O.W.C.A.'s Field Test:
The purpose of this test is to give the agents the opportunity to demonstrate skill, strength, intelligence and cooperation in various conditions. This by together in a group of five trying to solve various tasks.
The teams must together get to the set positions where they will encounter a special box that contains instructions for the next station. The way to each station is lined with different obstacles and quests. The boxes can only be opened if all agents in the group manage to solve the task. There is a total of five stations for each team.
Everyone in the group will, right before the test starts, be provided with a special kind of bracelet, anklet or similar (depending on the wearer's exterior), which contains a unique code. To open each one of the five boxes all five codes must be registered at the same time.
Good luck on the test agents!
1. The First Obstacle
"Did we have to choose to go this way?" Pinky questioned annoyed while we splashing waded our way through the scrubby swamp. It was times like these that I wished I had longer legs. The others could at least lift their feet above the muddy water surface, while I, however, almost had to swim to move forwards.
"This is the shortest way", Darren, who was carrying the map, reminded right in front of me. "We do want to get there as quick as possible, right?"
"Um, if I remember correct, it did not say anything in the description about this test being clocked", Terry said a few feet behind me.
"Well… no, but it doesn't hurt to try to hurry up a little", the duck thought and held a protruding branch out of the way with one wing in front of him. I had expected that he would hold it there for a while until I had passed by, but without taking a look back he immediately let it go instead.
The leafy twigs came whizzing towards me at great speed and I instinctively ducked to avoid them.
"OUCH!" I heard someone scream right behind me and when I turned around I saw Peter bothered scratching his face with his dirty front foot, giving him a mud-mustache. "URGH!" he groaned and frowned angrily at me.
"Sorry!" I apologized.
"Okay, I've had it! We haven't even got to the filst station and I alleady have sclatches and mud all ovel me!" he exclaimed displeased. "Whose stupid idea was is to let the duck be in chalge of the map?"
"Well, excuse me, mister", Darren said indignant and turned to the panda. "I can assure you that this thing is completely safe in my wings."
"Uhhhh… may I have some help over here, please?" Terry suddenly asked a bit embarrassed and when I turned around I saw that he was struggling to pull out one of his hind legs that apparently had been stuck in the mud.
Pinky and I immediately waded over to give him a hand. We grabbed each one of the turtle's front feet and pulled hard. After struggling a bit, the mud finally let go of him and a light 'flop' was heard when the foot was released.
"How can you be so sule?" Peter questioned Darren. "How do we know that you'le not leading us in the wlong dilection?"
"Easy! I'm a migration bird", the wild drake explained proudly. "I can sense the Earth's magnetic field so I always know where north is."
"Oh, yeah! That is true!" Terry exclaimed suddenly remembering. "But I am sure that you have remembered to take the inclination in count."
"The what?" Darren said puzzled.
"You are aware of that the geographic and the magnetic poles are not placed at the same location? The magnetic north pole, which actually is a south pole for that matter, is located in north Canada and not by the rotation axis like the geographic one is", the turtle informed. "That results in a misleading inclination that varies depending where in the world you stand. In this area the inclination is at 69.13 degrees, with a negative declination on 3.71. That means "north" in this case actually rather is pointing towards northwest."
Darren stared stumped at the turtle. Next to me, I heard Peter gleefully let out a quiet laughter.
The duck suddenly looked down on the ground to the side and sighed. Then he sourly pressed the map against the turtle's plastron. Terry took the paper, a bit surprised.
"Alright, the truth is I've never actually had gotten the time to migrate since I've had to much schoolwork to do", Darren muttered a bit grumpy.
"Hehehe, yeah, light", Peter said quiet.
Terry took a compass out of his hat and geared the map to it.
"Don't feel down Darren. I didn't know about this incalnation-thing either", Pinky comforted and patted the duck on his wing shoulder.
I took a look at the map over the turtle's shoulder.
"Okay… We're here, right…?" I assumed, pointing at a specific location on the map.
"No, here!" Terry corrected and pointed a little to the right of my finger. "The end of this lake is right over there."
Terry did a referential nod diagonally across the reedy lake a few feet away to the right of us between the shrubberies.
"If we go this way we should manage to get to this small trail that we then can follow until we get here", the tortoise assumed, and followed with his front toe along the thin path on the map a bit ahead of us.
"Alright, let's move then!"
The road became a lot easier once we managed to get out of the swampy marsh, and after a while we finally arrived at the big meadow, which was our first stop. Far away in the middle of the green grassy area a single large oak grew. Among the branches dangled a small red-and-silver colored item, which was noticeably seen against the tree-crown's dark contrast. That must be the first box.
"Well, this doesn't look suspicious at all", I said ironic, referring to the large open space between us and the tree.
"Whatcha think lies here?" Pinky wondered.
"Oh, that is easy to find out", Terry said confident and picked up a stone from the ground and threw it in the tree's direction.
We all followed the stone intently when it flew through the air and eventually landed hidden among the grass-blades. I expected some kind of hungry attack from firing lasers, arrows or something similar to pounce on the stone, but to everybody's great surprise absolutely nothing happened.
"Okay… maybe not so easy…", Terry said broody.
"I think we need something biggel", Peter thought.
"Or… at least something more powerfull…", I said thoughtfully.
I took off my hat and started rummage inside it. In one of the trays I picked up a small hand grenade.
"Woah, be careful with that thing!" Pinky said and recoiled a little.
"Yeah, we don't have unlimited with ammo on us", Darren reminded.
"Uh, I don't think that's what he really… Oh, whatever! This is only a warning grenade, it's meant for these kinds of situations", I explained. "We need to know what's out here."
I pulled out the sprinter and then quickly threw away the grenade over the field. It landed a little further away than Terry's stone where it quietly exploded in a small cloud of dust (it was after all only a small grenade). The ground underneath suddenly gave way under the blast and a big hole, about six feet in diameter, was revealed.
"Pitfall traps", I noted short.
"That's all? Pft! Piece of cake!" Pinky said easygoing and confidently lifted his foot to walk out on the field.
"Uh… Maybe we shouldn't be too easy on things here", Terry said suspicious and grabbed the chihuahua by the shoulder to stop him.
"Well, at least it doesn't seem to be any kind of aerial barrages", Darren said calmly. "Heh, lucky me!"
"Gleat! Then why don't you just fly us all ovel thele?" Peter snapped.
"Hey, do I look like Superman?" Darren asked a bit annoyed. "You really think I can fly all the way over there while carrying your big butt?"
"Why you…!"
"But what you could do is to go ahead and activate them for us", I pointed out tentatively. "After all, they are no threats for you."
"Um, I wouldn't be so…"
"Yeah, exactly!" Peter exclaimed, interrupting the turtle. "Then we finally can get some use out of youl palt on the team."
Darren glanced huffish at the panda.
"Since it's actually a very good plan, and probably the best solution we've got here, I am willing to comply with it", the mallards admitted a bit annoyed. "Alright everybody, after me! Forwaaaard, march!"
With that said, the waterfowl began marching out over the field. We gave him a slight head start before we others followed after.
We actually managed to walk several feet without anything happening. Darren carefully placed down his webbed feet on the grassy ground for each slow step he took.
"Everything seems fine here!" he called at us behind him.
We continued forward towards the tree and the box.
Suddenly, my heart skipped a beat when I felt the ground beneath my feet give way. The image of the clear blue sky disappeared from my retina, and was replaced by a dark wall of earth. Instinctively I turned around and buried my front claws into the mud wall behind me. Four long notches were carved down the wall on each side of me, right where my fingers cut, as I kept sliding downwards. I swore in my mind in pain as I felt one of my claws broke. Something suddenly grabbed a hold around my back and in the corner of my eye I saw something beige-pink wave a little. That must have been Pinky.
While I desperate continued pressing my claws into the wall, I noticed that we were slowing down and finally we stopped completely. I tried to get a reasonably good footing by forcing my hind feet into the wall as well. Once I'd managed to find a sort of rigid position to rest on, I glanced over the shoulder to see how it looked like underneath. Besides from Pinky's shocked expression in the face, I saw that we still had about two meters down to the bottom, which was almost entirely covered with thick vines with sharp thorns.
"ARE YOU ALRIGHT DOWN THERE?" I heard someone, probably Darren, calling.
I turned my head upwards and saw the dark silhouettes of three heads looking down the pit, partly blocking the sunlight.
"YES, WE'RE FINE!" I shouted back to them.
"DON'T WOLLY! WE'LE SENDING DOWN A LOPE!" Peter cried.
To the left of him, I noticed that Terry was already in the process of hauling down one end of a rope to us. We saw the thin string coming closer towards us. When it was just a couple of inches above me I carefully let go of the wall with one hand and grabbed on to it. I pulled it down a bit further and handed the end to Pinky before clutching on more properly myself.
"WE GOT IT!" I told.
"GREAT, WE WILL PULL YOU OUT NOW!" Terry called.
I felt the rope beginning to haul in so I leaned back and slowly began walking up along the wall. When we were almost there, I grasped on to the edge and pulled myself up on the grass. In the corner of my eye, I saw Peter giving Pinky a hand to help him getting out of the pit as well.
"Man! That was scary", Darren said.
"Yeah…", I uttered and dusted of the earth from my fur. I turned around and looked straight down the dark deep pit at the vines. "These traps are dangerous."
"You wele supposed to waln us about these!" Peter suddenly burst out angrily at Darren.
"Hey, it's not my fault that I'm not as heavy as you are", Darren said in defense.
"No, but you could've at least had stomped a little haldel", Peter said a bit snappish, "instead of just tippy-toeing that wimpy as you did."
Peter made a small imitation of Darren's tripping gait on the spot.
"Do it yourself if you think it's so easy!" Darren snapped at him.
"Hey, you…"
"Ay caramba! I'VE HAD IT!" Pinky suddenly exclaimed and without warning he quickly ran right across the field towards the tree. I lost my breath for a moment when I watch the scurrying little dog suddenly falling right down into yet another trap, but before the ground around him had managed to collapse completely, he made a great leap and jumped back up on solid ground again.
He didn't stop running because of that but kept going. He stepped on two other traps, both of which he smoothly bailed out of like the first one, until he got to the big oak.
"THERE! NOW YOU'VE GOT YOUR PATH TO FOLLOW! CAN YOU, PLEASE, STOP FIGHTING NOW!?" he shouted towards us.
I glanced at the other three and saw that they were all staring at the chihuahua with identically amazed expressions and open jaws.
"Uuuuhhhh… yeah… we-WE'RE COMING!" Darren shouted back, still quite nonplussed.
We zigzagged our way between the open pitfalls in the ground and got to the big oak with the box hanging in a string in the tree crown. Pinky had already taken the time to climb up to it.
Getting a closer look, we saw that the box actually looked more like an angular capsule. It was about the same size as Pinky's head and seemed to consist of some kind of metal. One half was red while the other half was silver-colored. A diagonal line separated the colors on two of the long sides.
I grabbed on to one of twigs at the bottom of the tree and started climbing. The others followed my example, except Darren who flew right up, and soon we was reunited with the chihuahua. We all settled down on the branches around the capsule that Pinky already had gotten the hold on. I was sitting on a branch that grew a bit above to the left of my teammates.
"Okay, how does this thing work?" Terry, who was sitting right to the left of the puppy on the same bough, wondered.
"I'm not sure, but I think we're supposed to place our wristbands above this tape", Pinky assumed and showed the shiny black tape that stretched all across the whole silver part of the capsule's long side.
"Well, it's wolth a tly", Peter, who was standing on the branch underneath in front of them with his head right in front of the box, said and placed his light blue wrist strap across the middle of the strip. Terry and Pinky followed his example and put their straps on each side of the panda's paw.
"Um…", Darren, who was standing right to the left of Terry, uttered pensive before he gently placed one of his wings on the turtle's shoulder to maintain his balance so that he, a bit awkwardly, could stretch out his webbed foot and place his ankle over one of the strip's ends. He was the only one among us to have his strap around the ankle rather than the wrist.
Since I was sitting a bit above them, I first grabbed with my right hand around a pretty thin twig in front of me and then stretched out my left hand towards the other end of the strip.
We waited a few seconds before a light 'click' was heard from the capsule and the diagonal jack between the red and the silver part opened up a little.
"It opened!" Darren exclaimed, as if nobody had noticed that already.
"Man, you sure are observant", I said ironic.
Pinky grabbed the slot and pulled in both directions. Inside the capsule's smooth roundish interior laid a scroll, which Terry took out. He rolled it up and studied it for a while. It showed a map of the route to our next station.
"So, whele ale we heading next?" Peter asked insistently.
Terry took out the compass again and geared the map to it. Darren curiously took a look at it over the turtle's shoulder.
"That way, right?" the duck assumed and pointed across the field behind us there no traps had been unveiled, yet.
"Yes, I believe that is so", Terry confirmed and nodded without lifting his head.
"Bueno! Okay, let's go!" Pinky said eagerly and let go of the box, which he had closed again, and let it dangle in the string.
"Are we going to go back the same way as we came from and then go around, or should we take the chance on crossing the field, you think?" Darren asked.
"Let me take a look", Peter asked, holding out a paw towards the turtle. "How long does it take to go alound?"
Terry handed the map to the panda, who immediately began to look through it.
"It might take a while. It is a pretty big detour", Terry presumed.
"Mah, I can just run across for you again", Pinky offered and waved unconcerned. "It was actually much easier than I had anticipated. Besides, I am the fastest one among us."
"Ahrm!" Darren cleared his throat to rectify.
"On land I meant", Pinky pointed out and rolled his eyes.
"I do not think that is a very good idea", Terry said, and looked suspiciously at the grass behind us. "There might be other kinds of traps in the area."
"But we would save a whole lot of time if we take that way… Whoops!" Peter said and pointed in that direction with the paw he was holding the map in, resulting in that he dropped the paper.
The map got captured by a gust of wind that blew it away across the open area.
In the corner of my eye I suddenly noticed Pinky's ears straighten up as the fetch-instinct in him got activated.
"I'll get it! I'll get it!" the dog cried hastily and quickly rushed down from the tree. He ran over the grass with his eyes focused on the flickering object. He jumped up and caught the map in the air with his teeth.
BOOM!
A deafening sound cut through the air when the ground beneath the chihuahua suddenly exploded. The little puppy uttered a heartrending whine as he was thrown several feet above the ground and landed hard in the grass without moving.
"PINKY!"