Another leaf fell from the tree and brushed past her nose. Through some serious effort, Katniss avoided scratching at it- she needed to keep her bow strung. From her perch in the canopy, she could see the figures assembling at the bottom of the tree. The huge man in the green armor stood with his back to the trunk, while four other men gathered around him. The armored man began to address them.

"One, two, three, four. Okay, that's everyone. Report what you found on your reconnaissance missions, locations of teams or the ring. Anything of importance will do. Kenshiro, you first." Katniss had never seen Kenshiro carry any weapons or use any sort of magic, so she assumed he was some kind of martial artist. He was a tall, intense-looking man with an angry-looking face. He wore a faded blue jacket and old, worn boots. The old clothes seemed familiar to Katniss. His clothes seem almost home-spun. I wonder if his universe is anything like mine?

Kenshiro spoke. "I saw a team, in the distance. They were headed north, where the forest becomes thinner and the stream runs. It was the team with the robot dinosaur, and those horrible mutants. There was a man with them I didn't recognize. That's all."

The man in the armor nodded. "That's the Master's personal team. They were given a head start in the last challenge, and I'm willing to bet that they've been clued in on where the ring is. After the rest of your reports, we'll track them down. Mario, what did you see?"

The short and comically-proportioned man shrugged. "I got-ta nothing."

Next to him stood a tall, husky man with a massive machine gun, wearing a heavy bulletproof vest over a shirt marked with the letters R.E.D. He replied with an accent proportional to his body's thickness. "I saw no puny baby-men, either."

The armored man turned to the youngest member of the group, a boy in a black robe. Katniss had spoken with him briefly, on the first day of the Grand Combat. His name was Harry, and he claimed to be a wizard. "What about you, kid?"

"I was by the stream as well, a little further to the west. There were some footprints in and by the stream. Some of them looked human, but a little small." That's probably Holly, Katniss thought. "But there were animal tracks there as well. Looked like hooves. They went down the bank, next to the footprints." That's more difficult to explain. As far as I know, there are no animals in this arena. What could leave those tracks? I had better try and find her.

Katniss slowly and deliberately turned and crept back along her perch to the trunk of the tree. She had just reached the trunk when she felt her left foot lose purchase on the branch. Her next thoughts were not very profound.

"Oh, shi-"

She fell sideways through the branches, being knocked backwards and forwards the whole way down. Katniss concluded that dropping straight down from a much higher altitude uninterrupted would have been far more pleasant. She was considering whether or not she was lucky that a branch didn't knock her unconscious when she plowed face-first into the dirt at the bottom of the tree. She had conveniently fallen just out of the armed men's line of sight, but they certainly heard her.

"What was noise?" The tall, fat man said, hefting his minigun and spooling it up. Dazed and confused, Katniss attempted to get up and stumbled awkwardly backwards, tripping over the tree's exposed roots. She fell on her back, staring up at the dirt clinging to the roots. Something stuck in the mud glinted, and she feebly reached out and pulled it to her face.

No way, she thought. The armed men swept around the tree trunk and surrounded her. The accented man leveled his minigun at the fallen girl.

"Now it's coward killing time," he chuckled cruelly.

Katniss smiled weakly. "Not today," she breathed, and disappeared.

***

It had been about an hour since Holly and her new companion, Twilight Sparkle, had heard the gunshots. They had immediately set off in the direction of the sound in order to investigate, but the arena had turned out to be much larger than they had previously thought. "Bloody forests. Even if they had let me have some wings, they'd be useless," the elf concluded.

Twilight nodded. "It's a war of attrition the Master of Games is after. He certainly took the size of the arena into consideration. The construction, on the other hand, seems to be a little shady."

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Holly halted their advance through the forest and turned to face the diminutive, yet intelligent unicorn. "How so?"

Twilight dug her hoof into the ground and lifted up a little dirt. "See this? Humus. It's a soil that's naturally found in deciduous forests, like the one the arena is simulating. But the dirt on the paths is more mineral-heavy, and less fertile. The Master isn't building them to be realistic, he's building them to be useful."

"This may sound odd, but I thought something was wrong with the dirt."

"Yes. The arenas aren't real places, they're being conjured magically. And very quickly, too."

Holly knelt down and plucked a blade of grass. "And he's made some sort of mistake?"

"Yes," Twilight continued. Her horn glowed softly, and the blade of grass lifted out of the elf's hands and floated next to the unicorn. "When a plane of existence is conjured slowly, deliberately," she gestured toward the blade of grass as it split seamlessly down the middle. "The magic it was created with removes itself from the world." Holly nodded, though she wondered if the extended metaphor was necessary. "When the world is created quickly," Twilight elaborated, snapping one half of the blade of grass in half again, but more violently, "You get left overs." She set the torn grass back in Holly's hands. Holly saw the strands of the torn grass poking out, the little veins that had moved water through the small plant.

"Left-over magic?"

"I call it the Residual Magical Genesis Field," said the unicorn proudly. "Tons of formless magic, stored energy, floating around in the air. And it wants out." Holly was genuinely impressed.

"Now, could anyone in the arena use this magic?" She questioned.

"I don't know. The magic is waiting for some form of outlet for energy, but where and when it may release that energy is-"Her ears perked up. "Do you hear that?"

Holly did hear it. It was a low roar, accompanied by sharp cracking. "Fire," she realized. She broke off at a run through the woods, and Twilight galloped after her. She saw light breaking through the trees ahead, and she charged through into a sizeable clearing. The opposite end of the clearing was ablaze. Through the mirage of the inferno, Holly and Twilight could make out a singular figure, crossing the expanse slowly.

"D'Arvit. It's Katniss." Holly rushed ahead.

"Wait, Holly! Something's not right!" Twilight called. Despite the warning, the elf charged up to the girl, who stopped in the middle of the clearing. Twilight reluctantly ambled up, but kept a fair distance.

"Well, are you okay? Run into any trouble?" Holly waited for a reply as Katniss stared off into the distance.

"A little. One of the other teams. They're dead now." The girl said without batting an eye.

Realization struck Holly. Twilight's right. What in Frond's name happened to her? She tried to glean a little more information from her using a roundabout technique. "Ready to, um, team up?"

"I don't think I'll be needing your help anymore," Katniss said, drawing something from her jacket. She held it between her index finger and thumb and shifted her focus to it, giving the object that same blank stare. It was a small, golden ring with a thin silver chain. "It's all I need."

Holly needed to appeal to more basic logic, as Katniss was clearly not in a proper state of mind. "Well, maybe for this challenge. But we've got to stick together for this whole thing. Don't you want to go back home?" Katniss did not lift an eye from the ring.

"But it's more than that. It can give me everything- a way out of the Combat. I could go back to my life, live it over. I could get revenge on every single person who ever hurt me, or Prim. This ring, it's more than a means to an end."

Holly tentatively stepped forward, ready to seize the ring. First, you should negotiate. "Yes, it is very nice. Now, can't I see it?" Katniss turned her head and stared Holly straight in the eyes. The Mesmer had failed.

"No. You can't. I can't let you have something so…"

Holly stepped even closer. "Listen, give it here. It's done something to you."

Katniss stared back at the ring, and found the word that had eluded her.

"Precious," she said, drew her knife, and plunged it into Holly.

"My precious."