Chapter 6- Fight

Today is the day of the tournament, well the first day. Sometimes, these things drag on for months. I was just hoping they didn't; I’d have to announce for the first 5 matches, no matter how long they took. Ricky had been the one to give me the honor of announcing first. She says it might give the tournament a good look to have a bubbly red dwarf announcer instead of a sad brown dwarf one. We were in the main part of the arena, where all the fights took place. They all happened on a platform that looked like a boxing ring, but with nothing around the edges. Which meant nothing was stopping you from going flying if you took a bad hit. Around the square platform was an oval floor covered in nebula dust and gasses to break falls. Around the floor were seats that stretched up into what seemed like eternity. To house as many people as it does, the arena needed a lot of seats. Ricky and Lena had come along before the first round of competition to show me the ropes and what to expect.

As the competition drew nearer, my stomach started to churn. I hadn’t ever been this nervous before. Ever. It was odd, but I also hadn’t done anything like this ever. Maybe Ryko wouldn’t like this, she wasn’t anywhere near as extroverted as me anyway. “Okay, so this is the lift. When you hear the tone you have about 5 minutes to get on it before it starts to move up, so get on it quickly. Your mic will be on with the tone so be quiet until you're above the platform.” Lena puts a headset on my head and presses a button on it. “Is your buddy gonna come? You know, curly hair, glasses, sweater vest, khakis?” “Braun? Oh yeah he should be here, I don’t know when though, why?” “No reason, just tell him I'll be in row 356 seat 20, if you can.” Lena walks away and Ricky runs after her yelling something about being nice to him. After a quick text on flare to Braun, I quickly got the same nervous feeling. I knew the walls of the arena were billions of feet away from me, but with this feeling in my chest, it seemed like they were gonna squish me; Like every seat had eyes and they were watching me. Wait- that was it. I felt like. . . I was being

Watched.

I looked around, turning my head so fast it made me dizzy, but I couldn’t find the eyes. What the hell? I knew for a fact someone was looking at me, I had felt hot my entire life, but I kept getting horrible chills. This just wasn’t right. I couldn’t even focus enough to remember what I was supposed to be doing. Getting on the lift, that was now lowering into the basement under the arena floor. Realizing what was happening, I ran to it quickly, and jumped on.

I scratched and hit my head, hoping to get it into the right place, at least the absence of my usual ponytail helped make scratching easier. The announcer dress codes were actually quite strict. No more wool shirts for me. They didn’t even allow my favorite blue sweatpants, but my boots stayed. I was given a dark red button down shirt and this horribly itchy tan suit vest. Paired with it were some tan dress pants with red vertical lines. I counted them, checked my outfit for dust, and brushed through Vee’s hair. He hadn’t started talking yet, but the announcer girls said to make sure our planets looked their best too. I had given Vee an outfit similar to mine, but his was a full suit. I tried to focus on him for a while, he had grown really long hair in the few days he’s been alive. It was almost to his legs now. Us stars can’t grow our hair too far without it burning off at the ends. It made me really admire any beings who could grow their hair super long. Pollaria, Vee, Braun. He was just stupid and decided to keep it short. Man, if I could grow my hair past my shoulders I would be so happy.

The lift finally came to a stop and I was hit with the presence of dust, an old book smell and a dim luminosity in between darkness and dawn. Of course, it wasn’t an issue for me as a star, but us red dwarfs are dim and can’t light areas super far away. From what I could see, boxes labeled fragile and don’t touch were all over the place. Some were open, others were completely closed, taped up and all. I knew to mind my business, especially because I was still so sure someone was keeping their eye on me. I couldn’t understand who though, but it seemed I was about to find out. I heard rumbling, and more, and more, until BAM, a star around the size of Ramos jumped up from behind me. “Boo!” They started laughing hysterically while I just stood frozen in fear. “Didn’t expect a contestant to be here did you? Well this is my hiding place, and you were the first to come here so. . .” “Wait, wait, wait. You’re a contestant? Shouldn’t you be getting ready? And, you’re talking to me! Why?”

“What do you mean why? A girl can’t have a conversation? Usually you dwarf stars are so much cooler than everyone else in these stuck up, high chin, bitchy competitions,”

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“No, no. I just mean most people like you don’t wanna talk to us! It's kind of refreshing, honestly.” I scratched my head. Boy was I having some luck running into all these nice high mass stars.

“Woah! Making generalizations I see! You must think all of us blue stars are mean, destructive, hotheads who turn purple because someone *Exaggerated gasp* sat on a chair!” She holds her hand against her chest and makes a painful expression.

“You saw that?”

“I see everything. I hate talking to stars my size, they always suck ass and think they’re better than everybody else. And even worse, they expect you to feel the same if you’re like them; It’s torture! So, I mostly stay out of the way. My only acquaintance here is Ramos. He was telling me about you, actually. I wasn’t sure if you were the right girl, but most red dwarfs go into journalism, so since he pointed out you were an announcer I was certain it was the famous Rayes! Though I had seen you before, but not much of your face,”

“It makes sense that you and Ramos are friends. You know, you guys are both really good people.”

“Aww, you little charmer. Flattering me and such, but it doesn't take much honestly; Being a good person,”

“Of course. But still, you deserve a thanks. . .um,”

“Nahara, it's a pleasure to meet you!”

I smiled only to realize that again, I got so distracted I forgot about the tone, and lift, and my job as a whole. “Oh shit!” I dashed toward the lift, and hopped onto it, just making the tone.

“Alright stars, planets, and the like! Let’s give it up for the 10th annual supergiant tournament!”

*Loud applause from the crowd.*

“I know I'm excited to see who the next star of the millenia will be! And to see some gruesome fighting! For our first match, we’ll have Alor against Maia!”

*Stars have absolutely no physical strength differences due to gender, so men and women fight in the tournament alike.

Alor waves and the crowd is silent. I wonder how such a pretty boy could have absolutely no fans. He looks irritated and brushes his golden blonde hair out of the way angrily. Maia is an orange star; I haven’t really seen one of them in person before. Not only that, she wears this huge witch hat; Was it a part of her power?

“Let the match begin!”

. . .

Maia is beat. There was no true fight anyway. She took off her hat and attempted a chant, but it was quickly stopped when Alor threw her off the platform. This happened to everyone else who went up against him. The way the tournament works, if someone wins, they keep going against the other contestants until they lose. If you lose the first fight, oh well, someones stronger than you anyway. Lena approaches the stage.

“For our 15th fight of the 10th annual supergiant tournament, we will have Alor against Portia.” The fight begins.

Alor is obviously nervous. His radiation is all out of whack and he’s having small solar flares. Portia is shaking out her hands.

Alor charges up a radiation punch, gathering all the heat he can around his hands and charges towards Portia ready to strike.

He made a huge mistake doing that. Portia uses one of her hands to catch him in his tracks and grabs him tight with a now charged hand. She then used it to throw him by his leg face first into the cold floor of the platform. “Ouch.” Ricky shuddered next to me.

Alor is sturdy though, even after all of that, he manages to get up again and regain his balance. Trembling, he heats up his hand and holds his hand to his face; Healing all the bruises and his now un- broken nose. Everyone watching can tell; This will either be over really quick, or Alor will have to get real serious. Alor holds his hand up and detaches his arm from the rest of his body; It loses form and instead turns to a sphere of boiling plasma. He lowers it with his now regenerated arm, and throws it toward Portia, who is now checking her projector with her back turned to him. She turns around to see it coming towards her, but it isn’t much to her anyway. She elbows it back at Alor who just barely jumps up and dodges it, but this distracts him from Portia running up for another punch. She jumps into the air and supercuts him right before she hits the floor, then as he’s on his way down, kicks him off stage. “I literally didn’t see him get up, it was so scary!” Portia shivers dramatically. The crowd is stunned.

I get a chilling feeling again, like I'm being watched by a million eyes. I looked up into the crowd; My eyes met by a million blurs of bright faces that I couldn’t discern, no eyes. Nowhere.

But when I looked down, I saw Portia’s eyes, and her head going up, up, up, and a face peeking over the arena.

Bright, unfamiliar eyes. Looking over the arena.