The Ranch

Fairytale Maze (10)

Tug enter the cage and princess-carries the two dolls outside. Job completed, he looks for candy he has yet to try.

Theodore rushes over and lift Hansel up. He thinks for a second," One-fourteen." He picks up the other one to measure," Ninety-three."

"You sure?" Kai questions.

Theodore nods," Trust me."

Kai frowns at those words, but he doesn't refute. They don't have the time or leisure to argue.

With the question of weight solved, everyone starts dumping the small pile of food into the caldron. After it's all entered, the scale shows [186].

Knowing they're underweight, everyone starts a mad dash to hunt for more food. Even Basile gets caught up in the atmosphere and starts searching. Tih continues leisurely stuffing faces with sweets, slowly appreciating the handmade candy.

The Hansel and Gretel were ditched by the others. They're now lying against the wall, near Tih. He listens to the soft ticking sounds while he chews when it suddenly stops.

He wants to investigate the dolls the the sound of the door banging open draws his attention, along with everyone else.

The Witch enters and everyone freezes. The ugly looking lady opens her mouth and a gratingly sweet voice asks," Is my meal ready?"

Everyones surprised that she can talk and more-so, it seem very realistic. Slightly surprised by this new information and the sudden intrudance, it takes a second for anyone to react.

"Uh, that's..." Kai tries to think of ways to stall time. They're not prepared and they know the pot doesn't have enough weight to it to pass the scenario. Theodore and Pierre carefully block the view of the pot from in front of the counter.

While the others are nervously watching the witch Basile turns his back on witch towards the caldron. After a moment he turns back," It's ready."

"Oh goody!" The witch claps her wrinkly hands together. Her long yellow fingernails click together. The group turns to look at Basile like he just caused their downfall.

The witch walks over, dragging her robe across the floor. Others quickly make way for her, trying to keep as much distance as possible. They end up switching positions with witch.

They watch in apprehension as the witch takes out a wooden spoon. She scoops up some liquid and slurps it. Immediately afterwards, she shows an absolutely disgusted expression. After all, they were dumping in random foods together. When would they have time to remember the taste of the soup?

The witch screeches curses at the group, becoming crazy and infuriated in the blink of an eye.

She starts coming after them, so the group madly shuffles out the door. The witch throws her spoon like a dagger toward the escaping group.

Just when it was about to hit, Hansel moves in the way and blocks it while Gretel starts to fight the witch to buy some time.

The group quickly exit the house and see an open passage. "This way!" Victors directs them in. They all run through the corridor

Witch screeching can be heard coming from inside the house, along with things breaking. Soon enough, the witch comes out of the house and chases after them, into the corridor

"They can leave the scenario?!" Pierre yells, confused.

Sherlock huffs between words," The corridor opened, so we solved the scenario. My guess, they're multiple solutions."

Victor, who has better endurance, takes over,"I see. The combination of food we put in isn't edible so the witch doesn't consider it a meal. So although it technically counts as a solution, it wasn't the true correct answer."

"If we wanted to have the correct solution, the meal would have had to taste good." Sherlock speaks between breaths. If it were not for their parkour training, he would not have been able to keep up with the aces.

When they first entered the scenario, Sherlock hypothesized that they needed to put a certain amount of food in the caldron. This wasn't wrong, but was only half the answer. At the end of the day, a hypothesis is just an educated guess.

The boys run head-first into corridor, the witch seems to be a little faster than them and is slowly gaining on the group. Just then, something shifts and the corridor slowly starts closing on its sides, tightening the space they can walk through.

Eventually, they have to run in a single-file line. Up ahead Victor notices the path splits in two. The first five people head down the left corridor, but the sixth person in line turned back to check the situation and didn't get to see which way they went.

With no time to contemplate, he heads down the right path and everyone else follows. The witch comes to split pathway but before she can choose one walls spring up to block her.

Hearing the mechanical sound of the metal bushes scraping together, everyone pauses and turns around. They notice their entrance has been closed off and the corridors are no longer closing in on themselves.

They all take a break to catch their breath and look around. The people in Kai's group had it the worst, as they had to keep up with the five aces' speed.

Kai looks around but immediately frowns,"...Tih? TIH!"