Young Writers Society

Sorry I haven't posted. I'm going to work harder now, at least for my Career.

Marco Denver

It didn't take long and the sounds of butterflies crashing into the door subsided. But it was longer still until I decided it was safe to leave. In the mean time, I looked through what I had. I strapped on my sword, and the weight felt natural against my hips. My black sleeping bag was thin, but insulated, and would be invaluable to me, I knew. As soon as I looked in my backpack, I remembered exactly why I didn't take anything until the last levels - the stuff there is so much better.

Inside the backpack was a gallon water jug, a pack of water purifiers, a bag of dried fruit and crackers, a loaf of stale bread, and a tin of cold soup - not choice normally, but too much to wish for in the Games. It wouldn't last long, but by the time I ran out I'd hopefully have gotten supplies off of other tributes, dead ones, after I was through with them. There's also a package of ear plugs, but I'm not sure what good they'll do - I need to be able to hear my enemies approaching, not the opposite. I stash everything but my sword in my pack, which I pull on.

When I do decide to leave the closet, I open it a crack and pause, waiting to hear something. I don't, so I open it enough to stick my head out. I almost fall backwards.

Scattered across the floor are the black butterflies, lying lifeless, but I know it would very well - and most likely is - a trap. I push the door open slowly, and the insects it sweeps back remain motionless, but that doesn't mean that's the precedent. I step softly between them, skipping sometimes and hopping, as quietly as the boots I'm wearing allow. It isn't until I get outside, away from the butterflies, that I allow myself to breathe.

It's chillier outside, but I suck it up - I'm a Career.

And right now, I have to make a plan. I don't know who's left - just the people who died before last night. But if I go searching for Careers, they may be dead and that'd only put me in danger. But if I don't, I have no alliance, and an alliance is something I need. Yes, I could survive without one, but everyone knows having an alliance ups your chances of winning and makes living in here easier - you can sleep, usually eat better, make plans, ambush others, have protection. They can also kill you in your sleep, but never right away. They're too big of assets right away.

I decide I'll look for them. I'm pretty well off now, but who knows where I'll be in a day or two, if I make it that far on my own? Of course, I'm going to win this - I have to. I've trained all my life for it. But I didn't train to be cocky or stupid. I'll only win if I play it right. So I set out.

As I go as stealthily as possible in these dark clothes between the buildings, I don't see anyone. I make my way towards the Cornucopia, hoping they'll have stayed around there, maybe looking for me. Or, at very least, maybe I can pick off some people still lingering.

When I'm almost there, I hear a long croak, then a voice, too familiar.

Lani.

"Marco! Help....!"

I jerk my head around. Nothing. It's just a trick. She's not there. She can't be.

"Please Marco, help me! You didn't last time - please, now!"

She's dead.

A piercing shriek fills the sky. Her shriek. I recognize it - I've heard it before, that gut-wrenching, that blood-curdling. That pain-induced.

I see movement to my right. It has to be her. Not hesitating, I sprint over and tackle the movement. But when I look down, it's not Lani's face I see.

On top of either Erin or Fern.

Kyran Oleander

We shuffle back into the store, and I hear my stomach rumble. Ara and Aspen look sympathetically my way.

"I have water. But this early in the game, we don't want to waste it." Aspen said.

"Well, I have a pocket knife, Kyran has a spear, and Aspen has an axe. Maybe we can go kill something, or find something edible, and find a way to make fire?" Ara offered.

"Sounds like a plan. Okay, but we don't want to freeze out there, so if you grabbed anything, put it on now."

Ara looked around the room, trying to find something warm. Aspen pulled gloves and a scarf out of her back pack, and put them on. I grabbed my heavy jacket and shrugged it on. I looked at Ara, already shivering.

"After a while, you can borrow my jacket, Ara. That way we can both be kind of warm." She nodded. "Also, put your hood up. A lot of heat escapes from your head, so your hood will keep you really warm." They both nodded and flipped them up.

"You know Ara, if you take your belt off, you can strap my blanket to yourself, if you want." She shook her head.

"Nah, it doesn't seem that cold that we need to do everything like that. I think I'll be okay for a little while." Aspen rolled her eyes, and we headed out to find our next meal.

We were trudging through the woods, when Aspen stopped us short.

"I just remembered. You can eat pine needles, and the seeds in the pine cones. Do you want to try it? It's actually not the worst food I've tasted." She grinned. I shrugged and reached for some pine needles. I turned them over in my hands, and popped one in my mouth. It didn't really have much of a taste, but kind of chewy and a bit like sap.

"Not bad. I bet if we eat enough of them we'll be full." Ara looked a little intimidated, but she ate some anyway. We all grabbed a few handfuls and sat down under another pine tree.

The mood really lightened from there, and we started cracking jokes and actually having a good time. Needless to say, we were enjoying our time left on Earth.

"Okay, how about this one." Ara said in between giggling. "You know that you're from the lumber district when all of your appliances are made out of wood." It wasn't really that funny, but we all were giddy, and Aspen laughed when she had a mouth full of chewed pine needles. She laughed so hard, probably because it was about her district, and pine needle paste came out of her nose, covering Ara, who was sitting across from her.

"Ewwwwwwwwww! Aspen, I can't believe you just did that! Ugh, this is disgusting!" She had a disgusted look on her face, but she was laughing anyway. I looked at Ara's arm, which had been covered in butterfly marks before, and they were gone.

"Ara, your marks are gone!" I exclaimed. She looked down at her arm, and sure enough she saw that they were gone too.

"I bet it was the pine needles! Aspen, you're a genius!" She ran over and hugged Aspen, still covered in pine needles. Ara ran over to the tree and grabbed a handful, spitting them all over Aspen. They both giggled as it worked it's magic, and by the time we got back to the store, our marks were gone, our bellies were full, and we were ecstatic.

In the store by 1st Avenue, with Aspen and Ara. Has figured out cure for the butterfly marks.
PS
Sorry for such a long post! I got carried away, and I hope you had the patience to read it! xD

Just a note, Amf, it's probably not in Ara's personality to be running around hugging people. No big, just keep in mind she's a pretty serious/reserved. Also, I'm fairly sure they had a fire started just outside the entrance to the store?

Ara Ordoe

They got back to the store and Ara stirred the coals of their fire with her foot. It was getting dark, and they would want the heat for a while. Though, they probably wouldn't want the light it provided for very long. She hadn't seen any of the other tributes all day and it was starting to make her uneasy. Especially since she only had a pocketknife to defend herself.

She sat around the small fire by herself for a while. Kyran and Aspen chatted back in the store as they took inventory of everything they had. Ara thought about all the weapons her mentor had made her use during training. She hadn't been competent with much. Weaponry wasn't exactly her main concern back in eleven.

Ara sighed and leaned back on her heels as she crouched. Her legs burned in the position, but she didn't want to sit in the snow. She pulled out the locket she wore around her neck from her shirt. It was warm from lying against her chest. She flipped it open and looked at the photos of her parents in the firelight. For only knowing them for a few years, she remembered them perfectly. Everything about them. She could almost hear their voices...

"Ara, how could you..."

Ara blinked and looked around. She hadn't imagined that. It was her mother's voice, and it was so real.

"What a horrible excuse for a daughter. Her father's voice.

Ara stood up and looked around. She could hear them so clearly. "Mom? Dad?" she called. She felt ridiculous, she knew they weren't there. They were gone, dead. They couldn't be here, in the Hunger Games, talking to her.

"Ara!" her mother's voice shrieked. "Ara!"

Sharp pain shot over Ara's arms, running across her collar bone and down her back. The scars she had there, the one's she'd had since she was a child, burned like they were on fire. Memories of the last night she saw her parents alive played through her head. The burning fields, their house catching fire, the sounds of her parents as they searched for her.

"Ara how can you leave us like this?!" her father called to her. "Ara!"

Ara pressed her palms to her ears, falling to her knees. She squeezed her eyes shut and whispered to herself, reminding herself that they were dead, they weren't her parents. They were only memories. Her body was on fire, her scars singing her skin. She opened her eyes and all she could see was fire. The whole street was aflame, and the trees of the central park down the street were pillars of fire.

Suddenly, everything changed. She was back in district eleven, back in the fields, and everything was ablaze like that night...

"You have to save us, Ara!" her mother's voice called. "You have to help us!"

Ara jumped up and sprinted down the street that she saw as her home on fire. She ignored the concerned calls from Kyran and Aspen, and she left all her supplies behind. She just ran as fast as she could towards what looked like her home. She ran and ran until everything went black.

Passed out somewhere in central park. Just to clarify, she only imagined everything was on fire. I took some liberty with the birds, or we could say she was suffering from some lingering effects of the butterfly poison as well. She's left Aspen and Kyran for a while, but she might try to find them again once she comes to.

It looks great. Cool affect that she actually sees the things, but make sure that only you can see it. No one else can.

Fern Le Rose

As soon as my last words leave my mouth someone lands on me with a hard Kaploosh.

"Oh God, Fern!" Erin cries.

The kid is heavy on me, pushing down on me in every spot imaginable. I gasp for air, every part of me screaming Attack! I roll over, but the kid manages to stay on me. I grasp for my knife and feel the cool handle in my hand. Nobody attacks me and gets away with it. I move my knife towards the kid's stomach, preparing to end his life. That's when the kid sighs. I look up, my hand firmly on the dagger, into the eyes of a calming Marco Denver.

"Your not Lani." He mutters.

Lani. The name sounds hauntigly familiar, something from the past. I didn't remember who she was, but I remember the pain after her death. After the way Marco just was acting, I don't really want to remember.

"No," I say calmly, "I'm not. Now Marco, I'd appreciate if you'd get off me."

"Right." He rolls off me and bounces to his feet. "Sorry about that."

"Not that much of an issue."

I kneel on the ground before jumping to my own feet and dusting myself off. I catch Erin's eye and she mouth's. Marco? I nodd, mouthing back: Yeah. Turns out, he found us. She cracks a small smile. Marco clears his throat, his eyes shifting back and forth, like he'd just seen a ghost. Lani's ghost. My hand grasps tighter around the dagger in my hand. I couldn't risk, no matter how unlikely it was, the fact that Marco might've already gone crazy. Crazy people were unpredictiple. If Marco was crazy, he wouldn't hesistate to murder Erin and I in one swipe. Instead he gives me one of those sarcastic smiles. His sword was attached at his hip, but if he had gone crazy I doubted he'd use it.

"Who's your friend?" He nodds his head over at Erin.

"I'm Erin." She says.

"District four?" He asks, spying the fish-shaped hairclip holding back her bangs.

She nodds. Erin catches my eyes. Should we- I wasn't sure after his attack on us. Then again, it was probably some mutant. I had heard something starnge just before he arrived, something that sounded like my brother... Wait for it. I mouth back. She nodds, her eyes suddenly guarded like lock and key. I remember how eager she was when she met me- she really wanted a career pack. There was an awkward silence. Marco seemed fully calm now. I don't know if he'd use his sword, but if he did... He looked innocent. I remember all the things we could do with a strong alliance of three... Especially a career alliance of three. I look at Erin. I remebered my suggestion on our next goal. Ask him. I mouth. Erin smiles.

"Are you in for an alliance, Marco?"

Guys, you do know that Marco has his sword, right? It's strapped to his hips.

Marco Denver

"Are you in for an alliance, Marco?"

I look at the girls. They seem unsure. Honestly, I'm unsure too. Before, I'd wanted the alliance. But now, after hearing Lani... something was out there, something sent to mess with us. The question is, will siding with them help me or hurt me?

But wait, I tell myself. I was looking for an alliance before. Nothing's changed. Hearing Lani doesn't change anything. It's probably just some mutt. It has to be.

"Yeah, sure," I say. They probably guessed that would be my answer, since I didn't try to kill them right out. Or maybe they think I'm going insane. Maybe I am.

"Okay, great," says Erin, voice a little... off? I'm not sure why. Maybe they didn't expect me to say yes.

They both look a little haunted - the Games do that to you; I should know, I have to be worse than them - and it reminds me of another haunted face - Lani's. There's no way it could've been her - not unless they raised her from the dead. So how did they get her voice? How did they record a dead girl?

And how did they know that'd affect me more than anyone else, even my family?

"So... what's our plan of attack?" says Fern after some awkward silence.

I'd already thought about that, back hiding in the closet. "We should check the perimeter of the park, around the Cornucopia to make sure no one's hiding near by. Then we should find a rendezvous point, then go out hunting other tributes. If we ever get separated, we meet up at the point. If not, we go from there."

They look a little shocked of my quick answer.

"What about supplies?" asks Erin, eyeing my pack. She sounds unsure about where that conversation might lead.

In all honesty, I'd forgotten about the weight on my back. I pull it off and take out some of the supplies. I give Erin the dried fruit, a couple purifying tablets, and a third of the bread. I give Fern some tablets, some bread, and the crackers. The rest I leave for myself, since I found it. Then I see the earplugs, and finally I understand what they're for. I give them each a pair.

"Really?" Fern asks. Obviously everything I do surprises them. That's good. Maybe my actions will surprise my enemies, too, and I'll take them out in their confusion.

"Yeah, of course. We're allies."

I put my pack back on.

Before we head out to check the perimeter, Erin says innocently, "Why'd you think Fern was Lani?"

I look down. "No reason."

Another question: how'd they record the voice of a dead girl, a voice no one else can hear?

Steyna Cole

It was awkward and cold sitting in that house. Actually, I'm not sure if it could even be considered a house. It was just a shack, and it didn't keep the heat in, it only gave us shelter. There were still small cracks that the biting winds could get in, but it was better than sitting out there in a snowbank.

"So, Steyna, you're from district 12?" Hunter asked, trying to make conversation. I grimaced and nodded.

"Yep." I hated that my last name was just a different spelling of what our district was known for. It made me feel like I had a label, that said, "I breathe in dust all day, and we make money by selling rocks."

"Oh. Cool, I guess. I'm from the hunting district. 9."

"Cool, I guess." I mocked him. He grinned, and so did I.

"What's your family like?" He asked. He must really want to have a conversation. It was then that I realized how cold (no pun intended) I was being to him. Why? I was trusting him with my life, and all he was doing was trying to be friendly.

"Well, I live with my mom and dad, and my younger brother and older sister. You?" He looked shocked.

"Oh. Well, I live with my mom and little brother. My dad died when I was little." He looked down at his feet. I decided now was a good time to change the subject. I rubbed my stomach.

"So Hunter, you're a hunter?" I winked.

"Steyna Cole, your from the coal district?" He grinned.

"Touche. Hey, I'm hungry. Whadda ya say we go try out the bow and arrow?" He looked excited. I pulled on my hat and stashed our stuff under a crate in the corner of the shack. I flipped my hood up and he did too.

"Ready?" He asked.

"Definitely." We headed out into the cold, armed with a bow and arrow, and good intentions.

Out to go find a meal, with Hunter Williams. DaSpets, feel free to post at anytime! Seriously, post. You're way behind.

Cody

He had actually eaten raw rabbit. How putrid. I shot him one last glare as he bounded off into the woods. I hoped he got eaten by some sort of hideous monstrosity to explicitly graphic to describe. I would much rather kill him myself, though now that I thought about it he was an excellent scout for any troubles lurking in the forest. Better yet he had decided to do it himself.

Holly sat and chewed on bark she had been saving. God, she was like a beaver. I rolled my eyes at her and set about digging a hole in the bitterly savage ice. After a couple minutes of hacking away at the frozen ground with a combination of my pipe and my fingers I was able to make a sort of bowl shaped cove out of snow and dirt.

"Hey Holly, past me that wood would you?" I asked. Holly reluctantly pushed the pile over to me, and with one quick motion I scooped it into my pit. I fumbled around in the snow behind me for a stick, which I found and then used to hang my water jug over the pit. I tossed some snow into the jar, and then leant back and waited for Gabriel to return.

Sorry Ultra! I edited a bit, but it shouldn't change anything.

Hey, I''m going on vacation so would you mind freezing my charrie? Feel free to use him still.

Hey guys. I feel really bad, but I've fallen too far behind. I'm going to have to give up my characters. I pass full control over them to their alliance-mates. I'm very sorry, but I just can't keep up.
May the odds be ever in your favor,
~Sky

O.K. blue. Come on guys get posting. Hmmm maybe I will come up with another Gamemaker thingy.

Kyran Oleander

"Ara! Ara come back!" Aspen screamed. We knew it was risky, but Ara had been screaming before she ran away, so it really wouldn't make a difference. After a few seconds, we didn't hear anything else, so I came to a conclusion.

"We're gonna have to go find her." Aspen nodded, like she knew this was coming. We grabbed our weapons and headed out to go find Ara. There was a nice little fire going outside, which was making a lot of smoke. I was afraid it had been a dead giveaway to where we were, so I put snow on it, reluctantly, until the fire was out.

"Let's go. We have to go find her before anyone else does." Aspen said solemnly. I nodded, and we followed the swiggly footsteps into the woods.

Sorry, it wasn't much, but feel free to post, Funky!

Like I just posted in the DT I am saying it is the night of the third day. A few people besides Amfliflier (through P.M.s) have made comments on the time. So I hope this works for all of you.

I was waiting for Elinor to post, but I decided now would be a good time to. I also looked in the DT and gathered that neither of blue's kids are in alliances. Am I right?

Fern Le Rose

There's an awkward silence and I scold myself. Marco was strong, even if he was beggining to go crazy. I already trusted Erin, and we both needed to trust Marco if this thing was going to work. Even if he had heard this mysterious Lani, I knew with every bone of my body that the voice was a borrowed nightmare. A mutt trick. We inspect the perimeter, the remaints of camps. Not a soul was around. The evening sky rises above us, the color of blood. I run my tongue over my chapped lips. The color of blood. We must be along the... eastern perimeter, maybe? It'd be to risky to check it all, but we needed to gain ground. The other tributes were already scared of the whole 'career' thing. We needed to let them know about the career pack. They would practically kill each other over fear. There hadn't been a career pack for years. We needed to make...my breath lodged in my throat. A kill. A detached kill might be best.

"Nothing." Marco sighed. "They're all inside of the arena."

There's a silence. I can tell Marco and Erin are thinking the same thing that I am.

"As a career pack, what should be our first motion?"

"Hmm..." Erin mutters, thinking.

Marco's eyes catch on the trees and buildings in the distance and I know that he's thinking off all the tricks our mentor had taught us. All the sly, career foucused tricks that he himself had never really used. Comforting. Erin catches my gaze, and I could practically see the gears in her head working. That's when it came to me. The trees and buildings... the perfect detached kill.

"We need a trap." I say. "We need-"

"A net!" Erin and Marco both say.

I smile. I could get used to this whole great-career-minds-think-alike thing.

"It's the perfect weapon. Detached and threatning. " I turn to Erin. "You can make net's right? A nice, tight one?"

"Of course."

"Do we just hide it under some leaves, or do we put food there?" Marco asks.

I bite my lip. Food was scarces, but it made it even more easy to catch other tributes. After three days here, you started to get hungry, no matter who you were.

"I-I don't know. It might be to much to risk the food, but it inhances the chance that we'll get a...kill. It's up to you two."

Watch out world, here comes the career pack! Note: It's not as long as I'd like, but I have some stuff to do...