Aurora Maple: I woke up to the sound of chirping birds as the soft morning light hit me right in the face. The greenery outside seemed to shine vibrantly like emeralds and the water flowing down the creek river glimmered like crystals in the light. But it just didn’t really get me in the mood…..

I didn’t really know what to think of Savian–all I knew was that he was strong. It didn’t take a genius to discover that he was fast–like really fast. He was so fast that fast didn’t even really describe it. It was almost like everything around him slowed down so much that he just seemed really fast.

His speed also granted him an absurd amount of strength as well. There had to be some type of tradeoff for his abilities though. Usually, warriors with an absurd amount of speed were hindered by their small size or frail body. He wasn’t very small though–in fact he was about as tall as Geon–and he didn’t seem particularly frail….

I got up and walked to the bathroom. I began to subconsciously go through my morning routine while I thought about everything some more.

My gut told me that this guy shouldn’t be trusted–not just because we would need to fight him sooner or later but because he gave off a weird vibe. It was almost like he was examining us or gleaning us for information. I get that he would want to see his biggest competitor–Geon–in person, but he definitely had his own reasons for coming to see us. But I could just be being really paranoid–which is very likely.

I didn’t really know what to make of him. I didn’t really like him that much–he didn’t give off a really friendly or wholesome vibe.

Unlike Evay…

I wanted to know more about Evay and these days, I felt a little more attached to him in a way. I mean….he did almost die so as a friend the least I could do was let him know we cared. But he was beginning to open up a bit more, act more himself, and I found that that side of him was more…..likeable. But he was still filled with questions. I didn’t know where he came from, what exactly his skills were, how he got into Eden, and I didn’t even know where he went to school before Eden. In fact, come to think of it, I didn’t even know how old he was. I assumed he was around my age but there are kids who get accepted into Eden when they’re really young….

It didn’t make it easier that he still didn’t like to talk to me….It’s like he’s scared of me or something….Am I a bad friend? What did I do to make him hate me?

I sighed. After I finished washing my face I walked into the living room where Lila and Geon were throwing playing cards at the still sleeping Evay.

“Hey um, is this like a new thing we’re doing now or….” Lila turned around and looked and gave me a smile.

“Good morning, and kind of. Evay’s barrier doesn’t drop when he’s sleeping. Apparently he turns it off when he’s just going about his day but for some reason it stays on when he’s asleep,” Geon ditched the cards and I saw him throw an apple at Evay’s face out of the corner of my eye.

“Well probably because you guys are doing that,” me and Lila both laughed as Geon kept throwing things at Evay. She smiled as she looked over at Geon and we both sat down at the kitchen table.

“Hey um, can you give me advice on something,” Lila looked at me and nodded. “Can you get Evay to like me?” she almost spit out her coffee and gave me a half smile half grin.

She whispered in my direction. “You like Evay?” her voice was high pitched and excited. Why is she so excited?

“Well he is a roommate and I think it would be beneficial if all people under a roof got along,” I gave her my most honest and serious answer, but she giggled a little. “What?” I gave her a confused look and she still giggled again.

“Nothing. Um….I think he’s just nervous around you. Aurora, I kind of need you to figure this one out because it doesn’t feel right for me to….mess anything up. Evay’s trying to make things happen with you, I think. So, you know, for Evay’s sake,” she smiled at me and gave me a pat on the shoulder before going to join Geon again.

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As they smiled and laughed I wondered what she meant? For Evay’s sake? What did he have to do with me trying to befriend him? Or how did that involve his sake anyways?

Why was he so nervous around me? What did I do wrong? Why did everything have to be so….complicated?

Why are humans so complicated?

Geon Leventen: “Right side!” I heard Evay yell as he threw a barrier onto Aurora while she slid into enemy lines. She made quick work of the other team as a scatter of her electric bolts hit them all squarely in the chest. I heard three bodies drop to the floor as I flew into the air and lifted my hands up.

The ground shook and the stadium tumbled as the entire floor started to lift. The large chunks of marble floated up from the ground and into the sky. Lila closed her eyes and listened carefully until a look of realization came across her face.

“There!” she pointed to the far left side of the stadium and I focused in. I let the thousands of floor pieces suspended in the air come crashing down and I raced towards the spot Lila had pointed to. I flew up higher and higher until my target was just a small dot in the vast expanse of white marble. I dove head first into the ground at sonic speeds and aimed to hit the last opponent—who was hiding underground. I heard a loud boom as the target got closer and closer.

Three, two, one, now. I rammed my fist straight into the ground and added an explosive blast to my strike for extra power. A spike of marble came shooting out of the ground right when I reached the floor, but Evay’s shield timing was impeccable. The spike harmlessly shattered around my chest as my punch tore through the ground and into the solar plexus of my burrowed classmate. His eyes went wide with surprise and he let out one last cough before his liquor screen shattered. A bell went off and Professor Vylen’s voice could be heard. “Team 3, with your latest win you advance to the grand finals where you will fight for a chance to become Taegan’s official Youth Warrior team,” I smiled as Aurora and Lila gave each other a high five.The quarter finals and everything before that had been easy, but the grand finals were going to be the hardest of them all. The school tournament was important as only the team that won went to the Youth championships—which were in a couple months. However, the tournament was in teams of five this year, and traditionally this was where things got a little choppy. Our school, and many other elite schools, usually didn’t have enough students to host full five on five in-school evaluations. So usually the board just chose someone who was cooperative with others, and had excellent individual results. It didn’t always work though, since certain styles of fighting were already established in most teams and adding a random person with minimal experience with the team didn’t ever help. It was basically a crapshoot on whoever got the correct guy.

It was a race to see who fit better with what team and if we made it through I had a decent idea on who we would be paired up with. We had already faced the other classes and we would be fighting class A-5. I looked over at Evay, Lila, and Aurora as we made our way out of the stadium. They were talking about studying, and books, and math–useless stuff like that–which reminded me of something….

Final exams were in the afternoon and we had just finished the mountain of homework from our other classes—to the best of our abilities. Well, they did, I kinda just copied whatever Evay put down. I hadn’t studied anything at all–I got to skip every other class because of Professor Vylen’s winner take all rule….I’d been really abusing that freedom but it was coming back to bite me.

Lila, Aurora, and Evay went to get some drinks at the concession stands and I waited for them to come back. I pulled out a file that I had gotten from the Professor which contained stats on our opponents in class A-5.

They also had our stats and that made me feel a little uncomfortable. I looked at the files and it was pretty easy to see why they had made it this far. Their survival rate was flawless among their team—but so was ours. They had an engagement win rate of 96 percent, while we had a rate of 93 percent. Since we had Lila’s healing capabilities it made more sense to pull out of some engagements to recover, so we tended to retreat a little more than some other teams.

We weren’t given any information about their skills but by their round win time I could see that it had something to do with speed–since they won by a ridiculous 34 second average time window. Ours was about six minutes and four seconds…..

I looked at the roster and immediately my eyes went wide. I traced my fingers across the paper as I laid my eyes upon the star of their team. It was a familiar looking face as Savian looked as bored as ever in his official school photo. Savian seemed to be the spearhead for this team. I assumed one of the people on the other team was their leader and organizer, and Savian just followed their game plan. Even Savian would have trouble just running around everywhere without a strategy, so I assumed someone on the other team had a good mind for team fighting.

Even so, they heavily supported and built their team around him to win. We could build a game plan around that fact and counter their supporting pieces one by one. Teams like these always tended to have apparent weaknesses, and our team was much more cohesive. I smiled a little and I felt decently confident. We could definitely win this. All we had to do was not get beat by Savain. He didn’t seem like all that–I was stronger than him, faster than him, more handsome, you know, all the stuff. But I still felt a little worried.

Especially since this red haired dude with a weird necklace was also on Savain’s team. He had the same bored expression as Savian and it only took me a second to guess who it was. It was the boy from opening night--the one who had participated in the fight that Evay got caught up in.

His name was Akasa of house Miri. Unlike all the other members of Savian’s team I knew what this guy could do. I remembered clearly. His power was super dangerous–it directly countered everyone on our team. I was so used to always being able to solve everything with my skills that when I had them taken from me things became super difficult. But I wasn’t too worried, he seemed pretty beatable in straight hand to hand combat and if his entire arsenal just consisted of supportive abilities like that–he’d be dead as soon as we isolated him.

I smiled.

“Oh yeah, we got this.”