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Upon being released, Technoblade watches his fellow tributes all rush for the different weapons stations scattered around the training hall. The girl from 3 goes for the bow and arrow station and his fellow Career from District 4 rushes for the throwing knives.
Technoblade spins around, looking for which station he’s going to train at today. He’s been advised by his mentor not to show off too much of his skillset, rather save it for the Gamemakers, so it doesn’t leave him many options of where to go.
Even if he was allowed to show off, it’s not really like he needs the training anyway.
In the corner there’s a basic survival section which is completely empty, all of the tributes choosing to work on flashier skills. The survival section focuses on things like building fires or identifying edible plants or tying knots or gathering food, all things Technoblade knows how to do, but it wouldn’t help to brush up on those skills, so he turns and heads in that direction.
Unlike most of the other tributes here, except for those from 2 and 4, Technoblade has been training for the Games his entire life. From the moment he was born it seems he has always known the weight of a sword in his hand, the taste of blood between his teeth. He was made for the sport of hunting, felt it forever flow through him.
He’s told he’s one of the greatest tributes they’ve ever seen. The people at home said it, his mentor CaptainSparklez said it. He hasn’t even gone into the arena yet, let alone been given a score by the Gamemakers, and he’s already crowned the Victor of this Game. No one else stands a chance.
A man is standing at the survival section when Technoblade gets there. He’s blond with stubble and probably somewhere in his thirties. It takes Technoblade a minute to put a name to the face but he recognizes the man as Ph1LzA. He doesn’t remember too much about the older man’s game, it happened when Technoblade was only a toddler, but he’s studied each and every game enough to know who he is and a few facts about it.
Sometimes, when past Victors no longer have to mentor new tributes because that job has been passed along to a more relevant and newer Victor for their district, they will sometimes be assigned the job of helping in different sections in the Training Center.
“Ph1LzA, but you can call me Phil if it makes you more comfortable,” the man introduces himself with an extended hand as Technoblade approaches as if he doesn’t already know who the Victor is. “I’m here to help assist you in anything in this section.”
“Technoblade,” he returns, completing the handshake. He doesn’t give his real name, his old name, to Ph1LzA as he did. Dave from District 1 was gone the instant he volunteered, all there is left is Technoblade, the destined winner of the 56th annual Hunger Games. The naming ceremony hasn’t even commenced yet, but he’s already using his new name that the nation will soon forever know him as. He has to get started on branding himself early.
There’s a screen with a control pad to Technoblade’s left that looks almost like a game.
“What’s this?” He asks Phil.
“This is an edible and poisonous plant test. You want to try it out?”
Technoblade’s fingers hover over the keys. “Sure, I’ll give it a go.”
Phil starts it up and as soon as the beginning countdown turns to zero, Technoblade races to begin identifying the different plants shown on screen. He knows the test isn’t based on how quickly you can complete it, but he speeds through it anyway. There’s something deeply competitive sunk within every inch of his being, a piece of him that gets the adrenaline rushing and kicks his brain into overdrive. He never loses, and even though there’s no one here to lose against, that doesn’t stop his instincts from screaming out to him to complete the thing as fast as possible.
The screen flashes green with correct answers as Technoblade identifies katniss to be edible and pink oleanders to be poisonous.
Suddenly the screen flashes red with an incorrect answer. Technoblade is shocked for a moment but moves on. A minute later he wrongly identifies another plant to be edible instead of poisonous and the wrong answer screen flashes again.
Finally the sequence ends and Technoblades score comes up on the screen.
96% correct.
Something about that irks Technoblade. It isn’t a bad score, not by a long shot. He knows none of the tributes here would make any higher with maybe the possible exception of the other two Careers, but it still pisses him off. He should have aced this.
“Whatever,” he mutters under his breath. “It isn’t going to help me win anyway.”
He’s surprised when Phil answers back, he was almost certain he had said it too quietly for the older man to hear.
“Winning isn't the point.”
Technoblade turns and meets the eyes of the Victor. He’s so used to people turning away when his brown eyes meet theirs, so used to people shying under his gaze. The other tributes do it, even his fellow Careers. The others back home wouldn’t meet his eyes either, perhaps too afraid of what power they knew he held from his sheer abilities.
But for the first time in a long time, someone holds that gaze. Phil doesn’t turn, doesn’t wither. He looks back with such sadness in his eyes and it so very much catches the younger man off guard.
“What do you mean winning isn't the point? Of course it is,” Technoblade says back. Is this man delusional? He’s a Victor of the Games, he more than anyone one should know that. He won them himself.
“Winning isn’t the point, Dave, surviving is.”
There have been a few times Technoblade has been caught slightly off his guard here, though never for long. There’s the occasional irritation, the intermittent shock, but nothing has truly hit him like a brick to the brain like the usage of his first name like that.
Back home, back in District1, he was called Technoblade by his trainers and his peers. It was preparation for this, to get him ready for the days when he would only be known by such a title. It was all so meticulously planned, his name, his persona, his outfits. He’s been trying to win the game long before he was reaped.
But now, standing here in a quiet area of the Training Center, being called Dave by a Victor, it catches him by surprise. It isn’t irritation he feels at the name, not anger, but almost like someone has taken a sledgehammer to the persona he’s so heavily created and fortified and made a crack within its surface.
It’s a show of who Ph1LzA thinks he really is. The Victor doesn’t think of him as Technoblade, the undying god, but as Dave, a thirteen-year-old from District 1 reaped to fight in a brutal competition.
Winning isn’t the point, surviving is.
Technoblade thinks about that. All these years all he’s ever known is that he is to win the Hunger Games, to come out on top. He’s thought of it as a game of victory, a game of glory, never as a game of survival really. He’s always known he would survive it, but he thinks maybe it's different for people like Phil, people who came here to the Capitol with the odds stacked heavily against them, so certain they would die.
Technoblade really has only kept up with the more spectacular victories of the Games like that of his mentor, CaptainSparklez, or someone like Pyrocynical. Those who fought their way through the arena by bow or by blade. Those who came out covered in the blood of their fellow tributes and rose above them.
But still, Technoblade has seen all of the tapes of all the Victors, studied each and every one. He knows that not all the Victors make their way through the arena like that, all covered in the blood of others with their heads held high. Some barely scrape through, they trudge on in a game of survival, never winning the game, but outliving others.
Technoblade doesn’t remember Ph1LzA’s game in great detail, but he remembers enough. He remembers Phil being an underdog. Not a great score from the Gamemakers at all. Maybe they had underestimated him.
Phil was just a fifteen year old from Six. Skinny, hungry, scared. His Victory had gone down as one not so remarkable really. He’d spent the game hiding, running from others and doing all he could to survive. He didn’t hunt after the others like the Careers did, he just did his best to make it until the end.
Phil had only killed once in his Game, if Technoblade remembers correctly, and it had only been in self-defense on the first night. Even his victory was not by his own hand. That year the Gamemakers had released a group of zombie-like mutants into the arena to liven things up and they’d taken out half the tributes. Even Ph1LzA had barely managed to survive them, being terribly injured by a baby version of the mutant. He’d only won because he’s managed to outlive his competitors, managed to survive better in this new environment filled with horror better than the others.
It’s a game about survival.
Technoblade tries his best to not think of his fellow tributes, tries to put them out of his mind knowing what he’ll have to do to them once they’re thrown into the arena. But as he ponders Phil, he can’t help it. He can’t help but think of the thin and hollowed tributes from the non-Career districts, the way their bones jut out of their skin.
He tried not to think on it too much, but he never really knew the poorer districts were really that badly off. Of course, he knew they weren’t as fortunate as he was in 1, but he never realized quite how badly the disparity was. The only time he ever saw those people was on TV and by then if they were in the Games where they’d already been fattened up a bit from the weeks in the Capitol before the area or shown from afar during the reaping. But someone like Phil, someone who came from a district like 6 who had absolutely no chances of winning at all, his perspective on this is totally different. Technoblade will be a Victor by winning the Games, but Ph1LzA was a winner by surviving his.
It cracks a slight something in the strutting champion facade he has going, exposes something of the insanely anxious boy beneath, a boy called Dave and not Technoblade. A boy who is slightly aware that he will be picking off kids who have no chance of winning, trying their absolute damndest to survive. They have no chance against the environment of the arena, no chance against him. They won’t win, they won’t survive.
And so Techno lets Phil help him despite his anxiety, let’s Phil show him how to survive because that’s what Phil did, he survived. He lets the older man show him key characteristics to each plan to identify if they're edible or not, let’s Phil show him how to tie different knots or more efficient ways to fish. Something like respect builds up in Technoblade for Ph1LzA, makes him realize he would mind standing beside him after the games as a fellow Victor.
There’s something in the system of the Games and the Capitol’s ruling iron hand that has been tainted for him now more than ever before and it leaves an acidic taste in his mouth. It’s like a sinkhole has been exposed, the gravel falling in and revealing a gaping hole beneath. Because Technoblade knows he can win this game, that he can come out of the arena holding his head and sword high, but something deep down within him fears he won’t survive it.