(Disclaimer: See Chapter 1)
(Well, here I am, and here is Chapter 4. Read and enjoy!)
"Focus on your landing." Chuck reiterated for perhaps the fifth time today, not that it mattered. The blues sat with rather glazed eyes, the sugar of the glaze too sweet to resist.
"Are you paying attention?" Chuck shouted bluntly. They snapped back to attention almost immediately. Jim listened to Chuck's instruction not with his mind but with his ears. Painful thoughts of the past and the future still plagued his mind and curved his line of focus. Soon he found his body navigating thorough tires, leaping and bounding across the obstacle course, struggling to finish. Jim's recurring dream played back in his mind, only this time he wasn't asleep. Chuck's voice straightened his mind.
It had been two weeks since the argument between Red and Matilda, and after a fortnight of recovery Matilda conceded the blues were ready to train, despite her personal disapproval. Children should never have to fight, she would protest most adamantly. They are not children anymore, Matilda, Red would respond. She then gave in and stepped back, her anger quivering precariously at the boiling point.
"Pay attention! Now what do you do when you see the pigs with the eggs?" He was now giving an extensive lecture on "Angry Birds strategy". The skills learned would soon be tested via a hundred-question short answer test. (Hey, Angry Birds have to go to school too.) The little capillaries on Chuck's body slowly bursting like little microscopic popcorn. Jake giggled briefly at his desk, worrying the other two blues.
"You dare laugh during a serious training session? Now you'll see the end!" Waving his long rattan "pointing stick" as usual, nothing actually happened. By now Chuck fell victim to his own hot-headedness, convulsing involuntarily, trashing himself across the grassland, his face not red but irate and incoherent for sure. This granted more laughter among the trainees.
"Look at him, so silly and full of himself. What entertainment." Jay whispered.
"I don't endure much for a rigorous training session." Jake replied. "Let's see if we can try something fun. Quick, get some TNT." Jim scurried off to get some. No matter how dire the blues' emotional state was, a day of mischief with friends was always fully appreciated.
Moments later, he returned with enough ammunition to move even Terrence from his resting spot by a 20-ton boulder in a small grotto. Unknown to Chuck, the blues set TNT across their teacher's sporadic but predictable path. Oblivious to the danger, each bomb Chuck smashed went up in torrential smoke, massive flames, and of course, an earth-shattering bang. The blues' toxic laughter fueled more danger for Chuck, the blues setting up more TNT and Chuck setting them off, until the sun dipped below the horizon. Covered in black dust, he continued on, until he gained the mental focus to compose himself. His enraged face and razor sharp beak quieted down the giggling guilty party, their laughter now nervous and breathy.
"You can laugh now, but you won't be anymore. Come here, let me teach you a real lesson."
They didn't laugh anymore.