𝐒𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊𝐒 ❦ The Hunger Games

seven

☆ CHAPTER SEVEN! ☆
007. Training days

|| THUNDER ||
❝Just a young gun with
a quick fuse, I was
uptight, wanna let loose,
I was dreaming of
bigger things.❞

➳➳

THE TRAINING CENTER had been rejuvenated in the two years between my games and now. It used to be made of stone, I remembered how much it hurt when I fell from an obstacle course onto the floor when there weren't any mats to stop me each time I glanced towards my feet. Now everything seemed to have been upgraded to metal (which would still damage me as much if I fell) and the many real trainers had been replaced with bright orange holograms. Nobody gathered us around to talk about what we had been forced into- the usual speech about our deaths was nowhere to be found. Perhaps they expected us to know about death by now, so instead they filled the empty space with stages to show off our skills. To boast about how great we were and how quickly we could snap some body's wriggling neck.

They wanted us to hate each other.

Johanna was freely swinging her axe on one stage; she winked at me as I passed the first stations even after watching how tentative my hardened face had become. Her coal-dusted auburn hair was stuck like glue to her forehead and her shoes looked almost destroyed as she swung left again, and yet she could slice apart a hologram all while eyeing the way I actively avoided any kind of weapon with a frown on her face.

The Career Districts of One and Two had set up some kind of power camp on stages 6 and 7- Enobaria snarled her teeth as I passed them all while Gloss just seemed to glare. They didn't want my company and, in all honesty, I didn't want their's- it seemed as if it was just like any other Hunger Games. The only difference was that some Districts hadn't even bothered to get to practice on time now, which would of been enough to crucify us before.

This time it almost seemed pointless, even with the sharpest things in the world surrounding us from all angles, and the eticate had somehow changed. Instead of hushed whispers and silence- it was filled with boastful chatter if you got close enough. Johanna even shouted to gain my attention from her very own stage of death- a call that dragged me towards her like she had released an entire orbit from her body that pulled me in.

By the time I had reached her, the last of her axes had been thrown.

"What?" Johanna slurred once she watched her axe sail into the target hologram. "Aren't you going to correct me on my form? The way I'm standing?"

Her eyebrow was raised so that it's natural arch was somehow more defined as she stared at me; it didn't remind me of anyone else than Johanna. There was something about the arch of it and the quirk it added to the ends of her almond shaped eyes, eyes that seemed more sultry than mine even if they were supposed to be similar.