𝘗𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘰𝘳 ~ [𝘋𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘥 𝘹 𝘖𝘊]

⇒ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀ ᴛᴇɴ

Mr Campbell was back. Because of course he was. Things in this place couldn't stay nice without something coming and ruining it, could they? Upon his arrival, he'd discovered that our platypus mascot had laid eggs, so now the kids were being parents for a day and taking care of them. Fucking brilliant. This wouldn't cause any arguments at all.

"Alright, bonus activity day." I informed the kids wearily. The whole group, including Cameron, Gwen and David were assembled outside the Mess Hall. "I'm sorry you guys are going to have to work on a Saturday, but Mr Campbell can legally fire me if I don't carry out his wishes so..." I trailed off.

"Whoa, whoa, don't go around calling it work! We don't need any child labour allegations... Again." I hate it here. "This doesn't count as overtime either."

"Why are you making us do this?" Max threw his hands in the air.

"I'm sorry, not my choice." I muttered. Gwen nodded in agreement at my words.

"Well you see, Mitchell," Cameron began, getting the kid's name wrong, "These eggs are far too valuable to let some dumb animal take care of."

"But that's the fucking point, aren't we disrupting the natural order taking its offspring from it?" I made sure to use the phrase natural order in and attempt to get David on side.

"The USCA is really cracking down on bio security, so if any 'government official' asks, this is just an innocent camp activity with these eggs we just happened to find." I bet ten dollars he was going to sell these eggs for profit.

"We ddi just happen to find them." Nikki pointed out. She wasn't wrong.

"Exactly." He winked knowingly.

"Mr Campbell, what's so special about these eggs anyway?" Gwen arched an eyebrow, shifting her weight to aid in holding the box containing them.

"Well, between you and me, there's a bit of unrest back in Thailand." He leant over to my co-workers and I. Of course, how could I forget, he'd managed to become the Prime Minister of that country through winning a game of cards. "Some ridiculous accusation of me embezzling all their money. You know, the usual."

"Did you embezzle all their money?" I had a pretty decent guess the answer was yes.

"Anyway," He laughed nervously, "The Russians are offering to help out, but you never want to be in debt to those guys, so I'm trying to take care of things myself by selling off these bad boys." He gestured to the eggs.

"So you're making a load of impressionable and naive kids take care of them for you whilst threatening your employees with job termination if you don't enforce it?" I summed up the situation. I over-exaggerated the impressionable and naive part for effect. "Sounds pretty illegal to me, you scheming fuck." I added for good measure.

"Avery!" David gasped in shock, looking at me with a grain of disappointment. Oh yeah, forgot he looked up to the guy like a mentor.

"Are platypus babies really that valuable?" Neil asked skeptically having overhead our conversation.

"They better be..." Sick of listening to him, I elected to split the kids up into pairs.

"Alright camperinos, you'll be working in twos to look after these eggs!" David narrated as I moved along. It ended up with Ered and Dolf; a neutral match, Preston and Nurf; this could probably go wrong, Neil and Space kid; this would go wrong, Nerris and Harrison; this would definitely go wrong and Max and Nikki. Maybe the last two would be okay. I watched Space kid take Neil's hand gently with a gleam in his eyes. The Science nerd wrenched it free immediately.