Academy Competition (Pt. 3)

Then the magic words signaling the next fight ring through the air

"Match start"

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Gabriel starts us off and runs at me with his sword as I begin to gather Mana into my hand and change its element to sunfire. Gabriel was fast and was quickly upon me going for a thrust and I side step. Gabriel must have known I would do that as he quickly pivoted his feet and swings his thrust horizontally causing me to take another step back quickly to avoid the sword. I see an opening and unload all of my stored Mana as beams of Sunfire at his back leg hoping to incapacitate him in some way. The beams hits and 3 narrow burn appears on his leg causing him to shudder, fail his next strike, and retreat. His sword begins to glow yellow and a beam of light is launched at my feet blowing up sand into the surroundings. I immediately pull the ribbon around my neck to my eyes and jump back out of the dust, but am careful, as to not jump out of the ring fore I have no bearings of where I am in the black of the ribbon, and I haven't really been paying constant attention to the boundary. I suddenly feel something cold and gross move through my abdomen. It was brief and, it startled me into a taking a step back. I lower the ribbon as Gabriel's sword roughly traces the path of the cold feeling. He seemed as supprized as I was, but I couldn't let myself get distracted. I quickly started to gain a grip of my surroundings as reality slowed slightly once again making the process that much easier. I notice that our feet are near each other and his back leg is the one I shot earlier, so I sweep his front leg forward with my foot and his leg follows moving his foot so that only his heel was touching the ground causing gravity to make him fall almost into the splits with my assistance, but not all the way down. it didn't look overly uncomfortable, but it was inconvenient for him to get up from. I would go to punch him, but I would have to get closer, and due to my small arms, I didn't want to do that. It was then that I realized I could have borrowed a sword from the beginning and it would have been very helpful with the physical reach that I am so badly lacking. I notice that we are right near the edge of the ring boundaries, and I 'accidentally' trip and fall over onto my butt, my back facing the edge of the ring, and make it look like I'm trying getting up, but shift myself into a crouch. Gabriel recovered and attempted to kick me out of the ring but as he prepares to kick I jumped forward at his other leg causing him to trip over me. I try to jump up immediately afterwards hoping he would tumble out of the ring, and as I had hoped he did just that, tumbling face first he rolled landing sprawled out outside the ring.

" Winner Alice"

I walk over to Gabriel who is now laying on his back and extend my hand to him offering to pull him up. He accepts and I help him rise from the ground. I thank him for the fun battle and he reciprocated with a neutral face, but I think I saw his lip quiver into a smirk momentarily. We were checked out by the healing mage and we returned to our seat and were given five minutes to rest.

I begin to poke Oreo who is, by some miracle, still on my head to see if he's awake.

' Morning little sis ' Oreo said groggily he didn't move thankfully but it seems I woke him up.

" Good morning Oreo" I say petting the magic kitten plush on my head.

' What's going on Alice?' Oreo asked as he finally gets a grasp of where we are, which is somewhere he doesn't recognize.

" Remember the tournament I had to go to, I'm there." I say as I take Oreo off of my head and place him in my lap. I had talked to Oreo about the competition the night before, and he was there when I was told about it too, since I bring him literally everywhere.

' I missed the beginning!' Oreo seemed supprized them downcast ' I'm sorry I missed the beginning.'

" Don't worry the beginning of the tournament was fun and I have enjoyed myself this far, but you didn't miss much." I reply, and start swinging my legs since they don't touch the ground from where I'm sitting. My tail was swaying side to side as I stroked Oreo's fur which was suppreizingly soft. I gave off an air of peacefulness similar to the comfort I was currently feeling despite the uncomfortable seating, and it almost made you forget I was currently talking to thin air and burned the insides of someone's other end in the first round of the competition.

I snap out of my daze and look at the people around me. Most of them were ignoring me and the one person I noticed looking my way gave a disgusted expression. I tried to figure out what I did and remembered Leonard. I start laughing when I think of the look on Leonard's face was he was writhing on the ground.

' Why are you laughing?' Oreo asked concerned, and as I try to reply but I can't make it come out and I just start laughing harder and tears start to form in my eyes. I can't tell you why I was finding it so funny but it was thoroughly tickling my insides.

Between tears and gasps I manage to articulate " I'll ... Tell ... you ... later."

I can feel the laughter getting out of hand and by any reasonable consideration, I shouldn't have started in the first place, so I focus on calming myself but doing so was difficult I couldn't stop and it was starting to hurt. I may need to reevaluate myself at a later date to find why I was acting weird.

Wiping my tears I notice Miss Hemiko l standing in front of me with a peeved expression.

" Are you done?" she asked impatiently

" Yes ma'am, sorry about that" I say rubbing my eyes to remove the tears and their paths from my eyes, and taking a few breaths to relieve the pain in my chest.

" Well your time is up. Go finish the last fight, it's already been called."

Nodding in affirmation I walk into the ring, and prepare for my next fight. I'm up against Chloe, and to be honest she is probably the most terrifying opponent I have to face. Gabriel was a challenge because I couldn't really see him fight beforehand but he saw me fight, and his tactics were annoying. Chloe on the other hand is a complete mystery to me. Her power seemed completely erratic, her mood swings are terrifying and I cannot seem to get her. Is she plotting something, is she doing it for amusement like me, or does she have like a split personality? I don't know.

Whatever the case It doesn't really matter. I'm watching Chloe and notice she is shaking a lot more than the other matches she seems more afraid than anxious this time around. I have a plan I hope works but it is a longshot.

" Final match start!"

As Chloe begins to form her wind magic as she has done all her other matches I accumulate Mana into my hand as I proceed to start laughing and acting in a peculiar way, attempting to make myself look as mentally unstable as possible. I ignite the Mana I turned into the Sunfire element and attempt to make myself as scary as possible. My experimenting with Universal language has helped me change the pitch and tone of my voice, making it sound like I was possessed and my previous actions throughout the tournament caused Chloe to freeze. I was hoping for this to happen.

" You could always just forefiet, we don't have to fight" I say keeping my tone as creepy as possible, my throat was starting to hurt but it was fine.

Chloe however did not respond she stays frozen for a few moments more until she relaxed completely, giving off a scary feeling as if I just royally fucked up.

Chloe stares me in the eyes momentarily and shot forward as she continued to form the magic circle in her hand she had paused.

' This is the exact opposite of what I wanted.' I thought as I began to panic a bit, but forcefully calmed myself and prepared to evade the attack.

My opponent seemed to have two personalities, one that is meek, shy and a bit clumsy. The other was agile, calculated and a violent. My initial plan way to scare my opponents 'weak' side into forfeiting so I could avoid instigating the other side and win with no difficulty, but it seems I only scared her into her other side instead.

Chloe approached me quickly from the front and struck out with a punch forward which I dodged left for and was immediately hit with a gust of wind from her other hand. I was hit hard but I could still control myself and I landed on all fours on the ground with Chloe hot in pursuit. She attempted to kick for my head since I was low and I rolled under her leg and released the burning, golden red fire from my hand and to my supprise it didn't come out as a beam but as a condensed blast and it was then that I realized that the attacks themselves can change based on the state of the Mana when released, a door to a large room of opportunities was opened to me, not that I could do much experimenting at this current point in time.

Chloe who I was trying to hit In the back was sent flying forward and her back had some light burns, not as bad as the ones from concentrated energy beams but they were still noticable. I wouldn't let my opponent recover so I began charging energy around both hands and ran at Chloe, If she wants close combat I am happy to oblige I try punch her in the stomach attempting to copy the form she had when attacking me and the others in her other matches, I noticed I had relatively decent awareness of my surroundings and control over myself so it was a somewhat successful attempt at copying but you could tell I was not accustomed to the movements and it was still very flawed.

Chloe recovered in time to dodge and jumped back, quickly landing angled forward and launched forward back towards me using her back leg as a springboard. I had been gathering Mana during our short exchange and had converted it to Sunfire and began compressing a little before she came back to strike me. I dodged the first two punches and a kick to the head, but her recovery from the kick supprized me and I was caught but a punch to the solar plexus.

I had, luckily, enough time to cross my arms in an attempt to mitigate the damage but her strike had landed and I noticed that a small wave from the impact had caused my Mana to act up and it imploded blowing me and Chloe away, my hands and forearms had some burns on them and it hurt like hell. I don't understand how the kids in this world are able to shrug them off with little reaction.

Chloe has some burns too but more damage had been done to me. I notice Chloe is nearing the edge of the ring so I begin to run towards her. I don't plan on using my hands because, ouch so I kick towards her head instead and she dodged backwards and grabs my tail that was revealed from the kick showing my back and tried to throw me out of the ring. I was immediately jolted by a feeling that ran through my entire body. I started to flush and I started seeing red. Literally, my sight changed as if a red filter was covering my eyes. I immediately wrapped my tail around Chloe's hand and smashed her into the ground on the other side of me and back again with my leg still recovering from the kick. She released my tail and I kicked her in the stomach punting her out of the ring.

" Winner Alice" The Overseer called out and continued " Alice will be moving to the Main Competition. This concludes the competition for ring six."

I walk over to the medical station gritting my teeth over the burns on my hands and forearms and the pulsing feeling that faintly remained on my tail where Chloe grabed me making me feel extremely uncomfortable, but am interrupted by Miss Hemiko before I arrive at the Medical mage.

" Alice are you alright?" Their was concern apparent in her voice.

" How so?" I ask in response

" Physical, mentally, and emotionally" She replied still concerned. " You changed rather abruptly at the end and the beginning was if nothing else concerning."

I laugh a little, and respond " Mentally I'm fine, Physically the burns hurt a lot, and emotionally, aside from a small persistent anger and embarrassment I'd say I'm fine." Respond and continue towards the healing mage.

" Ah, sorry I forgot you did that to yourself" Miss Hemiko said as a yellow light was emitted from her hands, and I noticed the burns are gone and the discomfort vanished.

" Thanks Miss Hemiko" I say with a smile and I walk off to leave the ring