The Spark

Training Begins

Today is the day that training begins which means I have to come up with some sort of plan to make it to the end of the games for Terrek's plan to work. If that's still the plan, that is.

Down in the training arena, I decided to work on throwing knives since I've had some practice with throwing stars, so it's the closest thing to that. I see Ethan and Nil in the survival tactics area, and Carter was in the area where you can practice fighting with a knife. Emily just looked lost, Livia was practicing climbing, and Terrek went to the archery area.

I might go to the archery area in a little bit , but for now I focused on my new goal of being able to generally protect myself with some throwing knives, from both close up and far away.

I turned quickly as I heard a yelp from above. I looked up to see Livia hardly holding on to one of the metal bars, looking frazzled.

"I'M OKAY!" she called, swinging herself back up onto the parkour course with relative ease.

"YOU SURE LIVI?" I yelled back, making one hundred percent sure she was actually okay.

"NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST—" she replied, then slipped and fell, quickly breaking her fall and rolling into a side flip.

I rushed over, knives still in my hand.

"You okay?"

"Yes, very okay," she said, darting over to the course entry and scrabbling up. A few moments later, she glanced down at me, hanging upside down from her knees.

I nodded at her, walking back over to the throwing knife area.

Livia flipped down and headed over to me. "You're getting pretty good with those knives," she commented, picking one up and hurling it at the target. She missed the major "point" areas, but still managed to get the knife's blade into the dummy.

"Thanks. I've worked with throwing stars before and it's pretty similar to throwing a knife. I'm not the best but if it keeps me alive then it's worth working on."

Livia grabbed another one of the knives, turned, and threw it at the target again, still missing the marked point area, but a bit closer than the try before. "Hold on, let me try something," she muttered to herself, grabbing another knife and throwing it at Ethan. He jumped back as the blade slammed into the beam next to him, and turned back with a very frightened expression.

"What the... what was that for?" he called.

"Practicing!" she replied cheerily.

"I thought we weren't allowed to kill each other!"

"You're not dead, are you?"

He muttered and went back to practicing.

I burst out laughing. It was almost like old times again. "I see that bullying Ethan is something that we are continuing."

She nodded. "I'm going to go scare the crap out of someone," she said, sneaking back up onto the bars. A few moments later, someone screeched, and Livia's giddy laugh echoed back to my ears.

I guess we'll never really change.

I went back to practicing throwing, which is where I stayed till the end of training for the day.

"Just look at all of this amazing food made specifically for you to enjoy!" Trilly squealed with excitement.

"It looks like everyone else's hard work is being used for you without any reward going to them. Not really something I want to take part in," I mumbled out.

"You will never survive in the games if you keep up that attitude."

"You think I want to survive?"