It was evening. The arena set up specially for the competition was filled with the buzz of countless shinigamis trying to get a seat. It was arranged rather like the Colosseum in Rome, with the seating are in tiers, surrounding the sporting arena. Seating was based on a first-come-first-serve basis, and not on rank or division. Hitsugaya Toshirou was seated somewhere near the back, with nobody sitting within a twenty-five-metre-radius of him. Hisagi Shuuhei sat at the front with Kira Izuru, eager to catch his drinking buddies in action.

Ichigo stepped up into the middle of the arena, megaphone in hand.

"All right! Laydeeees and gentlemen! This is the night all of you have been eagerly waiting for. The first challenge in the Seireitei Game Show!"

The crowd cheered.

"Please welcome the first group, the Yellow Penguins!"

The Yellow Penguins walked in, looking around. Renji, at the head of the group, looked around and waved to Hisagi.

"And please welcome the other team, the Green Monkeys!"

Ikkaku walked into the cheering arena, followed by the rest of the Green Penguins.

"Okay! For the first challenge, we're going to start with something simple: fighting hollows! Here's the catch: you're only allowed to use kidou, and you have a five-minute time limit. Any hollows left after the time is up will be destroyed by me and Quincy boy over there."

"Oi! It's Ishida, Kurosaki!"

Ichigo rolled his eyes.

"When the whistle blows, your time starts. Get ready!"

In the Yellow Penguins corner, Nanao immediately took charge.

"Right, Renji, please stay they in the corner and don't do anything. No offense, but your kidou isn't that great."

Renji sighed. He hated not doing anything, but if he did use his atrocious kidou skills, his team would lose, and he feared thathe would be kicked off. He nodded dumbly and went off to the corner.

Over at the Green Monkeys, things weren't going quite as well. Ikkaku, a eleventh-division member through and through, decided to give his teammates a pep talk – eleventh division style.

"All right guys, we're gonna do our best, and kick those hollows' butts off!"

Raucous cheering followed.

Then the whistle blew.

"Go!"

Immediately Nanao charged forward at the head of her team, and began destroying hollows. In about one minute, the number of hollows had been reduced by about half, thanks mostly to her amazing kidou skills.

On the other hand, the Green Monkeys were not having quite as much fun. Indeed, they had skilled fighters on the scene, but Nanao's kidou skills were on par with at least any three of them combined. It didn't help that the idiotic Shiba Ganjyu was on their team. While his sister, Shiba Kuukaku, just acknowledged the fact that she couldn't perform kidou and had gone over to keep Renji company, Ganjyu had insisted on tagging along, and proved to be a huge distraction, running around the arena, screaming "Eeek! It's after me! It's after me!"

Of course, he naturally went to his own teammates for help, thus making them fight two hollows at once.

At the end of five minutes, the score stood thus:

Yellow Penguins: 144 hollows.

Green Monkeys: 25 hollows.

The Yellow Penguin supporters cheered wildly, eagerly anticipating the announcement of the rewards and the punishments.

Ishida and Ichigo destroyed the rest of the hollows relatively easily, and soon Ichigo was in the middle of the arena again, clutching the list of rewards and punishments.

"All right! As you can see, the winners for tonight are the Yellow Penguins!"

Cheers from the audience, along with some screams of "Tell us the reward!".

Ichigo took a deep breath.

"Their reward is…a day-long, already-paid-for session at the karaoke club in Karakura Town!"

The female members of the Yellow Penguins whooped happily. The guys, however, weren't as pleased.

"Not only do you lucky people get to sing and party all day, there is also an all-you-can-eat buffet for lunch and dinner, with a free flow of drinks!"

The guys looked slightly happier at this.

"And as for the Green Monkeys, they will also have quite an interesting lunch."

The Green Monkeys looked hopeful. Until Ichigo pronounced their death sentence.

"They will have lunch with Marechiyo Oomaeda."

The Green Monkeys were horrorstruck. A pin-drop silence reigned in the arena. Even the Yellow Penguins were revolted.

"With Oomaeda?"

Ichigo nodded enthusiastically.

"We got special permission from Soifon-taichou to borrow him for the whole afternoon!"

All glares turned to the petite captain, who accepted the attention with a regal wave of her hand.

"After that, the Green Monkeys will proceed back here to kick some unlucky person off their team."

With that ominous statement, the first challenge of the Seireitei Game Show ended.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

The next day, the difference between the Yellow Penguins and the Green Monkeys was very evident.

The Yellow Penguins had left for the club early that morning equipped with only a hangover cure, and Panadol.

The Green Monkeys, on the other hand, were frantically checking that they had enough supplies to last them through the entire torturous lunch. They looked through several huge duffel bags, at the same time referring to a checklist. The duffel bags contained several important items, including paper bags (to barf in), smelling salts (to revive those who fainted), Oomaeda-shaped voodoo dolls (for those who felt like stabing him/wringing his neck/castrating him with a rusty spoon etc), pins (for stabbing the voodoo dolls), and basins (should the paper bags fail).

Some brave shinigamis had bought special tickets to watch the punishment, and they were in the room, sitting in the viewing area behind a thick one-way mirror. It had easy access to the toilet, and paramedics on standby, in case any of them had the sudden urge to faint, or go on a barfing spree.

At noon, Oomaeda swaggered into the room, equipped with rice crackers, rice crackers, and more rice crackers. The Green Monkeys, already sitting at the table, paled, and started praying fervently to whatever gods listening that they had enough supplies.

Half an hour passed. Oomaeda had begun eating, stopping to dig his nose and eat the boogers leisurely, completely unaware of his audience.

Soifon, sitting in the viewing area, smirked. Most of the audience had either vomited, or fainted, or both. Her lieutenant's actions had never made her feel sick in any way, but then again, she had never really watched him for four hours straight. Maybe her immunity would last for at most the first two hours.

For the Green Monkeys, things were much worse. Matsumoto and Nemu had already fainted, and no matter how much smelling salts Gin held under their noses, they simply would not wake up. Urahara and Ikkaku had put the voodoo dolls to good use, thwacking them with any available utensils on the table. Ganjyu alone had colonized every single barf bag, and was now hanging his head over the basin, weakly regurgitating his breakfast.

By that evening, none of the Green Monkeys wanted to see rice crackers ever again.

The Yellow Monkeys had all returned, glaring at one particular redhead.

"What?"

"Renji, don't you ever dare sing. Never again."

Startled by the amount of venom in Yoruichi's voice, he just nodded.

Back at the arena, Ichigo was getting ready for the elimination round.

"All right! Green Monkeys, each of you will write the name of somebody you want to eliminate and drop it in this box. the two people with the highest number of votes will battle it out in another challenge to decided who gets to stay. Got it?"

The Green Monkeys nodded, trying their best to ignore the giggling group of shinigamis known as the Yellow Penguins settling themselves comfortably in the seating arena among the audience.

One by one, they solemnly wrote a name and dropped it into the box Ichigo held.

Finally, Ichigo opened up the box and started reading off the names.

"First vote: Ikkaku."

He opened up another piece of paper.

"Ganjyu. Ganjyu. Ganjyu. Ganjyu. Ganjyu."

"Ikaku and Ganjyu, please come forward. Today's elimination challenge is one of dexterity and agility. Each of you will be given a bucket filled with paint bombs. These are balloons filled with glow-in-the-dark paint that explode upon impact. After five minutes of throwing these balloons, you will all stop, and we will turn off the arena lights. The one who glows less gets to stay."

Ikkaku and Ganjyu each grabbed a bucket.

Ganjyu sneered.

"Haha, you are so going to lose, baldy boy. Bombs are my forte."

Ikkaku rolled his eyes.

The starting bell rang.

Ganjyu lobbed a ball of paint at Ikkaku, hitting him in the chest.

Very pleased with this, he started doing a victory dance.

Ikkaku raised an eyebrow.

The next moment, Ganjyu found himself in the middle of a barrage of paint bombs that never seemed to end.

At the end of five minutes, Ichigo snapped his fingers, and the bright arena lights went off.

In the darkness, the audience noted that Ikkaku had a huge glowing green splat on his chest. Ganjyu, on the other hand, looked like he had just stepped out of a barrel of nuclear waste.

In other words, his entire body was glowing.

"First person to be eliminated on the Seireitei Game Show: Shiba Ganjyu!"

The crowd cheered.

Ichigo bowed.

Ikkaku grinned.

Ganjyu scowled.

And with that, the Yellow Penguins and the Green Monkeys departed.

……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Ganjyu got voted off! Did that surprise you?

Next chapter: The second challenge! Here's a hint: it's not a physical challenge.

Want to find out more? Then review!

Thanks go out to my wonderful co-author, sakukara95. This challenge was her idea.

-espeon16