The next few days were a bit lighter, though the kids didn't rag on each other nearly as much as they normally would. They kept their interactions to the usual pleasantries, not all their paranoia relieved. But overall they were able to act like a normal family, albeit perhaps a bit too normal for the Russo's. What Jerry ironically found he missed the most was Alex's smart-aleck comments. Smart Aleck, smart Alex – maybe it was her name that gave her that attitude! Jerry cracked a wry smirk at this, not wanting to feel too happy but needing the humorous pick-me-up. Still, she just wasn't herself. Neither, of course, were Justin or Max, but Justin's nerdiness and Max's inanity weren't as endearing as Alex.

Soon, the fateful time came, the time when the competition proper technically began. It started with a commencement ceremony, a lengthy ritual of cleansing and preparation, and accepting the responsibilities involved with the competition. It would be performed in the lair. Jerry set up a small table where the coffee table normally sat. It was taller than the coffee table, but didn't have as much surface area. Upon it was placed burning incense, a small bowl of water with a stone in it, and a feather.

The kids stood around the table, holding their rulebooks in their right hand and wands in their left. First, they performed a ritual invoking of the elements.

"Terra! Ignis! Ventus! Aqua! COR!"

"Via viribus vobis temperaverunt, Capitaneus Orbis SUM!"

Next, they all closed their eyes for a full minute and remained in silence. Then, they recited the acceptance of the rules. This involved them passing the rulebook over their heart while saying:

"By these rules I agree to bide

'Til I've won or until I've died"

"OK," Jerry said, looking at his kids. "Now you all have to say your individual spells, which will transport you to your random starting location, and the competition will commence. Goodbye everyone, and good luck."

Max was the first to read his spell:

"Somewhere on the globe I am put

Now I begin, the game's afoot"

And he was off with a puff of smoke. Then Alex recited hers:

"I see London I see France

To someplace I will advance"

And she was gone with a small sucking and a pop. Justin, being the oldest, read his last:

"I won't be left out in the cold

This will be o'er before I'm old"

And he too was transported away with an impressive whoosh. Now Jerry was left there alone, and he went up to see Theresa, who was crying once more.

"Don't worry, I think they'll all be all right," he said, hugging her, trying to comfort her and calm her down.

"I know, but it seems like no matter what happens, there will be a rift between them. They may never speak to each other again."

"I know, baby, I know."


Max looked around. He seemed to have found himself in some sort of jungle. A warm one, at that. It was probably about midday, except very little light was getting through the thick foliage. It did seem to be a clearing, at least, more clear than the rest of the jungle he saw.

"Well this is crap," he said aloud, though no one was around to hear it. But he felt like he had to express his dismay at where his randomly chosen location was. It hardly seemed fair; how did they expect him to do anything here? One thing was certain, he would have to prepare a way to sustain himself. He would start with building a shelter and starting a fire, which he decided to do by hand. He could probably conjure some sort of shelter, but that would require more of an energy expenditure than he was willing to sacrifice at the moment. The young wizard also figured that the same reason would prevent him from summoning too much food. He would have to hunt and gather his own.

So he ventured into to the jungle and collected dead wood and plant matter. He couldn't find any grass, but he did get some mosses, which he collected while trying to remember if mosses were plants or not. Well, some of it is green which implies that it photosynthesizes, and he knew that lichens were a symbiotic relationship between an algae and a moss – that was right, wasn't it? He sighed, thinking about how much smarter he actually was than everyone took him for. Hopefully, that would work out to his advantage in this competition. He knew that Justin and Alex would usually underestimate him, but would their extra caution make up for it? Well he knew only one thing: He had to be prepared. And he had to out-think them. OK, two things. He had to be prepared, he had to out-think them. And – he couldn't think of anything else, which disappointed him greatly because falling into a Monty Python skit was always amusing.

Quite quickly he managed to procure enough wood to start a decent-sized fire. Of course, there was the matter of lighting it, but with a quick snap of his fingers he was able to produce flame, which immediately began to consume the tender tinder he had gathered just for the purpose. Soon the lapping tongues of the fire licked at the larger twigs, which also ignited. It spread from there until he had the campfire he needed. Fortunately, the ground around the fire was dirt, and wouldn't burn. Just to be safe, he dug a trench around the fire. He would have laid stones, but none were to be found here.

Next, he had to build a shelter. It was back into the jungle for him, this time to find fresher wood and loose foliage to form a roof from. If only he had tools! Perhaps a little bit of magic would suffice here, he decided, and took a particularly large stick, and laid it on the ground.

Though being a wizard meant that one could generally ignore the laws of thermodynamics, it was much easier to break them less.

"This stick belongs to me, Max

Now it needs to be an axe."

That spell transmuted the wood into a conglomeration of wood and metal, in the form of an axe. Really, he just had to combine various carbon atoms into iron atoms, then restructure the whole thing into a different lattice-like combination. At least, Max always thought that it should work like that. In reality, it was magic and didn't obey rules of conservation of energy – which wasn't entirely true either, he was drawing energy both from within and another plane when he did this.

Either way, he now had himself a decent hatchet, which was an extremely handy tool to have anywhere, especially the jungle. He used it to hack at a live tree and gather sap in a leaf – he was going to use it to put together his roof. This wasn't the most effective measure to use, but he didn't have a sewing kit. Then it dawned on him, and he hit himself in the head. He was a wizard. Although he'd just used an ad-hoc spell, he decided that a sewing kit was useful enough to bother with another one.

He laid more sticks on the ground.

"To make a roof over my head

These need to be needle and thread."

He used the kit to sew together the large leaves and create a makeshift covering. Splitting freshly cut green wood with his hatchet allowed him to make crude rope, which he used to lash together the sturdier branches in a vaguely tent-shaped fashion. He drove the ends into the ground, and then gave it a good shake. It seemed sturdy enough, so he threw the cover over it and began to secure it with more 'rope.'

Once that was done, he gathered more mosses and leaves, and sewed them into a mattress. Just because he was roughing it didn't mean he didn't want at least a bit of comfort. Besides which, it wasn't that comfortable anyway, but it would do, especially being as tired as Max was at the moment. He proceeded to cast two spells before laying down for a nap. The first one would wake him up if anything entered the area (which he defined as the clearing) and the second would wake him up in two hours, if nothing else happened.

Nothing happened, at least nothing of which he was aware, in those two hours. He woke up, dismissed the ward and set about his next task, finding food. He realized that hunting wouldn't be much use, nothing too large lived in the jungle except maybe some big cats, which weren't good eating anyway. Of course, if he had to, he would, but he felt that trapping would be a more effective method of gathering meat. Gathering plants would be easy, but of course he had to make sure he wasn't getting anything poisonous.

He racked his brain for a while until he came up with an identification spell, which would tell him about various plants. He cast it numerous times, once on each plant he found, which told him about their various nutritive qualities. By this method, he gathered enough food for a meal, mostly berries and herb-like plants, which he ate while thinking up a method of building traps. Eventually, he decided that he would use the ward spell he had originally cast, but instead of waking him up, alter it to cast another spell, the second spell being something deadly.