The Alliance Of Six: The 29th Hunger Games.

CHAPTER NINE

CYN'S P.O.V.

I fire my arrows away, all of them hitting the target exactly where I want them to. I think I’ve got the hang of these weapons, so it's time to stop. I don't want many other tributes to see my skills, I want to save it for the games. I already showed off a little to Electra, but she didn't seem like someone you would approach with a friendly smile, asking them to be allies with you. No. She wanted someone to challenge her, I could tell.

I put the bow back on it's rack for others to practice with, and I join Princeton at the camouflage station. Princeton and I are surprisingly good at this.

We try some useful camouflage that we might use in the arena, but we mostly just paint with the dyes, I pick up a bowl of bright red dye as Princeton paints on my face with the blue. We look at each other, and laugh at how childish we are acting.

“Do you know what you'll do for your private session?” I ask Princeton.

“Maybe throw some knives, or do some camouflage. I think we actually have quite the talent.” Princeton replies sarcastically, winking. “What about you?”

“Paint with the dyes, of shoot a bow and arrow, I guess.” I tell him. “I actually had this idea of painting some kind of a picture, like a scene from the first games or something.” I say, somewhat excitedly.

“That's actually a really good idea, camouflage never gets too high of a score.” Princeton says. We have this sort of agreement, where we won't get too high of a training score. The higher the score, the more of a target you are for the other tributes.

I think my painting idea will get the gamemakers' attention, but won't get me a huge score.

By the time we are done at the camouflage station, training is over. We get a lot of odd looks from the other tributes because of all the bright colors and dyes on our skin.

On the third day of training, we start to get called in for our private sessions with the gamemakers during lunch. District 1 gets called first, first the boy tribute, then the girl. Each tribute gets about 15 minutes to show the gamemakers what they can do. Princeton and I wait for a while, until the District 7 tribute, Ashes, is called, and we wait for our District's turn. Princeton is called in and I give him a small nod on his way out, reminding him of our agreement. We are aiming for around the same score, as best as we can. Not very low, but not very high either. We want the tributes to kind of just forget about us after seeing our training scores, for everyone to underestimate us.

My name is called and I walk into the Training Center, passing Princeton on the way in. By the looks of him and the Training Center, his session was pretty average, which is what we want.

As soon as I’m in the gymnasium, I stand there for a moment deciding what to do first.

I guess I’ll just go with my painting idea.

I walk over to the camouflage station and I grab as many different dyes, paints, and colors as I can, and I carry them over to a big open space on the smooth floor of the Training Center. I try to remember what the first games was like. My mother, Twyla, told me about the very first Hunger Games, and I’ve seen it on tapes. My mother always told me it was awful, she was around for it of course. I think my mother knows a lot about the Capitol, and how the games came to be. Most of District 8 knows that something happened in her life when she was young, because they were around for it too, but my mother doesn't like to talk about it.

The first Hunger Games wasn't very long, the tributes died quickly because they weren't experienced. The arena wasn't particularly special compared to the newer arena's the Capitol have done, it was a mountainside. Some parts being large portions of water, others being scrub-land, most of the arena was big rocky cliffs that made up the mountain. I guess I could paint the bloodbath at the cornucopia, but the gamemakers might enjoy that a little too much. Once I have a scene from the games in my head, I start to paint it out. I take a dull blue color and scoop some paint out, and begin smudging it across the floor. Next a brown, then a green. Taking different colors and smearing them on the floor, creating the mountainside scenery that was the 1st Hunger Games.