The Eleventh Hunger Games~ A Mags Fanfic

Chapter Six: Training

Hellooooo my lovely readers! I am so sorry about the failed consistency of updates, eep! I was planning on this chapter being small, but I got a bit carried away...anyways, I hope you enjoy and I can't thank you all enough for reading it!

Chapter Six

Training

Early morning light streams through the towering windows as I make my way to the training room. Tributes from various districts begin to gather around the head trainer, some cracking their knuckles to show just how tough and robust they really are, sending a touch-me-and-you're-my-next-meal faces to on looking tributes. While others stand away from the group, biting their lips and nervously rolling back and forth on their heels. The trainer, a bulky squat man with the slightest peak of a Mohawk sprouting from his head (that strongly resembled a potato) herds us together and begins to instruct us about the different stations. (Survival, weapons, hunting, etc.) After a brief description of the endlessly potential ways to parish in the Games, we scatter to the stations.

"Hey." Someone crouches down beside me, plucking some of the plants from the artificial forest ground. I glance to my side. A tall, lean boy with dark, shaggy hair smiles and holds out his hand. "Ben."

"Mags." I reply, shaking his hand warily. Who are you and why are you here? Is what I really want to say, but I hold it in.

"So, District Four?"

"Yeah, District Five?" I say, glancing at the number pinned to his shirt.

"Yep. So you're stuck with the kid that doesn't know how to smile and looks like he could spit fire, right?" Ben drops the plant and brushes his hands on his pants, leaning back on his hands.

"That about sums him up," I twist the plant, cracking a smile.

"So what are you doing exactly?" Ben asks after a while, nodding to the pair of sticks that lay in my hand.

"Attempting to create fire, but as you can see, it's not going so well," I try once more to rub the first stick up and down on top of the wider stick as the instructor had advised.

"Hm. Maybe you're doing it wrong." Ben reaches down and is about to move the stick when suddenly a thin stream of smoke erupts from the stick-medley. He jerks his hand back, wincing.

"Gah I'm so sorry!!" Great, I've already managed to hurt someone before the Games have even started. Not that I plan on hurting anyone in the Games--I kind of hope to just slip my way through it without creating too much damage...because that's possible in the Games HAHA ha...

"It's all good Mags." He is about to add something when someone, the other half of District Five, calls his name over to the weapons table.

I roll the handle of the dagger between my fingers. "Now the key is to hold your wrist back towards your forearm, like so." The Knife instructor demonstrates, grabbing a short, deadly knife and flicking her wrist with such a force that it makes the knife drive deep into the center of the target. "Ready?"

"Uh..." I make a visible gulp and grip the handle of the blade tighter. I position my body correctly in front of the target and bend my wrist back towards aching point, flinging the dagger across the room--all of three feet.

"Again." She orders, grabbing another knife and placing it in my hands. "If you want to survive in the Games, you have to know how to defend yourself." She nods at the knife.

"O-Okay." Squeezing the handle to stop the small shaking in my hand, tossing the blade an additional six feet and having it clatter to the ground. I give the instructor a guilty look and flee to another station. Clearly, knife throwing is not my weapon of choice. After veering far away from the weight lifting station where Lorem is heaving practically a mountain across the room with the face of a tiger that had just been dunked in water, I end up back where I started: the "Forest."