**********************************************
"Your flag has been generated. You have 20 minutes remaining before its location is changed. 19 minutes and 59 seconds remaining."
And with that, we were off. At first, Emily and I butted heads about which direction to go in. That was until we were given a distance warning for trying to go in separate directions. It was a 15 point dock if you and your partner were more than five minutes away from one another.
Hell…at least the rules of this assessment were strict. There was no way for Emily to actually harm me or anyone for that matter. Not while we had these watches on.
And pretty soon, she got frustrated with me for not knowing anything about this test. I glanced at her while she whined, an ugly frown making its way to my face.
"This idiot…Should I just kick your ass and fail the assignment anyways? Then…we can tell who's in it for real."
"Don't even come near me." Emily glared, but she took a step back on the dirt path, worried I might actually do something. "How can you genuinely not know anything about this assessment? Are you dumb or useless? Or both?"
"Are you deaf?" I shot right up. "Ms Smith set this assessment up. Not Gracelyn you-ugh! It's pointless! It's like everything I say goes in one ear and out the other!!"
"Oh please. You think I believe that you got your sister to come here without trying once to screw me over? I'm not an idiot, Sara Bearens."
"No, no but you are a moron." I agreed with a smile. "In case you haven't noticed—we're in the same group. If I wanted to screw you over, why, oh why Emily—would I choose to be in the same group as you?"
She went silent, grinding her teeth. She knew I was right. "You think—"
"I'll stop you, right there." I laughed bitterly before staring at her seriously. "I don't think about anything else except finding this flag so that we can be over with this. I don't want to think about you, how much I hate you, how much you hate me, how much you wish I was dead, or any variant of those points for the next however the hell long we are looking for this freaking flag! Do you hear me?"
She scoffed. At the sound of it, I couldn't tell whether my anger would kill me first or her. If I let her, that is. "I hear you. But you should hear me too, Sara Bearens. You keep sticking around Luke or Vikky, bad bad things will happen. And it's not like I can stop them, even if I wanted to."
"…" I choose not to respond. If I did, it would likely be my fists answering for me. Emily however, couldn't stop running her mouth.
It was as if she was talking about everything she could to irritate me. As my hand tickled and flickered with fire magic…
Bzzz! Bzz!
I glanced at my watch. "Oh god… again?"
It read: warning one of one. Unwarranted use of powers will be penalized with a 20 point deduction to your individual score. Please stop immediately.
With a sigh, I quickly realized something while walking. If nobody could use there powers for this assessment, how were we supposed to find our flag so soon?
"There's something we're missing. I'm heading back to where we started." I announced to Emily, though I didn't wait to see if she would follow enough. Even if we got points deducted. I was certain that my hunch was right.
"God! Where the hell are you going! Wait! You're wasting our time, ugh!!" Emily trailed after me after the loud voice of our watches spoke in unison.
"10 minutes left. Flags will move locations in 10 minutes."
I started rushing back to our starting point even faster. Emily had no choice but to follow. By the time we got back to the small clearing that was our starting point—marked by a stick in the ground— four more minutes had passed.
"You idiot, are you kidding me right now?!?" Emily glowered. "Our flag is going to move again!"
"There's no way we were close to finding it just now. We were only getting farther and farther into the woods, anyways."
"It's a random location, astray." She hissed. I ignored it for the meantime, making a mental note to slam her into the ground for every insult she made the second this assignment was over. "It could be anywhere!"
"You really believe that?" I glanced at her. "If that's the case, then out of the 12 teams, shouldn't at least one or two have randomly found it by now?"
"There's so much ground to cover. Its expected that they can't."
"Right. Because a team can only move in one direction. And their only truly required to go a as far as a 30 minute run out before turning back. The flag can't be any further."
Emily crossed her arms. "So? What's your point?"
I plucked the stick out of the ground, notice where it left a hole. As best I could, I drew a wide circle around it. " If the middle is our starting point, then, the circle represents everywhere within 30 minutes that we can run to."
"I pieced that much together, thanks."
"If the flag was truly moving randomly every 20 minutes, then, no mater what, no one will be able to get to their flag on time. Unless they absolutely, positively, know where it is, and can reach it within that 20 minutes. That means we'd have to run at our top speeds to even think about getting it."
"Get to the point, damnit. Do you want us to just bite our time until the flag changes locations closer to us?"
"No…because like I said. We won't know be able to make it unless,"
"Yes yes, I heard you! Unless we know that it's 100% there!"
"God—just think for a second!! What is the flag possibly moving 100 yards away from? Huh?"
"It's original location, dummy!!"
I scoffed at her. "Really? If that's the case, we would all find our flags far too easily. It took us about seven minutes to get back here. We probably already ran over 1000 yards or more just coming back.
"!!" Emily stopped glaring, but for only a second. "W-What?"
"I said,"
"I heard you! But if the flag isn't moving 100 yards away from its original spot, then…"
I pursed my lips, lifting my watch.
"5 minutes left. Flags will move locations in 5 minutes."
"There's another reason we have to stay close, Emily."
She clenched her hands. "The flag…moves 100 yards out in a random direction…based on our location?"
*****************************************************
(Thank you for reading my book! I really hope you enjoy it!)