“You guys aren’t gonna watch?”
The group was standing in a circle outside the entrance to the Radecross Sports Arena, just a few minutes before the opening bell of the tournament was set to ring.
“We’ll be exploring the pulse some more,” came Kiria’s answer. She was speaking of herself, Annabelle, and Zeo, who had decided not to stick around in the stands as the tournament raged on. “We might find more information on Mistral. There’s no need for all six of us to stick to one location; spreading out would be more efficient.”
Reina gave an exaggerated frown as she sympathetically patted the arms of Tyger and Cain, although neither of them seemed particularly affected by their classmates’ disinterest in watching their matches, as they were instead glaring intensely at one another.
The frown then immediately transformed into a bright smile, however, and the sympathy pats turned into hearty slaps across the back. “No worries, guys! I’ll be in the stands cheering you on! I’m really, really good at cheering!”
“Um, g-good luck in the tournament!” Annabelle said with a polite bow of the head.
Zeo reached a fist out towards them, although only Tyger reciprocated it. “You guys got this in the bag, for sure. Only thing stopping you is the other. Either way, Class G’s getting that money and putting a stop to Mistral!”
With eyes fluttering like butterfly wings, Annabelle said, “Wow! You’re so good at motivational speeches, Zeo!”
“Contact us if anything goes wrong, or if the tournament’s finished before we get back,” Kiria said. Unusually, there was a bit of hesitation in her voice. Not hesitation borne from an omen, but rather, she wasn’t quite sure which of the three she should be directing those instructions to.
Her first instinct was Reina, as she was her best friend, and she figured the boys would be too occupied with the tournament to be readily available for emergency contact, but Reina herself wasn’t exactly the most responsible adult, and she’d also be willing to bet that the excitable little chameleon girl would probably be equally as distracted by the tournament as the boys with her legendary cheering routine.
“We’ll be fine, Kiria!” Reina assured her as she locked her arms around the boys’. “Let’s go, guys! The tournament’s gonna start soon, and I wanna get a good seat!”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
Monsters appeared to be much more plentiful on the side of the ultrapulse furthest from the entrance Class G first used. It made sense; those tunnels were closer to the city, and thus had been kept clear by the city and any prior explorers, including Mistral.
Not long after arriving inside the pulse, a trio of spiders descended from their webs in the ceiling.
Kiria quickly cut off their trajectories towards Annabelle, directing her to safety in the corner of the room. At the same time, her cyber arm moved to her back, activating the rod strapped behind her.
She clubbed the first spider across the face in the same motion. A blue spark of electricity jumped from her fingers to the rod, transforming it into a six-foot-long staff.
Spinning in a half-circle, Kiria blasted the end of the rod into the second spider, sending it crashing into the wall. The monsters were nearly the size of large dogs, but were much heavier than one would assume, to the point that a small dent appeared in the tip of Kiria’s rod.
Zeo was the one to claim the third as he leaped and spun around in a circular arc, his blades slicing through the target as he gracefully completed his rotation.
With all three monsters slain, Zeo and Kiria sheathed their weapons, and Annabelle jogged over to join them. “That was so cool, Zeo!”
Kiria glanced over at him, her eyes focusing on the scabbards on his back specifically. “Not bad. Where’d you learn swordsmanship?”
“My older brother, mostly, but I recently started training in dual-wielding at the Freiden Battle Academy.” His gaze moved to the floor at the dead spider monster closest to him. “I’ve actually fought spiders like this before. To be honest, I’m a little disappointed; I was hoping to fight something new in here.”
“Pulses usually do have new species inside them,” Kiria responded. “Perhaps we’ll find some if we head further in.”
Nodding his head, Zeo led the way forward further into the pulse, once again using his Fire Install as an overhead lantern to light the way. The architecture of the tunnels on this end didn’t appear any different from the ones before, but it was clear they hadn’t been tread by ultranian feet — there were spider webs everywhere, as well as undisturbed caches of forcestones still lodged in the walls.
Annabelle gravitated towards one such wall. Now that she was able to get a good look at them in their full glory, she was fully enraptured by the twinkling embers that danced within the orange crystal. “They’re so pretty….”
“It doesn’t seem like Mistral’s been here,” Kiria noted. “Otherwise they would have mined these as well.”
The elven girl spun around in a circle, turning directly to her Royal Guardian. “Um, Kiria?”
“What is it?”
“Is it true that forcestones….th-that you don’t have to be an ultranian to use them?”
Kiria’s brow raised. “Hm?”
“It was something Cain mentioned when we first got here,” added Zeo. “He said something about them having enough ULTRA Force to be used without Force Slots.”
“Ah. Yes, that’s true. Actually….” she moved beside Annabelle. “Lady Raschell occasionally uses them herself.”
The elven girl’s eyes widened. “R-really?!”
“Who’s Lady Raschell?” asked Zeo.
“The baroness of Losaria, and Annabelle’s mother,” came Kiria’s response. “She isn’t a warrior, but she uses special forcestones when she tends to her garden to enhance the plants and make them grow much faster and stay healthier.”
Annabelle’s eyes were locked onto the wall of orange forcestones once more. She hadn’t said a word, and simply looked at them in sheer awe. Kiria found it quite adorable; it wasn’t often that the young Lady showed high interest in things, likely due to how routine her life back at the manor was; she hardly ever got to experience anything new. But this recent trip to Radecross had opened her up to a whole new world, and it was like a new life had been breathed into her.
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“Are you interested in using ULTRA Force, Annabelle?” asked Zeo as he stepped forward to join the two girls. “Are elves not able to?”
Annabelle’s head sank a bit. “That’s right….Because we’re not from Planet ULTRA, we don’t have any connection to ULTRA Force….”
“Huh? You’re not….from Planet ULTRA? Since when?”
Neither Kiria nor Annabelle faulted him for his ignorance (Annabelle wouldn’t fault him for much of anything, truth be told). Elves were an incredibly rare species, so it was common for ultranians to grow up never even becoming aware of them. Most of them were sought out by and betrothed by the nobility as a status symbol as well, so a commoner who wasn’t a part of a noble family would have even less of a chance to interact with one in their lifetime.
“The first elves are said to have come from another world,” Kiria answered, having been educated on the topic by Lady Raschell herself. “They don’t recall what that world is, but they have a vague, shared memory of it.”
“How did they get here then?”
Sensing Zeo’s sudden interest in her heritage, Annabelle leaped into the conversation. “Th-the Lera Tree! We hatch from the seeds that come from the Lera Tree!”
She found the confused look on his face that followed to be almost too cute to handle. “Oh, right, you mentioned that before….Sorry, it’s just kinda hard to wrap my head around.”
“Th-that’s okay! Um….the Lera Tree is a giant, magical tree that’s connected to our home world through the spirit realm. When a seed falls from the Lera Tree and hatches, an elf is born.”
“That’s how Lady Raschell came to Planet ULTRA many years ago,” Kiria said, tagging in to give the slightly-embarrassed Annabelle a break.
“Ah, I getcha. But wait, what about you, Annabelle?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hatch from a seed too? What about your father? He’s not an elf, right? You mentioned your little brother was half-ultranian, so I assumed….”
For a moment, Kiria hesitated. This information was something the Quinah Royal Family kept very private, discussing with only themselves, as well as the members of the Royal Guard closest to them. But, when she considered exactly who it was that Annabelle had told this information to, the surprise vanished. “Baron Xander is ultranian, yes. He isn’t Annabelle’s father by birth; he wed Lady Raschell when Annabelle was an infant.”
“M-my baby brother is his son biologically,” Annabelle added, although her cheeks were still a bit red. Perhaps it was the awkwardness of discussing her parents’ reproductive history. Just a theory. “So he’s half-ultranian, and half-elf.”
“So….who’s your birth father?”
When only silence came to answer Zeo’s question, he quickly held his hands up. “Ah, sorry, Annabelle! That was an insensitive question. Forget I asked.”
The elven girl shook her head with a smile. “No, it’s okay, Zeo. I’m not upset or anything. It’s just….I don’t actually know who my birth father is.”
“Ah….”
Despite reassurances that no feelings were harmed in the making of Zeo’s question, the conversation deadened once more, and neither Annabelle nor Zeo seemed to be making any moves to resuscitate it, which left the responsibility to fall onto Kiria’s shoulders.
“So, Annabelle, you want to try using ULTRA Force?”
* * * *
ULTRA PULSE
* * * *
The arena was quite packed, and finding her way through the crowd to a good seat in the stands was a tough task. It was so tough, in fact, that Reina wasn’t actually able to complete it at all. With her short stature, she wasn’t an imposing enough force to drive a wedge through the sea of bodies making their way to the stands, and she knew that by the time she actually made it to the arena, there wouldn’t be any good seats left.
So she decided to cheat!
She shoved aside a rotund man carrying two giant bowls of fried meat and desserts, escaping the ocean of tournament-watchers until she was nestled quietly behind a pillar.
She placed her hands against the pillar, and activated her natural camouflage, rendering her practically invisible to the naked eye. With a satisfied giggle, she quickly scurried up the side of the pillar until she reached the ceiling, latching onto it with her hands and feet.
Reina then began her mad dash of a crawl along the ceiling towards the arena, completely bypassing the horde of people below.
After a mere minute of climbing, she arrived in the arena proper. It was about what one would expect from a sports venue: large and vaguely rectangular in shape, with layers of seating around the edges of the room. Because the tournament was only set to be held for a single day, it seemed the city hadn’t bothered doing a full renovation of the place, so there wasn’t much in the way of thematic decor, and in fact, the ultrarush scoreboard was still installed in the ceiling at the center of the room, despite the fact the sport would be in the offseason for another two months.
The only preparation that had been done was an installation of barriers around all four sides of the rectangular field the participants would be battling within, likely to set a strict bounds of play, and to keep the members of the audience safe from harm. The barriers were a light blue in color, and almost invisible. These were forcefields: walls of ULTRA Force that immediately halted all Force Slot and Install activity upon contact. They were common installations for combat sporting events like this.
For a brief moment, Reina was tempted to continue climbing up the ceiling to the very top of the arena, but when her stomach rumbled, she instead prioritized finding a good seat and having a snack as soon as possible.
She located a nice seat in the center of the combat field, up in the fourth row, and scurried on over there. As soon as she was comfortably seated, she undid her camouflage. This sudden manifestation into the world sent her seat neighbor into a temporary shock, causing him to choke on his hot dog.
Reina gave him a bright smile as she opened up her bag. “Are the hot dogs good? I sure hope so, cuz I got five of them!” She pulled them out from within to demonstrate.
As she unwrapped the foiling around the first hotdog, she directed her gaze to the floor of the arena, just in time for the opening announcement to begin.
The screens plastered over the walls of the arena all lit up with the same image — a live video feed of Mayor Virilitas. “Good morning to all of you in the Radecross Sports Arena! Welcome to the ‘Crossroads of Combat’ Fighting Tournament!”
A round of applause echoed around the audience, but at a much lower level than one would expect, and it came with a notable sense of awkwardness. Probably because the live feed of Mayor Virilitas was, uh….not what people were expecting to see.
Rather than a natural setting, such as his office or something along those lines, Mayor Virilitas appeared to be sitting in some kind of fancy hot tub. While it wasn’t surprising for a man of his wealth and status to enjoy hot tubs, it was a bit uncomfortable for the people of Radecross to see him in such a state in a public sporting event video.
For those who were not already familiar with the Mayor, such as Reina, Tyger, and Cain, the appearance of Virilitas came as quite a shock. Befitting his home city of Radecross, Virilitas had a, uh….”passion” for the many cultures found on Planet ULTRA, and he liked to showcase that passion physically, such as in his artificially-tanned skin, the Beasterizer-esque fox ears he had surgically grafted onto his head, the Cyberizer-inspired cyber muscles he had installed onto his body, the elven bikini model on his left, or the woman on his right, who appeared to be some sort of Energizer whose energy signature had grown so pervasive, her physical body was now entirely made of bright blue water.
“Ahhhh!” Reina gasped. “What a weirdo!” And yet, she could not pry her eyes away from the sight.
“This tournament’s a single-elimination, all-styles-welcome fighting competition! Winner declared by knockout, or by judge’s vote at the fifteen minute mark!” the Mayor continued. He leaned over and nibbled on the pointed ear of the elf model beside him, which prompted several mothers in the audience to clamp their hands over the eyes of their children. “We’ve got quite the lineup of badasses from all over the globe here to compete for your entertainment! So without any further ado, ladies and gentlemen, let’s get this thing started!”
Thankfully, the video feed cut off just before Mayor Virilitas pounced on the elven girl.
Sitting back-to-back in the locker room, Tyger and Cain stretched their arms and rolled their necks. They each ran through their individual game plans in their minds, and began formulating the gloating speech they would deliver to the other upon their inevitable victory.
It was time for the Radecross Sports Arena ‘Crossroads of Combat’ Fighting Tournament to officially begin.