Phase Three: Now, We Hide?!

Eligh didn’t waste any time. He ground his right foot into the island terrain and thought Speed Burst! loudly in his mind. He and Mara darted forward, heading straight for Oliver who dodged out of the way with a Power Jump so high it could be mistaken for flying.

“Rulebreaker! He’s flying! That’s cheating!” Jordan yelled as he pressed forward on the other two red team members. As their attention was drawn to Oliver for a split second, Jordan swiped at the armband of the teammate doing the carrying.

“Chan, DJ, watch out! Don’t get distracted!” Oliver yelled from above.

Chan, or maybe Chan was the one riding piggyback, swatted Jordan’s hand away a millimeter before it made contact, and the pair backed up along the tree line.

Eligh moved in close to Jordan. “Good effort.” He said and kept his eyes on Oliver and his partner as they touched back down on the ground.

“Thanks.” Said Jordan whose eyes found the giant timer ticking away on the jumbotron. Eligh looked, too. Twenty-four minutes had passed. Jordan had six minutes to find a partner. One minute past that and carrying anyone piggyback would be pointless.

For some reason, Eligh was worried—(Eligh had to pause to roll his eyes at himself)—over Jordan’s impending failure. He nudged Jordan with his shoulder. “Hey, you still have your gift orb from Phase One?”

“Yeah, I do.” Jordan said.

He and Eligh dodged to the left and right as a white net from the gear toolkit shot out at them, much like earlier. The red-armband pair in front of them chased after the net, having used it as a decoy.

Eligh jumped toward them, carrying Mara close to their bodies, in a great position to pull their flags. But Oliver and his teammate were right on them, intercepting them midair. This time when Eligh shouted, “Gear Spin!”, he was able to complete the full rotation.

He and Mara spun clear of Oliver’s teammate’s reaching hands and skidded to a halt beside Jordan once more. “Darn these guys,” Mara said. “They’re totally better than us. Well, you and Jordan, at least.”

“Mara! Not helping.” Eligh said.

She chuckled, a singing sort of sound that Eligh couldn’t be mad at. “Sorry!” She said, clearly not sorry at all. Eligh smiled a little before getting serious again.

“Here, Jordan.” Eligh stabilized Mara on one side and struggled to quickly grab his gift orb with one arm. “Trade me.” He and Jordan swapped orbs and popped them open. “Use it however to take these guys down!”

“Right!” Jordan said and thrust his right arm out. Eligh didn’t know what the older guy envisioned, but in the next moment, Jordan had slightly visible blasts of air, the shape of rubber balls, launching from his gear. It seemed to have transformed into a glove over his hand.

The blasts were mildly powerful and rapid. Hard to dodge. The red pair—DJ and Chan—were pelted incessantly and had no means of escape. Eligh took this chance to rush in on them and he and Mara snatched the red flags from both the boys’ arms.

They both blipped seemingly from existence, leaving nothing behind. Now, the trio whirled around on Oliver and his partner. The timer counted down Jordan’s last two minutes.

“Let’s go!” Mara yelled, and all five people clashed in a flurry of arms and legs. Eligh felt his flag almost pulled at least twice, shooting his anxiety through the roof. Jordan sometimes played it safe, back up a bit before attacking again, like a calculated snake.

Mara was all in, grabbing hair and tugging like her life depended on it.

“Ah! Ah!! You can’t do that!” Oliver’s partner yelled.

“Where are the rules saying I can’t?!” Mara yelled back and used her other hand to snag the flag on the guy’s right bicep. He vanished in the blink of an eye, and Oliver’s center of gravity rocked off balance.

He fell backwards with a thud onto the ground and Eligh was on top of him before his younger brother could move a centimeter. Before he pulled Oliver’s flag, Eligh wagged his tongue at him and said, “Payback.”

With Oliver gone and no one else to stop them, Eligh looked at the timer with wide eyes. Jordan had less than forty seconds.

“Jordan!” The man looked at the jumbotron as well and then his eyes immediately found Mara’s. Mara still had a couple minutes to be on Eligh’s back for the full ten minutes to count, but they all knew he could pick up that time later.

Mara, though, said, “Absolutely not.”

Jordan dropped to his knees. He rubbed his hands together like he was trying to make a fire, pleading with her.

Mara didn’t budge. Though Eligh could die happily right there at her refusal to leave his back, he had to force himself to ask her, “Please, Mara! He’ll be eliminated any second!” The girl groaned and the cold hitting Eligh’s back as she slid off him brought a sad little tear to his eye.

“Th-Thank you!!” Jordan cried as Mara neared him. She purposely whipped him in the eye with her long hair, though, before getting on his back.

Just then, a soft voice and a tall body came crashing through the brush, bringing a giant, holographic juggernaut in its wake, the ground shuddering. “Um! Could you pair with me?!”

It was Tessa from the Captive’s Jail, and she spoke directly to Eligh who was partnerless. He only had a few seconds to say, “Sure!” before the effects of the juggernaut would send them all flying in different directions again.

“Yay, great!” She yelled and sprinted toward Eligh before the final few seconds could tick the thirty-minute checkpoint away. She positioned herself in front of Eligh as she reached him and held her arms away from her back.

“Wha—What are you doing?”

“I need to carry you piggyback! Hurry!” She yelled.

“Goddammit.”

Thirty minutes later, Phase Two of the Games was over with the red team crowned the winners of Capture the Flag.

Eligh, Mara, Tessa, and Jordan (who they were slowly warming up to but still wouldn’t have minded losing at some point) were on the ground by the end of the game. They weren’t the only ones. Having trudged back over to the aircraft camp where the second phase had started, every participant in the Games watched one another either celebrate their victory or lament their defeat—all from the green grass.

Everyone was too tired to get up.

“That was fun!” Someone nearby said, high fiving a friend from where they were both spread out like starfish over the grass.

Even Oliver, who came practically crawling over to Eligh’s little group with his short, still unnamed partner in tow, hardly managed a mean thing to say in his fatigue. All he got out was, “Of course you guys lost.” Looking at Eligh he said, “Loser stats,” with a grin like the old Oliver wore.

It made Eligh immensely happy.

After a few more minutes trying to catch their breath, an island-wide announcement startled the air.

“That’s a wrap on the second phase of the Gear Up! Games! Whoo-hoo! Well done to those of you left standing.” Those invisible fireworks were blasting the sky again, and animals Eligh had yet to see in the jungle were making a mess of noises.

“Are the animals on this island real or…?” He asked Mara who lay on the grass to his right. She shrugged her shoulders, and the announcer picked up where he left off.

“Of the eight-hundred-thirty participants who started this phase, only three-hundred-seventeen remain! You all knocked out over half of your competition. Again, champions, well done! … Now.” A deep, rumbling drumroll broke over the intercom system and all the contestants looked overhead as the jumbotron began changing colors.

“There is one thing we neglected to tell you at the start of Phase Two.” These words were jumping all over the jumbotron as the announcer spoke. It built suspense. Eligh felt excited. The announcer continued. “The truth is that… Phase Three… Begins… NOW!”

“Huh?!” Eligh cried.

And all at once, three things happened.

The five-hundred-thirteen participants eliminated in Phase Two disappeared on the spot. Shrieks of surprise rang out around them. Eligh and his friends scrambled to their feet.

The entire island was then thrust into an extreme state of darkness, as if the lights had been turned off in a room with no doors or windows. By the sound of it, some people were going ballistic in the dark, screaming in wonder about what was going on.

Wherever they were, they now knew they weren’t on a real island.

Eligh and his ragtag group grabbed hold of each other. He heard Oliver say, “I told you so.”

And then everything went quiet. The “lights” came back on, and as visibility returned to them, eyes blinking to the brightness around them, Eligh and the others couldn’t believe what they were seeing.

Giant, fluffy-looking, happy and loving, hearts-for-eyes teddy bears of all colors towering over the trees stared down at them.

“What… the hell…?” Eligh mumbled.

The jumbotron stopped flashing and the announcer yelled, “Phase Three: Hide and Seek! While remaining hidden, your team must complete useful missions geared to help other teams throughout the game. Each team must complete seven missions. The time limit for this phase is two days! —”

“Two days?!” Mara and Eligh cried. As if one, they looked over at Jordan.

“Get caught three times and the game’s up for you! You have two hundred seconds to conceal yourselves from the bears.

“Aaaaaand… Happy hiding!”