At the sound of the pop, Wolf opened the door behind him. Before Iliya could do anything, he grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him inside. Wolf slammed the door behind them.

“Don’t you want to talk with the others?” Iliya looked back at the door. In a small area like this, he wasn’t sure everyone staying together was a good idea, but hearing everyone’s plans could be a start.

“No,” Wolf said succinctly. Well okay, then.

Iliya pulled out his phone, and checked the game info. A clock was ticking down from ten minutes, but the two hours of the game remained stagnant. The ten minute head start wouldn’t count for the game. “So what’s the plan?” Iliya asked Wolf.

“Survive.” Wolf answered.

Iliya blinked at him. “That sounds good. But how?”

“If I see an enemy, I punch it.”

“That’s… a start.” It looked like any advanced planning would have to be done by Iliya. He decided to begin by surveying the room they were in. It looked like a storage room. Boxes were stacked in huge heaps. Cotton candy and popcorn machines lay in various states of disrepair. There was a rack with some clown costumes.

Iliya looked at Wolf. He turned back to the clown costumes. Wolf was a big man. Tall, with long legs. Muscled arms. He might not be able to fit in a clown costume, but Iliya might be able to. He pulled out one of the costumes from the rack. It was a jumpsuit, similar to what the Moderator wore, but it had stripes instead of polka dots.

“That will be a last resort,” Wolf decided for both of them. Iliya agreed. These challenges were meant to be fairly simple. It was entirely possible they could pass by just hiding. However, Iliya didn’t want to take any risks. In a game where the goal was to survive, he was sure there would be some kind of offensive opponent. Probably a killer clown, by the looks of the arena. With the costumes, it was possible they could even become a bigger target, if the opponent knew they weren’t truly clowns from the circus.

There was a knock on the door. Wolf instinctively stepped in front of Iliya, facing the door. “Wait,” Iliya whispered. “We still have about eight minutes.”

Iliya was right. “It’s me, Wicker! Can you guys come out?” If Iliya remembered correctly, Wicker was what the young girl who was standing alone called herself. Wolf looked at Iliya for instructions, and Iliya nodded that it should be okay for him to open the door. Outside, the other four challengers crowded around the door.

“Ooooo, another storage room!” Rina poked her head in and looked around. “There’s lots of places to hide in here!”

“Seems like it,” Iliya agreed. “So what’s up?”

Roman, the man who had arrived with Rina, stepped up to talk. “We all took quick peeks in the rooms we came from. The other rooms are a dressing room, a warm up room, and another storage closet.” Another storage closet, huh?

“You guys checked pretty fast,” Iliya praised them. “I think it would be a good idea for us to team up and all work together to survive.”

“Yeah, I think so too!” Lex, the teenage boy chimed in.

Rina hummed, and rubbed at her chin. “I think six people hiding in one spot would be obvious though.”

“You’re right!” Iliya pretended he had just come to that realization. “Then how about we split into two teams? Since Wolf and I are friends, we can be a team and one of the single players can join us. How about you, Wicker?”

Wicker blushed under the sudden attention. “Sure.” She looked fairly unassuming, but Iliya knew better. This was her last challenge before she was able to move on and become a full player. He wasn’t sure what the snake challenge would be like, but it definitely meant that Wicker had made it past the pvp game. Furthermore, if he and Wolf made it through safely, Iliya could ask Wicker more about that final game.

Wolf looked a bit peeved that Wicker would be tagging along. Iliya didn’t know him well enough yet to make assumptions about why, but he assumed it was because it was harder to hide three people than two. And if they had to resort to punching, as Wolf would clearly prefer, making sure one teammate was safe was easier than keeping two safe, along with yourself.

The two teams parted, and Roman announced the other team would go to the other storage room to start. There was no way to tell what would happen, but ideally neither team would have to resort to hiding in the brightly lit dressing room, or wide and open warm-up area. There was about two minutes left before the game really began, and Wolf, Wicker and Iliya hid themselves in various parts of the room. Wolf stood still directly at the left hand side of the door, where if the door was opened, he would be blocked by it. Wicker crouched behind some cardboard boxes, and Iliya went inside the container of a hot dog cart.

A loudly blaring bugle was heard, announcing that the game was about to begin. In the darkness of the hot dog cart, Iliya took out his phone and confirmed.

Challenger Red, you have been assigned the mission challenge Survival Circus.

To win, you must survive for 1:59.

Lose, and you will suffer punishment.

As expected. The same schtick as always. Iliya breathed in, and grimaced at the stink of metal and old hot dogs. He was pretty sure that he would be safe for two hours if he just hid in the broken down cart, unless whatever was coming to get them was either clever and knew this would be a great hiding place, or stupid and looking for hot dogs. But it was boring. Iliya watched the countdown tick down to one hour and forty five minutes left. He sighed. He didn’t want to spend two hours curled up in a hot dog cart.

So he wouldn’t.

Iliya opened the cabinet and looked across the room at Wolf, who was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked just as bored as Iliya felt. Iliya waved, and Wolf tilted his head and waved back. As carefully as he could, Iliya raised himself out of the cart. “Hey, Wicker,” he whispered. She startled, then quickly calmed down when she saw it was Iliya. “You can take the cart, it’s probably safer.”

“Thank you,” she whispered back grateful. Then Wicker narrowed her eyes. “Wait, if it’s safer, why are you giving it to me?”

Iliya shrugged. “I’m already bored, so we’re gonna take a look around.” He was fairly confident Wolf would come with him. He wasn’t afraid of any rule violations that would have come from punching the door, and it didn’t look like he was scared of punishment either. Wolf looked like a man who would be up for a risky adventure. Besides, if this weird circus arena had any hidden items, or a secret plot, it was possible they could be awarded a bonus item for figuring everything out. “I’m gonna start by poking around in here. Wolf, you’re keeping an ear on the door, right?”

“I’ll give a warning if I hear anything,” Wolf said.

This would be the first real test of their ability to work as a team under real pressure. Iliya’s hands shook with anticipation. “Thanks, Wolf.”

“You two are so stupid.” Wicker said, then bit her help. She probably realized then that if Iliya and Wolf were off messing around, any bad attention would be targeted on them. If Iliya wasn’t so bored, with a nagging curiosity about this entirely new space. Unlike Feed the Kitten and First Escape, this challenge gave them a world to explore that was decidedly outside of their own. Who knew what an intrepid adventurer could discover? With this in mind, Iliya began opening up the boxes in the storage room.

Iliya reached up, and pulled down some of the stacked boxes, starting at the top. The first one was filled with clown accessories. There were some honking horns, flowers that could squirt water, and colorful handkerchiefs. Iliya set a few of the horns aside, just in case they could be useful for alerting people of something. The next few boxes had similar items, though not all were related to the ancient art of jokerry. Some were related to acrobatic arts, or materials that could be used in animal performances.

Then came the box that was second to the bottom. By then, Iliya was thinking everything might have been straight forward, without much of a story. Until he reached a box that was stuffed full with newspapers.

“Jackpot!”