Victory & Destruction

The atmosphere was electric in Domus Flou, the crowds were cheering their hearts out. Alex was as excited for the competition as the next guy, though he was disappointed at the line-up of guilds competing. Only 6 guilds had been chosen to participate, Fairy-Tail, Lamia-scale, Blue-Pegasus, Mermaid-Heel, Orochi's-Fin, and Twilight-Ogre. The minimum requirements to participate had been to apply, and have at least one S-class-mage in their ranks. Unfortunately only four guilds that met that criteria had applied and the organizers were forced to hold a raffle of the lesser guilds to fill the last two spots. Orochi's-Fin and Twilight-Ogre had been the lucky guilds chosen.

Looking over the rosters from the other guilds, Alex was only able to recognise a few from Mermaid-Heel. None of the big players that he had remembered from Pegasus or Lamia-Scale were here. 'Arrana Webb and Risley Law. I don't recognise any of the others... Hmmm, this might be boring. Oh, Ichiya is here too. Who could ever forget that guy?' Alex idly mused to himself as he waited for the rest of the players to be introduced.

"We hope to bring you an exciting event! Guilds! Please send your first participant to the Arena!" The short Pumpkin headed man announced, pulling Alex from his internal thoughts.

"I'll go first! I'll show them the power of Team Shadowgear!" Droy shouted, both fists raised to the sky.

"We are all part of Team Fairytail now. You can't just be fighting for the glory of your party", Warren countered.

"Jet is the team captain, I think he should take the first game. This is the first event of the first ever Grand Magic Games. Seems fitting for the captain to go first", Alzack reasoned.

"Good point", Max agreed.

"I didn't even want to be the captain! You guys chose it for me when I was sleeping!" Jet shouted at them all.

"You weren't sleeping, Alex knocked you out in that last group spar", Droy added helpfully.

"Fine. I'll go", Jet relented after a minute of unintelligible grumbling. Jet made his way to the arena to stand beside the other contestants.

"Hello Participants! I am Mato and I will be the referee for this wonderful event! I Will introduce all you fine Pumpkin's to the crowd and then we will move on to the rules of the first event!" Mato shouted enthusiastically.

"But.. You're the pumpkin.. Men.." Ichiya muttered darkly. The others just stared at the pumpkin.

It didn't take long for Mato to introduce the Wizards and confirm for Alex that he had never heard of three of them. Aside from Jet, Ichiya, and Arrana, the others were unknown. 'Guess they must be scrubbs then. I haven't even heard rumors of their names', Alex mused to himself.

"Now for the rules!" Mato shouted excitedly, gesturing around the arena as a gigantic magic circle appeared and started creating an obstacle course. Three glowing orbs appeared above each participant at his words as well.

"This game is a race filled with great dangers at every turn. 'Watch your Step', was designed to force you to use your magic in interesting ways to overcome the obstacles, but there is more! Each of you has three 'Lives'. Each time you trigger a trap you will lose one of your orbs, you must have at least one orb still above you when you cross the finish-line for your score to count! Three strikes and you're out Pumpkin! Don't give up hope though! Every two minutes, one of your orbs will regenerate. This can only happen for orbs that you lose to traps. You can also steal other people's orbs. By landing a solid hit with a magical attack you will gain one of their orbs, 'Stolen' orbs will not regenerate. Each person can only have a maximum of three orbs at a time. If you steal another's orbs while you already have three, that orb is removed permanently! Watch your backs and attack your enemies, but above all else! Win the race! The number of orbs doesn't matter if you can't beat the clock! With that, we can move along. Take your places and 'Watch Your Step'!" Mato yelled with a flourish.

"Not going to lie, this actually sounds like it could be a pretty fun game", Alex said randomly to the rest of the guild members in their box.

"I know right! It's so exciting!" Mavis agreed happily.

"Who do you think will win?" Mira asked curiously.

"By my calculations, Jet has the highest chance of winning based on his magic type alone", Mavis said in a rare serious tone she adopted while forming strategies.

"I would have to agree, Master Mavis. If he uses his head, he will blow them out of the water", Alex said, agreeing with her point while answering Mira. Everyone stopped talking as the contestants lined up and waited for the race to start. Alex was carefully scanning the obstacle course to see if he could spot the 'traps', only to realize that they were all very obvious. It was to the point that he wondered if the organizers were looking down on Wizards or if he just had too high of an opinion of them. The small inconsistencies of the track were something that had been brought up by Mavis during the training period before the games. 'Time to see how much of her training he remembers', Alex thought with a smile.

As soon as the signal was given to start, Jet used a super sonic blast to propel himself forward. A side effect of the blast was it had knocked all the other contestants, bar Ichiya, on their asses. The blast apparently counted as an attack because all the contestants, except Ichiya and Jet, lost an orb each. Jet expertly avoided each of the traps with practiced ease and blazed a path through the course. He reached the finish-line in under two minutes since the start of the race, leaving the announcers and the Referee in utter shock. He stood at the finish line for a full 30 seconds before Mato snapped out of it and announced him the Winner. All the fairy-tail members laughed as Jet started trying to get comfortable and 'Nap', while he waited for the others.

Ichiya, seeing he couldn't get first place anymore, put something up his nose and then rocketed to the finish line with a speed that left literal sparkles in his wake. As he was about to cross the finish line, he was suddenly warped before he swapped places with the wizard from Lamia-Scale.

"Damn, that magic was actually pretty cool. Too bad it took him so long to cast it, he could have used it on Jet'', Alex said in appreciation. A series of nods was all he got in response and he went back to watching the race. Ichiya once again blasted through the race with his 'Super Speed Parfume', but was only able to claim third in the standings. He was currently complaining to the Lamia-scale Wizard for 'using underhanded means to cheat'. The lady from Mermaid-Heel came in fourth and the guy from Orochi's-Fin came in fifth. Twilight Ogre didn't finish the race but it wouldn't have mattered anyway as their participant had lost all his orbs.

"Yes! I knew Fairytail was the best!" Mavis shouted.

"Keep your words to yourself little girl or I'll spin you!" an old lady from the Lamia-scale box said. Alex chuckled with a few of the others as they watched someone from that same box start spinning like a top after talking back to the old lady. Mato Announced the placements and points awarded to each team before the announcing of the next event, the fighting!

"For the final event of the evening, we will be having combat trials! The fights will be 1 vs. 1! 10 points will go to the team of the winner, draws will earn each team 5 points, and a loss will get you none! Our first match for the evening features our current first place team against the current fourth place! Please cheer for Max Alors of Fairy-tail and his opponent, the beautiful Risley Law!" the announcer called out from the box. Mato was busy dancing back and forth for the crowd as he waited for the fighters, and couldn't be bothered with the announcements.

The fight between Max and Risley was pretty anticlimactic. She was a wielder of gravity magic, but she didn't seem to have that much control over it or even a good imagination about what it could do. Alex was curious as to how her magic seemed to change her body at a physical level, but it seemed like it was happening by accident and she couldn't control it. Risley was no match for Max after Alex, Mira and Mavis had whipped him into shape these past few months. He finished the fight in only a few moves, showing how outmatched she truly was.

After Max's match was over, Alex figured it was time to carry out his plan. Lots of eyes were on Fairytail's booth now, and he didn't doubt people would recognise him. Turning to Mira he told her he was going to be heading out. He would be leaving a 'thought projection' in the booth, he would also be limiting the sensory input he would get from the projection so he was counting on Mira to keep people from trying to talk to him while he was gone. Entering Stealth at the same time as he created the projection, Alex spared no time leaping into the sky and heading for the palace. He would destroy Eclipse and be back to Domus Flou before anyone was the wiser. He had left a small teleport beacon on the top of the arena to make sure he could get there quickly.

In what felt like seconds, Alex was standing in front of the Eclipse gate. He knew casting magic near this thing would be pointless and Fel-Fire would point all fingers right at him if there was someone keeping watch over this place, so he went to the next best thing. He was delighted to see that Curse energy didn't get absorbed by the gate and actually reacted badly with it. Forcing all the curse energy that he could command into the door, he watched as cracks started forming all over it. It took longer than Alex wanted it too but in the end he had succeeded, eclipse was now just a bunch of rubble on the ground and he could feel all its stored ethernano start dissipating into the atmosphere. With one final nod and a glance around the empty chamber, Alex teleported out, though not before hearing shouting heading towards the chamber.

'Damn, It's a good thing I didn't use the Fel-fire or reveal myself. That could have been very annoying to try and explain', Alex thought to himself as he glanced down at the stadium below him. The crowd was going wild because of the exciting battles. The Mascot, Mato, was congratulating all the guilds and announcing today's winners. Fairy-Tail had dominated the competition and was in first with 20 points. Lamia-Scale's fighter had beaten Blue-Pegasus and was in second with 18 points. Orochi's-Fin had beaten Twilight-Ogre and had moved up to third with 12 points. Blue-Pegasus's loss had knocked them to fourth with 6 points. Mermaid Heel was in fifth with 4 points and Twilight-Ogre was in last with 0 points.

Alex made his way back to Mira with nobody any wiser that he had been gone. He squeezed her hand lightly, letting her know that it was done and they could talk about it later. They both went and congratulated Max and Jet on their Victories. There were also reporters there hoping to talk to the contestants. There was one outlier among the reporters, the flamboyant reporter, Jason with sorcerer weekly, was heading right towards Alex with a fiery look in his eyes.

"Good to see you again Jason, how did you like running the transmitter?" Alex asked, hoping to curb Jason's personality. It didn't work.

"It was soo COOL! I can't believe how awesome the fights and the race were, but this device was by far the best! I've already been contacted by my boss asking if we can form a partnership with you to be able to use this full time! They were listening from Magnolia, and said most of the town was trying to listen in before the end of the games!" The ever excitable man said.

"Hmmm, that could work. I have been meaning to set something like that up and I have a good opinion of your company so far. It'll have to wait till another day though, feel free to keep it and keep announcing the events happening in the capital as you see fit. This is still a trial run for the radio, who knows what it could be useful for", Alex said with a small smile. Jason spun in a few circles while shouting to himself before running off in a random direction.

"He is such an excitable guy", Mira commented with a chuckle. "That he is. You will have to deal with him a lot if he does become the one in charge of the radio. Well, if you still plan on using it to promote your new music anyway", Alex said with a smirk and a wink. Mira just chuckled and gave him a smile filled with hidden meaning.