Preliminaries

People started flocking into the venue and soon, I heard the sound of trumpets blaring signaling the arrival of a very important group of people.

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Everyone that was attending quieted down and their attention was averted to the box seating, where there was a man in rather extravagant robes that was signaling for everyone to silence.

" Thank you, everyone, for attending here today. We will soon begin a tradition that has been around for as long as this country has experienced peace. We are here to witness the strength and ferocity of the current protectors of this kingdom and the human race as a whole, as well as the budding new prodigies that will soon shoulder this mantle for themselves. Before we begin I would like to thank the participants for coming to demonstrate their strength today for our entertainment. We thank you for your cooperation and what you've done to assist in the protection of our people, and our country. I also, with great pleasure would like to present to you all, a recent development made by our kingdoms royal magic research and development team, the projector. This device allows us to show a recording of the events it witnesses and project them to other places in real time. This would allow us to show this very competition to the entirety of the kingdom, and reduce the time between us witnessing these wonderful events to yearly as they are held."

A mixture of gasps and cheers rose from the as they understood the implications of such a wonderful invention. From the reaction of the crowd, I discerned people really love these competitions.

" Yes, Yes, we know this news is very exciting, but I do believe that it is important to be here supporting the participants that have chosen to participate now. Without further ado I would like to announce the competition shall now commence."

With that the man turned and sat back down. I noticed that there were only four people of the seven sitting in the chairs there. One was occupied by the man that was speaking, the other was a woman, to the woman's left there sat a girl that seemed to be an adult and the man had a boy to his left that seemed a little younger than the girl.

" Who are they?" I asked Eric, since he was from a reputable family, I figured he would know the big shots.

" You seriously don't recognize the king of our country?" He asked seeming surprised.

" And when would I have ever seen him? Need I remind you I don't know anything beyond five months ago?"

" Point taken, but you surely must have guessed by the seating. He is literally sitting on a throne right now."

Looking back at the family, I noticed the chairs were very luxurious and did in fact look an awful lot like a throne.

" You have a point, I suppose." I muttered

All of the Schools were then called to the stage. Each was called individually and they were greeted with cheers. When we were called the Guildmaster was in front followed by Miss Himeko, and Talfa behind him, then us children behind them. This was how it was for every school, not that it mattered much.

All of the student were required to wear their uniforms and I could see that each school was given a color to accent their uniforms. Haven had gold, Providence was purple, Fort Atlas was silver, Elysium was brown, Origins was blue, Remnant was red, Scotland was green, and Pride was Orange.

It was decided that the physical competition would go first then the magic would go second, the elite going last. They decided this order by way of a coin toss. The competition would work in a rather interesting way. There were two rounds, the preliminary and the individual combat matches.

All the participants who were participating were then called to the center, while everyone not participating were asked to move to the edges of the arena. The ones that were participating positioned themselves ear the middle of the grounds. Once everyone was where they were supposed to be, the ground shook and a circle around us sunk into the ground Like it had been cut by an invisible blade. Then the land rose, as yellow barrier shot up around the entire arena and turned clear once it had completed.

" The rules for this round are simple. You goal is to knock all of your opponents off the island by any means available to you. The arena will get smaller every five minutes the round goes unfinished. This barrier prohibits the use of magic, any magic that one attempts to use will be immediately nullified and they will be removed for cheating. Team up with friends or go it alone your choice, just don't fall. The round will end when there are sixteen of you left."

" Combatants ready yourselves ... Begin!"

I was near the edge of the area as I was still a little nervous about the whole competition and saw no reason to place myself in the middle. As soon as Begin resounded I found someone running at me with reckless abandon probably trying to take me out early because I was an easy target. His thought process was actually a decent idea because most people would be so disoriented by the spontaneity of the whole situation he probably would have been fine. Unfortunately him, I am simply too fast. I dodged just barely out of his way and with a sweep to his leg and his built up momentum he flew right off the side. Truly a shame.

A few people had been victims of such attacks some managed to get out of the way others fell, and a few managed to turn the situation around on their attackers. I looked around and noticed that none of my friends had fallen yet. However, a quick count told me six people weren't so lucky. I looked over to the others who were near me and we regrouped. Might as well work as a team.

We came up with a simple strategy, Lyric Tanya and I are all pretty fast, Gram and Eric are pretty sturdy so we split into two teams. Gram and Lyric will do the initial attacks and draw the attention of our opponents and we'll attack from behind and launch them off the island. A simple but effective plan, which we got to test not long after.

Lyric, Tanya, and I created one group and made some distance between us and Gram and Eric. We would do some light fighting so we seemed less suspicious, as keeping an eye on your surrounding was imperative for this, we were always moving and covering the backs of the other two while hiding in plane sight, or at least that was the plan. After the initial chaos everyone seemed to team up with the others from their school if they were still in the fight, royally screwing over our initial plan of using the chaos of a brawl to cover our attacks. The Green and Red school got completely screwed in the first part as they only had three members at the end, they knew they themselves were screwed because they could see everyone's eyes lock onto them like a bunch of hungry wolves.

Once everyone got into groups no one moved and a brief silence descended with a silent pressure, each group anticipating the actions of the others. suddenly a high pitched war cry resounded and I saw Anabelle rocket from her group toward one near her and the chaos commenced, three groups had gone after the weaker teams, and gold was caught in a battle blue and as it stood we were in the clear. Everyone was fighting around us and we just kind of stood there. We moved a safe distance, keeping ourselves as out of sight which wasn't too terribly difficult since we had no intention of joining. We just stood there, our group was dangerously close to the edge but we were officially out of the battle. One guy saw us standing there, so he ran at us, but Gram and Eric stopped him and threw him towards lyric, who wasn't overly prepared, kicked him towards Tanya. The air combo continued as she grabbed him by the foot and chucked him towards me. With a expertly placed, dodge from me, he flew over my head and rolled off the stage.

The fighting started getting more hectic as the groups started to converge on the center to keep them from falling as easily, Red and green had teamed up to fend of their attackers, and blue was almost completely destroyed by gold, everyone was struggling, but us of course since we had practically been forgotten. Eventually the brawl started to clear when they realized they were too far from the edge to actually knock anyone more off, and at this point they were just wasting energy. There was a stand off between the people in the center while they tried to figure out what to do next to win but not put themselves in jeopardy, Finally someone noticed we were missing.

I noticed someone looking towards us so I waved with a big smile on my face, the others saw what I was doing and thought I was weird, but once they saw where I was waving too they understood and at once they decided to join me. While we we full of smiles and giggles waving at our competition they were practically growling. The fighting had been pretty harsh, every last one of them had bruises and dirt on them they weren't looking very good. Haggard from the fighting, they now stood staring at these happy children with not a scratch on them gleefully waving at them.

The other children were enraged that they were taking this so seriously and we were just screwing around and many of the weak minded ones ran straight at us. We were expecting this, so as soon as the first wave came we acted quickly. Gram and Eric stopped the assault and Tanya Lyric and I quickly sprang into action surrounding them and corralling them into a small group. Once we made it around the back of the attack, Eric and Gram abandoned their position and we puched forward attacking them, and preventing their escape. The people started falling off one by one tripping over each other trying to push forward but a fist foot or sword would either halt there advance or knock them back into the crowd.

We were careless and as we finished the group that had attacked us another front slammed into the back of us. I was the first to be attacked and I warn the others before they were caught off guard. My opponent was a girl with a longsword, she attacked with a thrust that I managed to sidestep after I entered her guard she abandoned her sword and wet for a punch, I ducked, swept her leg and Grabbed her Arm. Spinning around I used her body as a shield against another attack that was coming towards me. The girl attempted to kick me, however the fist she got in the spine, prevented that. I threw her body and punched the gut who threw the punch in the kidney, and like that he crumpled. I dragged the injured to the edge and gently toss them down.

A person came up behind me and I tripped him while passing causing him to fall face first off the edge. The amount of people was dwindling fast and It wouldn't be long until this ended. I spent the rest of the time running around keeping my friends from falling off the edge. many of them could pretty much match my physical strength but I was way faster, so escaping was easy.

I helped get someone off Lyric, and from across our little battlefield I saw someone creep up behind Tanya, they grabbed her around her waist and pulled her backwards. The person I had in my hand, was then thrown over my shoulder and slammed into the ground before he was punted off the ledge. I made a mad dash towards Tanya and someone got in my way. I tried to skirt around him practically walking on a razors edge but he managed to push me, I quickly wrapped my tail around his wrist before he got too far from me and flipped myself over him jumping off the back of his head and pushing him off. My graceful landing shifted to a run again, but I couldn't make it in time the guy tried to throw her off but she clinged onto him instead taking him with her and spun in the air making him cushion her fall and she rolled off him hitting the floor.

"Match end" The ref called and I could see the tears in Tanya's eyes starting to form. She hit the floor last and the game was called immediately after, she totally thought that she hadn't made it. Most everyone else thought the same but there were only fifteen people on the island when she hit.

'Maybe my luck is rubbing off on people?' I thought to myself as a joke. I thought I should tell her because she would probably be really upset, but I also thought the look on her face would be wonderful if she found out last second, so I didn't.

The island was let down and we all converged and traveled back to the group. Tanya was on the verge of tears and it honestly made me sad. I looked at the others to see if any of them noticed, but they were all trying to console her so I doubt it.

I steeled myself to wait these agonizing five minutes, of looking at the pitiful Tanya until the brackets for the next part of the competition were finished. Looking at Tanya she actually looked like a vulnerable girl for once. Something I've learned from the few months we've spent together is Tanya's a tough cookie. She is a really sweet person, If anyone is ever in trouble she is one of the first people to offer assistance. She is determined to get stronger with everything she has and she is a really smart girl. She, lyric and I are the top three consistently, and considering that both me and lyric are not human, but she manages to keep up physically is rather impressive. Not to mention she isn't half bad with magic, it is her own hard work and dedication that has brought her to this point, and it is rather inspirational.

I've never seen Tanya cry, never have I seen her flinch, nor have I ever seen her sad. She can get mad and jumps when scared but she immediately resists in the most inspiring show of courage. Once she has her mind on a goal she never relents. She can be hotheaded, brazen, and stubborn, not always in a good way, but she definitely isn't weak. But if you stay around her long enough you start to realize that that impenetrable guise had its cracks. She tries to play super tough and she has the strength to back it up. But, no matter how hard she tries she has a sensitive frail side. Now she was sitting her head in her hands and tears faintly streaking down her face she seemed like a frail little girl, and her cute soft side was clearly showing now. I never realized just what this meant to her, or maybe it was the fact that she was so close but just failed at the last second, who knows really, but it got to her.

She looked over in my direction and when we made eye contact I nearly cracked. She looked like a mess. Her blond hair was all over the place from the fighting, so it was in disarray as it still framed her looking like a crazy a bit. Her eyes were read and puffy, and she was still fighting the tears that were pooling in the corner of her eyes. Her face which normally had a confident, almost cocky smirk, had broken and helped accentuate her more soft facial features, her eyes were a bit swollen and made her cheeks puff out a bit. Her bottom lip quivered, and she occasionally sniffled as she stared straight into my eyes with the most adorable puppy dog eyes, that were further enhanced by the fact she didn't realize the expression she was making. It was a sad kind of adorable, and I felt so bad, but I also didn't wasn't to ruin the moment. I did my best to sear the moment into my brain because chances are she would work even harder over this and I won't see such an expression ever again.

Just before I was about to walk over to cheer her up, our attention was caught by the match ups. I wasn't overly concerned so I made it to Tanya and gave her a hug, she had her eyes down not wanting to see the board and I wasn't paying attention when we heard Gram.

"Wait!? I'm fighting Tanya in the first round!? How!?" He sounded really confused and with his out burst everyone found the part he was talking about. Sure enough. The board read true.

[Tanya (Elysium)VS Gram (Elysium)]

Everyone voiced their confusion aside from me of course because I had noticed from the beginning. I just looked for my opponent. I was in the first match against someone from Haven.

" Alice you didn't seem overly surprised, when you found out Tanya was still in this." Julien said

I was still distracted by the name of my opponent so I let slip " Oh, I noticed there were only fifteen people on the area when it ended, Tanya was the sixteenth even if she fell off not even a second later."

" WHAT!" heard behind me, and I clamped my hands over my mouth.

I slowly turned around to look at the scary presence behind me, and I saw a really mad Tanya. She isn't mad I didn't tell her, but she is mad that I could have prevented her crying in front of everyone.

She had this vindictive glare and made a move to come after to me, so I made a quick retreat.

"WellwouldyoulookatthatmybattlesnextsorryIcan'tstaybutI'vegottogetintotheringbye." I then ran into the ring.

Looking back as I ran I yelled "Sorry Gram!" before I made it to the center.