Chapter 10: Bridgette And Izzy's Third Trial
~~Bridgette POV~~
The hood over her head was pulled off abruptly, leaving her shake her head in confusion, a bit disoriented from the strange events.
As she looked around, her vision, which had been in doubles, cleared up; with it cleared, she could now see around her, allowing her to take in her surroundings. Her eyes landed on the screen in front of her, with Chris on it.
He smiled, seeming to see her look up, though Bridgette could tell the message was pre-recorded.
"Hello! As was previously stated by a rather handsome man, this challenge will push you in one aspect we believe you've struggled with the most in the challenges you've participated in on the island. Your challenge however, will be a little special. This is because, while it is true that the challenge will be on something you struggled with, it was through no fault of your own."
Bridgette felt some dread, she could assume from what she had done on the island what her challenge would be about. While before she wouldn't have worried, now she began to feel some doubts in herself in this particular aspect; leadership.
"That's right, your challenge will be about leadership! You will be asked a multitude of questions pertaining to leadership, and you must answer them within the allotted time-frame. The questions will become increasingly more challenging, you will only pass if you manage to answer 15 out of the 20 questions we will ask you, with a reasonable answer, which will be determined by a ex-military strategist we hired!"
As Chris' voice faded, another figure appeared on the screen, replacing him. The man that appeared looked wizened, with silvery-grey hair, a long beard, and features that were as sharp as a hawk.
Bridgette felt that, even though the message was pre-recorded, the man seemed to be staring into her soul. Overcome with nervousness, she let out an audible gulp.
That was when the man spoke for the first time since his sudden appearance, "This is not a pre-recorded message, the part with Chris was, but this is not. I will be physically watching over your exam and giving comment on your answers, determining whether or not they're reasonable."
His tone was firm, holding an absoluteness that showed his confidence in his ability to determine whether her answers were good or not on the spot.
"We will start whenever you are ready." He stated, but this just caused Bridgette's nervousness to rise.
She couldn't help but feel this was a test in and of itself, one that she didn't know the correct answer to.
Bridgette took around five minutes to fix her state of mind, before she looked up at the man with a determined expression, "I'm ready!" She said, tone not wavering in the slightest.
The man looked down, nodding his head in approval. "You were right to assume this was a test, one in which you passed with flying colors. This was actually the first of the 20 questions you'll be asked." Bridgette felt herself alight with joy, before she steadied herself once again.
The man seemed to notice this, his head nodding in approval once again. "The correct answer to this question was one you probably didn't even know, showing you have a natural inclination for leadership. The correct answer was that waiting 'till your mind is in the right state is much better than entering the test prematurely in an attempt to appear more impressive. However, that was only part of the question."
At this, Bridgette had a confused look appear on her face, what the man had previously stated was what she had concluded from the test, she hadn't realized there was more to it.
"The other half of the question is something I assume you didn't realize, but that's okay, you weren't expected to. This was a part about leadership; a leader should never take too long to get ready for a battle, either mentally or physically. As such, if you were to take too long to prepare yourself, your people would start doubting you, believing you to either be afraid or incompetent."
Bridgette sat in silence for a while, the man seemingly allowing her time to digest this.
After a couple minutes, Bridgette took a deep breath, preparing for the questions ahead of her.
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~~Izzy POV~~
Izzy could feel her heart pounding in both terror and exhilaration.
Behind her a figure could be seen chasing her, the figure of a gigantic robotic monkey.
Izzy remembered a little while ago, when Chris appeared before her to inform her of what her mission was.
~~
Izzy's eyes snapped open, a craziness contained within.
She was instantly prepared, her body taut and readied to pounce on any enemies. It was at that moment that a screen before her lit up, Chris appearing on it.
He looked down at her, his signature smile appearing on his face. He spoke up, "Izzy! You have shown commendable strength as a hunter, managing to easily stalk the other competitors as well as showing skill in strategy during your joint attack of the Killer Bass with Aoife." Here, he stopped, taking in a deep breath before continuing.
"So, the challenge that you will face is a unique one. This challenge is to see how you respond to being viewed as the prey, to how you deal with the stress of a being outside your ability to fight, chasing you in an attempt to endanger you."
Izzy could feel her heart pumping in excitement, a smile spreading across her face.
The reason for her excitement was that Izzy didn't just have a love for the chase, she also had a love for being chased. This could be seen in her running from the Canadian government, enjoying them trying to capture her.
Izzy could hear her heart beating in her ears, feel it as her palms grew sweaty; she felt as her cheeks stretched into a crazed grin of excitement. This was all caused by the figure before her.
Before her was a gigantic figure that was around six meters tall; it was in the shape of a gorilla.
Chris had just finished explaining to her that this was the being that would be chasing her, causing her excitement to rise to an unprecedented level.
~~
Izzy laughed maniacally, her body flinging through the treetops, her heart feeling more free than ever before.
Behind her, the gigantic figure of the gorilla could be seen, it would scale trees before leaping toward her, each jump allowing it to travel distances of around 30 meters.
The gorilla finished scaling a treetop as it jumped toward her.
It's arm reached out, seemingly about to grab her. Izzy could feel it as her heart pumped in glee; right before the robo-gorilla could grab her, her body was suddenly yanked to the side.
It turned out that Izzy had long planned for the gorilla to nearly get her, she had tied a vine around herself to a tree that was a far distance away.
Upon reaching a certain distance, the vine had strung taut and launched her figure backwards towards itself. Izzy's laughter turned a hint more crazed, the look in her eyes would not be unfitting on that of a serial killer.
Her excited laughter continued to ring out as the gorilla came to a stop, figure turning toward her in a blur of speed.
As Izzy was launched in the direction of the tree, her eyes glanced up at the sky above her. Right in the center of it, a timer could be seen, this timer was slowly counting down, the number on it displaying a large '59:99'.
Izzy could feel a bit of disappointment welling inside of her at the time, feeling disappointed in her only having an hour left of this exciting game.
Still, the manic glee returned to her eyes, her figure coming to a stop as she reached the bottom of the tree the vine hung from. Reaching up, she cut the part of the vine connecting her to it. Afterwards, her figure flashed, her laughter running out as the gorilla landed where she had just been standing.
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~~Chris POV~~
Chris watched on, excitement visible in his jittery movement.
As he watched the three figures of Aoife, Bridgette, and Izzy, all Chris could think of was how great this would be for their ratings.
After all, Aoife had managed to answer all of his questions in a detailed manner up to this point, even with a time-limit that had lowered to five minutes. His answers were being reviewed by multiple highly accredited philosophers, who by this point, seemed to be reviewing the work of a peer rather than the answers of a young man.
And while Bridgette hadn't done quite as well, she had managed to answer 12 of the 15 asked questions in a manner the military strategist deemed acceptable, 5 of those 12 being answered in ways that caused the strategist to give her an excellent score.
What Chris hadn't told Bridgette was that the man wasn't just an ex-military strategist; he was someone who was known as a legendary figure in the army, even so many years after his retirement.
To earn a score of excellence from him on just 1 question is something that any member of the army would be proud of, let alone 5. And she still had more questions to answer, meaning she could give more than just 5 excellent answers.
This all still wasn't taking into account Izzy, who was definitely the show-stealer even with the performance of the other two. This wasn't to say that what she was doing was anymore impressive than them, no, they were about the same level of difficulty. It was just that her challenge being a physical one, made it far more engaging for the audience.
Obviously, with parts of both Aoife and Bridgette's missions being kept secret, Izzy also didn't know the full scope of her challenge.
The robot that she was currently running circles around, was used by the military as a way to train their most elite of soldiers. Even still, this training only consisted of the soldiers trying to avoid the robot for around 30 minutes, nothing like the five hours Izzy had been tasked with avoiding it for.
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Hello. I hope you all enjoyed this chapter! I feel that this chapter could also be viewed as a rather interesting one in and of itself. I still feel that the last chapter is the one I'm most proud of, but this one is by far a close second.
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