"Our dignified president, Rudolph Baryon, is going to give a verdict."
As the white cockatoo parrot announcer, Nigel MacBarkle, who declared this sentence in exalted satisfaction flew away, the animal teenagers, varying by their species, gathered in the square. It's not like they wanted to. They were forced to be placed there by the government.
The large group of rebellious individuals, cunning and defiant to orders of their parents, reinvented in the type of their lifestyles and willing to mock their President, stood there like popsicles in the middle of the arctic blizzard. To be honest, most of them probably felt this way.
A shadow of considerable size with bloody-red eyes approached with loud stomps like a wicked wide-reaching force of nature. Mr. Rudy circled some of his subordinates, moved across the pillars in the front porch of his mansion, then just like a usual bipedal dinosaur, crouched to reach the microphone with his narrow muzzle.
Everyone applauded as the big lizard, their leader, greeted his charges and inhabitants of Ice Valley by raising both of his sharp knife claws. "Thank you… Thank you… The choice for the games is about to start!"
In the crowd, Ethan, the most rebellious teenage mammoth looked at the rest of his pack, Katie, Steffie, and Meghan, who were just as ticked off by their stress as him. His buddy, Troy, was of course the only exception. Closed-minded to the point of hearing no indifference.
Mr. President pointed at the teenagers with his pale saurian nail. "Today is your foremost day! Today! You were all granted the opportunity to join a tournament! A tournament that will give you fame! Luxury! Power!"
When the applause tightened and every bird's blood-curdling screeching ended, Mr. President continued. "As you are aware… Every state beyond that will have at least 7 players each led by a mentor." ,
He reached for the tiny envelope and opened it. "Every participant of the game will be set into his own surrounding of their luckiest herd in the tournament! And as you know, I'm gonna be the one willing to give you invitations to this greatest and most thrilling party."
"Ethan, don't be scared, you heard that?" Troy beamed in a trailing whisper from a dumb excitement. "We are going to get our own invitations…"
"That's why I am scared, you nitwit…"
Some steps away from Ethan and his group, Peaches, the daughter of a mammoth called Manny, listened to the lizard's words, step by step. She accusingly glared at the white parrot by Mr. President's side on the balcony. Peaches didn't know why, but she disliked Nigel more.
His smug and proud beaky smirk drove her to madness. His baggy eyes looked down with prominent passion at every creature beneath his talons.
Immediately, every younger's ears were surrounded by a long thud, while everything around turned silent. Peaches was the first one to raise her eyelids in a shaky earthquake and have seen him. President Rudy was out of his balcony, standing there and sniffing the essence of clear air into his lungs.
He was standing in Icy Valley's city center, as well being the size of the nearest market some streets away.
"Well, the task will not do itself" his bloodshot eyes moved to the front, his nail sticking close to his pale teeth. "Let's go to the best part!"
The sirens sounded in the massive ego of the country's president. Sharing the same hint of egotism.
The choice for the game has begun just at the right pace. A tournament no one was betting on just thinking about. The blood of every rebellious animal teenager, froze the moment of awareness, that the albino Baryonyx was about to give them a sentence of a traveler for a straight wilderness.
A sentence of starvation.
The albino reptile strode closer, kinda menacingly, while the teenagers showed fake and lousy grins to assure their service being allowed in the prepare. His eyeballs punched back every immobile expression from the teenager's stances.
"So many faces… So many desires of the prize."
He readily reminisced every detail of appearance that they carried, the willpower they were willing to enter the game with. Rudy marched very slowly, his nostrils again, skewering the air from his surroundings like it was something very satisfying explanation for the taste of his mind.
That meant he just started choosing the contestants.
"Ethan Walters… The worst thorn in my side."
The rest of Ethan's group gasped confusingly at the reveal, terrified. The light-haired male mammoth hunkered down, mumbling to himself in denial, still not willing to believe that he was going into the wilderness.
He gave up soon after a while and took a breath
"Well, how was I supposed to think otherwise…"
The mammoth breathed in and out, to calm his emotions, just to move through his crowd and be forced to stand by the President's side. Peaches could tell how terrified, but somehow relieved the boy appeared to be. He wanted to act like a hero, it seemed.
"Stephanie "Steffie" Hughes."
The heartbeat of the brown ponytailed elephantoid stopped. Her heart sank to the pit of her stomach as her breathing became shallow, her vision became blurred as it seemed everything had stopped, and she struggled to catch her breath as she made small attempts, only able to meekly gasp.
"No, no, no, no… NO! NO! NO! NO!"
"Okay, okay…" Mr. President appeared to be faking his worries. "No more whinings, your whole girly stuff, and friends, Meghan Irving and Kate Typerstone are also joining the game. Good?"
"WHAT!?" Katie shouted with Meghan in unison, pushed away alongside her friend into the vision.
Mr. Rudy also added. "How could I also forget about you, Troy Shaeffer?"
The dark-coated male teenage mammoth didn't need much encouragement, he happily joined the group, as Ethan far away irritatingly covered his eyes with a trunk just from seeing how dumb his friend was. He and the girls could hear whispers of their president counting them in a row.
"One more player needed… One more player needed…" the dinosaur repeated in musical hums.
He turned the sniffing to nearby areas and peeked at the crowd from above. Just by his expressions, Rudy already knew who he was supposed to choose.
Peaches calmly looked around as the other attendants and passersby's moved away into an abyss, just to be surprised by Mr. President tilting his head in her direction. She stiffened but had enough strength to withdraw from the panic that her friend burst into a minute earlier.
She just didn't expect that's it. No more dumb outbursts. Just stupefy.
"Peaches Taylor… There she is… A wooly opossum and a snarky butterfly."
The lightly-coated mammoth with green eyes swallowed in an immediate flow of confusion… Also, embarrassed, because the dinosaur called her freaky names in front of everyone. "Mr. President? Eh, um… I think you are kind of mistaken… I don't think I can do this…"
"That's the rules of the game, mammal," Rudy said sarcastically, possibly hearing this kind of explanation prior. He forcibly pulled Peaches and placed her next to the other teammates. "Now, it is time for a mentor."
As he took on this task, Peaches glanced to her left and saw Meghan cheering Steffie up. The latter shivered and tried to take a good posture in this situation, but to no avail. Ethan, meanwhile, in annoyance tried to explain to Troy that they weren't invited to the party, but to a dangerous safari.
Rudy decided to stroll several times before a final decision was made.
"Your mentor is going to be…"
The white dinosaur growled, smiled, and sought somewhere in an invisible distance for a vision. "Tyler "Blu" Gunderson!"
Far, far away, the blue macaw melancholically sighed at the announcement. He assured his wife and hatchlings that he is going on a mission and then drew ahead, dashing through the population of animals for some minutes.
"Tyler "Blu" Gunderson!" Rudy continued, catching no sight of the blue avian.
"I can do this, I can do this…" Blu repeated under his breath, still struggling a bit to fly amongst the crowd.
His heart beat rapidly as he flew, wanting to run away, but knowing he can't. He made it to the podium and gasped air.
"Ah, there you are." President Baryon said as he continued his proclamation.."I guess the team of youngsters is now full and ready to take precautions into the deepest road of their journey into the jungle under the leadership."
The teenage mammals blinked confusingly at the blue feathery creature panting and slowly raising to its talons.
"Are you kidding us, Mr. President?" Ethan shallowly glared at the blue parrot. "Amongst the greatest mentors in a Capital State, you gave us a tiny birdie?"
"This "tiny birdie" is a winner of the previous tournament," Blu addressed, trying to keep up with his introversion. "so stay away with your dry comments to yourself, mammoth rebel."
"Exactly," the albino dinosaur nodded. "He may be timid and shy, but as he said, he managed to win a game."
"Pardon?" the blue macaw rose the finger of his wing at the mention of "timid" and "shy", but was cut off.
"Enough of the chattings," Rudy put in with a long growl.
A helicopter landed, blowing a whirlwind toward the crowd and contestants.
"Climb aboard!" the albino dinosaur demanded as the combatants lined up with their mentor.
Blu upon looking at the helicopter was then filled with fear, his heart went on beating faster as visions of his time in the arena haunted him, and now he was forced to damn others to this hell.
"No!" the blue-colored bird yelled, trying to fly the farthest mile, only to be instinctively pulled and thrown inside the flying vehicle with force.
"What happened to that bird?" Peaches asked, being lightly pushed inside along with other teammates.
"A drama queen," Katie told, still comforting Steffie.
"A drama queen, I guess…" Meghan rolled her eyes, trying to make a space between her besties, when the animal bodyguards from both sides closed the doors and just sat there to watch.
Peaches and Ethan took their places in a tighter shape of the engine, while Blu breached close to the corner in a fetal position.
"What a weirdo…" Meghan commented. Rolling her eyes as she took her seat and the sound of a rotating enlarged above their heads took off.
Blu began having flashbacks, vividly seeing blood drip from his talons and the body of an enemy in front of him weirdly shaping to the other flashback, where he entered a similar helicopter with his own mentor, a toucan called Rafael.
Rafael was a smart lad, smarter than Blu ever imagined himself to be.
Everyone shook when the helicopter took a flight deep up into the blue colors of the sky, still a bit confused.
The blue macaw got on his feet, walked over to the closest window he seemed to spot, and immediately jumped in its direction.
A piercing pain struck Blu in the feathery head and left him dazed. One of the bodyguards approached the appalled bird and placed him back in the seat.
The teenage mammoths giggled and convulsed with laughter seeing this. Steffie let out a laugh for the first time, as she has seen this phenomenon. Peaches just looked at it with curious wonder.
"You are right, Meghan," Steffie stated, her expressions more colorful than ever before. "He is a drama queen."
Blu's hearing faded for a minute making him unable to hear mocking taunts from his proteges. He pressed his head back to the chair he was settled on and kept reminding himself of the memories.
The blue parrot harked back to the memory of his teammate, Sid, whom he treated like a brother, but departed their ways some time ago.
SOME TIME AGO
A practically furnished kitchen of the mansion shone in a voluminous reserve from the bows of the sunny light. Blu's hatchlings, Carla, Bla, and Tiago prepared their own cereal breakfast, as their mother, Jewel, went to make a coffee for her lovely husband.
Tiago, as the smallest macaw, struggled a little bit to seize control of his chair, to no avail. He was assisted with help by his father, so he wouldn't be struggling more.
"Thanks, dad."
Carla and Bla forced their sight upon the yellowish sloth entering the room.
"Hello, uncle Sid," the spunky eldest child greeted taking headphones from her head and waving in his direction.
Sid waved back, having his niece's name at the tip of his tongue. "Hi, Ella… I uh, I mean Carla!"
"Dang it…Why do I forget her name so often?" he scolded himself in a whisper.
The sloth walked beside his nephews' and sat next to the youngest. Tiago didn't mind, as he seemed to be occupied with his sugary cereal. A source that would have an emphasis on his oddball ilk.
"Good morning, Sidney." Jewel welcomed the mammal with a cup placed before his two-sided eyes, which some would think lacked perception.
Sid looked to his right and spotted a feathered camouflage of his "brother's" wing raised in the air.
Blu was offering him a high five.
Flattened by a sudden reaction from his former teammate, Sid rose his claw and flapped it against Blu's wing.
"Just like the old times, pal." Blu nodded.
Sid, although nostalgic in that sense, sensed something was really silent that day. He spotted Carla being rather downcast and saddened by something. Barely eating any of her meals.
"Is something wrong, little girl?" he asked with a tone warping into a calming interest.
The little female parrot quavered, as she noticed a stare from her family. Her father even responded to her behavior the moment Sid pointed that out. She seemed to be behaving in a very calm demeanor but mixed with a tone of gloom.
She never acted like this before.
"It's nothing, really, uncle."
Blu glanced at his beloved wife, Jewel, who just like him appeared with an expression of confusion until he looked back at his daughter. "Honey, listen, we will support you no matter what, just tell us what happened."
Carla sadly sighed, on the visible verge of tears. "I… I… I was bullied…"
"By whom?"
Carla shivered in distress. Her breathing slowed down with each second passing.
"By a group of mammoths from my school… They started to pick on me for no equal reason."
"What have they done to you?" Sid asked.
The teenage macaw looked around and burst out crying.
"They... They called me a fatty!"