THE SIX CHALLENGES

6 FEBRUARY, SATURDAY, LYCAN STUDY GROUP

Now there were 6 challenges, 3 stations, and only 3 teachers VS 20 youths/10 pairs. I waited to see how Mrs Beta planned to pull this off.

"Okay, I want all of you to number off and break into two groups. The first group will start with Station 1. The second group will start with Station 2." Mrs Beta announced.

So we did. Dean and I were going to start with Station 1... Along with Ben and Jonah, Tim and Drew, Jay and Nolan, and Delilah and Carlie.

"Great, we're toast." Delilah said when she realised who she was up against, "Let's just get this over with. If we're quick they might eliminate us early."

"Yeah, man." Tim agreed, "You girls don't stand a chance."

Teacher S.O. was grinning at us when we came over to his station, "So, are you ready for your first challenge? I must say this one is an interesting one. When I first learned about it I was very intrigued. There are a lot of lessons we can learn from this on exercise. It's both simple and difficult. I found it very challenging myself..."

"Cut the chase Uncle S.O. and just tell us what the challenge is." Ben interuppted.

"Yes, yes, all in good time. Ben you really need to learn patience..."

After 20 minutes of "good time", Mrs Beta came to check why we hadn't started yet, she gave us the instructions and left.

We were given drinking straws, old newspaper, and a raw egg. We needed to wrap the egg so that it wouldn't break when thrown.

If your egg didn't break, you passed the first challenge and can move on. If your egg broke, you had to stay back and start over with a new egg.

"Alright! We did this in school!" Tim said, "You can do this, Drew!"

Okay... I looked at Dean who told me, "We played at the school-wide games day last year. I think Link and Drew won."

"Do you remember how they did it?" I asked.

"Well, they used straws to make a cage structure." Dean explained, "I don't really know how to say it, I'll show you."

"Oh!" I felt hopeful for a moment, "You know how?"

"Probably..." Dean mumbled, "It didn't look hard."

He folded the end of one straw longwise and pushed it into end of another to make a longer straw, "You join it like this."

Okay, I know this. Savy and I used to make long swords out of straws at MacDonalds when we were pups.

Anyway, Dean tried for a bit, but ended up with a bunch of messed up twisted straws, "It's not working."

Okay... I frowned at the newspaper and straws.

"Hey Sam, wanna make a alliance?" It was Delilah, "I can show you how to make the straw cage this challenge. And you help me and Carlie on something else in the next challenge."

Carlie rushed over triumphant, "Look what I got! The guys gave me all all their pink straws."

"Go girl power." Delilah answered sacarstically.

I guess more resources in any color was always good.

"Let's make an all pink armour for our egg." Carlie decided, "I'm going to call her Alezea - opps."

Alezea fell and cracked on the floor.

"Noooo..." Carlie cried.

Teacher SO gave Carlie another egg.

"Hey, is that allowed?" Tim asked.

"I think we can all give the girls a chance." Teacher SO said and then continued to lecture the guys on the meaning of the word "gentleman".

Luckily Ben interuppted, "Okay already. Just stop talking."

"Please Sam, we need all the help we can get." Delilah said.

"Yeah, us girls gotta stick together!" Carlie said.

"I'm not a girl." Dean said.

"It's okay, you can be Deana." Delilah grinned at him.

"Go....girls!" Carlie cheered. She picked up the new egg, "I'm going to call her Zoe."

"No touching the egg Carlie." Delilah scolded, "Actually, no touching anything. Why don't you go distract the other teams?"

"Okay!" Carlie agreed and went off.

Five minutes later, I was following Delilah's step by step instructions on building a straw nest. Basically we were aiming for a diamond structure. And then we will stuff it with newspaper.

It wasn't easy at all. But who knew making straw swords at MacDonalds would provide me the basic foundation for such crucial skill?

Five minutes into the on-the-spot tutorial, Jay shouted in exasperation, "Teacher SO! Can you tell this girl to go back to her own team?"

The other guys laughed which gave Jay a good idea, "Tell you what, why don't you go help Ben and Jonah's team."

Ben and Jonah had made something that looked like a rocket. There was a cockpit in the middle for the egg.

We had to stop after 15 minutes because we were out of time. I looked at the little straw cage stuffed with newspaper and had an idea. No one said there was a limit to how many newspapers we were allowed to use so I decided to stuff the egg into the straw cage with lots of tiny paper balls, then wrap the whole thing in crumpled newspapers. When I was done, we had something like looked like a beach ball made of newspaper.

Ben and Jonah's was the most impressive. A rocket made of straw.

Delilah got the pink straw ball by weaving the straw like a basket. They actually had a good chance.

Drew and Tim (mostly Drew) produced a replica of the winning entry at school. Tim smirked when they presented it, but all he did throughout was have a yelling match with Carlie. (At least he kept her out of everyone's hair.)

Jay and Nolan just used newspapers. The straw structure they had made just couldn't hold up.

To test each structure, Teacher SO would stand on a chair and drop the egg.

"Zannia!!!" Carlie screeched when their pink basket was dropped.

"I thought her name was Zoe." I said.

"Oh right, Zooeeeee!!!" Carlie amended.

But Zoe survived.

Dean and my egg survived too. Even though Tim insisted we unwrapped the whole thing to prove it.

Tim and Drew's naturally survived.

Jay's and Nolan's egg broke and made a mess of wet sticky newspapers very quickly.

Ben passed the egg rocket to Teacher SO, "Hold it upright and drop it."

So it survived. Then Teacher SO decided to drop it a second time, head first.

And the egg died.

"You had to drop it upside down, didn't you?" Ben growled.

"It's okay Ben, whatever." Jonah tried to pacify.

Teacher SO looked very smug, "Ah, but I didn't say I had to drop it your way."

Ben started growling.

"It's just a game, Ben. It's okay." Jonah held him down by his arm.

Challenge 2 was for our eggs to now survive being thrown, I mean dropped by the other team. Dean and I quickly re-wrapped ours.

Teacher SO drew lots on who got to throw whose eggs.

Dean and I got to throw Delilah and Carlie's Zoe.

"Yes!" Delilah fist pumped, "Don't forget our alliance."

Dean dropped their pink basket very very gingerly.

"Yay!" Carlie cheered, "Girl power!"

The guys laughed at Dean and he reddened.

Tim made sure to properly smash Ben and Jonah's second attempt into the ground.

Carlie dropped Jay and Nolan's second attempt and then accidentally fell over her chair and landed on it.

"You got egg on your butt now." Delilah informed her.

"Ew... Teacher SO, can I go home now?" Carlie asked.

"But we're winning!" Delilah argued.

"But I have egg on my butt!!!" Carlie wailed.

"No! You're going to stay till we win!" Delilah told her firmly.

Carlie looked devastated.

Ben got to throw my egg. Dean and I watched as he stood up on the chair.

"Smash it hard, Beta!" Tim yelled.

Ben simply dropped it lightly. It didn't even bounce on impact, just rolled over.

"Hey!" Tim said.

Ben simply shrugged, "I don't have to listen to you."

So if Tim had shouted for him to go easy on us, Ben would have smashed our egg in?

"If you keep this up, Sam and the Omega are going to win again." Tim said.

"Yeah, they always win." Jay said.

"If my Alpha wins, I win." Ben said.

"You mean, if you can't win, then you're going to make sure Sam wins." Jonah interpreted.

"Opps." Drew said. But he was chuckling.

Jay turned to Tim, "You had to smash their second egg."

Tim was aghast at the accusation, "Look, Uncle SO started it, he dropped their rocket down inside down!"

"Twice. He dropped our rocket twice." Ben said.

Oh. Ben was mad at Teacher SO. Now, he will go all out to ruin the game dynamics by ensuring my win.

I hate it when Ben got me involved in his revenge schemes. They were often highly complicated and sometimes so subtle, the person targeted had no clue what just happened.

"Ben, can't you just forget about it?" I groaned.

"Not with my exceptional memory." Ben told me.

I suppose to forgive and forget wasn't something a person like Ben was inclined to do.

I kind of miss the Ben before his shift, the one who would yell fiercely, "Don't tell Sam what to do."

No wait, Ben was always this way....this was nothing to do with the shift.

Anyway, Teacher Rose called us over to Station 2. At Station 2 we were given more newspaper and a territory marked out with masking tape on the floor. Each team had to make as many balls of paper as we could in three minutes. A crumpled piece of newspaper wouldn't cut it either. It had to be properly balled.

Okay, straightforward enough.

The team that had the most paperballs in their territory would win the third challenge.

Good! An easy and straightforward challenge!

Dean and I picked a territory. Ben and Jonah put themselves right next to ours.

Suddenly, I knew this challenge wasn't going to be as straightforward as I thought. No thanks to next door complications.

On go, we started crumpling the paper. Ben and Jonah were doing well too.

There was a sudden fury from behind me, I turned around just in time to hear Jay explode, "DON'T TAKE OUR BALLS!"

"Oh so scary!" Carlie gasped, "You wouldn't hit a cute girl would you? Would you, Jay?"

If Jay was older, I'm sure he would have growled by now.

"Alright, stop it. We are wasting time. Here take back your balls." Delilah pushed back a few paper balls and got back to making more.

"That's like less than half of what she took!" Jay argued.

"It's okay, don't waste any more time." Nolan urged, "We can make more faster than arguing over those."

"One day, Carlie, someone will beat you up!" Jay warned her.

Carlie just laughed it off.

At the last second, Ben and Jonah shoved their pile of newspaper balls into my territory, so I won.

Challenge four was to get rid of all the balls within two minutes. This meant we needed to dump the balls into somebody else's territory.

Suddenly we were having the greatest newspaper fight in our lives. And then I noticed how the other teams would let the balls accumulate and then dump it all on a neighboring territory.

I'm not sure what the point of this game is, but it wasn't about cultivating good neighborly relationships.

Anyway, Ben had an idea, "Stop! This is useless. Everyone gather your balls, and then at the last minute, we'll all dump it on..."

"If you dump it on us, we'll cry." Carlie threatened.

Jonah chuffed, "Girls!"

Carlie blew him a kiss and he shut up and slunk behind Ben.

"Tim." Ben decided, "Sorry Drew. You got the wrong partner."

"Should've gone with Shannon." Drew regretted.

"Sure but it would be your team anyway." Ben smirked, "We're eliminating the biggest threat."

"Oh." Poor Drew.

Anyway, at Ben's signal, we totally mass dumped our paper balls in Tim and Drew's territory. Drew did a last ditch effort to push as much as he could back out, but it wasnt enough to save them.

All it did was make Carlie and Delilah scream when the balls were returned to their space.

"Opps, sorry." Said Drew.

"Serves you right." Jay felt avenged somewhat for the balls they had stolen earlier.

"It's just some paper balls." I said.

"You don't understand, Sam." Jay told me, "This girl... she's always like this. Someone will need to teach her a lesson..."

"Just let her mate deal with it later." Jonah brushed it off.

"Yeah? What if she is your mate?" Jay challenged.

"Oh, Jonah~" Carlie breathed a dreamy sigh.

"No." Jonah answered quickly, "The goddess knows my limit. She won't give me more than I can bear."

Lol.

Seriously, that was the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Anyway, Dean and I had 4 challenges down.

We met the other teams at Station 3. All three teachers met us there.

In Station 3, we were given unlimited paper, scissors, and markers. We were supposed to make $10 bills. It was very easy. Cut a piece of paper to roughly the right note size, write a "$10" and draw a circle around it.

Whoever made the most money in five minutes wins.

Okay... So anyway, we obediently became a money printing factory for the next five minutes.

Angela and Jessica won the round. They printed $760.

Dean and I printed $510.

"Aren't we going to help Sam?" Jonah asked.

Ben held up a hand, "Wait, we need to see what the twist is first."

I guess he learned from Station 2 that it wouldn't be so straightforward.