uniform for the Training Center.
I quickly put on the plain bodysuit and slip out the door. I am in the room closest to the elevator and I enter it without stopping to grab breakfast. I am not hungry, due to the fact that I do not need to eat. I want to eat, but what I want to eat is something that is denied to me for the moment. I hope that in the next setting I visit I get to actually eat my enemies since I have a fair number of powers that activate the moment I consume foes who have died at my hands.
The elevator is a gigantic thing and a few other tributes are inside of it when I enter it. The ride down to the Training Center’s bottom floor is a silent one, and I can feel the eyes of my enemies peering at me. When the elevator doors open I am the first person to step out of them and into the gigantic room where an instructor awaits us.
The instructor is a tall, thin black woman wearing a modified version of the same bodysuits we are wearing. Hers have the colors of the Capitol, despite the plainness of her appearance suggesting she is from the Districts. As we arrive I see Katniss, Rue, Glimmer, Thresh, and a number of other tributes awaiting us and watching her curiously.
The room itself is the main hub of the Training Center’s various stations, where countless skill stations are on display and awaiting users they can instruct. We all step toward the instructor and when she notices us she smiles and begins to speak.
“Alright, well it looks like everyone is here. Excellent. Welcome to the Training Center. In a few weeks twenty-three of you will be dead, and the survivor, and thus victor of this competition, will be determined… In all likelihood, anyway, by how you spend the next few days preparing.” She begins, speaking rather grimly but in an admirably professional tone given her dark task.
“Everyone wants to grab a weapon and start using it on their rivals, but truthfully the biggest enemy all tributes have is the environment. It kills as cruelly as a knife does, and with more brutal efficiency. The main purpose of the Training Center is to give tributes a chance at learning to survive before the actual games begin. If you are smart and use this time to hone your survival skills and pick up a few pointers, you may survive to see the end of the first day.” The woman begins, before taking us on a tour of the facilities offered by the Center.
The tour is a quick one, we are taken to various stations, shown how to check out weapons, and even get a chance to see a demonstration of one of the facilities the Center possesses creating virtual foes to fight. It is only after this that we are freed to go out and train on our own. And as quickly as we are freed the hours, then days begin to blend together into a blur of chaotic training, action, and even light socializing.
I spend each of the following three days training at an array of the consoles that the Training Center has readily available for use by the tributes. Doing so allows me to show off the array of skills I possess, and to gain many more levels of skills than I previously had. I also form an official alliance with Cato, Clove, Glimmer, and the two tributes from District 4, the archetypical “Career Alliance” which is an expected aspect of the Hunger Games that benefits me so I opt to indulge it.
Glimmer and Clove, the female tribute from District 2, get several chances to show off their skills. They impress many people, even other tributes, with their skill with ranged weapons, though Glimmer is, sadly, less impressive than Clove when it comes to assailing foes from a safe distance. Cato gets a chance to impress and terrify tributes with his skill with a spear, and I manage to spook even my own allies with my skills with every weapon I get my hands on, thanks to the power of a perk from this setting!
All in all, we are an impressive bunch, and I feel confident going into the traditional private sessions with the gamemasters that we are a deadly team of warriors. I am the very first person to go into my private session, as both a man and as the tribute from District 1, and it goes as well as I could have possibly hoped.
I am able to impressively show off the not-subtle potency of perks like “Master of All” by masterfully wielding every weapon available to the tributes in the chamber where we impress the gamemasters. That includes weapons I have never held, like maces! I am also able to climb up the almost sheer walls of the room, replicating a feat that Katniss suspects the female tribute from District 11, Rue, performs when she is in front of the gamemasters.
By the time my time in front of the gamemasters is over I am being applauded by them and I wave at them as I am escorted out of the room by a pair of polite peacekeepers. As I leave Glimmer is welcomed into the room and I squeeze her shoulder as I am escorted past her.
The rest of the afternoon passes by quickly enough, and I spend it in the apartments given to tributes for us to rest prior to the games. At this point, we are done with socializing and training, and the only thing prior to the Games that we can prepare for is the interviews we will be having with Caesar Flickerman. Glimmer eventually returns to the apartment as well, and when she does she has a genuine smile on her face.
She joins me in the vast living room of the apartment and shortly thereafter our teams join us as well. It is an interesting sight to see Dewda, Gloss, Cashmere, our stylists, and us all together as we sit in front of an enormous television screen listening to the news. It is, unsurprisingly, all about us tributes and the upcoming Hunger Games.
When the time comes for the scores to be announced Glimmer and I are the very first people whose scores are displayed. An image of my face is flashed onto our televisions, and the number next to my face is an incredible number; twelve. When we see that number everyone in the room stands up in sheer awe, and exclaims in surprise at the number that is flashing on the screen, and somewhere I wonder how my family feels about that score.
The tributes are ranked on a spectrum of one to twelve, primarily because there are twelve districts, and each successive number means that the tribute is more impressive. There have been multiple games where there wasn’t a single twelve. Heck… Not even my brother, a victor, was given a twelve as his score.
Hearing that I got a twelve makes it nearly impossibly hard for me to focus for the rest of the night. The rest of the scores are the same as they go in the version of this universe where Katniss wins her games, including her incredible score of eleven and Glimmer’s impressive score of nine, as well as Clove’s score of ten, marking her as a threat roughly equal to Thresh and Cato.
A small part of me is annoyed by my inability to focus on anything else for the rest of the night, but the news that I received a twelve is something that shocks even me to my core. It is incredible news and means that I am assured to get a plethora of sponsorship opportunities. And it means that my interview is almost guaranteed to go well.
I go to bed not terribly long after the scores are revealed and meditate once again. As I do I focus on my charisma perks, all of which have been fully unlocked and swirl within me. I feel as though I only get a moment to spend in my meditative state before the same avox from before once again pulls me out of my restful state.
The agenda for today’s training is simple; prepare for my interview. And it is also quite simple for me. I am told, even after countless practice questions, that I just “have to be myself” and I will get countless offers.
Internally I wonder how much of my charm is me being myself and how much of it is my perks, but I also don’t particularly care. I am excited to see this through to the end, and by the time my training is done for the day, I am ready to get ready to go.
My stylist, Mars, picks out a dapper blue and gold suit and tie combination for me to wear for my interview, which I find nearly effortless to slip into. Once I am in it I am escorted to a waiting room on the ground floor of the Training Center, which is situated right next to a temporary stage and stadium constructed, destroyed, and then reconstructed every year right before the Hunger Games.
I am the second interview of the night, following Glimmer, and my fellow tributes begin to slowly arrive one at a time until Peeta shows up shortly after Katniss does. During this time Caesar Flickerman, host extraordinaire and effectively the Master of Ceremonies of the pre-Hunger Games festivities has been warming up his audience and entertaining them with countless examples of Hunger Games trivia.
It was only a few minutes after Peeta arrives that Mr. Flickerman excites his guests by declaring that the last tribute has arrived and that it is time for the interviews to begin. This, unsurprisingly, causes an explosion of applause and it takes a full minute for the deafening roar of the audience of colorful Capitol citizens to relax enough for Mr. Flickerman to call out to Glimmer. When he invites her onto the stage she steps out of the silver waiting hall and onto the stage to the delight and cheers of the strange and bloodthirsty people of the Capitol.
She is dressed in a delightfully sexy outfit that is made out of golden-hued translucent silk and her appearance energizes the audience of this final round of festivities. I can hear all sorts of delighted, lustful sounds as my “Girlfriend” saunters over to the white chair that Caeser will have us all sit in.
Glimmer plays to the crowd, winking and blowing kisses to assorted members of the audience even before she is seated, and I can feel the audience eating out of the palm of her hand. I smile at her display and fully focus on this moment so that I can watch Glimmer’s first, and tragically, also her last, interview.
