User:Ahalosniper/Kyler Teak

In the time since the Annual Hunger Games commenced, each year has seen only one child survive the slaughter as the celebrated victor, with one unknown exception. Kyler Teak was born forty-five years after the Dark Days in District 7, Panem’s lumber source. In the 61st Hunger Games, he was selected as a tribute in the Reapings at sixteen, and sent to the Capitol briefly before being fielded with twenty-three other tributes. But during the Games themselves, a building collapsed on him and another Tribute, and Teak’s left arm was completely severed.

While this caused him no end of pain, it did result in him losing the tracking chip embedded in him, and led the Gamemakers to believe he had died. Learning of their folly only strengthened his will to survive, and as crews were dismantling equipment and closing the ring on the other tributes, he was able to stow away and become possibly the only tribute to ever actually escape the Hunger Games.

After regaining a measure of strength and fighting off the mental trauma caused by the losing of his arm, Teak became a resistance agent and assassin, and was instrumental in coordinating the rebel cells in each of the Capitol-controlled Districts with District 13. With the outbreak of open war, Teak often worked with the Districts' Special Forces as an operative, helping five Victors of previous Hunger Games escape from the heart of the Capitol city. When the war ended, Teak turned to studying historical records for information on the world before Panem came to power.

Early Life
Born to the widow of a recently-killed logger in District Seven, Teak spent his early years helping logging crews by running tools and equipment back and forth, as he had no build of muscle to speak of and was unable to keep up with the cutting work. Through his early years, his family scraped a living out of helping gather wood for the Capitol’s paper. He was told as a joke once that most of the wood was used in the napkins of Capitol citizens at banquets, which sparked a growing dislike of the Capitol in him. By his early teens, Teak would often stay out hidden in the forests to avoid having to watch the reapings take place.

The Sixty-First Hunger Games

 * "To remember that those rebels who opposed the Capitol inevitably turned on themselves in desperation, we remember their end this year by having our tributes battle in a place not unlike where they spent their final, futile hours fighting: in the streets of District Thirteen."
 * — President Cornelius Snow announcing the 61st Annual Hunger Games.

As far away as he distanced himself, Teak could not run nor hide when his name was called. Brought to the stage in partial shock alongside his fellow tribute, he wouldn’t speak to anyone for the next day. This did not have any effect on his mentor’s harsh instruction, who was the District 7 winner of the previous year’s Hunger Games, Johanna Mason.

Training
Most of the communication between Mason and Teak involved her giving him difficult tasks and yelling at him when he failed. She was an inexperienced teacher, and backed against a wall by pressure from President Snow. But Teak was able to learn a few values from her; to be resourceful, to use an unfair advantage, and to be remorseless as a killer.

When in the exercise rooms with other tributes, he was instructed to balance time between watching his competition and picking up new skills. The hours within his quarters were spent honing his few talents rather than rest, primarily to run fast. Even through his stylists’ makeup, he appeared tired, yawning when he was interviewed by Caesar Flickerman.

Parade and Interviews
When it was announced that the theme of this year would be the Capitol’s triumph over the rebels, the stylists for District 7 recreated the uniforms of the Capitol soldiers that fought in the evergreen forests of Kyler's District. These included faded green flak vests, black boots toned down by mud, and steel helmets that were purposefully looked a bit large for their heads. During the parade, they looked the part of scared soldiers because they were as most soldiers are: scared, confused, and hoping against hope they’d make it out alive.

In the official interview with Caesar Flickerman, they were clothed in the deep navy blues and gleaming brass buttons of a dress uniform, being told to stand rigidly and walk with a sense of purpose. Teak did not act, had not been trained to, and appeared very sad and shocked despite Flickerman’s attempts to cheer him. Near the end of his three minutes, he asked Caesar how he could bear to sit with the tributes and get to know them every year, knowing that all but one of them would die. This was edited out of the broadcast, and his time was cut short.

Games
That year, the tributes were set loose in a recreation of what District Thirteen had supposedly looked like after being shelled for a week, and Teak escaped the bloodshed at the Cornucopia in the town square. The other survivors either hunted or were hunted in abandoned houses and underground bunkers filled with muttations and automated turrets. Teak wasn’t fortunate enough to get his hands on weapons, but did snag a spyglass and was first to learn food and water was often hidden in refrigerators.

Twice, Teak nearly died from Gamemaker interference, once an Improvised Explosive Device blowing up a car next to him, and again when an automated truck bristling with machine guns passed his hiding spot. Another time he actually collided with another tribute, but both were too scared of each other and took off in opposite directions. As the second day ended, Teak began to create a plan. That night, he sought out a place where the tributes from technological District 3 had deactivated and moved a set of automated turrets, creating their own fortified bunker. He proposed an alliance, and told them he had a plan to find a way out of the Games altogether.

Ultimately, their march toward the edge drew the attention of the Career Pack. They fled for the edge, only to find themselves up against a barrier keeping them in and the Careers at their backs. Because he was fast and the arrival of the gun truck, Teak made it away with a kill to his name for pushing a Career beneath the truck’s wheels, but both tributes of District 3 were tortured and killed. He blamed himself for their deaths, the fact that one or both of them would have died anyway proved no consolation. When he next encountered a tribute, his will to escape was gone and the two attacked each other with intent to kill.

Escape

 * Tribute Girl: "What if it doesn’t work?"
 * Teak: "Then I hope they nail you first!"
 * — Teak and another Tribute cooperate.

Ironically, his escape was nearer than ever. In their fight, he and the girl became pinned down by turrets, and were forced into sight of each other yet out of reach. Whenever something moved, the turrets would hit it with high-explosive anti-personnel rounds, to gory effect. After a few hours, they agreed to work together to escape. Each of them threw their open packs into the air, losing their supplies but confusing the targeting systems on the turrets. Amid so much movement, the two were able to slip by without any wounds.

Just when it seemed he had found an ally, a siren broke over the city. It was a warning for an artillery barrage, with the pair of tributes smack in the middle. As large-caliber guns obliterated blocks of the playing field, Teak entered a building just as a shell hit it, and the ceiling collapsed. Concrete slabs buried him, giving him a nasty blow to the head and knocking him unconscious. He awoke later, in the rubble, in pain. His left arm had been severed along the upper arm by a piece of falling concrete, the slab itself the only thing keeping him from bleeding out completely.

As he waited for death, he saw the hovercraft approach, and wondered if he was really dead and watching the world through dead eyes. Then he saw the craft lift his amputated arm and realized it had the tracking chip in it, and the Gamemakers must have thought his body was obliterated in the artillery strike. Still unable to move, he kept still as the forcefield constricted around a smaller playing field, leaving him outside it. Laughing hysterically, he managed to use the un-extinguished fires still burning to cauterize his arm despite the pain and smell of burning flesh, then stumbled away from the Games.

The same cannons that had fired on him were being dismantled, and Teak stowed away inside one of the huge barrels until it reached District 2 where he was able to get medical attention under a false name. In a hospital bed, he was forced to watch the rest of the Hunger Games play out, his moods swinging erratically from anger to sadness and back to shock. He heard rumors that the artillery strike had been staged to kill him specifically to get to Johanna Mason, who had publicly disagreed with President Snow on a number of occasions. He also felt mixed emotions for the winner of that year’s Games. Finally, he rejected emotions altogether as something that clouded his vision, and started meticulously planning where his life would go next.

Resistance Agent

 * "I think they know I'm alive. But they can't exactly put a poster with my name up for ransom, because that would prove their all-important Games aren't so invincible after all. And neither are they."
 * — Kyler to Mags, shortly after first meeting.

After recovering enough to sneak out of the hospital, Teak made a long journey on foot to District Four, and the home of previous winner Mags. She had long been an obstacle to President Snow, a political adversary he couldn’t quite get the upper hand on. He believed if anyone knew of a resistance, it would be her. Getting into the district was difficult, but soon he figured out the area where Mags took her personal boat out and boarded it as discreetly as possible, not an easy thing to do with one arm. The aging woman drew a knife on him as soon as she discovered him, still strong in her age. But as soon as Teak explained who he was, she showed interest in using him as an ally.

Before long, Teak was running messages between members of the resistance by posing as a train worker or just clinging to the trains' undercarriages. In District Twelve when delivering messages to Haymitch Abernathy, he used the same loose point in their fence as Katniss Everdeen and Gale Hawthorne. Despite his disgust of alcohol, Teak and Abernathy shared a cynical humor when he was sober enough.

Another important event for him was when Mags suggested contacting Johanna Mason about joining their organization. Teak was against it for her own safety, feeling for her as not only a former mentor, but also a crush. Mason was a year younger than Teak, which had made it ever the slightest bit more awkward when they were training. But it was not Teak's decision, and was forced to agree on one condition – that Johanna never know of his existence. Mags agreed, and Teak met another messenger partway that would deliver the letters to a prominent agent in District 7 that could convince her.

A few years before the 75th Hunger Games and the outbreak of war, Kyler had been delivering a message undercover to Mags in the Capitol while a different Games was taking place. He found the old woman on the floor of her hotel room, spasming in pain. He ran to find Abernathy, and they returned quickly with a doctor. The Capitol doctor pronounced it as a stroke, and with treatment she would be fine, but Teak and Abernathy suspected foul play by President Snow.

At other times, he served as a bodyguard for resistance members who might have been in trouble, twice single-handedly (no pun intended) killing would-be assassins.

First Strike
After the Third Quarter Quell resulted in open war between the Districts and Capitol, Teak was allowed to take on more valuable targets instead of the minor or old officials he had previously hunted. The earlier decision had been made by President Coin so that they would hurt the Capitol, but not spark large confrontations before the appropriate time. Teak relished the opportunity, taking out the last of the Capitol Gamemakers in his vendetta.

Though he felt most of his past was now behind him, the war went on. Teak was only just beaten as the first volunteer to join the strike mission to extract Peeta Mellark and the other Victors, Gale Hawthorne the only one faster. Teak had his own reason, mainly that Johanna Mason had been one of the ones abducted. Kyler and Gale had a mutual respect as fighters, but never knew each other well.

Almost from the outset, the mission went from bad to worse. Forced to fight through tight corridors and platoons of Capitol troops, they took severe casualties before reaching the torture chambers. The entire affair, however, had been organized by President Snow, and while recovering Mellark was easy enough, he had no wish to let go of Annie Cresta and Johanna Mason. Against his orders, Teak struck deeper inside to recover them, supported by later Squad 451 members Jackson and Mitchell. While they lost two other experienced rebel fighters and Mitchell was injured, they succeeded after a well-placed grenade opened the holding cells and wiped out the remaining guards.

Infiltrating the Capitol
Upon their return, Kyler made a request to President Coin to stay with Johanna until she recovered, but was denied on account of a high-priority operation that required someone with his field experience. The Victors of previous Hunger Games held significant influence in the minds of Panem's population, and those believed likely to support the rebels were being purged by the Capitol. Determined not to let the enemy tip the scales in their favor, President Coin and Commander Paylor of 8 decided to make an attempt at finding the remaining Victors first. Partnered with surveillance and technology experts from District 3, Teak and a number of other agents would infiltrate the Capitol to locate and kill Victors supporting the Capitol before evacuating as many District-siding Victors with them on the way out. Teak was paired with a young rebel named Tyson Webster, and they were smuggled behind the Capitol line along with the rest of the task force.

Setting up in an apartment used as a safehouse by District 13 agents, the two of them immediately began searching for their targets. Tyson quickly located a Capitol supporter who would be speaking publicly, and studying the location and leaked security details in the few hours between, assassinated the Victor with Teak's rifle. Their escape was nearly cut off, as the Capitol had expected this sort of retaliation, but thanks to Tyson's surveillance expertise safely lost their pursuers. After several other hits made by other agents, the Capitol took the other Victors in its grasp into hiding. Teak and Webster discovered the location of Enobaria, and with another pair of agents attempted to storm the hideout. Inside they found black-clad elite Peacekeepers acting as bodyguards, and Enobaria herself proved no easy mark. Both other agents were killed by Peacekeepers, and Teak engaged Enobaria alone and was nearly killed by the Victor, who'd just survived her second time in the Arena. In the end she fled, but Teak chose to rescue Tyson from the Peacekeepers rather than pursue.

Victor Rescue
After the close call, Teak realized the Capitol supporters would be too well-defended to make any more assassination attempts, and began searching for possible District supporting Victors and an escape route. While Tyson studied maps of the Capitol underground, Kyler tracked down Kevin Keverson, a Victor of District 3, but was too slow and the Peacekeepers beat him too Keverson. Determined not to let it happen again, he found a Peacekeeper force waiting at a train station for Kipcha Pryor and Ronda Grouge, planning to ambush them as soon as they arrived. Using tricks he'd picked up as a messenger between Districts, Teak boarded the train and made contact with the Victors, then hijacked the train and brought it to a stop, completely evading the Peacekeepers.

No sooner had Ronda and Kipcha been brought to the safehouse than Tyson learned of two more Victors by listening in on the Peacekeeper COM channel. Capitol squads had been ordered to execute Kai Shivers and Terra Storm, and the rebels had to move quickly. Teak stole a Peacekeeper uniform to move undetected, and headed toward the hotel they were supposed to be in. However, the Victors had avoided the ambush by chance, and fled as soon as they saw the Peacekeepers. Though Kai and Terra were winning the chase, it was only a matter of time before the Peacekeepers cornered them, and Teak headed them off first. Shooting the other nearby pursuers, Teak quickly explained that he was a friend and they had to move. Setting off an EMP device to disrupt the Capitol monitoring systems, Teak led them to the safehouse.

Afterwar

 * "Just Capitol children? If I remember right, there is no Capitol now that you’ve defeated it! They're just children like you and I were! Somehow, I thought the lot of you would have seen that! Mark my words, I will never let another child go through what I had to."
 * — Teak to Johanna after discovering the vote of support for continued Hunger Games.

Though angry after finding out there'd been a vote to continue the Hunger Games, he cooled off when he learned the new President Paylor had abolished them. He felt an experienced soldier would make the best leader for New Panem's early days, and was glad to leave matters of politics in capable hands. After a time continuing to run messages before Plutarch Heavensbee set up an efficient communication system, he began researching what had happened in The Dark Days, and how it had come about to avoid repeating these mistakes in the future. A year after the revolution, he organized an expedition to uncover the sealed and buried Library of Congress.

Personality and Traits

 * ''"Fifty Seven-point-Six-Two millimeter rounds in the gun,
 * ''Fifty Seven-point-Six-Two millimeter rounds,
 * ''Fire one out, chamber a round,
 * ''Forty-nine Seven-point-Six-Two millimeter rounds in the gun."
 * — A self-concocted song from Teak.

Teak had a perverse and sadistic sense of humor when it came to Capitol officials and personnel. The Resistence kept him on distant assassination missions, knowing his hatred for the Caps would cause him to blow an undercover operation in no time. While he killed most of his assigned targets with a cool precision, anyone to do with his own year in the Hunger Games met an extremely gruesome end. This included having their limb joints shot out and being left to die in the wilderness, and tortured in the same ways they had artistically showcased the deaths of the tributes from District 3.

When his thoughts weren’t clouded by hate for the Capitol, he was outwardly very calm, with an analytical mind that was best put to use solving someone else’s problem, and was a voice of reason for the winning tributes who worked against the Capitol when President Snow played with their emotions. But he couldn’t turn it over to his own problems. Being just older than his mentor, Johanna Mason, he felt an attraction to her that disappeared during her harsh training, but returned after he escaped the Games. For her safety and his instinctive avoidance of emotion that could make him weak, he kept watch on her from a distance until after the Capitol fell, and he was finally able to find some measure of happiness with her, if only for a time. He had an affinity for the tech-oriented people of District 3, and felt guilt over being unable to protect them several times in his life.

Physical Appearence

 * "Sometimes I can still feel it. It's called ghost limb syndrome. I start with the dream reliving when I lost it, buried under the rubble, and when I wake up I feel it, aching sharply where it should be. But it just isn't there."
 * — Teak on his missing arm.

Teak had a set of forest-green eyes and long, curly brown hair. His skin was pale from the shadows of District 7's forests, with a thin body at the time he was a tribute. After recovering from his ordeal, though, his remaining right arm grew very strong, as did the rest of his body while he trained to be an assassin. When not disguised as a Capitol worker, he commonly wore a dark green vest and dark sweatpants suitable for running in.

While he never got a chance to use more than a club in his time in the arena, after becoming a Resistence agent he made use of a revolver and sniper rifle for his assignments, though for the rifle he would have to take time to set up a shot.

Johanna Mason
Teak had a love-hate relationship with Johanna, beginning with her harsh attempts at training him to fight. While he was often frustrated by her stubbornness and angered by her verbal taunting, he came to care deeply for her well-being after his escape, even if she was unaware of his survival. To protect her, he kept a close eye on the Capitol's reactions to her actions, and carefully eliminated or blackmailed Snow's advisers to keep them from ordering her assassination. Johanna misunderstood when she found out about his actions, believing he didn't think she could take care of herself. Her anger only caused Teak to respond in kind, and it took a while for them to reconcile, but after Teak admitted to have feelings for her, she began to reciprocate his emotions.

District 13
Teak found a kindred purpose with the fighters of 13. They were dedicated to a purpose that had become his own, and formed bonds with many of its soldiers. The President's lieutenant, Boggs, was one of them. Meeting after Teak excelled in basic training despite dealing with his lost arm, they respected each other as fellow soldiers and frequently worked together in simulations, besting all other teams except those led by the woman who'd trained them both, Sergeant York. An expert at demolitions and squad-based tactics, York was responsible for training nearly half of District 13's forces, and some say they're the better half.

Mags

 * "She taught me everything I know about stealth and deception, but not close to everything she knew. She'd probably forgotten more than most will ever learn. She delighted in being eccentric, and more when it frustrated Snow. Crazy as she was, Mags was the toughest old woman I ever saw."
 * — Teak, years after the war.

While he was trained as a soldier by District 13, in his time as an agent Mags acted as something of a mentor for Teak. He rarely understood her logic, but her methods were very effective. Often, Mags hinted at a larger picture, stretching back to the Dark Days and the formation of Panem, but Teak had yet to grasp what she was leading to when the Capitol's assassination attempt left her crippled. Despite it, she remained a dangerous enemy of the Capitol, said to spook District 4's Peacekeepers at night by sneaking up on them. Teak arranged an escape for her before she was taken for the Third Quarter Quell, but Mags refused it, because it could harm the armistice between 13 and the Capitol, and would put Annie Cresta in danger. Teak watched her sacrifice in the Arena, wishing he could have done more.

Other Victors
Teak was wary of other Hunger Games Victors at first, knowing each of them was dangerous and an experienced killer. However, there were a few he trusted implicitly, including the members of his group that escaped during the Battle of the Capitol: Captain Ronda Grouge, leader of Squad 40 after joining 13's military; Kipcha Pryor, leader of District 5 after the war's end; Terra Storm, a fellow tribute of District 7; Kai Shivers, a strong, dependable fighter and loyal friend; and Kevin Keverson, a tech expert from District 3.

If you have a post-District War universe and would like to include Teak in a story or event, please feel free to do so, and let me know so I can enjoy your work. I hope you've enjoyed mine.