The Equestrian Hunger Games

I tried to follow Cheerilee's advice about the food. It was richer than anything I'd eaten before-roasted pears dripping with honey and spices, a savory pie full of potatoes and turnips and gravy, roasted asparagus topped with garlic butter and lemon juice, sugar-coated strawberries stuffed with heavy whipped cream...

The worst part of it was that there was entirely too much, even if all five of us—Gingerbread, Cheerilee, Lyra, Honeysuckle, and me—ate ourselves sick, there'd still be enough left over to feed several ponies.

I was glad there weren't any apples. I didn't know if I could bear to see them going to waste like this.

I kept looking over at Cheerilee as we ate, but she kept her eyes on her plate. The only times she spoke were to ask for something to be passed her way or to make monosyllabic responses to anyone's—mostly Gingerbread's—attempts to draw her into conversation.

This was the first year Gingerbread had done the announcing in District Eight—the pony before her had been named Silverstar. He'd been an Earth Pony. I guessed he'd probably been promoted to another district.

District Eight was Gingerbread's first assignment, she informed us all over dinner. She was ever so excited to be working with us. She knew that we didn't have the best reputation in the Games, but she had full confidence that we'd all put up a good fight.

That unicorn could carry a conversation all on her lonesome, which was a good thing, because she pretty much had to.

Lyra barely said anything. Honeysuckle tried, like I had, to see if Cheerilee had anything useful to say, which she still didn't. As for me, I figured it was best to just let Gingerbread talk at us. She seemed like kind of an airhead, but hey, there was the off chance she'd say something helpful.

"Silverstar told me such lovely things about your District," said Gingerbread. He'd never seemed to go anywhere in our District outside of the train station, the Hall of Justice, and the stage that got set up in front of the Hall every year, so I wasn't sure how he'd know much about it.

"Of course, District Eight might not be the most prestigeous of districts, but of course we all depend on the food we get from you, so you're really very important!" She smiled, glancing at all of us, as though she expected us to be grateful for the compliment.

"Well," said Honeysuckle after a minute, "we can all see how much you Canterloters like to eat."

Gingerbread paused. She glanced down at herself. "Do you... you don't think I'm... I mean, the crystals add ten pounds, and I have to look presentable..."

I glanced over at Honeysuckle. The corner of her mouth twitched upward. I sighed.

"You look just fine, Gingerbread," I said.

"Really? You're not just saying that?" she asked. Honeysuckle snorted, quietly.

"Really," I told her. "Honest."

She beamed. "Oh, good." She glanced at her plate—still about a quarter full—and delicately pushed it away. "And you can call me Ginger. All my friends do!"

"Well, that's... nice. Ginger." I wondered if she really understood what she was doing. Maybe she'd never let herself think about it. I guessed if I was in her place, I might not want to think about it, either... but then, if I were a Canterloter, I doubted I'd have gone into her line of work.

She kept right on chattering about how wonderful Canterlot was, and how much we were all going to love it, and how she couldn't wait to see us all on the crystal set...

I excused myself and headed back to my quarters, where I flopped down onto the bed and closed my eyes.

None of this seemed like it could be real. I hadn't even gotten to Canterlot yet, and I felt as though I'd stepped into an entirely new world, where food was something you could afford to waste and everything was shiny or plush. Sometimes both.

And every minute brought me closer to the Games. I didn't want to think about the Games, or the possibility of being forced to kill somepony, or be killed myself.

I'd seen some of the things that happened in the Games. The Career ponies were trained to hurt and kill other ponies, and a lot of them seemed to enjoy it.

I didn't like watching, but everyone was required to spend a certain amount of time doing so, to make sure we all remembered what Canterlot was capable of. There were crystal projectors and a big screen in the Hall of Justice that got set up for those mandatory viewing periods.

And I watched, like everyone else, how a Career pony—a red pegasus with a horseshoe cutie mark—broke the wings of another, black pegasus. When the black one tried to run away, the Career caught up to him and, with a great kick, broke one of his legs. Then the other three, one at a time. The red one just kept kicking, and kicking, and the black pegasus screamed and screamed, and I planted my hooves hard over Applebloom's ears, and because of that I couldn't cover my own, and so I heard as the screams grew weaker, and weaker, and I saw blood start to leak from the black pegasus's mouth, and...

I had nightmares for weeks after that.

If I were going to die, I hoped to die quickly, and I hoped to die when no one was watching. Late at night, maybe, when all my family was asleep. Though they might just play my death over in the morning-they sometimes did replays of some of the more dramatic moments when the Games hit a calm period.

I didn't want a dramatic death. If I couldn't die in my sleep of old age, I'd prefer a quick set of hooves to the noggin, or a meal of the wrong berries or mushrooms that made me fall asleep and never wake up.

But I wasn't going to do what some ponies did when they got sent to the games and kill myself straight off. The platforms all the tributes started out on had spells cast around them so that, if a tribute got off their platform before the starting horn, said tribute would get blasted to smithereens. There'd been maybe three ponies that did that, that I could remember. Two of them were in the same year—a pair of colts from District Five. There hadn't been any after those two, though, and there were rumors that the Gamemakers had set up precautions to keep anypony from purposefully offing themselves before things got started.

I laid there on the bed for a few more minutes, then got up and paced for a while.

All right. Strategy. What should I do?

Well, my main talent was bucking apples. It's what I'd been doing for years. I had strong hooves and powerful legs. I could run pretty well. I could throw a horseshoe and hit my target—or at least close to it—pretty much every time. Those were my strengths.

My weaknesses were mainly that I didn't know how to fight. I wasn't from a Career district. I was plenty strong, but the Career ponies had the heart beaten out of them. They didn't hesitate to crush, stab, or bludgeon a colt or filly, barely more than a foal, until they stopped crying. They didn't seem to feel anything when somepony else got hurt, beyond a feeling of satisfaction. Some of them even seemed to enjoy hurting other ponies.

I couldn't do that. I thought I could probably hurt a Career, if they tried to hurt me first. But not a little one. Not someone who was somepony's little brother or sister, scared as hell and just trying to survive.

Maybe I could just start running, and not stop, keep ahead of the killers and...

And the sound of the ponies they killed.

I wondered briefly if Cheerilee would mind sharing her salt. Probably she would.

I shook my head, turned off the lights, and tried to get some sleep.

A white unicorn sits up, bleary-eyed, when she hears the door to her cabin open in the middle of the night.

She sees the silhouette of a pegasus in the doorway.

"I, I'm sorry," the pegasus says. "I, just, if it's not too much trouble, can I stay with you tonight? If that's okay."

"Of course, darling," says the unicorn, scooting over to make room. "Bad dream?"

The pegasus nods. "I... I don't wanna talk about it."

"That's fine," the unicorn says. "It's all right. You're safe here."

The pegasus lies down, and seems to fall asleep quickly. The unicorn listens to her companion's deep, even breathing, and whispers a prayer to a long-dead goddess that both their deaths will be quick, kind, and simultaneous.