The 200th Annual Hunger Games - The Ultimate Games

Training (Day 1)

Gabriella Donnelly POV

I pushed open the doors to the training centre, with Marc and Travis right behind me. Most of the tributes were already in the training centre, in a loose semicircle around Audrey, the head trainer. She was glaring daggers at most of the tributes, as if she wanted to tear them limb from limb.

It was quite frightening, to be honest.

We quickly stood in line, looking down at our shoes, and Audrey began to speak.

“This,” she announced loudly, gesturing around at the stations and areas, “Is the training centre. You will have two days to train. Today, you will have the entire day to go from station to station, and try and hone your skills. Tomorrow, you will still have training, but then after a few hours the individual assessments will begin. Instead of getting a score out of 12, like in the normal years, each District will have all six of their tributes ranked from 1-6. So, basically, you are competing against the others from your District to try to get a higher place.”

Oh, now wasn’t that just fantastic. I looked around at the training centre, pondering where to go. My eyes fell onto the archery station, and a small smirk crept its way onto my face. Neither Marc nor Travis knew this, but my dad had gotten fired from his job a couple of months ago. With my mother gone, and my dad too softhearted and squeamish to hunt, it had become my responsibility to put food on the table for the past few weeks. I always had a natural talent for archery, but being forced to hunt to survive really honed my skills. A few days before the reaping, my father managed to find another job, so hopefully he would be able to feed the family with me gone.

“Donnelly!” Audrey snapped suddenly. I jumped and turned to face her. “Huh-wha?”

“Pay attention.” Audrey said. She continued to speak and, after a few moments, let us go train. I immediately went for the archery station, and looked at all the bows. They had all sorts. Mechanical looking ones, plain, rather bland ones, sturdy ones that looked really heavy, and lots of other ones that I couldn’t even begin to describe. I reached an interesting looking one, with symbols and words etched into the wood. My fingers traced over the carvings, my mind wandering into strange territory.

“You wanna try that one?” A voice sounded from behind me. I jumped and turned around to see a girl, perhaps 19, smiling back at me. I saw the word TRAINER embroidered onto her sleeve, and smiled back at her.

“Yea, I’ll try this one.” I replied. I picked up the bow, and selected a quiver of arrows. Then I turned to face the target, which was about 10 or so metres away. I pulled back the string and placed my sights on the bullseye, breathing slowly. I released and the arrow went whizzing through the air, landing on the target, not quite on the bullsye, but almost. I smiled to myself.

“Nice shot,” someone said in a snarky tone behind me. “You know, for a 5 year old.”

I turned around to see Xenia from District 8, smirking cruelly as she leant on the wall.

“Piss off.” I retorted, scowling at her. Xenia stood up and walked over to me, standing so close to me she was almost stepping on my toes. She stood over me easily, and she smirked as she looked down at me.

Expecting her to make a quick remark, I stayed silent, watching her face for any signs of emotion. She surprised me by walking away and picking up a bow and a quiver. She faced the target, and shot me a sideways glance, smirking. She trained her sights back on the target and, after a moment, released the arrow. The arrow pierced the exact centre of the target, landing a perfect bullseye. My eyes widened in surprise.