I woke up to a familiar discomfort; surrounding my drowsy body were my beautiful wings, now with an added addition. I admired the new metal-like feathers strewn around me, their sharp light blinking the sunlight back at me. Gently, I tap the edge of one against the pad of my finger, instantly drawing blood. A wicked grin spreads across my face, splitting my chapped lips until scarlet dribbles down my chin, yet i ignore the pain, because this new game change has me at an advantage. The Gamemakers listened to me when I wished for the wings, so that means they must be rooting for me; I must thank them.
The strong morning sunrise had already begun to fade as I stand, turning my head to and fro, attempting to look upon the whole of my wings, yet I could not stretch quite far enough to see them all. All I could tell was how long they extended (much further than the first pair, almost six feet longer), the color, an ashy steel, and how sharp the feathers were. Unfortunately, I have a nasty wound on my leg from recklessly rolling onto one to prove their danger. Carefully, I maneuver out of the pile of feathers I seemingly molted during the night to stand barefoot at the edge of the cliff, staring off over the abyss to the other islands. Somewhere out there rests Cherry, the seemingly freaking immortal tribute I've targeted since the beginning who somehow has survived this far even with practically everyone after her. Frustrated, I growl in the deep of my throat to her, brow furrowed. "I will get you, my little Cherry Pie." I laugh to myself, turning back to pick up what little supplies I had left, as well as a bit of monkey meat I have left from Elaine. Tossing my pack over my shoulder, I begin a torturous hike across the islands. My plan is that maybe if I can make it to the center Cornucopia, and camp there, eventually the tributes have to pass me by eventually, right? Then I can really thank the Capitol with a good show.
A rumbling from behind startles me out of the deep thoughts of torture and gore. Annoyed, I whip my head around to search for the ominous noise. The island littered with my new metal feathers shakes dangerously behind me, rocking the bridge I stand on. I shriek, clutching the edge as my life flashes before my eyes. The never-ending abyss teeters right under my nose, taunting me with death as my fingers slip from under me. Then, stupidly, I finally remember my wings. Easily enough, I lift my body into the air, and far above the islands. Only then do I turn around and catch sight of my old island plunging out of view, falling straight out of the sky; Soon the one I'm floating gently above begins to do the same. Reluctantly, I follow the pattern, grinning in glee as I spot Devlin and Cherry fleeing the falling path of islands as well, yet they were struggling along land, barely making it. I tauntingly fly lower to a few feet above them, flying at a lazy pace just ahead of them. "AHHH!" Cherry screams, jerking to a stop. Devlin, sweat dripping down his face, rips at her arm.
"C'mon! We can't stop here!" He growls, tugging her along. She reluctantly jogs forward again, as I practically lead them after me. Turns out the path of falling islands leads us to the Cornucopia as I had originally planned, leaving us, well, them, trapped upon the large circular island. Noelle eventually stumbles along, covered in white and brown fur and absolutely glowing with anger. I cheerfully wave from my decent height, admiring from my view how I seem to be the only one with any sort of weapon.
"Do you too have this?" Noelle stutters, waving her hands around wildly, sweat dripping down her face.
"The crazy? Well, not as bad as you," I giggle, flicking a feather as her. It slices her arm, and she hisses as bright red blood spurts out of the wound. Just before any of us can reply or move, the sky flickers and Sequin herself pops up above us.
"Hello finalists, and congratulations on making it this far!" She grins cheerfully, her lips coated in a sheer layer of green sparkles. I roll my eyes in annoyance, doing a lazy flip in the air, nearly dropping my bag on Devlin's head. "We have one last task left for you, and it's quite interesting." I yawn, missing a good chunk of her next statement. Like I care. "...and we in the Capitol have voted on who gets each element. You'll find out what element you each have on your own, no help from us. Good luck!" And with that, her face fades back into the blue, leaving me stumped. Elements?
"This what I mean!" Noelle shrieks, clenching her hands in a fist. Blobs of water seep out of the ground to reach her, floating in slim tendrils around her body. I gasp, nearly dropping out of the sky.
"How'd you do that?!" I yell, pointing spastically at her. a sudden gust of wind knocks Noelle back, knocking her head on the side of the Cornucopia. The crazy thing is, I felt the wind come out of me, like a sort of power. I look down at my palms, amazed. Devlin protectively pushes Cherry behind him, and she yelps in pain.
"Dev!" She jumps back, clutching her chest. Where his hand had just barely tapped her skin left a smoking black mark, the smell of charred skin filling the air. My mouth salivates just the smallest bit, and I bite my tongue. Not now, not now, I think, wiping my lips.
"Cherry! I'm sorry!" Devlin reaches out to her again, his hands sparking. Cherry screams, and falls backwards. Yet where she should've struck the ground, an opening swallowed her up, leaving her a good five feet under. I look down in surprise as she struggles to climb out, shocked sobs racking her chest as she breathes heavily enough for me to watch the rapid rise and fall of her chest. "Cherry!" Devlin calls out to her, but she's too far down to reach him. A sudden, sharp laugh escapes my lips, lighting up my face. "You think this is funny?" He growls at me, rage reaching his burned face.
"Yes, actually. Quite. You see," I begin, slowly sinking low to the ground, hands on hips. "If you look around you, you'll notice we're on an island in the middle of the sky, alone. I can freaking fly, we control the elements, Cherry's stuck in a hole, and I've got you all exactly where I want you." I eagerly rub my hands together, advancing slowly on Devlin. He stays crouched, fists clenched.
"You won't hurt any of us," he snarls, slowly rising from his knees. He swings a punch at me, but I easily dodge, catching his wrist on the backpedal. I lean close into his ear, ignoring the growing heat under my palm.
"Watch me," I whisper, twisting his arm out from under him, enjoying the quick break of his Humerus bone as I snap it out from under him, his cries of pain echoing out into the sky. I wordlessly drop his panting body, stepping away gingerly as he holds onto his broken arm. "Usually, I'd make a terrible joke about the funny bone, but I'll spare you the expense," I snap, kicking his leg. He whimpers, surprisingly, as I whip back around. I smirk to myself, slicing a wing at him. It strikes his face, leaving twin bloody trails across his cheek. He winces but says nothing. Noelle has not moved this whole time, eyes wide from fear of the streams of floating water trailing in a circular pattern around her. I twirl my finger in the air, then point it at her. A small wind ripples the water surrounding her, then a huge gust blasts it all away from her. She stumbles in shock, hands clenched as she waves them in my direction. I have to jump back in shock as a spear of water shoots out of her fist at my face, tip as sharp as a knife. Startled, she gazes at her own hand in awe. I narrow my eyes in anger, shooting a blast of air to knock her off balance again. This time, a wall of water jumps up in my way, reverberating the air back to me. I grin to myself, spinning in the air above the wall to finally spot Noelle again. "Now, this is getting interesting," I call out to no one in particular, throwing my arms out. This sends a whirlwind out of each outstretched finger, the gusts of wind sending Devlin sprawled out, tumbling across the island.
Cherry screams as I send a full-blown tornado her direction, sucking her straight out of the pit and out flying in the air. Her fire-red hair marks my target as I ready a handful of feathers, whipping them in her direction like throwing knives. A few strike her, but in non-lethal places, like a leg or her arm. She shrieks in pain and fear as her body is whipped around like a rag doll, blood leaking from her as I continually chuck razor-sharp feathers in her direction. Man, I am terrible at hitting a moving target. Suddenly she goes quiet and limp, no longer reacting to my torments. I sigh in frustration, annoyed. She's gone into a trance, which is never fun. Yet suddenly, her eyes light up in a green light, the color filling her whole sockets as she lifts her arms, rocks, stones, and any small means of loose earth levitate to her, her body no longer whipping around. She bares her teeth, feet landing on separate large chucks of solid dirt, the grain-like stones whipping my arms and face. "You've messed with the wrong Cherry," She screams in her girly voice, fists raised, yanking more and more hunks of land out of the small island, leaving Devlin on his own small, floating patch, his arm bent at a humorous angle (see what I did there?) as he pants in pain, his eyes discretely going back and forth between us.
"Come at me bro," I scream back, the loud noise leaving strain in the back of the throat. I throw my arms out beside me, inviting her attacks. She screeches in reply, her hair whipping around in the air as she rushes at me, huge hunks of stone defying gravity to make paths for her to run at me. I carelessly fly further back away from her, until I bump into something. I stare back into my own reflection; I've reached the barrier. My eyes are glowing a bright white, similar to the younger girl. Cherry is almost to to me, the fury reaching her face as she launches boulder and rubble at me, bouncing them off the wall, nearly hitting me. I begin to panic, my eyes widening as a huge slab of bedrock comes flying at my face. I quickly fold in my wings, dropping straight out of the sky, diving back towards the island. A rush of exhilaration douses my veins as I zoom through the air, the wind whipping my hair back as the meters fly by. Suddenly a blast of white shoots up past me, nearly striking me in the face. The impact finds my leg instead, and I open my wings to slow fall. I search quickly to see where the attack came from, and my eyes land on Noelle, who is swirling her hands in a complex manner. Around her, the water swirls out of the ground, solidifying into an arrow-like shape before she launches it at me life a spear. I roar in anger, thrusting a barrel of pure fury at her with the biggest surge of wind I can muster, sending her flying over the edge, down into the abyss. I can finally think in peace as her cannon sounds, turning back to confront Cherry. She surges towards me, her army of rocks billowed out behind her in an offense pattern. I sigh in indignation, tossing my tangled hair back over my wings, swooping up another ten feet higher to meet her. "It's time to end this, Cherry," I snarl, cracking my knuckles as she slowly approaches. her eyes narrow as she drops the rocks, sending them tumbling edge-over-edge back into the void, or landing back on the largest mass of earth, the original island. The Cornucopia, I notice, has long been gone, most likely fallen into the chasm below when Cherry began going crazy and heaving rock after rock at me.
"Agreed. Let's start by killing you." Cherry lifts her hand, forming a fist. A nearby large boulder lifts up, crumbling into an arrow shape, identical to the ice slivers Noelle had been sending my way. I yawn, waving my hand.
"Oh, not you too? Honestly, what is the appeal of arrows to you people?" I sigh, snapping my fingers. A abrupt idea had come upon me, lighting up my mind. If I can control all air, and people need air to breath....!
I took an experimental tug of the air around Cherry, sucking all the oxygen away from her face in a bubble shape. Her green eyes bulge in shock, and her hands reach up to claw at her throat. I smirk, turning the tug into a drag as I suck all air away from her, surrounding her in a vacuum. Cherry's body slowly began to swell up, her skin stretching to nearly double her size. I stare in glee as she struggles for breath, her skin slowly changing to a lovely shade of blue. Steam begins to lift off her lumpy, swelled figure as her temperature drops, waves off cold giving me goose bumps, even from this far away. Vaguely, I remember classes about the vacuum of space, and all the terrible things you would feel if you were vulnerably exposed to the treacherous terrain, to say. Her body begins to convulse and twitch, and I nearly giggle with delight. This is an amazing show, if I do say so myself; one of the best ways I could thank the Gamemakers who supported me. Cherry, in all her blue, swollen goodness, opens her mouth one last time. Her tongue, useless, flops out of her mouth, too big for her mouth; She struggles, attempting to pull in one last breath. That reminds me of what happens last (spoiler alert, all your internal organs explode.). A rapid expression of extreme agony fleets across her face before her whole body writhes one last time, and falls limp. Her stark white eyeballs dangle precariously out of their sockets, dripping blood and dull with lifelessness. I finally let the vacuum go, and the air rushes back audibly. The swollen, almost unidentifiable corpse falls back to the island, landing with a sickening slap and crunch of the gravel, quickly depressurizing back to a normal size, but still deformed and blue.
Devlin still lays untouched (mostly) by himself on his little island, clutching his broken arm as he attempts to try to push his island out away. "Let me end this easy for you," I smirk, flicking a feather at his neck, catching him dead in the side of an artery. Blood spurts out of the wound, rushing down his dead body as his cannon rings. Then, the final, victorious announcement.
"Ladies and gentlemen, the victor of the 51st annual Hunger Games, India Fox," Sequin announces, her glittery green lips enunciating each syllable carefully. I smirk, dropping the rest of the bloody feathers, cuts leaking down my arms.
"Please, Ms. Sparkle, call me Tigress," I announce, smiling my bloody smile. I stood waiting on my island for barely under a minute before the hovercrafts came. As they lifted me up the electrified ladder, my muscles tensed, I began to think of my life ahead. No way I'm going to stay in my rotten District, with all the reminders of what will be left of my brother and father. The ladder makes it to the top, and some Capitol avoxes pull me in, automatically beginning to scrub me down and begin my transformation back into a civilized person. It's a split second decision, but the slick interior of the hovercraft gives me my final answer.
As soon as the Victor Tour is over, I move straight to the Capitol. Unfortunately, President Snow deemed me attractive enough to sell my body to rich Capitol citizens. If I didn't, he threatened my life. So, I took the safe route and made myself unattractive. Surgery after surgery, I slowly turned myself back into a feline, adding sharp teeth, stripes, and altering my pupils to a cat-like color and shape. Finally he left me alone, leaving me to own a lowly fur store, selling the pelts of my fellow cats, a rather boring and stupid life compared to my short time in the arena. Until the time the Mockingjay and her group showed up at my front door, changing my life forever.