The Fourth Annual Writer Games: Canon

The Tributes | The Training Scores

District Nine – Kardel Barwick

Kardel Barwick had to acknowledge that everything in the Capitol did taste better than at home, with the exception of the throw pillows. Admittedly, he also had to acknowledge that out of everything he had everything he had experienced in the Capitol, it was unlikely that people there had ever considered the taste of their throw pillows. In fact, it was most unlikely that anyone, anywhere, had once leant back in their chair during a company meeting and announced that the business needed to revisit the taste of throw pillows.

Still, he sat alone on the sofa with one clamped between his teeth.

When he had first entered the suite where the District Nine tributes were detained for the opening events of the Hunger Games, Kardel believed that inspiration for the interior design had probably been drawn from a sweet store. The walls were papered in the pastel pink of taffy, with the sofas upholstered in suede the colour of fudge and the throw pillows – the ever-exciting, unappetising throw pillows – mimicked the primary colours of bright boiled sweets. Kardel had once seen the sugar discs in vibrant shades of red, blue and green coated in icing sugar in the sweet store at the centre of District Nine. He had never had the spare money to purchase them. They most likely tasted better than a throw pillow.

There was only one reason why Kardel had decided to clamp a piece of the expensive sofa between his teeth, and it was because it was easier than displaying any sign of nervousness. He hated himself for it. Every fabric-flavoured mouthful served as a reminder that you need to get your ass into gear, Kardell, or even this is nothing but a weakness, you know that, and you need to stop.

He did not stop. If anything, the voice in his mind telling him that he was showing weakness made him feel even worse. It was a reminder he had failed, because he was not supposed to be nervous. In turn, this made him feel even more nervous and as a result, the throw pillow ended up even further in his mouth.

During the final fight of the Fiftieth Hunger Games the year before, Kardel and Ren had both stayed home from school. Kardel remembered it well, even if it was only because it was a change in routine and in District Nine, it was a useful habit to be able to accurately recall anything that could be considered different. It had been a district-wide rule that people were allowed to stay home from education or grain fields so they could witness the final of such a wild Quarter Quell.

Kardel had watched his brother more than the fight on screen. As Haymith Abernathy claimed victory – something that Kardel only remembered because he had been forced to learn the name of the victors as parrot-fashion recitation – Ren had hidden behind a threadbare pillow. He had curled up on the sofa with his face buried in the fabric with only his eyes poking out above like periscopes. Afterwards, Ren had admitted to his brother that it was because he was scared of blood. Kardel had never understood that. It felt counter-productive to have a fear of something that was so integral to humanity as a concept. It flooded through Ren's veins like it flooded through everyone else's as far as Kardel knew, so to be scared of that was pointless.

Kardel did, however, agree that is was probably a good idea to be scared of blood if it was your own and it was no longer kept contained within your body.

At that moment, Kardel understood why Ren had hidden in fear from something as natural as blood, because he was now hiding from numbers.

Numbers, Kardel – this is ridiculous, you're supposed to like numbers!

It was not the numbers as a concept. In fact, Kardel quite enjoyed numbers as a concept. They were predictable, and he enjoyed being able to see into the future and assume what was going to happen with some reasonable accuracy. These particular numbers, however, did not provide him with that luxury.

They were training scores.

They would be displayed on the television, which was why Kardel was perched on the edge of a sofa in front of the giant screen currently gnawing on a throw pillow. There was some comfort in believing they had been influenced by his actions earlier on in the day, but the most rational part of Kardel's brain was quick to tell him that it was most likely the Gamemakers had stopped paying attention to any of the demonstrations beyond the girl of District Four and therefore the scores were probably delegated either by random choice or by some computer algorithm. That, or simply based on how pretty a tribute was because the Capitol seemed to like to place a lot of weight on arbitrary facial features.

Every other event in the circus of pre-arena formalities had been something where Kardel held a direct influence. If he considered it beneficial to smile whilst riding the chariot, he could have made that decision. If he believed it would be to his advantage to hide any sort of talent during the two and a half training days, then that was a tactic to employ. However, in waiting for his score to be shown on the screen, he had no control.

You're just terrified of random chance, as if that isn't something that happens every single day anyway, Kardel!

The score had no direct correlation to the result of a fight. Kardel had studied – under duress – the majority of the fifty Games that had happened since their creation and this was an obvious pattern. One thousand, two hundred and twenty-four tributes – yes, including factoring in that wild year when they had taken double the amount just to increase the entertainment value – had been sent to an arena just like Kardel would soon be facing. Out of the fifty who had returned, there is not even one who had the highest training score, Kardel.

In fact, the majority of victors had come out of this segment of events with a fairly average number to their name.

However, those who had won with lower scores had won with talent or luck. Kardel did not consider himself particularly talented, nor did he consider himself gullible enough to rely on luck. The training score held more weight for him because it equated to sponsors.

It meant gifts. It meant surprises. It meant people who would send you that one exact thing you needed on a silver platter when you were bleeding out in a cave or dying of thirst up a tree. It meant you had hundreds of people who could financially support you, rather than the hundreds of people back in your district who could do nothing more than send their best wishes.

Kardel was not likable. He never considered that as a weakness, it was his strength. It meant he did not have to waste time holding pointless conversations about weather or grain yield. It had meant that his escort had left him alone, his mentor had deemed him bloodbath fodder and his district partner had remained indifferent to him in all aspects of their interaction. Humans were complicated with their emotions, their social rules, their expectation for you to care about every single living thing when in reality, it was only beneficial to care about yourself.

Sponsors, however, cared about you. They maximised your own self, acted as an extension of your talents. If you fail to secure a weapon, they will secure one for you.

Kardel needed them. He did not believe in luck as a gift, but he believed in it as a concept, a physical concept that you had to work for. Luck would be what sent silver parachutes tumbling from the sky when he needed it most.

The Capitol did not care about personality. It did not affect Kardel, even when his escort repeated for the fifty-sixth time you have nothing unique about you and the people are going to be so unimpressed if you actually open your mouth. If they cared about personality, then they would not be spending their money on larger breasts, better muscles, specifically shaped noses or cat whiskers and endlessly inked designs – none of which Kardel believed had any evolutionary advantage otherwise humans would have been born with them already.

Personality did not make a victor, and that seemed to be all that the brightly coloured people of the Capitol wanted. They cared about being able to say that they picked one. They wanted to throw entire parties to announce they had chosen the winner before the bloodbath had even seen it's first crimson drop. They wanted to parade around about the fact that the victor had been declared only because of their financial assistance.

They would pick a winner based on numbers. They thought that they were smart. They thought that they could discern a winner from statistics, as if everything in life boiled down to a computer program. Those that score the highest will win – ignore the fifty exceptions and the one thousand, two hundred and twenty-four test subjects.

It's all just random chance, Kardel.