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Ash did not consider himself to be a wimp. Nor did he think he was afraid of much in the world, excepting social interaction on most days, but nothing grinded his gears like ruined clothing.

He took a break to roll his singed shirt sleeves up, albeit a short one as the zing of bullets urged him onwards-- into a room full of.

Well. he wasn't even sure what was going on here. It was like tetherball (#436 on things Ashford has learned from the internet) gone incredibly awry.

With a deep breathe, Ashford ran in, and was glad for the explosions. Why?

To hide his perpetual shrieking. There was soot in his eyes, the maniacal laughter of tiny minipets as they ran into each other and exploded with positively TOO MUCH GLEE for their suicidal antics. Ash had a feeling his luck might run out, but hey.

Worth a shot, right? ...Right? Maybe as long as he kept telling himself that, it'd be okay.


((Previous scores: 31, 95))

After the flaming hurdles of death, Carmine was visibly tired. It took a lot more than you might think to run and jump and fly just to survive the hurdles. Upon reaching the rings of fire, Carmine just couldn't make it and fell halfway through the second ring. With an agonized squeal, dissipated into the air, only to arrive in a clinic nearby.

It was nice to see there was still some fun stuff to do, after the florestival had ended.

...'Fun' being a very loosely used term. And upon a closer inspection, Poke decided that she would abandon the use of fun and just go with 'another way for ToT'ers to watch me cry out in pain'

It had taken her a while to recover from the injuries she had received during the florestival, and many, many showers to get the fish smell out of her hair. But as she was preparing to leave for home, the dragon ghoul had found out about a new 'obstacle course' being set up for anyone to use. Intrigued, she went to go look at it and even after the brief explanation given by the ToT Recruiter,she honesty though the festival was a cake walk compared to this.

She could already see that there was fire, There was lots of fire. Fire fire and more fire. The amount of fire around was very discouraging. Sure she was a dragon, but her element was water, not fire.

Even so, as insane as this course seemed to be, Poke was not one to miss a chance to show just how much of a bad a** she could be. She signed the papers, taking the sticker and placing it on her shirt front.

Now, onto the actual course!

Stepping up to the first obstacle, She stood there briefly thinking about how she would tackle it, then suddenly jumped as she was shot at, followed by some voices shouting insults at her. She would have enjoyed pummeling them, but she became to distracted by the feeling of intense heat coming up from behind-

"OH SWEET SALLY ON A JACKING PUMPKIN WHAT THE ******** wasted no time in starting the course, seeing as the wall of fire was making sure she woudl continue. And since it was coming towards her it made for a great motivator in jumping over the hurdles.

After the last hoop was cleared, Poke stopped for a second to catch her breath, and looked up to see there was...bombs. Lots of bombs.

Lots of Exploding Bombs

And, as evil and utterly crap this place looked, she couldn't help but feel a twinge of excitement at trying to get past this one.

Why?

Cause dam, it looked cool. Like she was in some sort of action movie.

She started off with a sprint, quickly diving for cover as a bomb went over her head, and she shimmed across the ground to escape a few more before jumping to her feet and running again to get past some others. More ducking, weaving and jumping insured, and then with one last dive and roll across the ground, she had cleared the third obstacle.

An obstacle course, set up just outside the school in town? With nothing better to do Sammy made her way towards the course with a slight bounce in her step, nothing better then running through a course to kill time and distract her from school and personal issues.

When she arrived she spotted other students and strangers milling about as Noxious Firth passed out pins for each racer. The moment it hit her she felt something insider her sputter out, as if a little part of her FEAR was locked away. Of course he explained it was to keep natural abilities from giving people an edge. "Well that shouldn't be a bother. Only thing I do naturally is lack a need to sleep."

So without further thought she made her way to the starting line, hurdles it seemed would be the first tas-

They burst into flames.

The hurdles are now on fire. Fire. On Fire. Right now.

A shot whizzed past and she could barely make out a few gnomes sitting in the distance shouting insults. "YOU LITTLE HALF SIZED JACK DAMN PIECE OF SH-" Another shot caused her to stumble back a bit swearing all the more, wait was it getting hotter behind her?

"Oh Jack...." She turned around to face the slow moving wall of fire. This was not going to end well. Stuck between flaming hurdles, Gnome bullets, and a slow moving wall she picked option A.

Run like the wind and pray to Jack she didn't end up on fire like with Death Wing during the Christmas Field trip...

Of course natural FEAR being repressed didn't mean it would repress her natural fear of fire. Sprinting for the hurdles she felt as almost if she had a lump in her throat, or something, wasn't that what Siddie called it when she got nervous and choked up a bit? OH SWEET JACK FIRE HURDLE JUMP!

Yup that must be what its like, OH GOD MORE HURDLES JUMP!

Each jump was accompanied with a wild flail of her arms and a yelp as the flames nearly licked her cold dead skin. She made it though, no thanks at all to the gnomes still taking pot shots.

"I SWEAR WHEN I'M DONE I'M GOING TO KILL YOU GNOMES!!!!!"

Of course as soon as she said this she noticed the flaming hoops and realized getting this 'done' was going to be a lot harder then she first thought.

Okay this part wasn't even right. The gnomes didn't even bother to shoot now simply choosing to point and laugh at students and random runners who crossed into the living minefield. Well no, not a mine field. More like a whirlwind of fire, death, and destruction.

Something about this though caused Sammy to pause for a moment stumbling slightly as she neared the edge. Her whole body seemed to shake but she couldn't place why. The sounds of the bombs exploding as they crashed against each other, against other people. It all sent shivers down her spine that she couldn't quite place.

Well she could worry about that later; her current goal was to survive and strangle the gnome who made a remark about her being a 'no good meat bag' and something about 'demons crap better turds then you.'

So without further delay Sammy charged into the flaming bomb hole screaming something intangible, but most likely just a long series of swears broken up by the phrase Jack as she ran through.

Of course by some divine luck she managed to follow the three D's. Duck, Dip, Dodge, and made it through the whirl wind of chaos that was the minibombs. Rolling out of the chaos on the far side she stumbled to her feet sprinting for the lake... of lava. Great. Lava lakes, today couldn't get any worse could it?

[STAGE 1]

Muka happily accepted his sticker though the sudden shutdown of his sense of smell was something he couldn't get used to no matter how many times he attended something put on by Amityville. He made sure to tuck his wings close when the organizer warned him about flying.

A zing of bullets just cemented the warning. He flinched, never having been fond of guns, and continued until he was surrounded by flames. As a bird he didn't like fire very much but like anything, he understood the need for it. He wasn't afraid of the flames but he held his limbs close and eyed everything warily as he prepared to tackle the hurdles. Running and jumping were NOT a strong suit for the strix.

He didn't run but used his long strides to vault himself over the hurdles. he extended his wings but instead of flapping them, used them to glide just a tad over each flaming obstacle. He arrived at the end unscathed though a perspiration was starting to build from the heat.

Stage One!

Gargantuan didn't know much about obstacles and courses. Obstacles were things to eat, and courses... Well, Gargantuan didn't even know what that word meant. But that was okay! And then the nice looking man let him scribble all over a piece of paper, and gave him a sticker! In the monster's mind, this was already one of the Best Days Ever.

Hex mumbled something about powers and things, and G had to beam a little. Maybe if he ate the obstacles, he'd become a super monster! That's what the prize had to be! Grinning from ear to ear while he shifted on his crocodile-like feet, the beast approached the first obstacles. They were tall, weird things... and they were on fire.

Gargantuan didn't know if one could eat fire. Fire was hot! And if his sensitive ears heard right, there was fire behind him, too! Not good. On top of it all, that's when the guns starting firing, and Gargantuan somehow managed to make a very tiny squeak despite his enormous size. He didn't like this already!

"G not a princess!" The behemoth wailed in protest, but there was no time for that now. If he didn't move, the icky fire wall behind him was going to get too close! Squaring his shoulders, the monster charged directly at the hurdles--not realizing that one was supposed to jump over them to succeed.

A side of fried monster, anyone? Extra crispy, just like Mama used to make...