Chapter 31: The Game Begins
Midterms were over and spring break came and went in the blink of an eye. And just like that, it was Monday and everyone was back on campus. Jet couldn't believe how fast the semester was flying. Before he knew it, it would be time for finals. And there was still so much to do…
Just as if he and his friends hadn't been separated the last week, the group was casually having lunch in the dining hall, just as they always did. Azula and Zuko were playfully bickering about something that happened over the break, Sokka was stuffing his face, Ty Lee was trying to teach Mai a mnemonic device for memorizing the names and birth order of all six of her sisters, and Katara was intently reading the updated campus news brochures that were propped up on the cafeteria table.
"Huh?" Katara said curiously as a slip of paper fell from between the pages of the brochure. "Hey, Sokka." She smiled. "Remember when you were like obsessed with these?" She turned the paper around so the rest of the group could see. It was one of those math puzzle games Jet had never gotten into.
"Ooh, sudoku!" Sokka and Azula said simultaneously, both reaching for the page.
Jet watched Azula's face brighten and a soft smile spread on her cheeks as Sokka's hand grazed hers. He felt his stomach tighten. Even though he had seen Azula's note and knew she was in love with him, that didn't mean she no longer had any feelings for Sokka. Not that it mattered since Sokka was currently hooking up with Zuko. Yes, that was still going on. A lot. Jet could hear them through the walls, which he wished were way more soundproof.
Why he even cared about whether Azula still liked Sokka was a mystery to him. He shouldn't care, not when he wasn't even sure about his own feelings. It was funny how he used to be their biggest cheerleader, but now, seeing Azula and Sokka nerd out together about a math puzzle made him want to punch a wall.
"I used to do these all the time on the toilet!" Sokka overshared without shame.
"I used to – " Azula started before giving Sokka a weird look. "How long do you usually sit on the toilet?"
"Oh," Zuko snickered, "he's been known to watch feature-length films in there."
"It's true," Jet confirmed.
Azula blinked. "That's probably not healthy. Anyway…" She smirked at Sokka. "I bet I can solve it before you!"
"You're on!"
Jet's jaw clenched as he watched Azula squeeze in next to Sokka and enthusiastically start on the puzzle, and even more so after Sokka suggested they work together rather than competitively after their elbows kept colliding.
Mai raised an eyebrow. "Why are four of the boxes highlighted? That's not normal, is it?"
Jet had noticed that too, but he thought that was a regular part of the puzzle. Four of the boxes on the grid were outlined in distinct colors: red, yellow, green, blue.
Azula and Sokka shrugged and kept on working.
"I think something weird is going on today, you guys," Ty Lee said earnestly.
"What makes you say that?" Katara asked.
"Well that random sudoku for starters. And also earlier today when I was in the mailroom, you know, to get my fan mail, there was a strange advertisement plastered all over the walls."
"An advertisement for what?"
"I don't know! It just had a cryptic URL on it."
The group, minus Azula and Sokka who were still engaged in their puzzle, looked around quizzically at each other.
"But when I entered it in my phone," Ty Lee continued, "the link was not found."
"Are you serious?" Jet sneered. "Why would you blindly put in a weird URL? It's probably a virus."
"Oh spirits, you really think so?" Panicked, Ty Lee grabbed her phone, opened her browser, and showed everyone the link.
Everyone grimaced.
"Yeah… that's probably a virus," Mai murmured.
"Wait…" Zuko stared intently at the phone before getting really excited. "No it's not! Look at the end of the URL, it ends with 'B/G/R/Y'!"
"So…?" Katara questioned.
"Blue, green, red, yellow!"
"The same colors that are in that puzzle!" Katara exclaimed.
Ty Lee gasped. "Finish that sudoku quickly, okay?!"
The group waited with anticipation as Azula and Sokka filled in the squares as fast as they could.
"Okay, done!" Sokka threw down his pencil.
Ty Lee opened her phone. "Okay, what are the values in the blue, green, red, and yellow boxes?"
"Six, one, seven, three," Azula answered.
Ty Lee exchanged the 'B/G/R/Y' in the URL for '6/1/7/3' and hit enter. "I-It worked!"
It seemed like some mysterious campus event was about to take place. Jet smirked. This was just the sort of thing he needed to distract him from his troubles.
"'Congratulations, Agent!'" Ty Lee read out loud. "'Welcome to the secret underground campus-wide game of Assassin. Do you have what it takes to be the last one standing? Only the first 100 students to register will be eligible to play. The winner will receive a $200 gift card to Wild Papaya.' Ooh, the Wild Papaya! I've always wanted to eat there!"
"Me too!" Sokka cried with a hungry look in his eye.
Azula had always wanted to dine there too, but she could never afford it. Wild Papaya was one of the fanciest restaurants in the Upper Ring.
"'So, Agent…'" Ty Lee continued to read, "'do you accept the challenge?'"
A yes/no prompt was presented beneath the question. Azula and the rest of the group immediately scrambled for their phones so they could play too. It seemed everyone had their eye on the prize.
Azula entered the URL into her browser and immediately selected "Yes". This prompted a new question, "What is your Agent name?", followed by a fill-in-the-blank textbox. "Hmm…" Azula thought to herself. She wanted to go with something like Agent Phoenix, but then she thought about Jet's annoying nickname for her and smiled. "I'll be Agent Fire Princess," she announced, grinning coyly at Jet.
"How fitting," he said, grinning back at her with a sparkle in his eye.
"I chose Agent Poof!" Ty Lee exclaimed with a wide smile.
"Poof?" Zuko questioned. "I don't get it."
"Because I'm gonna kill people so quickly, they'll disappear like poof!"
"Ohhh," everyone said as if her agent name wasn't stupid.
"I think it's cute," Mai smiled.
"I think you're cute!" Ty Lee gave her girlfriend a kiss on the cheek.
"Well I'm gonna go with…" Sokka struck a pose. "Agent Boomerang!"
"Nice." Zuko gave him a high five.
"Hm…" Katara thought. "Well, if Azula is Agent Fire Princess, then I'll be… Agent Ice Queen!"
"But you're not an ice queen," Ty Lee rebutted. "You're too sweet!"
"Aw, thanks Ty Lee!" Katara smiled. "But it sounds menacing so I'm gonna go with it."
"What did you pick, Zuzu?" Azula asked.
"Agent Scarface," he replied stoically.
Everyone was quiet.
"What?" he chuckled. "I think it's funny."
"I tried to be Agent FUCK, but it wouldn't let me input it. Fuckers," Jet grumbled, clearly not taking the game seriously at all. "It also wouldn't let me be Agent Cocksaplenty, BigPimpin, or I-will-actually-kill-you-be-afraid – I think the last one went over the character limit – so I ended up going with… Agent Agent."
"Ugh," everyone groaned.
"Oh, I get it," Azula said. "Agent Agent. Double agent. Clever."
"Yeah…" Jet trailed off shifting his eyes. "That was totally intentional…"
"Agent WhatsHerFace?!" Ty Lee questioned, reading over her girlfriend's shoulder. "Why would you go with that?"
"I couldn't think of anything," Mai shrugged. "Also I'm only playing for the prize. I don't really care about this stupid game."
"Suuure," Sokka said with a suspicious tone. "That's just what you want us to think."
"Whatever."
"Alright, well it looks like we're all in!" Azula grinned, eager for the game to start. The website said to await further instructions. "Now we just play the waiting game…"
The rest of the week passed without any update at all. Jet refreshed the page from time to time, but it still said to await further instructions. But then on Friday, Jet and his housemates all received mysterious packages outside their front door labeled "Open at your own risk".
Just like clockwork, Jet's phone went off. It was Azula texting the group chat demanding an emergency meeting at the boys' house so they could all go over the contents of the packages together. The girls showed up ten minutes later and they all tore into their respective boxes like rabid animals.
The boxes included a huge list of rules, a BSSU lanyard sporting an ID badge holder with a bright green ID that read "ALIVE", and a red ID card that read "CORPSE".
"Rules, rules, blah, blah, blah," Mai groaned. "Boring."
"I'll go over them for everyone." Katara cleared her throat. "Okay, rule number one – "
"Can't you give us the TL;DR version?" Jet asked.
"You guys! The rules are important!"
"I've got this." Azula stepped in, scanning quickly over the rules. "Let's see… basically we're all assigned a target to 'kill'. Once our target is neutralized, we obtain their target. The cycle continues until only one person remains. The game is campus-wide, but there are safe zones where no killing is permitted. Safe zones include the insides of people's dorm rooms, campus housing, bathrooms, any quiet study areas on campus like libraries, in the middle of class, anywhere off campus, etcetera. You kill your target by tapping them quickly on the shoulder or back and saying 'You're dead.' Any reports of unnecessary or unwanted touching will result in expulsion from the game as well as consequences from the school. We all need to wear our 'ALIVE' badges at all times, unless we're killed – in that case we can either choose to remove our lanyards or exchange the 'ALIVE' badge for the 'CORPSE' badge. Trading targets is not permissible. If you figure out who's trying to kill you, you can't preemptively kill them, you just need to try to avoid them. Oh, and apparently we can access our first assignments on the website."
"Spirits, I'm so excited!" Ty Lee said, rushing for her phone.
"Me too!" Katara smiled. "I just hope I don't get any of you."
"With 100 students playing, what are the odds?" Zuko asked.
"Well the odds that you'd get one of us would be 6 out of 99," Azula explained. "So the odds that you won't get one of us is 93 out of 99. The odds that none of us draw each other, well... that's actually a pretty complicated problem."
"A complicated problem, you say?!" Sokka grinned. "Sounds fun! Let's figure it out!"
"It was a rhetorical question…" Zuko sighed.
"Hmph. I'll try it later."
Jet refreshed the site and lo and behold, he got his first assignment, someone he'd never heard of or seen before.
"Does everyone have their first targets?!" Ty Lee squealed.
Everyone nodded, looking down at their phones.
"Maybe we should talk strategy," Azula said, getting serious. "What if we were to form some sort of alliance?"
"Ooh, I like that idea!" Ty Lee applauded.
"How would that work?" Zuko asked with skepticism.
"Well according to the list of rules, they're going to notify us every time 10 students are eliminated. So what if we decide to hold off on killing each other until we've made it to the last 10 remaining students?"
One by one, the group agreed.
"Great," Azula smiled. "That will really help the chances of one of us winning. Now…" Her sweet smile quickly morphed into a devious smirk. "…how about we all demonstrate our allegiance… and test our loyalty by revealing who our first targets are."
"Uhhh…" Everyone looked around at each other, trying to read one another.
"As an act of good faith, I'll volunteer to go first," Katara said. "My target is a freshman named On Ji."
"You guys, you guys, you guys! You're never gonna believe this!" Ty Lee was bouncing up and down. "I got Hahn! Remember? The guy who got suspended for stalking me?"
"Ooh, I don't know if I like that, Ty," Mai said, concerned.
"Yeah," Katara frowned. "Aren't you worried about seeing him again?"
"Nope! Because this time I know how to defend myself. I can't wait to exact my revenge!"
"Well if you need back up," Mai put her hand on Ty Lee's shoulder, "I'm here for you."
"Thanks!"
"Well I got a girl named Song, a fellow junior. I don't know her, but she looks…" Zuko looked at his phone. "…kind. I'm still going to destroy her."
"My target's a junior named Jiang," Mai said.
"Ooh, she's cute!" Ty Lee giggled, looking over Mai's shoulder at her phone.
"Yeah," Mai chuckled. "She is cute."
"I got a freshman named Jin…" Azula looked scrutinizingly at her phone. "I feel like I've seen her around before."
"Oh no, I know her!" Katara cried. "She's in one of my classes. She's so nice…"
"I know her too!" Ty Lee jumped in. "She's such a sweetheart."
"Well neither of you'd better tell her because she's as good as dead," Azula threatened.
"I got some senior named Satoru," Jet announced.
"Oh, I think I had an engineering class with him," Sokka said. "Good luck, he's really smart. Alright, so we're all good to go then, right?"
Katara flashed him a suspicious stare. "You never shared your assignment…"
"Oh right! Sorry!" Sokka started scratching the back of his neck. "I, uh, got a sophomore named mmm… Throckmorton."
"Throckmorton?" Jet repeated in an incredulous tone. "That sounds made up."
"Hey, maybe you shouldn't be so judgmental about other people's names!"
"Okay…"
"Well I guess we should go study up on our assignments…" With her package in hand, Azula started making her way toward the door.
"Don't forget your lanyards," Zuko called out, slipping his over his head.
"Thanks for the reminder!" Ty Lee put hers on as well.
As the girls filed out of the house, Sokka started following them, whistling innocently.
"Where do you think you're going?" Jet questioned.
"I-I'll be right back – I just need to talk to Katara about something."
Jet and Zuko exchanged unconvinced looks and decided to poke their heads out the door to watch him.
Sokka immediately ran up behind Mai, tapped her on the back, and shouted, "YOU'RE DEAD!"
Zuko's mouth fell open.
"Are you serious?!" Ty Lee shrieked.
"I'm so sorry!" Sokka apologized.
"Eh," Mai shrugged. "It's fine." She set down her package to exchange her "ALIVE" card for the "CORPSE" card.
"What about our alliance?!" Katara berated.
"Yeah, Sokka," Azula snarled. "I expected this from double agent Jet, but not from you."
"EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF!" Sokka triumphantly punched the air.
Jet burst out laughing. The game had officially begun.
Author's Note: I'm probably not going to be able to update for another 2 or 3 weeks. My mom is coming to visit and then I'll be on vacation. I'll update as soon as I can. Thank you for understanding and for your patience!