#acptraining3

I’d gone the last time without really learning any traps. It had pretty much all been knots, and it was vital to know how to create a snare, whether for an animal or for another tribute. The instructor, a different one from the day before, showed me several kinds, and how the size of the rope limited each kind to different uses. There were different kinds of rope for different uses, I learned. There were also different snares and traps for different uses. What would catch a rabbit wouldn’t necessarily catch a person. 

She then taught me the basic weave for building a hammock, in the case that I would need a raised bed to sleep on in the arena. A good hammock would take a couple of hours, she explained, and we didn’t have time for that, so she showed me the basic steps to begin and complete one, and the knits that I would need to know to continue the weave through the body of it. 

There’s also weakness, a lingering exhaustion from the convulsions of my seizure and the destruction of what she pumped me with. I never over used. Why did I overuse that time? It didn’t add up. Nothing added up. My nightmares and day time hauntings were enough. I just wanted to breath. Mentally. Now I couldn’t breath and Acaria was no where to be found.

I slept for hours in that white room stuck in a loop between reality and a nightmare. I couldn’t tell where the trip ended and the terrors began. I couldn’t tell if the white room was part of the delusions or what little coherency I had. They brought me food that I couldn’t stomach. I slept some more. 

A lady with black glasses and a clipboard came in when I was awake again. Fuck that clipboard. Why did it bother me. She told me about my mind, according to the many tests and scans they took of me while I was out. Apparently it had a lot of problems. I laughed. I laughed really hard. 

She examined my body first. Lifted my gown just below my breasts and exam the skin there. She inspected my nails, my hair, and took notes. 

We played ‘games’ after that. They seemed pointless but she seemed very intrigued. I matched pictures together. Sometimes they were simple shapes, other times abstract blobs and corners. Sometimes they were actual objects, words, symbols or full drawings. She had me look for patterns next, giving me weird lists consisting of symbols of some sort and ask me to identify which one would come next. She had me read, do things from memory, solve weird puzzles. 

She watched me as I played with weird objects. A smooth spherical object that slipped and glided even in my hands. A cylindrical container that held blobs of an inky black blobs suspended in a clear liquid. That one was interesting. 

Finally she interrogated me. The questions were basic at first. What was my name? Why was I here? Who was my family? How old was I? Do I have friends? Things they would know even without my telling because they are the Capitol. But they asked anyway. Maybe about of curtesy. 

Then they got me-specific. How much sleep did I get? How often did I have nightmares? What was my earliest memory? How much did I sleep? What drugs did I use.? 

Then they got personal. What was I afraid of?  What did I love? What did I think about the world? The world? The world. Did I believe in a faith. Did I experience sexual attraction? Did I experience romantic attraction? What did I think about humanity? 

Then they got. Weird. But only for one question. Because I couldn’t answer. What happened during the war.

Then I had to explain everything. The the threat of some ‘truth serum’ loomed over me if I failed to speak voluntarily. 

Delusions, evident in the voices and my many coping methods, caused by a psychotic break that would further progress if untreated. Psychotic breaks, possibly caused by my obsessive compulsion to rethink my life over and over and over again and underlying condition that goes unidentified. Obsessive compulsive behavior cause by fear. Anxiety, expressed by a pyschogenic itch, my upper abdomen, caused by fear. Memory lapses and repressions to forget the fear. She explained it so simply. So easily. And it struck me in the face. I thought about the water, the dusk, the red, the polygraph, the chord, and the snow, all the fragments but never about what I couldn’t remember. Because I didn’t want to remember. And it was driving me crazy. 

She filled me in by the way. I didn’t overuse, I didn’t overstep, kudos to me. Someone gave me more on purpose but I didn’t remember. Typical. But she said that I would. Soon.

Prescription mediation. Four of them. I couldn’t even pronounce their names. If I could I would have still been distracted by my new revelation: I did not know who or what I was. This me was not a real me. This me lived outside just on the border between reality and her mind. The me, high on drugs, was not a real me either. She might have been a me entirely inside my mind - just really good at shouting to the other side, into the real world. I had never experienced clarity and focus and normalcy without a high. I had never experienced the perfect middle. I had never been on the right side of the line.

I raced forward and picked it up-

“Throw it from right there.”

I quirked a brow, “What?”

“Stop right there, turn around and throw it.” The trainer repeated.

I wasn’t that far from the target, handful of feet maybe. I know I’m not that great of a shot but if I miss this one I might as well call it quits now. Trusting her judgment I set myself up and threw the spear, the blade planting itself along an outer ring of the target.

“Same thing, but come a little more towards me.”

I repeated the motions, coming a little further up the range and throwing the spear again. And again, and again, until I was nearly back to where I started. I had thrown the spear seven times during my trek back, five of the seven making their mark.

“Slowly but surely.” the trainer smiled and nodded, “One more exercise, and then you can move on.”

She turned on the holographic simulator and had me run through a few cycles of trying to hit a moving target. She led by example, grabbing a spear herself and demonstrating alongside of me as the weapon left my hand and soared towards the orange figure, missing it and clanking to the ground.

“Don’t get discouraged. Throw it from where you pick it up.”

I darted forward towards the spear, dodging past the hologram advancing with its own spear in the process. Only once I managed to finally plant the weapon in the hologram did she finally power down the machine.

“So, what did you really come all this way over for?”

I didn’t feel that the extended training I had with the spear was wasted time, far from it. Had I not had an alternative agenda I wouldn’t have minded taking another few rounds with it, but it really was the whip I had initially set my eyes on.

As with the spear I started from the beginning: reeling my arm back and snapping the whip above my head to instigate a cracking noise, lashing it forward to strike a stationary target and then moving onto moving holograms. The trainer walked me through the same motions as she did with the spear when it came to the stationary target, starting at a close range and then steadily moving backwards.

“Let’s build on what you have down so far.”

There were several techniques when it came to wrapping the whips tail around a target, all of which involved relying on the quick movement of your wrist just as much as the force behind your arm as you lashed the fall forward. The trainer had me run through each style before allowing me to become more comfortable with one over the other and letting me practice on the stationary target.

Learning to grab objects wasn’t that much of a stretch from wrapping. It involved a little more force applied to the recoil in order to tighten the tail around whatever it landed on. I ended up spending the remainder of my time practicing between the stationary and moving targets until the trainers called time and started closing up the stations.

“Remember, there are technically no rules to fighting. But, if you go in swinging blindly you won’t last very long.”

A lot of what he was showing me involved how to take the lead in a fight and maintain control should you find yourself up the creek without a paddle; reversals and counters, the most vital areas the strike. We started off slow at first, increasing the pace as the movements became more fluid until there was not a pause in my step.

The trainer and I circled one another along the ring’s painted perimeter, a slight bounce in my step to keep me light on my feet and arms at the ready. He moved in first, initiating the grapple. He threw his body back and forth to try and throw me off balance. I followed his lead, moving back and forth, finally kicking off with my back leg and forcing him forward. I stepped in quickly with my opposite foot, my back foot trailing behind and slipping through his legs and locking behind one of his ankles.

I kicked it back, tripping him off balance as one hand latched onto his back to bring him down to the ground then moved around behind one arm while my other twisted it upright, forcing him into an arm lock. I brought my foot down onto his ribs, causing him to grunt and pull his arm free. I let it go and bounced back out of range. The trainer rolled onto his feet and sprang from the ground, coming in with a sharp right hook to my jaw. It struck my chin as I deflected, bringing my knee up into his gut before side stepping his next move, only to find myself in a headlock in the blink of an eye.

When one round ended, we went right into another, trading strikes and reversals until one of us threw in the towel. Near the end of the second hour I wasn’t even paying attention to what my tally was versus his. My muscles were buzzing and chest rising and falling in a steady repetition by the time we finished our final cycle.

Another arrow flew and the reality set in, I only had one option and that was to shake off the shackles that had been placed on me when I’d moved to the Capitol and became someone else entirely. In reality asking what I had of the boy from four was more a move to ensure something selfish for myself and when he’d told me to do it on my own, I realized that I couldn’t, that in doing so I would alienate the people that I would potentially be surrounded by for the rest of my living life if I managed to escape this hell of the games. 

I needed to stop fooling myself into thinking I was a part of the Capitol, I was simply fostered into their lifestyle and placed as an ornament, a chachki for them to parade around and display. A torrid refusal to acknowledge the fact that I was a person, not a commodity. 

We went over the the toxic solution again, learning how to create a simple concoction out of berries and leaves that left anyone that touched it a blistering rash. She warned me to keep my face away from it; after a few minutes it could start releasing unpleasant fumes. 

After mixing and perfecting the potion we disposed of it and started anew. The instructor gave me something new: a balm that would soothe mild rashes and burns. This one was more difficult, and took more time. It required a few minutes to let the juices of the berries soak into the wood. It then needed tons of mashing and grinding to create a pulp. I understood it well, but it required much more manpower to fabricate. 

Finally I learned a mixture that would cause nausea if inhaled too closely. I made sure not to get too close as I mixed the ammonia solution with the aloe and leaves.