We arrived back at our room with around an hour to prepare. I sat down onto my bed and took off my foot, still feeling slightly weird that I could actually do that, though I ignored the feeling. As Alex walked into the room, I threw my leg over to him.

I immediately regretted doing so. All the different ways in which that scenario could go wrong went through my mind. I cringed as I anticipated the thud of metal hitting the ground as Alex failed to catch my leg. There wasn’t a thud. My leg was suspended in the air like someone had hit the pause button on only the limb, as everything else was still moving.

“I would rather not be kicked in the face while entering a room,” Alex said, looking at the foot just millimetres away from hitting his nose, eyes glowing copper brown as his Legacy activated, making the leg glow as well, as the power took effect. “I might as well get on with it.”

The limb was stripped into its simplest elements, with even the outer shell and screws being separated. The fridge in the room began to glow as Alex stripped it for parts, leaving the cans on the floor where it used to be. The different segments almost flew around the room with seemingly a mind of their own, pieces from my leg, the fridge and components which Alex had brought with him flying from one of his draws. They assembled into tiny intricate mechanisms as well as larger pistons and other fragments you would find in something like a computer or any piece of machinery.

Using the parts from around the room, he reassembled my leg, which looked considerably different from how it started. It now had a blue bolt of lightning along one side and black metal everywhere else. It was just amazing.

Alex, with the remaining parts which he had not used, rebuilt the fridge with the cans back in it. It, unlike my new leg, surprisingly looked exactly the same as how it started, as I don’t think we were supposed to tamper with the equipment. Alex collapsed on his bed after this astounding feat of power, and my leg landed on my lap. Oliver, who had clearly seen Alex’s power in action before, strolled over to the fridge and threw Alex a can of soft drink. Alex caught the drink in one hand and downed it in one. He sat up.

“I believe I have sorted out the flaws in the design. It should work fine now,” he told me, sounding like he had just run two miles in less than fifteen minutes, which was understandable.

I picked up my newly upgraded limb and looked at it, bending the ankle to test that it still worked. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Alex’s craftsmanship, but due to the fact, it had been floating around in pieces seconds before and apparently used some parts of a fridge. I put it on. I felt a minute jolt of electricity, not enough to shock but still noticeable. I moved the ankle again, this time without my hands. It worked.

“Thanks for the new limb; hopefully, it’ll help me not fall over,” I thanked Alex.

“Very well-articulated Tom,” Matthew told us after checking his phone for the time, “But we probably should get going to the stadium as somebody,” He glared at Alex, “thought it would be a good idea to arrange a fight an hour in advance.”

“It was actually an hour and a half beforehand,” Alex retorted, “Though we probably should get going.”

***

We arrived at the stadium around the same time as the Legends. Both of our teams seemed underdressed. It was only the first day, and therefore, we didn’t have any appropriate uniform, only T-shirts and trousers. The only real sign we were about to fight were our weapons.

We stood just outside the main entrance of the stadium, weapons in hand. As we walked in, I had to give pause, as I didn’t expect what I was seeing. There was a crowd—not a very big crowd like the one at the team announcement ceremony, but bigger than I expected. The new students were there, as were a few of the older students. I’m pretty sure I even saw a couple of teachers.

“Why is there an audience?” I asked no one in particular. “Or, more importantly, how is there a crowd?”

“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a fight if no one watched,” Alex answered, “So I sent out a message on social media. Anyway, let's start the fight!”

My vision shifted. “OK, let’s set some ground rules! We have lessons tomorrow, so no serious maiming; a player’s out when their aura levels go below forty percent, and the winning team is the team with the most aura after an hour if the Legends can last that long,” Edward taunted in my body before swapping back, a slight northern accent shining through as he spoke.

Both teams went to opposite sides of the stadium to arrange tactics.

“So how are we going to win this?” Matt asked with his telepathy.

“What the…!” Oliver yelled out, flinching from the voice coming from seemingly nowhere.

“Matthew has telepathy,” I told him, unhelpfully, in my mind.

“I gathered that; also, what is that music?” Oliver replied out loud.

“Oliver, I think they’re trying to talk tactics with telepathy to make sure the other team can’t hear,” Alex explained. He was getting the hang of talking without talking remarkably well.

“Matthew, you take on Star since you can use your rune things to defend yourself against his fire. Oliver harras Lilly at range and try to tire her out,” I commanded, sending my team off to their duties. “Alex, Cassie needs to concentrate to use her power; use that to your advantage. I’ll go against…Uh… animal-girl-person. Emily! That was it.”

The rest of the team went to fight their assigned Legend, and I ran to Emily. Her grass-green eyes glowed with power, and she was clearly not expecting my greeting of “Hi” as she yelped, trying to attack me with her claws as I just suddenly appeared to the left of her. She missed, obviously, her red hair smacking her in the eyes from the sudden change in direction. She was fast, but I was faster. Her movements seemed to reflect what animal she was channelling; currently, she seemed to be channelling some kind of big cat. Her fighting style was fluid and more reactionary as she seemed to change animals depending on the situation. The only things she was able to hit were sparks of blue energy left in the wake of my Legacy. I tapped her on the shoulder and waved. Being annoying was fun.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Trying to knock her over, I aimed a well-placed roundhouse kick on her legs, but this failed, as a silhouette of a cheetah appeared around her, and she managed to dodge the strike, staying on her feet. In one swift movement, the cheetah was replaced by a gorilla outline, and she delivered a powerful blow to my chest, launching me back a few feet, landing on my butt. Getting winded was not fun.

“I cat believe you’re using gorilla warfare tactics, you cheetah,” I managed to joke through slightly shaky breaths.

“Animal puns, really? Like I haven’t herd them all before,” She replied, smirking at her own.

“How is everyone getting on?” I heard in my mind just before I was about to run back to deliver a return blow.

“Bit winded, but other than that, peachy. You?” I answered though everyone’s thinking voice sounded slightly muffled (unlike Edwards), so I wasn’t completely sure who was talking.

“Star is slightly more relentless than I was expecting and we seem to be in a slight stalemate” he replied, “I tried firing shields of water at Star, but it doesn’t seem to be cooling him off.”

“Have you tried ice?” Someone, who I’m pretty sure was Alex, suggested.

“Fair point, I might try that.” Matthew thought back.

I ran back to my fight, changing my own tactics. I did what I did before, but this time, making sure I was too far away for her to punch when I said “Hi”. She acted instinctually and tried to punch me where I was the last time, which made her overshoot, opening her up to an attack from behind. I took the opportunity and elbowed her in the back, followed by a strike to her right leg, which was her stabiliser. Long story short: she fell. I managed to land a few hits by the time she hit the ground, and she landed hard.

“I think you might need to work on your balance,” I told her after checking if her aura was below forty; it had only been knocked down to around sixty percent.

“Thanks,” she responded sarcastically as she tried to get back up. As she was already down, it was easier to land enough punches in quick succession to bring her aura down low enough to eliminate her.

“Anyone else need help? I’ve eliminated Emily,” I asked, as there wasn’t much point in standing around. I checked my own aura to see how I was doing: seventy two percent, not bad.

“Yeah, I could use some help; arrows are not that effective against plants.”

I looked around for Oliver and saw a massive tree giant made of wood, leaves and thorns moving and dodging with a girl in wood armour. The giant matched her almost exactly, with only a small amount of lag between her movements. Its large limbs whined as they moved, and its leaves rustled as the plant matter that made up its joints warped and regrew to replicate her. The right arm was covered in small arrows as it had clearly been used to shield Oliver’s attack, and a small amount littered the rest of the body. Clearly, some had hit their intended target, one particular example sticking out her right shoulder. Oliver seemed to have at least one thorn in his left shoulder.

The girl was relatively short and stocky, contrasting with her armour, with brown hair and freckles around her nose; she had rose coloured eyes which were focused on Oliver as he fired more arrows to no avail, weaving between her legs as she also hadn’t gotten many hits in. Neither side seemed to have the upper hand as both of their auras were around eighty percent. Vines wiped away arrows, and Oliver evaded the tree strikes; it was time to lean the fight in Oliver’s favour.

I ran over to Oliver and stopped next to him. His expression was thick with the concentration needed to dodge Lilly's attack of thorns and to calculate the correct arc he needed to shoot to hit her where it would damage her aura most. He had only been able to hit his target a couple of times, the broken arrows stuck around Lilly’s wooden chest plate, evidence enough. Both Oliver and Lilly still had their auras in the high eighties, though neither had delivered a meaningful blow to the other.

“Do you have any other arrows other than boring old vanilla?” I asked as I tried to come up with a suitable tactic.

“Ask about a grappling arrow,” Edward told me, breaking his silence since the fight began.

“Like a grappling arrow, maybe?” I repeated, thinking at Oliver.

“Yeah, I think I might have one of those, but why did you repeat that, and why would we need… oh, you want to trip her.”

“Let’s go with that,” I thought, scrapping my actual idea of using the arrow to run to the top of the tree mech.

Oliver reached into his quiver, took out an arrow which had a metal cord attached to it, and fired it to the left of the tree’s legs. I ran after the arrow, caught it and rerouted the arrow’s direction to wrap around the tree’s legs as well as keeping the arrow’s speed, constantly giving it enough energy to cause it to trip Lilly’s creation over.

The organic robot fell over with a loud thud with Lilly still inside, which caused a slight dust cloud to be kicked up as Lilly yelled out in surprise. She fell out of the tree robot only to land on a patch of moss, which grew to cushion the impact of her landing. A chunk of her aura percentage was lost, but not enough that she was out of the game just yet.

Suddenly, my feet missed solid ground, which would have caused me to trip if I was able to.

Alex ran past me, “Looks like we're swapping. I’ll help Oliver!” A vine wrapped around his leg, dragging him closer to the action. A small drone detached itself from his shoulder and cut the vine to free him.

“I finally found you. Let’s see if speed is really as versatile as you say it is.”

Time slowed down around me as I tried to think, which was incredibly helpful as Cassie was clearly about to slam me back into the ground. I was unable to use my actual speed as I was too far above the ground to kick off it. The only way I was able to attack was my gauntlets, but the recoil would throw me back as I had nothing to secure my stance.

It clicked.

I fired my gauntlets behind me and used the recoil to propel myself toward Cassie. The impact hurt like hell as I had used my non prosthetic as otherwise, it might have been overkill. It was supposed to be a sort of friendly battle. I was certain that I had broken a few bones in my foot and, at the same time, with my foot as it collided with her chest, which caused her to be thrown back.

We were both knocked out of the match almost simultaneously, as both our auras had dipped below forty. My foot bent back in an awkward position, burning with pain. Somehow, I had known Edward would be right when he said that I would know the med bay well.

The second day of school had gone quite well if you had asked me.