Writer's Games Entries

Task 6: "My Battle Cry" (SF)

My body will not stop shaking. That voice, I can see her in my head, the clone...but she proves a point. That clone was a clone of me and there are no such thing such as foreign voices in my head, they're all mine. All this time, I've been fighting myself. Hiding in the shadows won't take me away from the voices...from the real enemy which is me. How can I fight an enemy that I cannot physically see?

Everything around me, the tributes and the walls, they just keep on growing while I still remain the same, turning to this minion in the middle of all this. I keep shaking. I can't take this no more. This is all too much. At least in their regular sizes, they don't seem that impossible to handle.

"Just stop...stop, I can't fight this. I'm not that strong..." I let out to myself as the arrowhead on my necklace suddenly hangs loose and completely catches my attention. The way it just sways back and forth as I keep my eyes on it before I take off my necklace. My hand is shaking, fragile even, but the arrowhead keeps shining as if nothing's ever touched it before. It almost feels like it's telling me to stand straight.

"Just because you prefer things from a distance, doesn't make you weak. It takes strength and intellect to know your physical limitations. There aren't many people that can say they do, least of all in this district and District 1. That is why, if you get reaped, you will win. You don't have to say much to know what needs to be done to survive, because that's what you have been doing up till now. Even if you come down to only having your own bare hands...you can use them in your own way."

Sometimes all I have is myself. The words come back to me as I look at this arrowhead which many people just think is an unimportant object...to me, it's so much more. It's a token of who I am, of what I know. The Master Instructor in Archery gave this to me, because even when I didn't think so, he knew how to get to me. Every lesson he gave me, was somehow just embedded into this token that I carry around my neck every day.

"Stars are only visible in darkness
Fear is ever-changing and evolving
And I, I feel poisoned inside
And I, I feel so alive"

Creating a distance, coping with things one at the time has always been my strategy, my way of surviving. That has been my way of battling through challenges all my life. People don't get close to me, I don't say much and Panem learned that from my interviews, not even my allies heard me say a single word...and yet, the environment never fails to read my body language.

After a while, I clench my fist around the arrowhead. I try to get it together by wiping off the tears from my cheeks and rise to my feet. 'Sometimes all I have is myself'...right now, all I have is my voice. The voice that nobody has ever heard before, least of all in the volume that I turn to when I scream. My chest is burning and I still keep going. My throat is turning soar, but I still keep going until I am all out of emotions, all out of helplessness.

"Nobody can save me now, the king is crowned
It's do or die
Nobody can save me now, the only sound is the battle cry
Is the battle cry, is the battle cry
Nobody can save me now, it's do or die"

Everything around me starts to shrink, the louder my voice, the faster they shrink. Once I stop, I have to catch my breath. I have never turned to this 'weapon' before. I manage to grab my bow and the arrow that I dropped only a few minutes ago. The tributes in grey disappear as I turn towards the ones that are left. They are tightening their grips on their weapons. I place my arrow on the string and pull it back.

My chest is still going rapidly up and down. That is usually the case when I have been running and running, but this time, it's for a whole different reason. For once it's about a cry for battle, a cry to point out that I am ready and that I am done being afraid of what might or might not be. It's about making a point:

"I was homeless at three and brought up in a shelter, but I was accepted at the Career Academy at 10...I have survived without any family or friend in my life since I was three. Why am I telling you that? Because if you think that it makes me even the slightest bit weaker than the rest of you, you are dead wrong. I would not be alive if that was the case..."

I pull the arrow back, close my eyes and take that deep breath like the Master Instructor of Archery taught me. "Become the arrow, just breathe...and let it fly." The moment I open my eyes however, everything is back to normal. As in there is not a single soul in front of me. I saw them so clearly a second ago, but now they're gone. I look around me and there's not a single sign of anybody having been here in the last couple of minutes.

The gas...of course, it was a trick. Now the entire nation has heard everything that I have held back for the entire Games. For some reason, it doesn't scare me. If one thing, it makes me relieved that the entire nation knows my story...my true story as a survivor of life, not a life of training. I will not give up. I'm not going to give that satisfaction to my enemies and my insecurity.

I locate one of the cameras against the wall, heavily zoomed in on me. A weak smile actually penetrates my usual façade as I aim my arrow at it. I look dead into it because I know there are people on the other side, one particular person, who is watching me. I want that person to hear this...

"That...was my battle cry."