May the Odds Be Ever in Your Favor

They next morning, I woke up to loud banging at my door. I got up and opened the door. Grap was standing there. He threw a pair of shorts and a gray t-shirt to me.

“Put it on,” Grap said. “You have you first training today.”

“What training?” I asked. The usual procedure of the contestants before the Hunger Games is not known to the public.

“All of the tributes go to the training center and practice using their weapons or skills like knot tying and camouflaging. It is where you need to find a weapon to specialize in.”

“Sounds good.” I put on the clothes and Grap led me to what he referred to as the “training center.”

The place looked huge. It was filled with weapons, dummies, ropes, weights, and almost anything else that could be used for survival. I ran in and admired the weapons. I picked up a spear and threw it at a dummy. I was aiming for the dummy’s head but it just barely caught his foot. If I was in the games, at least it would hurt and they wouldn’t be able to walk. I tried it with a knife and the handle hit the dummy off the top of its head. I was aiming for its heart. I wasn’t looking very skilled to the other tributes that were around.

I spent most of my time trying to find a good weapon to practice extensively with. I tried a sword, bow and arrows, dagger, mace, Morningstar, I even tried poison darts. I stunk at every one except the Morningstar which I was only decent at. It took almost the whole day but then I saw a weapon that resembled a spear but instead of a spear head, it had a small blade. The instructor called it a pole arm.

I took it and it felt like it was made for me. I swung it around a few times like the instructor told me and it felt a lot more fluid that the sword or daggers. I swung it around in my own pattern and it felt so natural. The instructor started to spar with me a bit so I could get a better feel for the weapon.

The first few rounds, the instructor easily “killed” me. Soon, I picked up on some pole arm strategies. I swung it at him in the fifth round and did some fancy twist with it that knocked his pole arm out of his hands. I, then, put mine to his throat so there was nothing that he could do to stop me.

“Good job!” he nearly yelled. “I’ve never had a tribute beat me before.” He was amazed. I had found my weapon.

I practiced with it until an hour had passed, then I moved to the camouflage station. I stunk at trying to resemble the woods and shrubs. If my life depended on camouflage, I would be dead. I went to the “what to eat” station. I was actually pretty good at it. I was about to go to the knot tying station but an alarm went off that signaled the end of today’s training.

I was escorted to a small room with a table in it. I was told to wait a minute and in the allotted time, Grap walked in followed by an avox. An avox is a slave that was once a criminal. They are usually the highest criminals. The capitol cuts their tongues off, and distributes them as servants.

The avox was carrying a tray of food. The tray she was carrying had some soup and a drink that I couldn’t identify. Grap sat down and started to talk immediately.

“How was the training? Did you find your weapon?”

“The training was good. I was actually really good at using a pole arm.”

“How good were you? You know, beating up a dummy doesn’t count.”

“I beat the instructor.” Immediately, Grap’s eyes grew to three times their normal diameter.

He recovered his normal expression fairly quickly and said, “He must be getting old.” I knew why he didn’t want to let me know that it was great. If you get over confident in the arena, you’re dead.

We started to eat and the mysterious drink was oddly delicious. I wanted more but it would have been a bit much, since the cup that I was originally given was huge. The soup was okay and abnormally filling. After I was only halfway done, I felt like if I ate any more, I would throw up. The capitol makes scientific advances in odd subjects.

The conversation while we were eating was reduced to little or nothing. There were a few tips like, “Always be cautious because anything could be a trap,” and “if anything completely out of the ordinary happens, remember, the whole thing is a show.” These were good pieces of advice but everybody knew them since they were five. They were common sense.

After the food was finished, I was escorted back to my sleeping quarters. I ran through some of the patterns with my imaginary pole arm. I killed my imaginary tribute a hundred times over but I soon got too tired so I fell asleep only half on my bed. I woke up a few hours later and got fully on the bed but again, I did not sleep well.