The Name of the Game I Finnick Odair

The Training Centre

Peeta and Katniss arrived early at the training center, but they weren't the first to arrive. Enobaria and Brutus were present already. By ten o'clock only about half of the tributes had shown up. Katniss didn't mind that, in fact she was glad that there weren't as many people she had to pretend to be friends with.

Atala, the woman who ran training, seemed unfazed by it. She had probably expected it. She ran the tributes through the stations, which included both combat and survival skills, before releasing them to train.

Katniss told Peeta it'd be better to split off to cover more territory. So when Peeta went off to chuck spears with Brutus, Chaff and surprisingly Kenzie, she went to the knot-tying station.

The trainer remembered her fondly, probably because she spent time with him last year. She liked him. He was pleased when she showed him she could still set the trap that left the enemy dangling by a leg from a tree.

Katniss would've been content spending the morning alone with him, but after about an hour and a half someone put his arms around her from behind, his fingers easily finishing the complicated knot she had been sweating over. Of course it was Finnick, who seemed to her to have spent his childhood doing nothing but wielding tridents and manipulating ropes into knots for nets. She watched for a minute, while he picked up a length of a rope, made a noose and then pretended to hang himself for her amusement. She rolled her eyes at him, causing him to laugh and walk over to Kenzie and Peeta.

Katniss' fiancé seemed to have kept his promise. He was painting dandelions on Kenzie's arm. Finnick was standing next to them, chatting with Peeta and his district partner.

Then Katniss headed over to another station, in which the tributes could learn how to make a fire. She already made excellent fires, but she was still pretty dependent on matches, so the trainer had her work with flint, steel and some charred cloth. It was harder than it looked and even as Katniss worked as hard as she could, it took about an hour to get it going. She looked up with a triumphant smile on her face only to find that she had company. The two tributes from District 3 were beside her, struggling to start a decent fire. She thought about leaving, but she really wanted to use the flint again and if she had to report back to Haymitch that she tried to make friends, she thought that these two might be a bearable choice. Both of them were in small stature with ashen skin and black hair. The woman, Wiress, was probably Katniss' mother's age and spoke in a quiet, intelligent voice. But right away Katniss noticed she had a habit of dropping off her words mid-sentence, as if she had forgotten anyone was there. Beetee, the man, was older and somewhat fidgety. He wore glasses, but spent a lot of time looking under them. They were a little strange, but Katniss was pretty sure neither of them would try to make her uncomfortable by stripping naked.

Katniss glanced around the Training Centre. Peeta was at the center of a ribald circle of knife throwers. The morphlings from District 6 were in the camouflage station, painting each other's faces with bright pink swirls. The male tribute from District 5 could be seen throwing up on the sword-fighting floor, while Finnick and Mackenzie were using the archery station. Johanna Mason was naked again and oiling her skin down for a wrestling lesson. Katniss decided to stay put.

Beetee and Wiress made decent company for her. They seemed friendly enough, but didn't pry. The trio talked about their talents. Wiress and Beetee told Katniss that they both invented things, which made Katniss' false interest in fashion seem pretty weak. Wiress brought up some sort of stitching device she was working on.

"It senses the density of the fabric and selects the strength." she said and then became absorbed in a bit of dry straw before she could go on.

"The strength of the thread," Beetee finished explaining. "Automatically. It rules out the human error."