The Guardian Games: The Odds of Five

Previously 'The Game of Five'

Summary: It's a game to die for: a charming blonde with 70ft worth of hair; a 'career' who couldn't - wouldn't kill; a determined redhead eager to make her mark; a shepherd boy the Capitol loves and a cryokinetic mutant who'd do anything to protect her sister. The Big Four Frozen or Rise of the Brave Tangled Frozen Dragons/Hunger Games AU, with deviations. Other Disney Dreamworks people too.

Prologue: The Day Before

District 12

There was a knock on her door. And another. And another.

"Elsa? I know you're in there."

Elsa's eyelids fluttered open as she drowsily noted that the break between each set of knocks was getting shorter and shorter. She squeezed her eyes shut again, curling up more tightly in her bed, as if that could shut the rapping out of her head.

Then she heard the door creak open and she knew she had lost.

"Elsa!" She could feel a grab on her arm, yanking it carelessly. "Wake up! Wake up!"

Elsa considered faking some snores, but decided against it. She didn't snore much in her sleep, unlike her sister. In what she hoped was a firm voice - "Anna, go back to sleep."

"I can't!" The other girl announced fervidly, leaping onto Elsa's bed. With a touch of drama, she declared, "The sky's awake! So I'm awake! So we," – jump – "must" – jump. Elsa waited for the last word to come out, but when there was just silence. She dared to wonder, though with much disbelief, whether her sister had suddenly decided to leave her alone, or maybe given in to her own exhaustion and had fallen asleep.

She wished too early.

The blow came in the form of a yell straight in the ear. "PLLLLAAAYYYY!"

"Ahh!" Elsa leapt up from her bed, covering the ear that Anna had just nearly deafened. The younger girl merely threw her head back, giggling to like there was no tomorrow, while her elder sister shook her head vigorously, trying to get the ringing sound out of her head.

"A tad childish, don't you think Anna?" She dryly remarked at the shamelessly laughing brunette. "And you're supposed to be sixteen next week."

"C'mon! Let's go do something fun! I've got the extra candle that Hans gave me last week, and some chocolate from the shop! We can stay up and eat! We can talk! Oooh, maybe ghost stories! Or village gossip! Or…"- a wicked glint appeared in her eye, - "boys."

Elsa rolled her eyes. Ever since Anna and that pretty boy, Hans, became an item – and only after a huge fight with Elsa - Anna had been going in this boy-crazy loop. To be fair, she had been doing that for quite sometime before that. Elsa tacked it down to teenage hormones. She supposed her already hyperactive sister would get over it, eventually.

With a level tone, Elsa said, "Candle should been saved for when we need to work nights. Chocolate's a rare treat, so we should try to save them for your sixteenth. Just in case."

"Ever the future-oriented," Anna lamented, pulling a disgusted face, but Elsa knew that she understood. Last year, both of them groped and pinched just to save up a little to buy just a bar of chocolate to celebrate Anna's fourteenth. Elsa even chucked her name in the bowl secretly for a little more tessarae to save some cash. In the end, all the birthday money went into food.

Things had been so much easier when their parents were around.

"Get some rest, Anna." Elsa told her sister, dropping herself back on the bed. "Tomorrow's a big day." She wasn't sleepy, but she suddenly didn't feel like talking to her sister anymore.

"Yeah, I guess-o." Elsa noted that Anna's tone mellowed. A pang of guilt shot through the elder girl's chest.

Tomorrow. That's why Anna came in. They both knew what day tomorrow was, and she was just trying to forget. The first year Anna's name was put in the bowl, she stayed up all night alternating between mimicking the ticking of the clock and doing her math homework. And she never did math homework.

Just as Elsa thought of saying something comforting, she heard the door close, and silence reigned once more. Of course, the blonde knew who really shut the door on who.

The pale blue light of the moon filtered through the broken blinds on her covers. Adjusting herself to face the window, she raised her head, staring at the unbroken white face of moon painted against the black sky. It was whole, perfect and pure.

So unlike the world it gazed on.

She heard a crackle sound and startled. She glanced down at her hands, and noticed that a white patch of frost had formed in her palm. Quickly shaking off the white stuff off herself, she grabbed the green pair of gloves that lay on her side table, chanting softly to herself, "Conceal, don't feel. Conceal, don't feel."

Elsa laid her head back on her pillow and shut her eyes, tucking her now-gloved hands under her pillow, hoping that she'd plunge into dreamless sleep before the entire room got iced again.

District 10

"Jack, I'm scared." She was shivering slightly - in part cold, in part fear, he suspected.

He draped his poncho over her shoulder, sitting himself in front of her. " And why's that, kiddo? You're not even old enough to get your name reaped."

"Yes, but you are," she told him.

That one thing he loved about kids. They didn't go in the big loops, with long boring, unrelated stories like grown up did. They were innocent, unassuming and honest.

A mischievous grin crept on his face. "Awwwww - and you'll miss your big bro if that happens, eh?"

Her lips curled into a pout, as she punched him with her scrawny fists over and over. They didn't hurt, but eventually Jack found tumbling himself of the bed, down to the wood of the floor, futilely trying to protect himself for the blows.

"Okay, okay, you've made your point!" He cried in surrender. With a satisfied smirk, Emma drew back and allowed him to get to his feet.

"Jack, stop messing with your sister and go to sleep," their mother called from the kitchen. He noted to warm glow of the fire from the dining was fading as she started to put it out.

"Alright, to sleep you go," he told the little girl, scooping her small form in his arms, setting her off into giggles. He tossed her gently against the pillows – made from the very feathers that he had managed to scrap together in work - before drawing up the snug blankets over her legs. He planted a kiss on her forehead, then rose to leave when he felt a tug on his sleeve.

"Tell me a story, Jack!"

"It's getting pretty late, y'know," he said, shrugging with false reluctance.

She pulled out the secret weapon: her large brown eyes, shining with eagerness, anxiety and joy at all the same time, the way only children's eyes could. "Please, Jack."

If his mother scolded him later, he'd just tell her she pulled 'the eyes' thing. It's not his fault that she did it, was it?

Besides, he'd been lucky the last six years, but that didn't mean that tonight wouldn't be the last night he could do this.

Kneeling next to her bed, his eyes sparkling, he began with a low voice, "Once, long ago, in some faraway place called Europe, there was a boy. He walked like a boy, and he talked like a boy, but in reality, he was really special."

"You see, he was the winter spirit. Every winter night, he would ride the wind, over rooftops and chimneys. He'd glide past the windows and with his ice hands, he'd draw beautiful pictures all over the glass panes. When kids wanted to play, he'd call snow to fall from the sky - even on the hottest days. His name … Jack Frost."

District 8

Most of the other girls in the orphanage had already gone to sleep, but Rapunzel was determined that she wouldn't until it was done. Punching the needle in the fabric a rhythmic fashion – in, out, in, out – she tried not to let the rolling of the melting wax worry her. Instead, she talked turned to her small green companion.

"Tomorrow's the day!" she told him animatedly as she made a quick knot with the thread, before shifting the cloth, folding it over, and plunging the needle in again. "Well, most of the girls are scared – what am I talking about, I'm scared! I mean, any of us could be the – well, you know – but it's the only day that they let us go out, and the chances of me being picked is so small, so I'm actually totally okay with it!" She ended with a smile that was a little too wide.

The green chameleon just narrowed his green slits at her with knowing disbelief. After a brief staring contest, Rapunzel sighed in defeat as her shoulders drooped. The needle fell out of her hand, as she whispered him, "Sometimes I'm so afraid of that they would call my name that I end up chewing my hair. I know," – she caught him rolling eyes at her – "it's a bad habit, but I am trying to break from it. But I'm just so afraid. Just look at TV! All the ruffians. Thugs. Poison ivy. Quicksand!"

She shivered in horror, "One year even had cannibals – though they sort of made it illegal now – and snakes! Snakes! And large bugs! Oooh, and those kids with pointy teeth! How do they even get those teeth?" She was yanking on her hair so hard that it was a wonder that she hadn't ripped them off her scalp.

The green creature stared at her placidly for a moment, then rose on his hind legs. With his front legs, he made a small up-and-down, up-and-down motions that she immediately understood. Taking in a deep breath, she tried to convince herself, "I am calm, I am calm." Then she exhaled slowly.

Seeing that she was more relaxed, the green chameleon dropped back to all fours and scurried over to the edge of the table, waiting for her speak.

"I shouldn't get so worked up, should I?"

He answered with a firm shake of the head.

"There are lots of girls in the village, and my name's only been there five times. Well, okay, twelve times since they forced us to get tessarae for the orphanage – not that I minded awfully!" Rapunzel quickly defended herself. "And maybe, four more times when the quadruplets came in, but it doesn't matter. It's still not a lot compared to lots of others. Right?"

He gave several eager and repetitive nods, though more to keep her smiling than because he really believed it.

"Great! Then I've got nothing to worry about. They said that they'll be let us for stay for the celebration tomorrow after the reaping, so I can finally join in the danc– oh!" She gazed down at the crumpled heap she had released on the floor. "I meant to finish this before tomorrow. A new dress for dancing, y'know?"

He nodded firmly to show he understood, but he nodded to the clock, then raised a brow – or his reptilian equivalent – at her.

She got the message. "I'd guess better hurry then." Bending over the dress, she pulled the needle in and out, seam after seam, under the glow of the slowly dripping candle and under the watch of her faithful green friend.

District 2

Paranoia wasn't the most becoming trait of Peacekeepers. They called it meticulousness.

And so that's how he described himself when he tried to calculate the exact probability of him getting picked.

Glancing at the stat report he had cautiously stolen from his father's desk an hour ago, he started to do some math.

His name had only been entered exactly four times, since he'd never needed tessarae. Okay, hardly anyone in District 2 had ever took tessarae, since most people could live well without it. Those who did take it were just did so to increase their chances of getting picked. He knew his cousin Snotlout had thrown in his name 10 times with much anticipation, though to no avail.

Hiccup shuddered. Up to now, he didn't understand everyone else's enthusiasm about getting into the games. Were they insane?

Of course, this was District 2. Sure, masonry was supposed to be the main gig, but really? Everyone wanted to be a Peacekeeper. It paid well, gave every bloodthirsty District 2-er his fair share of violence plus the honour to serve the Capitol.

And of being a victor? That was the biggest thing that anyone in District 2 could get. His mum was a victor. And so was his dad, and that status still pretty much overrode his position as a mayor in the eyes of people.

They had expected that of him when he was born – the son of two victors, who could blame them? But when he grew to his nice, scrawny self, people eventually admitted that the genes were lost on him. His mother had died when he was but a babe - a train crash, he had been told - and he liked to think that was the reason that he sucked so badly at being who he was supposed to be.

But really, the odds were always stacked against him, as if the universe wanted him to be most miserable failure ever. Please, at ten, he couldn't pick up a Vektor CP1 handgun without staggering. He remembered his younger days in Career Training (It was technically illegal, anyway. Why did it even have an official name?), watching his dad gaze back at him in complete disappointment after a trainee two-years younger than him had him grounded in less two seconds.

He had pulled out of Career Training altogether around thirteen– instructor complained he had slowed down the class – and he had been dropped back into masonry, where he hadn't fared better, thanks his obvious lack of muscle. Eventually, he settled in handling and fixing the machines, which he was surprisingly good at.

It didn't stop him from trying over and over to be the Career that his dad wanted him to be; like (failed) attempts at body-building, self-learning how to handle weaponry (he shot himself in the foot twice – fortunately nothing permanent), and even getting into street fights on purpose (those ... really didn't end well.) Still, it often ended with himself in a tangle, his peers mocking him, others sighing at him, and his father's disappointment.

Hiccup just stared at the millions of numbers before him. He glanced at the workings he scribbled on his notebook. He just needed to add the numbers of 12-year-olds joining the reaping this year and punch the data into the calculator, then he'd know for sure his chances of getting in.

The problem was he didn't know if he wanted to be in or not.

Sighing, Hiccup shut the book. Whether paranoia nagged him or not, there wasn't much point in this. He didn't have any control over the reaping process anyway.

Picking it the data book, he carefully made his way back to his father's study. Ensuring that no one was passing by, he retrieved the spare office key that he had hidden in a secret cabinet under a nearby window ledge. He had stolen it two weeks earlier - for purely academic purposes, he assured himself. Glancing around once more, he slid himself in, shutting the door quietly.

Hearing voices behind him, he thought that for a moment he had been caught in the act. However, it turned out that it was just holo-projector on father's table playing some news from the other districts. Once he found the right drawer, he slid the statistic report back in its old place. Involuntarily, he found himself watching the videos on the screen.

There were people on the streets, their fists raised as they charged forward, chanting something together. Opposing them were Peacekeepers, lined closely together, holding up their shields and trying to force the angry people back. When the people didn't budge, weapons appeared in the hands of Peacekeepers. Shots rang out in the air, and people were screaming and yelling, scrambling off in different directions. Some people stumbled to the ground and never got up again. Later on, more Peacekeepers entered the scene. More shots were fired, and the same thing happened over and over.

It wasn't the first time Hiccup had seen such clips during his escapades to his father's office, but he still cringed every time he did. He understood that rebellion brought violence, which why Peacekeepers had to contain them – literally, to keep peace. But when he watched it play out in real life, well, he couldn't barely keep the sickened feeling down his throat.

He heard a clinking sound from the door of the adjacent room, so he left the office hastily, locking the door before scampering off to his room.

Throwing himself on the covers, he eventually drifted off to sleep, dreaming of some place above the clouds.

District 5

Just this morning, there had been a riot.

Again.

It happened up in the northern sector. People were angry that they weren't getting the pay they had been promised, or something like that. With the coming winter, food and heat was getting scarce. Who could really blame them?

She suspected that it was started by old Macintosh, and maybe that egotistical son of his, though her parents 'kept mum' about that. Macintosh had been her dad's old pal after all.

Peacekeepers had been pouring in like floodwaters. It had been too difficult to sneak out to the woods tonight, so she decided to console herself by firing at the wooden target hanging on her bedroom wall. It was much too near, of course, and eventually three close-ranged shots at high-speed smashed it with a forceful thwack!

She stood absolutely still for a moment, listening. Catching the faint thuds of footsteps, she hurriedly stashed her bow and arrows all under her bed. Hopping into bed, she wrapped her wiry self under sheets, throwing her arms carelessly about, then started snoring in a suspiciously loud manner.

The door creaked open for a moment, and a thread of light appeared on the bedroom floor. Merida pricked her ears, trying to guess which parent it was. She decided to give a few more snores, just in case.

"See, Elinor? The lassie's all tuckered out, and – well, out."

She grinned. If it was just her 'ol'e da' ', it was pretty easier. She made a few more snores for his benefit.

"Don't be silly, Fergus. She didn't get to do hunting today - thank goodness she had the sense not too – but I doubt she'd exhausted herself over her history lessons, " she heard her mother's disbelieving voice echoing further down the hall.

Merida held her breath at that point. If her mother came into the room, she would, with her super-mum tracking abilities, see the splintered target board, find the bow, then sit her up to give her lecture about getting her priorities straight.

She'd been getting more these lectures ever since she'd hit sixteen. Her mother had been giving her lady lessons, emphasizing that soon she'd be old enough to join her father on his summons to the Capitol, and she'd have to know how walk, talk and act like on the Elites. 'Give our district a good name," her mother had told her over and over.

Maybe somewhere in her common sense she understood that, but still! What was with those impossibly high-heeled shoes that pinched her toes? And how was she supposed to breath in the ridiculously tight corset? And why have so many utensils on a table? Why not just eat everything with a knife? It's a lot more convenient.

Fortunately, her father won out in the end. "Well, just leave her be. She's got enough worries tomorrow."

When she heard her mother sigh, her anger cooled considerably, turning almost weary. "If she get's – well, you know – all those awful things that happen in the Arena – I…I don't think I could take it take it Fergus. "

"You know the odds, Elinor, there's no way she'd be picked with all those tessarae kids," her father comforted her. " And if she does? Why she's strong, just like her da'. More than that – she's wiley and quick, like you. She'd come out tops."

"But District 5 hadn't had a victor since you! And even then, look what the games did to you!"

Merida knew what her mother meant. When her father was in the games, he had to fight some weird muttation – a great terrible bear, he had told them. It had 'chomped his leg clean off', he had said before.

"Hush, 'linor," her dad said quickly. Even with only her back facing them, Merida could well imagine her dad holding her mum close, stroking her long brown hair gently. "It'll all turn out for the better. You'll see."

The stream of light vanished as the door shut behind her. After listening to her parents conversation, Merida fought a conflict of her own.

Ever since the riots had started in District 5, along her mother's talk of responsibility and leadership, she'd been giving a lot more thought about the Games. True, District 5 hadn't had a winner since her father, but she was going to change that. Because in dark times, people needed heroes, and maybe perhaps it's high time they got one.

She would bring the Capitol's favour back to District 5, just like her mother wanted, and quell the starvation that brought anger here, even if only a while. She had to admit, though, this was going to break her parents' hearts.

It was very simple. Merida wasn't going to get reaped.

She was going to volunteer.

A/N: Yes, in my other fanfiction, I said that I wouldn't be writing anymore till November, but this idea kept bugging me throughout school, so I decided to 'let it go'. Yes, you are not amused. Okay.

I know there are a lot of Hunger Game/ Rise of The Brave Tangled (Frozen) Dragon arts and photos out there, but so far I haven't found a fanfiction that satisfied me. So…this was born.

As stated in the summary, I'll be bringing in some other Disney and Dreamwork film characters either as supporting case or just cameos.

For the storyline, it's set in the Hunger Games World, but there are going to be a lot of differences (e.g. Human Mutants – Elsa), and eventually it would get weirder. The story would also be a hybrid of The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, because I refuse to kill of all my favourite characters (note the word 'all'. That should tell you something… )

However, I hope to keep the spirit of the Hunger Games, while keeping the characters, as well themselves.

The reaping would be happening in the next chapter, so stay tuned till Nov (because I should be focusing on school work…)

Please review! Ask Questions! Tell me what you'll think! Constructive Criticism appreciated too.

*Edited for Grammar as of 14 April 2016. Would appreciate PMs if you spot further errors.