Firecracker: The 99th Games Book One

Arena, Day 4 Part 1

The icy-eyed Head Gamemaker looked over her glorious arena and the cameras that watched over it, breathing in deeply through her nose. She gently placed a hand on the shoulder of a hawk-nosed woman with glasses, glancing down at her work station.

"Still no new deaths, Amanda?" she murmured.

"Unfortunately not, Miss Jemima," the hawk-nosed woman replied. "The Careers sealed an alliance in what they believed was a locked room, but that alliance found a way into the tunnels. No other tributes have attempted murder."

"Such a shame," a blond man sighed dramatically. "When I took this job, I was promised murder. But all I got was a single Bloodbath."

The icy-eyed woman sighed to herself, folding her arms. "...Well, that won't do, will it?"

Head Gamemaker Jemima Milhouse had not achieved her post by playing nice with the tributes. She knew what the Capitol wanted; bloodshed and dramatic sacrifices. The current batch of tributes had been keeping things just interesting enough with their interpersonal drama, but that appeal was waning fast. Jemima couldn't let her audience down.

She stopped by the station of a brunet man wearing a nice white coat, leaning down nearby him. "No Ha, what do you think about showing off your latest project to these tributes?"

The brunet man grinned, leaning back in his chair. "Well, I did make them for a reason. It's about time you let me add them in."

The blond man clapped excitedly, along with a man in a bowler hat near the front row of desks.

"Hooray, murder!" the blond man cheered. "Look, Meri is excited too!"

"Meri is very excited!" the man in the hat agreed. "I'm glad Souma is excited too!"

"Souma is, in fact, excited!" the blond man agreed.

A short man with an emo haircut scoffed. "Right, okay, cool. Are we even sure these things are gonna kill anyone?"

"They're gonna kill more people than your emo a*s, Rolf!" No Ha snapped.

"Don't be so sure, Buster," the short man said with a smirk.

Jemima clapped to get her team's attention. "Focus. No Ha, just scatter a bunch around the jungle and see what we can get. The rest of you, keep up the good work."

No Ha cackled quietly to himself, cracking his knuckles. "Oh, my pleasure, Miss Jemima."

                                                                                           ~*~

Fuyuko was rudely jostled awake for the second morning in a row. She snorted, kicking out at whatever she could reach until she managed to hit someone.

"Okay, rude," Piero's voice mumbled.

"So's wakin' me up like that," Fuyuko grumbled, stretching out like a starfish before finally opening her eyes. "Now what? Didn't we get enough fish yesterday...?"

After moving along the river for the better part of the previous day, their alliance had emerged with a grand total of...two jungle perches. Fuyuko had done the honors of killing both, an act that seemed to impress Piero for some reason. The fish were safely stored in two separate backpacks, wrapped in large leaves from the trees and to be eaten that morning.

Come to think of it, it smelled like something was cooking. Fuyuko sat up enough to look past Piero and found Marco already awake, roasting a perch on a stick over a small fire.