Celeste~
I moved myself further towards the centre ring I knew the star of the show would be inside. "Oh hey it's you from last time, come back for round two?" The man standing with his group of friends joked with me. I laughed it off but nothing was really funny, I barely made it out last time and even though I held my own in the short time, I knew that if It had continued it would not have worked out in my favour.
I had a nice position at the front of the stage, close enough to see all of the action.
For some reason I was so nervous to see him, I don't know if it was because it was the first time I was reaching out or because of the situation at hand but my heart was racing. The energy in the room didn't help either and just added to my apprehension.
"Caspian! Caspian! Caspian!" They all cheered for him, urging him to come out of the changing rooms once the door opened just slightly. He walked out, topless as expected and made his way to the centre of the ring. He put on a show for the audience and he usually did, hands in the air and flexing his muscles in all the right ways he was absolute perfection. The position within the crown that I was once happy with quickly changed to feelings of wanting to escape. It was at this moment that I realised that his field of view would be in my direction, he would definitely see me. It was too late to go back now and it would only make things weirder if I left. Hopefully, he remained preoccupied with the audience and the fight enough to not see the white haired girl in the front rows.
"Andddd give it up for Caspian!" The crowd cheered even louder after that one, Caspian opened the water bottle that he'd grabbed from the floor and poured it all over himself, feeding into what the crowd wanted. The droplets surfed down the smooth cuts of his muscles and it highlighted them in a way that made him look angelic under the lights above him. His blue and red eyes glinted under them giving him the most spine-chilling appearance that somehow just managed to make you want to drop your panties even more. What was wrong with me.
"Jemar! Jemar! Jemar!" They called for who I assumed was his opponent this time though it was nowhere near as loud as the way they were shouting for Caspian beforehand. When he was done and all soaked he shook off his hair and looked into the crowd.
His blue and red eyes pierced through mine as he made eye contact with me. It was subtle but I noticed a pause in his demeanour before he continued preparing for the fight.
The look just made me even more nervous than before but I had to move on from it. His opponent exited from the changing rooms into the ring. He was tall and lean but still had muscle, he had a short brown buzz cut that glowed against his skin the same way his golden brown eyes did. It was weird to say but I'd never seen such a brown brown before.
He didn't do the same theatrics that Caspian did, probably because he knew that the crowd was not here for him but for Caspian instead. That made me wonder how he even got into this position in the first place, don't get me wrong he absolutely looked like he was meant to be here with his tattoos and dangerous demeanour but I didn't know him to be a person of high status. They were usually the ones to engage in fights like this where there was a limit to how much someone like Caspian, who would rather have the trust of higher-ups, would hurt them. It also helped that nobody could blame them for losing the fight because he was trained through and through to be a weapon.
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Was he chosen randomly like I was or did he sign up for this, I couldn't think of any reasonable reason as to why any normal person was but maybe that was it, he wasn't normal.
I noticed again that Caspian took one last look at me before the round began.
"Three!, Two!, One!, Begin!" They really didn't waste any time, did they. Immediately Caspian and Jemar began sparring in the ring, they were throwing blasts after blasts of power at each other until Caspian eventually won. It was a bloody, gory fight but the crowd that was in here enjoyed it to the fullest. They both left the ring, Jemar with some assistance from someone and Caspian by himself back into the changing rooms.
I decided to walk over there and wait outside the door since people were leaving now that Caspian was done.
He was in there for about ten minutes until he came out. “Ah, Celeste, to what do I owe the pleasure, come back for round two?” He laughed as he taunted me. More importantly, he was way too upbeat to have known anything about the conversation I just had because if he did I doubted he would be smiling so much, I think he noticed something in my expression that said not today because soon after he said, “What’s wrong, are you okay?”
“I need to talk to you, like right now.” He looked around, but there were only bunches of people waiting for him to come to them surrounding us.
He took my hand and brought me inside the changing room that he was just in and locked the door behind us. “What is it, what happened was it Anastasia again?”
“No, someone took me for an interrogation.” He stiffened.
“One of the practitioners?”
“First of all, you cannot tell anyone that we had this conversation, you need to promise me.” I was scared as hell that this was all gonna come back to me and I would be even worse off than I was now.
“I promise you no one will hear a word about what is said in this room today.” I guess that was all the reassurance I could get today.
“Yeah, one of them, they said that they have reason to believe that I have involvement with the Angels.”
“I see. What else?” I tried to read his face but he didn’t give off anything that I could grasp.
“They asked about my involvement with you, asked what our conversations had been about.”
“And did you answer?” He replied to that one very quickly, I could tell exactly what he didn’t want to hear.
“No, I didn’t tell them. I asked if it was necessary and they just advised me that I should listen but, I didn’t, it was personal, I told him this.”
He let go of the breath that he was holding in and sighed. “I don’t think anything is gonna happen to you, you’re obviously not conspiring with the Angels that’s ridiculous they’ll know that soon though.”
“What do you mean by that.”
“There was obviously more to me ‘protecting’ you than just me harming you before the attacks. Because of who my parents are and who I am I have close ties with people who are valued in this society, I know a lot. I heard that the Angels are beginning to harvest the powers of those they can get and effectively use for themselves, that’s why it’s so different. It’s no longer random or political attacks but targeted ones. We don’t know the criteria for who they want to take but we know that they can’t use just anyone. After the attack, I got a few names that they were interested in, yours was one of them. I don’t know what it is about you that makes your power so desirable but they want it, and bad. That’s all I know.”
Well fucking hell that was something for sure.
“Okay, so somewhere along the lines they must have misinterpreted what they had found?”
“Yes, for sure but that’s not an issue. They will find out by tonight I presume if they don’t already know. It may well be that they just wanted to cover all corners and find out some information about us in the process. These are trained people, whatever you may have seen or whatever emotions they make have presented to you in the room could all be a lie.”
“He was really angry in there.”
He smiled, he seemed more relaxed now that he knew everything. “Yeah, there’s very few things a simple student could do to irritate a whole institution, even if you were the Angels’ number one comrade they have more than enough resources to take you out, it wouldn’t affect them that badly they’ve dealt with this before.”
“Okay. So there’s nothing I need to worry about?”
“Not at all, you’re good.”