Katniss is transported to the Capitol and has a few days to prepare for the Games there. The building where all the tributes are kept is luxurious, with high tech devices and plenty of food, unlike district 12. All the tributes have to participate in an opening ceremony for the Games, practice different skills in the training center, and finally are all interviewed. On the day of the Games, the tributes all have to stand in a circle around a giant cornucopia filled with all of the necessary supplies to survive.
These are the main events in the rising action:
An artist's drawing of Katniss and Peeta in the arena.
- Katniss becomes extremely dehydrated during the first few days and almost dies, but finds a pond and drinks plenty of water.
- She finds herself in the middle of a forest fire, including precision launchers that shoot fireballs, and gets burns on her hands and leg.
- Katniss is confronted by the Career Tributes (people who train for the games) and drops a nest of tracker jackers, wasps genetically altered by the Capitol, onto them, which kills about two people. Katniss passes out for two days from the tracker jacker poison.
- She wakes up and finds out that a district 11 tribute, Rue, has been following her. They become allies and form a plan to take out the Career's supplies, the only thing keeping them alive.
- Rue makes a fire to distract the Careers and Katniss finds their supplies. She figures out it has explosives underneath it and manages to blow up all the supplies. They are completely destroyed by the explosion,and Katniss is badly injured and loses hearing in one ear. Even though their plan is a sucess, Rue is killed by the Careers.
- Katniss finds Peeta and nurses him back to health because of a rule change: two tributes from the same district can both win the games.
- The remaining tributes are invited to a feast where they will all find something they need desperately. Katniss goes to the feast to get some medicine for Peeta's infection and gets injured
by a Career.
