Weapon For The Capitol || The First Annual Hunger Games

PROLOGUE

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Three months before the first annual Hunger Games, two years and nine months after the 'Dark Days' ended.

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Pehila Capulet rushed out of her concrete school building, almost tumbling out of the doors, making all of the textbooks in her hand fall. The other girls her age just stared, not even bothering to help her as she scrambled to pick up all of her belongings. That's the way it was in District Two, either you were waiting for a ride in your daddy's fancy new car, or you were practically stumbling out of the big steel doors on your way to work for the Capitol.

It wasn't like this a few years ago, before the war that is. Pehila lived in a place called "Kansas" before it was ultimately destroyed, rebuilt, and called "District Two". She doesn't have many pre-flood memories, mostly because the floods wiped the town of all their belongings, but she does remember her family planting crops on what she vaguely remembers to be her grandfather's farm. Instead of the ground being green and rich with soil, like it used to be, it's now a dark gray cement that makes the world look gloomier each day. And instead of being a normal teenager, like her mother promised she would be, she is stuck, living in fear of the Capitol.

She was now practically running to get to work on time, she knew what happened to others that arrived late, Peacekeepers aren't all that peaceful. She was probably a few miles away from the other look-a-like building she needed to get to when a group of kids, probably going to a factory from their school on the other side of town, were gossiping about some "school project". Pehila thought this was weird since the Capitol strictly instructed all of the schools across all of Panem to have the same curriculum. Curious, Pehila stopped, turned, and quietly followed the kids in the opposite direction. This couldn't take that long, right?

"So, that's what we are doing today? Making weapons for these "Hunger Games"?" a tall, brown haired boy said.
"I'm pretty sure, I heard the project was made to "punish the districts for rebelling" or something like that." a scrawnier boy stated.
"So what, the districts are going to fight to the death?" "Guess so!" remarked one boy as the group walked away laughing.

Pehila didn't think this was in anyway hilarious. Making weapons for the Capitol, only to use it to kill each other in the end? She wasn't at all surprised because it sounds like something the Capitol would do, but she was still mortified. But she had to push that to the back of her mind because she still had to make it to the other side of town, or she would get killed on the spot.

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Three months later.

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It was officially summer, so Pehila woke up late that morning. The first thing she did was look outside because she saw the sun glaring through her blinds. It was one of the only days where it wasn't gloomy outside, and probably one of the only days where you couldn't step on the cement without shoes on. Pehila got dressed right away since she had a day off from work. It was one of those pre-war, country holidays, Pehila remembers it being called "Fourth of July". She put on a gray slip dress, but not a fancy short one the Capitol people would wear, one that covered her knees and the shoulders were held up by two identical pins on either side. Right as she walked into the hall, her front door was being broken down.

A Peacekeeper, dressed in their all white uniform was walking straight at her as they grabbed Pehila's arm and yelled, "You! Out of here immediately!"

But it wasn't just that she heard, she could hear Peacekeepers yelling from all over, even from the neighborhood a block away. She was terrified, what was happening? Did I do something wrong? She thought as she was slowly walking to the door that the Peacekeeper was practically pushing her into. She felt so dizzy, Am I going to die? Just as she thought it couldn't get any worse, she was shoved out of the door and onto the boiling hot concrete. She screamed in pain as her hands flared up with burns.