(Adam's POV)

“What is this?” I asked, ripping a poster off of a wall. I uncrumpled it and read the heading: 35th Monthly 'Hunger Games' Competition. It showed some guy with a hoodie and a diamond sword slung over his shoulder grinning at the camera. The caption was: Can anybody beat the reigning champion, Mitch Hughes?

“Okay, I've lived in this town since I was born, and I've never heard of a Hunger Games competition,” Seto said, reading the poster over my shoulder.

Quentin looked over at us. “Probably because they started it only about three years ago.” He narrowed his black, pupiless eyes at Seto. “People who actually pay attention to what goes on in their town apart from robberies would know about this.”

“There's a Hunger Games competition?” Jerome asked suddenly. He fingered the ax I had found earlier that morning; it wasn't hard to guess what he was thinking.

“Focus, guys,” Ty said, although he didn't sound as tense as usually did. Ever since he had gotten back from wherever he had gone that day, he had seemed much more relaxed. “We don't have time for something like that if we're going to be fighting the squids.”

“Who said anything about fighting them?” Jason asked, sounding surprised.

Ty raised his eyebrows. “And if we just leave them alone without going in for the kill, they won't go in for the kill on humanity?” There was an uncomfortable silence.

Jerome cleared his throat. “So... if we're doing something like that, we'll need practice, right?”

“I just said that we didn't have any time for that,” Ty told him. His shirt collar slipped down but, oddly enough, he didn't readjust it. I narrowed my eyes. He had been so defensive of his gills before; why would he just suddenly not care?

“So we're going to charge in blindly to some underwater lab with no prep whatsoever?” Quentin asked. “Yeah, great idea.”

“I hate to say this, but Quentin has a point,” Seto said. “None of us have any real experience with Person versus Person. Besides, its UNDERWATER. Think, Ty: How would we breathe? Quentin would be fine, and Jason's suit might work, but what about the rest of us? We're going to need to stay on land anyways to figure out how to make that work. We might as well join the Hunger Games.” I agreed with him; and besides, no way would a group short of eight even have a hope.

Ty sighed. “Fine,” he decided. “You win. Jerome can go enter the Hunger Games and lose to Michael Hunter or whatever his name is. In the meantime, I will be trying to figure out how to make an attack work.”

“His name is Mitch Hughes,” Jerome told him.

“Do you think I care?” Ty asked. “He's probably some stuck-up dude who happens to be good with a sword.”

“Wait, this isn't like the actual Hunger Games, is it?” Jason asked nervously. I looked over at him; he was rubbing Dillon so hard that I was amazed his ears were still on. “I mean, if Jerome loses, he won't die, will he?”

“No, it's nothing like that,” Quentin said quickly. “It's a large, free-for-all arena, and everybody chooses one weapon before starting that they use the entire game. The weapons are blunted, too, so nobody can even draw blood. Every 'tribute' is given a necklace of wire, and when the wire breaks, they're out of the game. And...” he launched into a lengthy explanation of how everything was set up and how there was a fair and a whole bunch of stuff I didn't really pay attention to. I rolled my own amulet in between my fingers, watching as the gemstone filtered the sunlight and turned my gloves purple. I wondered what it was; it looked like amethyst, but I seriously doubted that amethyst would have any reaction with 'butter' at all.

“Thank you, Quentin,” Ty said, cutting him off. “But we really need to find a place to sleep for the night. This Hunger Games tournament isn't until tomorrow.”

“Right, sorry,” Quentin said quickly. “We can just... use my house,” he said. He led the way through the town until we were standing right outside of a house that was fairly big. I noticed that he stuck to back streets that nobody seemed to use; I was pretty sure it had to do with the fact that you don't normally see a mudkip, chewbacca, spaceman, and wanted criminal with two random dudes walking around town.

I noticed that instead of a lock, there was a scanning pad. “What's that?” I asked, pointing to it.

“It's a finger scanner,” Quentin told me, pressing a red button. “It only accepts the house owner's fingerprint as a key. All the town council members have these.” I was impressed; I hadn't even known that technology existed. Then again, I hadn't even known morphing technology had existed. The scanner turned blue and Quentin pressed his finger to it. We waited... waited... waited... and finally an electronic, female voice said,

“I'm sorry, but that is the wrong fingerprint. You have two more tries before the security system is activated.”

“What?” Quentin asked. He pressed the red button again and shoved his finger to it, waiting impatiently as the machine scanned it.

“I'm sorry, but that is the wrong fingerprint. You have one more try before the security system is activated.” Quentin punched the wall of his house.

“What the heck is wrong with this machine?” he asked, more to himself than any of us.

Jason bit his lip. “Uhm... Quentin...” He seemed to think that whatever he was going to say would be hitting a soft spot. “You're not... you don't have...”

Ty looked from Jason to Quentin. Whatever it was, he certainly knew. Then I realized: Quentin wasn't.... well, he wasn't human. If he had a fingerprint at all, it probably wasn't the same as it had been.

Quentin blinked and took a deep breath. “Right.” He turned back to us. “I guess this means that we'll have to find a hotel... and ask for a room for a bacca, mudkip, criminal, and astronaut.” The way he said made me pretty sure that it wouldn't be possible without some very awkward explaining.

Seto rolled his eyes. “What was that third thing you said? A criminal, right? Quentin, don't criminals get arrested for Breaking and Entering?” He shoved Quentin aside and examined the scanning panel. He pulled the entire front piece off, leaving a mess of wires. With a lot of fiddling which I couldn't even see, there was a click. Ty shoved the door cautiously and it swung open.

“How did you do that?” Quentin asked, staring at him in amazement. “It shouldn't have been that easy to crack without prior experience.”

“How do you think Bryce lost his gold?” Seto asked, stepping in. Quentin blinked, as if realizing what that meant. I stepped past him and into the house.

Jerome followed close behind, and he said in some extremely dumb accent, “So this is what Earthling Houses look like.” Jason laughed and I couldn't help grinning, too.

“No, Fluffy,” I corrected him, “This is what Fish Houses look like.”

“I'm not a fish!” Quentin shouted.

“They're raw, right?” he said. “I can't stand cooked fish.”

“Sushi for days,” I told him, and we both started laughing. I realized just how strange this entire setup was: I was joking about a mudkip-human hybrid with a chewbacca while in the hybrid's house that a wanted criminal who had given me a necklace that let me understand squids had broken into so a bunch of people who were trying to destroy morphing technology could spend the night. Put that in any other context and you'd be extremely confused.

“Can we just go to sleep so Jerome can enter whatever it is tomorrow?” Ty asked, sounding tired.

“The guest rooms are upstairs,” Quentin told us. Seto was the first one up the stairs, followed closely by Jason. Dillon was wide awake and flying right over his head. Jerome followed, faking a yawn, the bags and ax from earlier left in a pile at the front door. I went up one step when I realized that Ty wasn't behind me.

“You coming, Ty?” I asked.

He looked at Quentin before looking back at me. “Yeah, I'll be up soon.” I shrugged and continued up the steps.

(Ty's POV)

The first thing I did when Adam's figure had disappeared was turn to Quentin. “You're not very good at hiding that,” I told him.

“Hiding... hiding what?” he asked, but I was fairly sure he already knew.

“The fact that you're ashamed you have a tail and a fin and your skin is blue.” It sounded harsh, even to me, but I didn't apologize. I didn't need to.

Something in his eyes seemed to snap. “Yeah, I am,” he said. “How do you think Dan or Taylor or even Preston would react if one day I walked into the office with a giant fin coming out of my butt?”

“That's not the point,” I said. “The point is you can't just hide in your house for the rest of your life. Eventually the town council is going to wonder where you are, and when that happens it'll just be harder on you.”

“But you don't know what it's like,” Quentin said. “You don't know what it's like feeling different. It's not like the squids have done anything to you.”

“You might want to double check that,” I said, looking away.

He blinked. “What?”

I reached my hand up and pulled down the collar of my shirt. I got a little thrill for some reason as they touched air, like I was going swimming again. I mentally shook it off.

Quentin peered at my neck. “Are those... but you have...” he looked me in the eyes.

“Gills?” I asked. “Yeah.” I let my hand drop and readjusted my collar.

“Well, you're no weirder than the rest of us,” he said, but his tone of voice had changed.

I nodded. “Just keep... keep that in mind,” I told him before heading up the stairs. Quentin didn't say anything, but I had the feeling that my point had gotten across.