BLITZ JUMPED, DUCKED, SLID, AND SLIPPED away from deadly, spiked logs. One might believe she was superhuman, but she wasn’t. She was born to be a ninja, and fourteen years was expected to be long enough to perfect your skills. Blitz leapt over a suspended log, but not without scraping her boot. She took a split second to curse, which nearly cost her a life as shower of arrows rained down. Blitz narrowly escaped only to be met with a fire-breathing statue. She stumbled on with no time to recover, when seventy tons of boulders crashed in front of her, forming a tall wall.

Great.

Blitz tried to scale the rocks, but they had been baking in the sun. She recoiled from the hot surface, causing more stones to tumble. Blitz looked around for an escape route, but to both sides were spikes and behind was fire. Blitz was buried within a second, trying hard not to cry from the dust, weight, and heat.

Footsteps crunched on the gravel. The face of Rhea, the commander, appeared.

“Two and a half minutes before failing, almost a personal record,” Rhea snarled. “And now I have to get you another boot. That log was obviously a side-roll one. What were you thinking, jumping over it?”

“Um…maybe ‘Ah! There is a deadly piece of wood blocking my way! I’m about to crash into it and die! I think I can jump it, but will it work? I don’t know, and I don’t care, because this exceptionally long spike is about to skewer me!’”

Rhea turned her nose up. “Idiot,” she said, turning on her heel and walking out. Apparently, that was all she could think to say. Rhea was known for her looks, not her mind.

Truthfully, Blitz didn’t see what was so beautiful about Rhea. All Blitz could see was a tiny brain, a giant EGO, and a mouth coated with of lipstick.

Beauty in Blitz’s world was rather useless, at least in Blitz’s practical mind. To her, the most makeup can do is temporarily blind opponents with powder. Of course, you can also apply so much lotion or whatever that poison would be ineffective, but there’s plenty of better and less slimy salves for that use.

The ninja world doesn’t have makeup anyway, but Rhea’s spent so much time in the mortal world, the fashion is getting to her. It was around the time of the Major Recruiting that the uniform changed into a more “stylish” suit (translation: an impractical, uncomfortable, and expensive suit whose main purpose is to be shiny). Blitz really didn’t know how the human world worked, though it certainly seemed to have plenty of sparkling shiny things. Blitz didn’t know how she got to the ninja world in the first place, and she didn’t seem to have been born there. But Qwynn, her friend, had been born on the human world, and was personally recruited by Rhea at age four.

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“I swear, everybody turned their heads when they saw her,” Qwynn had said. But when Blitz asked how she got in the ninja world, Qwynn started to mumble things like, “It probably had to do with string theory and quantum chromodynamics and stuff.” But she never really said where she went. Or how she traveled. Blitz was really starting to doubt if Qwynn really remembered the recruiting at all.

But that didn’t matter right now, because Blitz was buried under a pile of rocks.

Qwynn stood over her friend, laughing at the short exchange of words. “You should have seen the look on Rhea’s face! Aw, man. She’s going to kill you, you know.”

Blitz smiled awkwardly. “Um, a little help here?”

Qwynn stopped giggling. “Right. Of course.” She wrapped her hand in her shirt and carefully lifted the boulders, one by one. When enough had been moved she reached for Blitz.

“Thanks,” Blitz said, dusting herself off.

“Don’t mention it.” Qwynn plucked a pebble out of her hair. “By the way, Rhea’s the idiot. You know that, don’t you?”

Qwynn had a habit of saying things completely off topic. Blitz had gotten used to it, but she still hesitated a moment before replying. “Well, she did get something right. That was a side-roll log. And I am the worst one in the first rank.”

Qwynn opened her mouth to argue, but Blitz put a finger over her friend’s mouth. “Admit it. I am the worst one. You passed through the arena in less time I took to fail!”

Qwynn knocked Blitz’s finger from her lips. “I’m not going to argue. But you really overreact sometimes. And you are a first ranker.” This time it was Qwynn’s turn to silence Blitz. “C’mon. Let’s get out of this filthy arena.” They set off to the gladiator gates, chatting as they walked. Qwynn changed the subject. “Did you hear about the attempted stealing? Happened right here, in the Kor.”

This was not a surprise. The five tribes always stole from one another. “Let me guess. Arth?”

Qwynn shrugged. “Probably. Couldn’t get a good look at the ninja though. She ran too fast. Wonder what she was trying to take?”

“Likely just formation papers or a stronghold map. Maybe for revenge. Sliver stole from them last time, remember?” By now the two had arrived at the gates. At first glance, they looked like the last place someone would willingly enter. A jagged outline of a three-headed bird, each one consuming a human, was carved with alarming detail. Blitz marched through without hesitation, long used to the spectacle.

Blitz and Qwynn entered a cold, stone corridor, lit by old-fashion torches. The immediately stopped talking. The stone had an eerie effect of echoing everything by a thousand times. Their boots clicked loudly on the floor.

Their next class was weaponry, where they fought surprisingly-hi tech VR versions of ninjas, swiping and killing as many as possible. Blitz had only been involved in one real war, but the VR came close enough. If you died in VR, well, you’ll be as good as dead in real life. The two were almost at the doorway when something stopped them.

Few things can stop two ninjas, if you think about it. Even fewer can make their blood run cold. But there is one universal way of sending pure terror into anyone’s veins.

That thing is a scream.

Blitz and Qwynn needed only a glance at each other they sprinted off in the direction of the scream, praying that they weren’t running into their deaths.