Chapter 8

Laura Phan broadcasted her voice through loudspeakers in a large reinforced arena. The other members on the team were able to watch the scene behind a large transparent glass window overlooking the ground below.

"The rules are simple. Using dull weapons, you can either make your opponent unconscious, make them surrender, or force them outside the indicated out of bounds zone. Next we will-"

Someone had tapped my shoulders from behind.

"Hi, I'm Lin Bo Chao-xing, but people just call me Lynn. I'm from the A.L.E.O. headquarters Asian branch. I was sooooo surprised when I heard the news from my instructor that I was moving to London. I've always wanted to go to London and see the different architecture, I think It's just so cool. What's your name again? Sorry I think I remember the Admiral saying your name, but I forgot"

"Ren Vincent"

The woman beside me wore a white uniform coat with a white dress shirt, black pants and long black hair that she tied into a ponytail. Considering the fact that she had been silent throughout the entire meeting, she was very chatty and talked quickly.

"I hope we can get along, I heard that you guys are apparently the best in the world. I'm not too shabby myself, but I'm sure if I fought you guys I'd probably lose since I don't spend nearly as much time out on the field as I do inside a lab so that's why I said I didn't wanna partake in the fighting. I don't really care as long as we can get to inspect the creatures later on. I just can't wait to see what kind of new discoveries we'll find along with enhancing my technics of poi-"

I turned my attention back onto the field below.

"Chantelle Harris, please step onto the designated area"

So that was the woman's name who had a snarky attitude. Chantelle. She was casually stretching her arms and legs as she was preparing. I found her choice of weapon odd. Most people tended to fight using more ranged melee weapons like swords, maces, and lances. If they didn't like a closer confrontation, they tended to use guns, but she wore brass knuckles on her hands and simple light armour.

"Manuel Perez, please step on the designated area"

The man on the right wore medium sized armour that fit his build and a large metal backpack that connected with his armour. It seemed to have a panel that indicated numbers and letters and a graph that looked like a monitor from the hospital. The man used a large metal hammer as his weapon and gloves that seemed to have multiple buttons on them. The man stepped inside the square and put the goggles on his forehead on.

"Three. Two. One. Begin!"

Chantelle reacted first. She started sprinting towards Manuel and covered quite the distance in a span of a few seconds.

Manuel immediately raised his right arm and a hole on the glove started releasing a gust of grey smoke. His backpack opened up and released tiny little boxes that scattered all around.

He raised his arms and blocked an attack from Chantelle who came out of the smoke. He twirled in a spin causing her to back off and remain at a distance.

Now on the attack, he charged at chantelle, dragging the hammer behind him before he jumped in the air and slammed the hammer down onto the ground causing some cracks to form.

She easily evaded and then came in closer and jabbed with her right arm into his chest knocking him backwards several feet.

Crashing onto the floor, Manuel raised his right arm again and the smoke spread through the air much more quickly than before, almost instantly covering a small area around him in smoke.

Chantelle dashed forward and made a fast kick in the air dissipating the smoke that formed.

Manuel had used the opportunity and made a dash back to the square.

I wondered what his motives were because his hammer was in the other direction.

Chantelle used her speed to make up for lost time and had caught up to Manuel. He then did something that surprised me.

As he turned around to face Chantelle, He raised his left arm and closed his fight. Chantelle who was about to slam her fists onto his face had stopped her attack mid motion almost as if she had become paralyzed.

She screamed and let out a roar and ran after Manuel who had again used the chance to escape and get into a fighting position.

Chantelle used a mix of boxing and martial arts to fight Manuel one on one. Although he was able to block all her attacks, he was forced to take a step back each time. Her reflex and speed were fast, but for some reason it seemed like Manuel knew her every move.

She continued to use an array of different attacks until the loudspeakers in the arena turned on.

"Cease all fire! Chantelle Harris is the winner. Reason. Out of bounds"

Manuel stretched his hand forward to shake Chantelle's hand, but she just walked off towards the exits.

"That was so cool how it looked like he blocked her attack earlier"

I agreed with Lynn. Despite the fact that he lost, He seemed to have quite a few tricks up his sleeve that were indeed impressive.

After a short while the two fighters walked into the room. Chantelle sat on a chair in the corner of the room and looked out the transparent panel and despite winning, she looked to be in a sour mood.

I made my way to the man whose name was Manuel.

"That fight was pretty cool. What did you do to stop her from attacking you mid-motion?"

The man held his stomach and bellowed a laugh.

"Thank you, that was one of my inventions that I had come up with. I simply called it a force field because it distorted and compressed the air in front of me for a split second so that a fast moving object such as a bullet travelling towards you would slow down drastically so that it looked like I had stopped its motion.

The man then took a slide glance at Chantelle.

"I've heard rumours about her. People called her 'Knuckle Head' back at the A.L.E.O African branch"

"That's a terrible nickname," I said.

"She's got a bad reputation there because of her personality hence the nickname. Every top person at that branch that tried to mess with her received a beating"

"Note taken. But it looked like you could hold your own with her during the match"

"Ah, that's because of my devices. I created them so that if someone was in range, the devices would scan their every movement and make a calculated decision altogether how the person would react. They sent the information to my goggles and helped me anticipate how they would react. Too bad it's pretty much useless for the aliens which were apparently fighting"

"Give yourself some credit. That technology is amazing and if you're able to come up with something like that against a human, I'm sure you'd be able to create something that would work against the Echos"

The man put his hand against the back of his head and scratched it saying thanks.

"Talking to you it seems like your the most normal person in the team"

"What's that supposed to mean" I wondered

"Don't you know anything about the others in the room?"

"Not really"

Manuel pointed his chin at the young short woman who was dangling her legs above the chair she was sitting on.

"That old hag is weird as hell. She pretends to act like she's a young woman when she's supposed to be way older than me. I don't know what she uses to try to look so young, but it ain't moisturizer I'll tell you that"

Manuel then pointed at the woman who talked to me earlier. Lynn was her name.

"And that crazy scientists over there. I've heard she experiments with all types of different creatures and creates some sort of toxic substance"

Manuel looked down below onto the stadium and I thought he was looking at Kim, but he was looking at the young boy who only looked to be around twelve or thirteen at most.

"To top things off, on the forums from the databases collected in the branches and online, it was said that there was a devil that resided in the North American branch. There's no way a child would be allowed in the army, I have a feeling that devil other people talked about is that child down below"

I did find it incredibly odd that a young pre-teen was allowed to even be in the military because you had to be at least eighteen years old at the bare minimum. I brushed it off thinking that maybe the other branches in the world had different restrictions and customs considering the circumstances our world was in. I didn't really pay attention to what happened around the world unlike Manual which is most likely why I had zero knowledge about any of the members from the other branches.

Kim was decked out with a body armour that had magazines loaded and attached to his body and pants. He carried an M4 carbine with a scope, two dual pistols holstered on both his sides and an infinity 12 shotgun which was a very small shotgun considered as a sidearm that had a three bullet magazine and shot out pellets in an infinity which spread out the further it launched.

Usually he carried a sniper rifle with him to battle when we'd go out, but it makes sense he'd use an assault rifle because the enemy would be coming after him. I was curious about why Kim didn't just put the sidearm on his back onto one of his side like the other two and carry another assault rifle, a sniper which he was more skilled at, or even a regular type of shotgun that could keep someone from getting too close.

Looking at the other side, I questioned the boy's use of weaponry. It was different just like Chantelle's. The boy whose bangs almost covered his eyes was using a long stick. A simple long metal stick. He didn't even wear any sort of armour which made me wonder that if this boy is a devil like Manuel said then that means he's either too cocky or too confident he won't even be harmed at all.

"Three. Two. One. Begin!"

Both Kim and the boy dashed forward. After creating some distance away from the out of bound zones, Kim made sure to keep his distance and fire rubber bullets at his opponent.

Since this was only a sparring match, if we were going to use guns then we would change regular bullets with more softer and bouncy material which would prevent lethal damage. That's not to say the bullets wouldn't cause serious pain. After all they were travelling faster than the speed of sound.

Kim used the assault rifle and fired rounds of bullets at a time. The boy had reduced the distance in the beginning, but at the moment all he could do was stay out of Kims range as he fired every so often and prevented his opponent from getting too close.

The boy was very skilled. It wasn't like Kim to miss. In fact I don't know anyone who had a more accurate shot than Kim. It was more like the boy deflected the bullets that would injure him.

Kim needed to reload and when the boy came close it seemed a bullet had almost hit him because the boy had jumped back and created distance.

It looked like the boy became more cautious instead of running in blindly and the boy would circle around his opponent while Kim would mimic his movements. Every so often Kim needed to reload his assault rifle with a new magazine and that was when the boy would come at Kim.

With one hand Kim would reload his assault rifle that was attached to his body and pants and use the pistols on his side to fire bullets to prevent the boy from rushing him head on.

It looked like the boy was looking for a battle of attrition. He knew that Kim would eventually run out of bullets.

"Why is he trying so hard not to show his back?"

I looked at the scientist who watched beside me when the battle started. She was rubbing her chin back and forth and looked to be thinking really hard.

"What do you mean by that?" I ask

"Well the first couple of times it looked like the man with the gun was just trying to make sure he always had a view on his opponent while creating some distance, but now it looks like he's desperately making sure that his opponent doesn't see what's behind his back at all"

"What could possibly-"

I paused on my sentence and looked back towards the fight beneath us.

Kim used up the last magazine on his assault rifle and threw the gun onto the ground. He held one pistol in both his hands and aimed before firing. The boy dodged and weaved around the bullets fired at him and had finally gotten within range of Kim.

That's when Kim pulled out the Infinity shotgun behind his back and shot it. The boy landed a hit on Kim and at the same time was thrown backwards. The boy was flung and spun multiple times in the air before he landed on the ground facedown.

The boy stood up and drops of blood spilled onto the ground from his cheek. He turned his head towards the wall behind him and then looked back at Kim who was slowly moving his upper body from the ground. The boy grinned furiously and dashed even faster than before.

Kim screamed as he fired the second round towards the boy.

My eyes widened from what I saw.

The boy had run straight towards Kim and then immediately made a dolphin dive through the air. Unharmed he was able to knock the gun out of Kim's hand with the stick and smacked him square in the face with his knee.

The boy then raised his stick up in the air prepared to strike down. When the speakers spoke again.

"Cease all fire! Nathan Callister is the winner! Reason. Unconscious opponent"

The boy walked off towards the exits.

"Absolutely amazing!"

The scientist had sparkles in her eyes and she giggled with glee.

"That boy dived through the bullet spread of the infinity gun and was unharmed in the process I must put this into my calculations"

I excused myself from the two and walked out of the room.

I haven't felt the feeling of anxiety and anticipation in awhile. My heart was racing and thumped loudly.

If what the Admiral said is true then this group may very well be the best soldiers in the world I'd be facing.

The speakers in the hallways make an announcement.

"Daisy Young. Ren Vincent. Please make your way towards the preparation rooms"