It was just a second. One vague instant of the doors being drowned with angry sounds and a terror-struck stomp that allowed to throw them wide. Jewel flew instantly to the source and nurtured the explanation of two creatures, two wooly mammoths, disregarding the place of their visit.
Her hatchlings were as full of pondering as her.
"My daughter… My daughter…" the male mammoth began addressing her with such mannerisms, that the female blue macaw thought he was angry…
…Except for the fact, that he always looked this way.
Despite the small amount of relationship their families had, Jewel's eyelashes tweaked in puzzlement as her heart beat slower. "Manny, Ellie? What happened? Why are you both here?"
"They've got our daughter, Peaches…" Ellie calmly declared, her tone drifting in the slides of her worry. "She found herself escorted on the wildlife side of her place."
"How do you know?"
"From Eva. She told us everything."
"I'm sure we can talk about the circumstances…" Jewel replied in a same emphasis as Ellie. "I know Blu well, I trust his intentions to be a mentor…"
"No," Manny regained more of his speech. "Your husband is a danger to Peaches."
Jewel frowned, taking a deep breath and exhaling. She refrained herself from escalating the situation. "No, I assure you he isn't, but why do you think he is?" She asked, landing on Manny's tusk.
"Manny, don't you dare…" Ellie glared.
The darker mammoth, in fact, already decided on his opinion. No reason to refrain himself. "If you say so… He's a klutz… A dolt… A simpleton… A dunce… Thickhead… Twerp… Dumbhead…"
Meanwhile, Carla, Bla, and Tiago all mused about what he talked about.
The female macaw's eyelid twitched. "Oh, really?"
"But of course, darling," Manny left a hint of sarcasm in his dialogue. "...And that's why I think Blu, YOUR husband is a bad figure to watch over my daughter…" Manny said as he looked away, causing Jewel to fly up and meet him at eye level.
"They say people imprint on others, so I think that's what [b]YOU'RE[/b] doing, you feel weak, and stupid because you couldn't be there to save your daughter." Jewel scolded the mammoth as he looked at her in anger.
Manny's wife caught her eyes with a trunk, releasing all the stress accompanying her, being a witness of the conflict in front. "Why should I bother?"
Her husband, in fact, was about to say more. "Who are you supposed to be, Birdlady? I didn't ask my daughter to be in that mess!"
"Just as I didn't ask Blu to be her mentor!" Jewel yelled out enough soundwaves to make the monstrosity stay still. "How dare you even say that my love is an idiot, ignoring the biggest achievement of his greatest victory in one of the previous games when you have not been there?"
Manny was utterly speechless. She's got a point. "I… uh…"
"Listen Manfred…" the female blue macaw stated blankly. "I'm fed up with your whinings and snarlings and with you acting like a manchild. Why not better just figure the circumstances out, as I suggested to you both in the first place?"
"I'm in!" Ellie put in, her tone full of cheeriness, as Jewel brought it up. "I'm tired of my guy getting into arguments."
"Okay," the blue parrot giggled. "If your mate will not stop bothering me, I'll order him to head to the exit."
"Mrs. Taylor," Jewel started a conversation with Manny's wife by taking a flight course on her tusk, as they headed into the kitchen. "What kind of tea would you like?"
"No need to call me by a surname," the female mammoth said. "Ellie is enough."
As they left, the darker mammoth sighed in defeat and took a glimpse at his neighbor's hatchlings, who were kind of unaware of what argument happened a while earlier.
"Aren't you a mammoth, sir?" Tiago sought a reply, his sisters looking at Manny in a similar way to their younger brother.
"Sure?" Manny, being serene and peaceful for once, nodded. "Why are you asking me, little guy?"
The smallest macaw cheered. "I know a lot about mammoths! I know how much masculine robustness they have to their name as a species!"
Manfred raised his eyebrow, somehow helpless at trying to run away from this situation of babbling. "Excuse me?"
"Mammoths scare me…" Carla addressed her neighbor with a soft shiver. "But you seem to be an exception for this case, Mr. Taylor."
"Pardon?"
"Mr. Taylor," Bla added, her tone undisturbed. "You may seem frightening to others with a cluster that took earlier, but you are not scary to us."
Manny meekly asked their intention, sensing a weird set of awkwardness passing through his immune system. Like a giant boulder getting thrown at his face with a large chain dragging him down the deepest depths of the ocean.
He sought an answer.
Tiago glided into the air and then arrived at his neighbor's maned head. "Fluffy, warm, and cozy. It is perfect enough for a bed."
"What are yo-... Gah… Get out of there!"
Manny reached with his trunk into the mushy darker shade of his fur, definitely in a scuffle with the ambiance. Tiago, with his best efforts, shrouded somewhere under all this comfortable hair.
"No, I do not think I will, sir," the youngest macaw pouted in hiding. "I'm going to make this my nest and sleep now."
Tiago's older sisters chuckled and laughed, as their neighbor maintained this kind of frisky personality and tried his best to sweep their smarty brother away and also stop making him feel at home.
He heard the sounds of snoring.
"Oh come on, kid. This is not funny anymore."
"Be careful about his talons," the eldest daughter said with her younger sister nodding in the motion. "Tiago's can scratch really, really hard and be no awareness0 of this. Especially when it comes to him, sleeping."
Out of the blue, Manfred surrendered to a terrible pain passing down his ears and making him feel comparable to being at the hairdresser. Another scratching felt more painful to the point of trying to show no emotion and failing.
"YAAWWW!"
The darker mammoth finally sighed with relief, when he noticed the small macaw peeking out from his mane.
"Who dares to disrupt my snoozing?" Tiago released his eyes, looking directly at everything around his habitat.
"You just slept for a minute, smarty," Bla replied in modest displeasure.
Manny, mildly dazed from the pain, headed to the kitchen with his neighbors' hatchlings following right behind. As he stood at the doorstep, he got stared upon by Ellie and Jewel at the table, as they were again acknowledging his existence.
"What's up with them and scratching?" he asked, at least getting to place Tiago somewhere else. "This little monster gave me some bruises."
"Let's get the message away," the adult female blue macaw amusingly shrugged. "...But I don't want to explain this phenomenon either. Simply put, they like you."
Manny winced a bit. A flood of questions crashed into0 his mind, usually, young'uns feared him due to his grumpy demeanor. He scratched his head with his trunk, pondering why these kids were so different.
"Yeah, sure…"
The darker male mammoth ignored the hatchlings on a latter trail and took his place on the chair envisioning the opposite side of the table, which, also could support his above-average width.
He contemplated the room before silently looking back at Ellie. She silently revealed a smiling expression.
"How is Eva doing?" the adult female macaw urged a question. "Blu barely talked to her for some time, since you know, the previous games some years ago. He still asks himself if he has done right…"
Manfred gave a silent stare traveling to Ellie and back to his neighbor.
"She fends for herself and her kids, I guess…" he stated. "It is a hard time for her, but one benefit. It balanced her stability."
Jewel sighed and poured coffee into Manny's cup. "It is good to know after all things that happened to them."
[b]MEANWHILE, CAPITAL STATE, PRESIDENT'S MANOR[/b]
"Eu te imploro… Eu te imploro…"
President Rudolph Baryon looked at his best friend, Nigel MacBarkle with a broad smile on his snout from ear to ear as he placed his reddened eyes back on the toucan. "Do not overstay our welcome with such pathetic pleadings, my little buddy. Be careful with your language."
Rafael Silva was already overstaying their welcome for 7 years.
Involuntarily, because he was trapped in this dirty and unhygienic basement since his kidnapping.
Malnourished, tired, and in lack of necessary vitamins, the toucan begged both Rudy and Nigel for some aspects he really desired to see.
"Please… L-light… Just a speck of sunlight…" he repeated and repeated, encouraging his kidnappers to roll their eyes in annoyance.
"You already have a prison window, you know, Rafi?" the albino Baryonyx mockingly pointed at the hole above the toucan's range of view.
"Heh, good one!" Nigel laughed.
Rafael went on, ignoring the mocks in0 his direction. "Eu te imploro… Eu te imploro…"
"You are asking for too much." Rudy said, the embrace i,n his words really fake and manipulative. "Let's say we would give you that sunshine but it wouldn't suit you. Not enough for your privileges, you would then ask to grant yourself a whole balcony."
Rafael's eyes soon filled with the ads as he hunched over in pain, his stomach growling fiercely prompting his kidnappers to give him some gray mush.
"Eat up, that should be enough to keep you alive" the tyrannical fossil bellowed.
As the dinosaur said that, he lost his grip on a crustacean carried in the palms of his claw during the conversation in a sloppy way. It was cooked, but bland enough without spices and any ingredients to make it a terrible torture to eat.
"Bon appetit or Bom appetite!" the white parrot teased. "The fruit of the ocean is full of protein and available to almost everyone due to its abundance."
Rafael brought the food close0 to his orange beak and disorderly bit into the flesh. His brown eyes fiercely watched.
"M-muito obrigado." the toucan stammered, tearing every bite of the crustacean as he ate it like a maniac.
"Eeeww…" Nigel winced disgustingly, most likely faking his reaction in a malicious mockery. "Didn't your mother teach you manners?"
Rafael just didn't care. He was munching on his meal so much, that it made him mildly absent from the questions.
He was simply starving.
"Okay, okay," the white parrot said, mimicking a very worried tone. "Take your time…"
The toucan finished the lobster just some seconds later, swallowing parts of it in feral slurps.
Rudy moved his face sideways, observing how a hungry animal perceives their hunger and willingness.
"That should be enough to fill your stomach up," the albino dinosaur added across his voice lines. "Any questions?"
Rafael squinched in fear when a flow of a dirty basement reek aviated via his feathers to the cold ground. "Yes…"
Nigel glanced at Rudy with obvious chagrin. The dinosaur then sighed and rose his elbow. "Alrighty then, what is it?"
"Can I… Can I listen to some music?"
The entire insides of the room were clogged with silence as soon as this question was echoed. The eyes of the white parrot and the reptile flickered on the toucan's face. They both burst out laughing. Nigel guffawed while Mr. President himself strained his lungs in amusing emotion.
"Excuse me?" the white parrot grinned, as he approached the prisoner on his feet. "You want to listen to the music?"
Rafael felt strange, as he saw their reaction. "Is something wrong with this question for you, Mr. Vice President?"
The white cockatoo circled around the toucan. Several motions as he out of nowhere maneuvered his talon and caught the neck of the "visitor". Rafael really struggled to take a breath, his lungs straining in a hope of catching fresh air.
"Are you testing our patience, long beak?"
"N-no" Rafael struggled to get out as he gagged, struggling to get some air as he started to cough.
Releasing his grip, Nigel tossed the toucan to the floor, leaving him coughing and gagging.,
"Wise decision, long beak."
The pressure in Rafael's chest was relieved ending up with him taking slow gulps of air and steadily regaining consciousness.
"You know what, Rafi?" the white cockatoo stated. "I'm tempted to squeeze the eyeballs out from your sockets, but I will be the nice guy."
Rafael coughed. "Y-yes… I understand…"
"I hereby advise you to say nothing pathetic or mocking in80 my direction, long beak!" Nigel yelled out and moved the feathers of his wing in the shape of scissors. "...One more yelp and I will cut your tongue!"
The toucan nodded fearfully. "I understand, I understand."
Rudy cackled in a sound of low-pitched satisfaction, but as a President, he had his limits on the cases like this.
"My friend, you may be obstinate in intelligence or mental slyness. but you shouldn't brag about your haunting mind this way. The poor one is shaking!"
The white parrot let out a laugh.
"Yeah, yeah, I understand." Nigel left a quick glance at the other bird. "He slightly got on my nerves, you know. It is ruffling my feathers."
"Your feathers are always this way, pal." Rudy replied with a softer bellow. "It is a natural aspect of your species."
"You flatter me, pal," the white parrot rolled his eyes and amusingly nudged his workmate upon landing on the dinosaur's elbow.
Rafael felt very relaxed when he witnessed such an exchange. It meant the two of them were leaving this room in good spirits.
And that was the blessing. They left.
A release of this meek personality gave him the benefit to express his emotions the way he could without these two watching his guts.
He shrieked and laughed at the uneven pace of blood passing down his veins and leaving a trail of relief and shock.
He laughed his heart off in a loud manner of his word.
Rafael stopped his mannerisms to laugh, as he suddenly picked up the sounds of soft mumbles from the door.
The door opened with a slight creak following the push forward. Rafael's eyes were greeted by three lizard-shaped tiny silhouettes.
"Hello, Mr. Rafael." they welcomed their entrance in a way of being very polite. "We brought you some food."
Egbert, Shelly and Yoko. Rudy's glamorous triplets entered the room, marching their style of avoiding any meaningful sound for their eardrums.
Tearing up, Rafael petted their heads. "Thank you, but the lobster was enough." He replied as Egbert put down a plate of steak and Shelly a small goblet of wine.
"We insist, mister, please. Our father can be cruel, just hide the empty dishes behind the hay you were given to sleep on and we'll retrieve them." Yoko replied as Rafael teared up.
The toucan saw a spark of hope, the innocence in their eyes and how they have love and compassion in their hearts lifted his spirits
[b]AT THE TOURNAMENT[/b]
The team led by the blue macaw stopped their conversation, as they heard loud thumps and rumbles beneath. Steffie was calm enough to stop reaching the sound with a terrible feeling, as she was already calmed down by Meghan and her other teammates.
Blu grumbled and jumped on his talons and sighed. "I guess we are already at the place."
"Uh, honestly. Where are we?" Troy lifted his trunk in a question, again unaware of what was happening.
The blue parrot inquired to explain. "The jungle hides an arena expanding across the whole place of the event. The event in itself is not a simple competition, but a clash for survival,."
"An arena?" Peaches started a question. "You mean something like the ancient thing with gladiators?"
"Perhaps, but it isn't what I meant." Blu turned to face them with his nerdy tone. "It is more of a wildlife camping, but without rules. Exactly, that's what I meant."
Steffie sadly looked out of the window.
The helicopter's blades stopped spinning, as the animal guards approached the players.
"Out." was a simple order.
"Okay… Okay…" Ethan replied with a note of cowardice, standing up on his four feet and approaching the exit. Peaches and the rest of their team have done the same.
A wave of feedback echoed through the sky as a very well-known5 voice to the teenagers came on the loudspeakers.
"[b]HELLO, AND WELCOME TO THE GAMES, IN THIS EVENT YOU MUST FIGHT FOR SURVIVAL, YOU MAY BE GRANTED WEAPONS OR YOU MAY FIND SOME HIDDEN IN THE AREA, FIGHT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT, TRUST NO ONE, AND REMEMBER… ONLY ONE TEAM CAN SURVIVE.[/b]"
Blu, as a mentor, led his team out of the flying vehicle just at the second of the machine being taken away into the air. As the team got to know the area, the guards closed the door leaving them in the jungle.
Straightly in the middle of it.