The 23 Cannons Trilogy

Reunited

As soon as the bell stopped ringing, Liam stood up from his seat; the bell signalled that lunch was over, and that the tributes were able to go back to training. He walked across the dining hall, avoiding the crowd of tributes that filed out of there. One of the Careers brushed past him, knocking him into a table. Liam turned, scowling, but found that the offender had left the room. Just brilliant.

Liam sighed, and slowly made his way to the doors, which had closed. This day had been less than eventful: the archery station had been occupied all day, which meant that he couldn't practice with the one weapon he had half an indication about how to use it. In fact, out of all the stations, only two had been available for Liam to use in the morning: shelter building, and cooking. Neither of them were particularly crucial to his survival in the arena, but he didn't want to just be doing nothing during the entire day: it would be a waste of time. And here, every second counted if he wanted to survive the arena. So far, it would be just brilliant if the arena consisted of ovens and house materials. But as if the Gamemakers would be so kind as to do that.

He reached the white doors, and pushed them open, returning to the training room. Instantly, the sounds of the tributes reached his ears: most of it was either conversation or tributes getting far too engrossed in training. One glance to Liam's left showed the sword station, where the boy from District 2 was currently savagely tearing a dummy apart. He rolled his eyes; if there were no weapons in the arena, then the Careers would be screwed over. But the odds of that happening were ridiculously low, since the Capitol adored watching the Career tributes slaughter the other, more innocent ones. Although, Liam couldn't say for sure that everyone was innocent enough; he didn't know anyone here, but it was a given that you didn't trust strangers at face value.

Liam walked past the sword station, and to the next available station: camouflage. He figured that it wouldn't hurt to learn a little about camouflage, in case the arena would make it so that knowing how to disguise himself would be useful. With this decided, he walked over to the station. As soon as he set foot onto the floor that made up the camouflage station, the trainer appeared: a tall, slender woman with curled green hair and a black dress. 

"Hello there," she chimed, beaming happily.

"Uh, hey," Liam replied. "I'm kind of here to learn how to use camouflage...?"

"Oh!" she said, surprise dancing across her face. "Of course! Come with me!"

Liam followed the trainer to the other side of the station, where there was an array of paints and brushes, and several model environments, which included sand, rock, trees, snow, and mud. The most common landscapes seen in the Games. Seemed that there weren't any hints about the arena to be found in training then.

"Now, I bet you're just dying to know what to do here!" the trainer piped.

"Uh, sure," Liam said, shrugging. "I guess so; why else would I be here?"

"Okay then!" she said, clapping her hands, an odd gesture that so many from the Capitol seemed to do. "Let me explain! Camouflage training is fairly simple: you have paints and brushes. All you have to do is choose one environment, and blend an arm into it! I will review it when you're finished to see how you're doing!"

"All right," Liam said. "Sounds simple enough in theory."

The trainer bounced away to the other side of the station whilst Liam walked over to the sand station. He rolled up one sleeve, and grabbed a paintbrush with the other arm. He approached the paints, and proceeded to coat his arm in a strange shade of yellow. It took a while, but soon his entire arm up to the elbow was coated in the pain. Liam lowered his arm to the sand, and looked at it. He sighed; the paint was too dark to match the sand. Liam grabbed the paints again, and mixed them around to make a lighter shade of yellow. He coated that on his arm, and found that it matched the same basic shade, but was missing the grainy detail of the sand. Liam grabbed another brush, and using a darker paint, added the tiny flecks into his arm. After waiting ten or so minutes for it to all dry, Liam placed his arm against the sand once more. It still wasn't perfect, but from a distance, it could easily pass as just sand.