Chapter 7- Chompy

  Once we start running into the jungle, we literally cannot stop. It seems that every direction we head into, another duo awaits us, weapons trained and ready to kill. We barely dodge their shots, and when we finally lose them, surprise, another encounter at another corner. We run so deep into the jungle that I’ve lost my sense of space, and the only thing on my mind is to outrun our pursuers.

  They seem to be in better sync—something I failed to account for in our partnership. Other duos entrust each other as if they can read each other's thoughts, while Bison and I can’t agree on a single thing. This needs to change now.

  A single team has hunted us down, but now another has joined the chase, coming up on the right ahead of us. Four on our tail. Great. Then an idea strikes as we come full circle back to the pond. Though it’s a quick exchange between us, Bison nods as he steers right and I, left.

  The two enemy teams split just as I intended. I run a full lap around the jungle, almost out of breath, when I see Bison on the other end. He gives me a dip of the head before he pauses and socks a fist into an enemy’s guts. I do the same with my opponents, but instead of continuing the fight, we just flee and leave the battle to the ones remaining.

  We hear the battle from afar, followed by three elimination bells. The final player is on the ground, an inch away from zero. A kick to the thigh is all it took to send him back to the lobby.

  For the first time, Bison and I finally catch a break. A high note sounds from afar, somewhere on the other side of the room. The second and third ones ding before I understand that it’s music. An instrument. The other puzzle, if I had to guess. Dammit. Someone got to it before me.

  When that’s over, we continue treading the jungle.

  Unluckily, most of the chests are looted dry. At the same time, we haven’t bumped into a single person since the music started. It’s been a trainwreck of music; the notes play inconsistently, and I do my best to tune it out. But the repetitive melody has stuck, and before I know it, I’m absentmindedly humming to it—a very popular nursery rhyme that can be played with five notes.

  We search through the jungle, but only ten minutes have passed when I check. It’s when I pass by the same dragon with a broken tail that we realize we’ve been wandering in a circle.

  “How do we get out of here?” I grumble.

  The plushie animals are about three times Bison’s height and five times the weight, with beans added to the mass. Without a clue how to leave the way we came from, we decide to knock our way out in a straight line, pulling the plush to make a beeline towards the music. It takes us strenuous effort to pull each one out, and on the fourth try, we pull out a panda dropping a bright green apple that it apparently had been holding. Weird, but we don’t think much of it until we take a step further and wander into a different terrain.

  A cozy ring of animals huddles inward, all of them holding a piece of edible, and the imposing head of a crocodile in the very center of the rink immediately tells me we’ve stumbled upon the right place.

  When we decide to push the panda back into the arrangement behind us to close us off in case other teams take notice, the apple that fell reappears between its clutch.

  “Must be part of the puzzle,” Bison says.

  Strolling toward the heart, I scan the animals carefully, especially the objects in their plush hands—wooden bell peppers, a crochet strawberry, a plastic lemon. “What exactly is the puzzle?”

  At the center, the crocodile's mouth is wide open, with sharp rows of teeth above and below, its pink tongue smooth, as welcoming as the mouth of a cave.

  “Oh, it’s Chompy the Crocodile,” Bison says, pushing down on a single tooth until it vanishes under the gum, then pops back up after a click. “My very first gambling toy.”

  “Chompy the what?”

  “The toy,” he replies as if it’s self-explanatory.

  I shake my head in confusion. “I never had any toys.”

  “None? Yikes. No video games, no toys. No wonder you’re…you.”

  “You mean an intellect at the top of her class, the three-time winner of—”

  “Anyways.” I can hear his eyes roll. “You press each tooth down and hope one of them doesn’t trigger and chomp down on your finger. Well, in this case, your entire arm. Or head.” He casts the puzzle up and down, taking notice of two screens on the inside of the mouth. A six-sided dice on one monitor, a coin on the other. “But I don’t remember those.”

  With that, he steps onto the platform. The game immediately lights up each tooth like a slot machine would, and the announcer speaks.

  “Welcome to Chomp’s puzzle! Press the button to begin!”

  Right where Bison stands, a podium rises from the floor with a single red button at the top.

  “No instructions?” I ask.

  “Should be pretty intuitive; It’s a children’s toy.”

  Knowing Cerena, nothing is ever simple or easy. But since Bison is familiar with this and the arena as a whole, maybe it’s a lack on my part. I give him the lead.

  “Start it,” I say.

  Bison flings his wrists like shaking water off and does his little stretch before a run, shaking the entirety of the toy with his weight before pressing down the button.

  “Once the game begins, you cannot leave until it’s over,” says Chompy. “Look at the screen for which object to retrieve. If you fail to give the corresponding object within ten seconds, you will suffer a heavy penalty. Good luck, players!”

  The screens blink; The dice and coin activate. Before anything else happens, a small surge of water rises onto the tongue, pooling over Bison’s combat boots.

  “What the—” When he tries to lift a leg, the thick substance stretches into a snot-like texture, sticking to his sole and snapping him back into place.

  The screen makes a noise when the coin lands on fruit, and the dice stops rolling on the color green.

  “What does that mean?” he asks. The countdown begins from ten.

  “Fruits,” I mutter. Then I remember the fruits on the animal’s hands. “I need a green fruit.”

  “Go get one!”

  I’m already sprinting away as he shouts, scanning around the wall for anything green. But not all of them are colored. Most are made of plastic, some of cloth, and a few of pale wood. Then I spot a lime the size of a turkey, and snatch it, sprinting back to him before the timer runs out. I hurl it toward him, and the lime lands on the tongue.

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  The speaker makes a ding, and a green light appears on the screen with the word PASS; the lime melts.

  “You have three seconds to get rid of his teeth before the next round starts,” Chompy says.

  Bison immediately slams on two. It only works for the player on the platform, because when I try, it’s stuck.

  “Okay, not bad,” Bison says, snapping his head back to the screen. “I guess the goal is to knock them all down.”

  “Seems easy.”

  Bison can probably press three or four teeth if he’s prepared. At this rate, it’ll only be around five or seven rounds before we complete the puzzle. How elementary. Maybe the most challenging part of it is stumbling upon this area to begin with.

  It goes on like this for the next two rounds, passing with no trouble. There’s nothing we can’t locate. When the prompt blue vegetable appears, my mind goes to eggplant.

  “It’s purple,” Bison counters, and scans around. But neither of us can identify what the Chompy is asking for. With two seconds remaining, and no clue what to do, I toss the eggplant in and pray for the best.

  The screen blares red. Without warning, the roof of the mouth slams down, swallowing Bison. It doesn’t occur to me it’s painful until he lets out a wail like he’s been stabbed in the guts. The mouth opens up shortly, and he’s lying in a fetal position.

  Barely an ounce left on his health bar.

  “This took away fifty health?” he chokes on his words. “How is this right—justified?”

  “It means each team can only fail twice,” I say. “Brutal.”

  Bison sits up on the tongue, nursing his invisible wound on his shoulder, and studies our surroundings. The edibles we took respawn back in the animals' clutch every round. So I note that it’s possible to repeat combinations. Besides that, I learn nothing else.

  “What kind of vegetable is blue?” I grumble. Nothing around us strikes me as an answer.

  “I thought you were smart!” Bison shakes his head. “But if you don’t know, maybe it’s a fault in the system.”

  “Maybe.” But Cerena doesn’t make mistakes like this. Or we have to think outside the box.

  We spent ten minutes trying to recover from the shock while listening to the noise called music, which sounded like a dumpster fire. It stopped for a bit a while ago, then returned ten minutes later to exactly where it left off. I suspect they were fighting off rival teams that must’ve found their way to the noise. Good. It means they’ll leave us alone to our own problems.

  But there haven’t been any elimination bells either; the remaining teams are playing it safe.

  Their puzzle gives me the incentive to progress with our own before someone finds their way here. If I want my plan to show up at the end, I need to get the other half of this puzzle. I push myself up on my feet and offer Bison a palm.

  “Break’s over,” I tell him. “Idling here won’t change the fact that we need this puzzle piece.”

  “What if we get the blue vegetables again?”

  “With the dice and coin, there are only twelve combinations in total. There's a one in twelve chance it’ll show up again. If we maximize our time each round and knock down enough teeth, we can finish it in five or six rounds.”

  “Not very good odds.”

  “Unless you have a better idea, we’ll have to take it.” One hour left, we’re past the halfway mark. If the answer doesn’t come now, it won’t come in the next hour.

  He gives the animals one more sweep and takes my hand. We take a moment to study the fruits and what’s offered, so we know where to get them without wasting time searching.

  Since I have around eighty health, I step onto the platform and start the game. The first combination shows up, orange fruit. Bison searches and hurls it in. I slam down as many teeth as I can within three seconds.

  Violet fruit. Green vegetable. Blue fruit. Red vegetable.

  Bison hurls a tomato at the latter.

  A tomato.

  “Wait—”

  Too late. The roof of the mouth collapses on me. Every bone in my body shatters, every nerve electrified, and I’ve never wished I were dead until this moment. Even screaming magnified the pain.

  Bison tenderly picks me up when the mouth releases and puts me flat on the ground.

  “You dumbass,” I croak. An agony to speak. He wasn’t exaggerating when he refused to leave the mouth before. I can’t decide if the physical pain is worse or the fact that I only have a third of my health left.

  I carefully lie on the ground until the painful sensation completely leaves my body. Five whole minutes of pure torture. Fucking SNO. I should’ve refused the injection.

  “Look, I’m sorry—”

  “Shut your mouth.” I push off the ground and jab a finger at his chest. Ugh. What did I expect from a nepo-baby who pays Raven to do all his papers for him? “What is a tomato?”

  He sighs. “It’s a fruit.”

  “Good. Sear it into your brain. Let’s keep moving.”

  “Already?”

  “I’ve wasted more time resting than doing anything else.”

  We let an hour pass, accomplishing nothing. And I can’t get over the fact that this—this elementary puzzle—is what I get stuck on. Out of all the exams and theories I’ve tested and researched, I can’t identify fruits and vegetables from colors? It’s a slap in the face and a kick to my ego. It doesn’t sit right in my chest.

  I march onto the tongue.

  “You’re getting on?” he says.

  “You’re better at tossing,” I explain. “And mightier. Saves us at least one second. Ready?”

  I slam on the button as he nods.

  The first combination comes up. The coin flips to vegetable.

  The dice stops on blue.

  Fuck.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

  All the blood drains from my face. No matter how hard I pull, my legs are completely stuck on the crocodile’s tongue. There’s no way out for me. I have to endure not only the pain again, but the loss, the humiliation. This is a trap Cerena set for me. I just know it. That fucking bitch. Is she watching my POV live, laughing at my crisis?

  How will she explain this to everyone in the post lobby? That she messed up? All her fault. Too bad the drill’s over. Nothing I can do.

  But something tells me that won’t be happening. As awful as Cerena is, she won't risk smearing her career. Anyone could’ve walked into this puzzle, not just me.

  Not targeted for me, I repeat to myself.

  If that’s the case, this roadblock has to be intentional, not a fault in the system, which means the answer is here.

  I cut a glance across the edibles on hand. All the colors are there. No. Not all. Not the wooden ones. Yet we still use them. When the screen requested a yellow vegetable, I grabbed the colorless bell pepper. I used the same one for red vegetables. Because there’s a variety of colors for a single fruit or vegetable, that leaves me with one question: What vegetable can be blue?

  I scan meticulously, naming each edible in my head. Then it hits me when I see it.

  “Get that one!” I point.

  Bison gives it a double look. “But corn is yellow.”

  “Not blue corn.”

  Anthocyanin. The reason some plants and produce turn violet. Due to the high stress of the environment—high or low temperatures, high sunlight—resulting in the shift of color.

  With three seconds left and no other choice, he snatches it and hurls it before the timer runs out. The wooden corn with the husk rolls on the tongue.

  The following second stretches. My muscles lock in place, bracing for the snap of the jaw. For the pain to engulf me, and if I’m still wrong, I probably deserve the punishment. Will it be too purple even if the name is blue corn? I can be wrong. I’ve been wrong many times before. And this moment will be the true test of my knowledge.

  The corn melts, followed by a green screen.

  I can fall to my knees with the pressure out of my chest, but the puzzle isn’t over yet. I take out four teeth, and the screen keeps spitting out other combinations. Much easier this time around. We complete one after another with careful assessment, not willing to repeat the last mistake. Then the last fruit is given to Chompy, and I slam down on the final three molars once I hear the winning ding.

  The puzzle is complete.

  Fireworks shoot into the sky, the explosion cracks for all to see and hear. Great. Thanks for announcing it to everyone, Cerena.

  But the high of the triumph now cannot be beat by anything. I can’t help but feel that she designed for me to fail, yet I still beat her plan.

  The moment the celebration is over, the crocodile vanishes, and a metal crate appears where the screens should’ve been. I fall backwards, feeling my heartbeat pound against my chest as if I finished a marathon.

  Bison opens the crate, and multiple items drop. A paint gun, a water gun, a blue mushroom, three hearts, and lastly, the half piece of a moon, a broken plate split down the middle.

  I consume a heart, and Bison takes two. The remedy instantly evaporates all my pain, like drugs to an addict who’s gone cold turkey.

  I call dibs on the paint gun and the moon. “Have the rest.”

  “How generous.”

  He pockets one of the two water guns, then he gives me a fist. This time, I bump it. Any victory is a win, no matter how small.

  With that, we head toward the music.