A Game Of False Fates ✭ Cato Hadley

Twenty-Seven - How To Run From The Mess You Made

The daytime live broadcasts on the twenty-first and twenty-second of July are structured a little differently than usual, filled with more live updates instead of intentional scenes designed to build drama and resentment. The mentors sit and watch, spending some time in the viewing room together, other times in their suites and then the rest of their time is spent charming the rich Capitol citizens into providing more large sponsorship donations.

July 21st

As the first morning after the announcement rolls around, Clove and Ajax spend the first hour or so coming to the apparent realisation that it was Katniss who killed their last remaining ally after they followed the small trail that Rue had left in the woods and found a small heap of bones from the groosling that they shot down from the trees two days earlier. With some deduction they work out that the girl from Five and Thresh are alone, thriving on foraging not hunting, and that only leaves Katniss, given that Ajax cut the boy from Twelve deep enough to seriously injure him. Then they begin to search through the flatlands and entry to the woods around the cornucopia. There's a replacement commentator in the early morning before Claudius Templesmith and Caesar return around nine am.

When Katniss reorganises herself in the tree she camped in overnight, Claudius is the first to comment on how she's playing it safe with the announcement. The main feed camera zooms in on her, re-organising her pack of food and looking over the floor of the forest, for any sign of Peeta or of her competition. "Many of us wish that we could have seen a dramatic race throughout the forest overnight but unfortunately she seems to have the good sense to wait for the morning light to improve her vision, but she'll want to hurry up if she's to save him in time. Can we play the footage?"

The footage cuts to a rerun of Katniss calling out the boy's name the night before, her common sense evading her in her panic, which, annoyingly, means that her 'love' doesn't entirely faked. Then they show the riverbank, where there's noise, mutters of Katniss' name coming out of the mud. "We've had our body languages and experts and psychologists analyse several of the moments between the pair from Twelve; but that will have to wait because she's on the move."

Cameras then return to Katniss in the current moment as she's shuffling down from the top of her tree, her bow held out in front of her, poised and ready to shoot. She's looking around warily but all of the mentors can tell that there's nothing to see because there's no one nearby. "Katniss Everdeen is a rather skilled tracker, even without the presence of her pint-sized ally." Caesar says and Clio cringes, wanting to throw something at the commentator now that the feed has switched from the District Two tributes circling the grass around the Cornucopia carefully, walking away from the stream. She grabs one of the handheld viewing devices, flicking to the District Two tracker cam as Caesar continues speaking. "I'm sure she knows that he would have been stung by the tracker jackers she released on the career alliance; I'm sure she also realises that Ajax will have attacked him for assisting her escape and so I'm also sure that she knows that means he can't have gone far."

"But where is she headed?" Claudius asks his friend in the studio.

"Clearly to find water." Cashmere mutters beside Clio on the couch, at the same time that Luna, on the other side, says, "to the stream."

"Yes!" Caesar says as if he can hear the women in the viewing room. "She's obviously come to the realisation that he'll be in need of water, and so she's likely headed towards the only source they have."

"Could this be dangerous for her?" The man beside him asks, full well knowing the answer just as well as everyone else in Panem does.

"Potentially." Caesar muses before he clicks some buttons on a control pad on his desk, and a large map of the arena covers half of the screen next to them. All of the mentors look up from their own personal devices to watch the six flickering dots that are each branded with the number of their district; the victors paying special attention to the locations of their own tributes. The two markers for Clove and Ajax are within the start of the woods on the complete opposite side of the arena to Katniss who is a good way upstream from Peeta's hiding place near the plunge pool that the Twelve girl was found in several days ago. In fact, Clio notices that her tributes are much closer to Thresh, who is still hunkered down in the long grasses, and that they're a considerable distance away from the wiry girl from Five; something which both relieves and worries her at the same time.