by Simon Archer
“I would very much like to meet her,” Aylin chirped. She was suddenly brimming with excitement, her eyes looking off to some distant memory. “I like ghosts. I miss them.”
Everyone but me turned to her. It was Eric who asked, “You like them? They aren’t… scary?”
“Scary?” Aylin asked as if that was a completely foreign concept. “Why would they be scary? They’re usually quite good company. I spoke to them all the time at home.”
“So…” Eric struggled to find a polite way to clarify and waved his hand gently in the air as he mined his brain for a proper response. “To be clear, we’re talking about spirits, right? Dead people?”
“Oh, yes!” Aylin beamed. “Our people can see them. You cannot do that?”
“Not normally,” I said, a little distracted. “I mean, there’s a ton of rumors, but that’s all they are.”
“What a shame. Your human vision seems quite limited. I wonder what that must be like…”
“Boring compared to that, I’d imagine.” Eric chuckled.
I was still focused on the battle on screen. The initial barrage from Oliver had put half the Osata team down for the count, and the rest were barely able to mount to hold their own. I wondered what it would be like to be mentored by someone who claimed to be a ghost. She’d been a beautiful woman, calm and serene as she spoke to her students. Yet… like the rest of the Carter team, there was also something off about her.
“So, you don’t know what ‘ghost’ means?” I asked Kara. “Like, specifically? As a power?”
“Nope.” Kara shook her head. “Nada.”
“Alright. What about the others?”
Kara ticked off her hands and began to announce, “Glass control--”
“Wait,” Matt cut in. “Glass control?”
Annoyed to be cut off so early, Kara nodded and pressed a control on the remote to swap to one of the other camera views. While the audiences watching at home on television were limited to what the producers wanted to show, we were given access to all one-hundred-and-fifty-two cameras recording the action on the field. This shot was focused on a pretty black-haired woman with green eyes, seemingly pulling a long, sharp shard of glass out of thin air.
“Yes,” Kara gestured impatiently, “glass control. Her name is Angela, and she can make glass and fling it at people. She can breathe out shards of glass, she can make glass explode into splinters with a glance. Pretty much, if it involves glass, she can probably do it.”
“Lovely.” Matt sighed. “I suppose I’m the one getting cut to ribbons, then?” he asked me.
I tossed up my hands up in surrender. “Don’t look at me, I’m not the one with a healing factor.”
“Yeah, except for ten minutes a day,” he sneered. Matt was still pretty salty about that, and for once, it made me chuckle.
“Right, exactly,” I said with a grin. “What else have we got, Kara?”
Kara ticked her fingers again. “Roger, who is an animal shifter with a healing factor… locked to medium sizes, before you ask.” She glared at Matt, who was about to interrupt her again. “Some girl named Callie who has light manipulation. Actually, she can go invisible, so watch for that one. Light manipulation also means lasers, so there’s some ranged firepower. There’s also a fire user and an ice user--”
Both Matt and I perked up at this for two different reasons, so I snatched up the remote and cycled through the cameras until I got a good look at them. The fire wielder was a stony-faced young woman, and the ice student was a screaming, red-faced man. They worked very closely together, combining their elemental control to create steam attacks or building platforms of ice as sniping perches to hurl fire from, but considering how they seemed to be shouting and shoving each other, their partnership only ran so deep.
“Yes, boys,” Kara sighed, “you heard me correctly. The girl’s name is Sarah, and the guy’s name is Thurgood, fire and ice. It’s probably intentional. The fire girl can fly, so he’ll probably give Aylin some problems.”
I wondered what kind of statement they intended with a fire and ice team. It could be a sign for peace… or it could be a way to fuel bitterness already in the works. No doubt my father wouldn’t be happy with the reminder. His hatred for Ice Bringer and his children were on a whole new level of insanity. He felt that his old partner had betrayed him by not converting to the Brand and failed to see how murdering the man’s wife was crossing an unforgivable line.
The camera showing the current match didn’t focus on the audience, so my imagination was left to fill in the blanks as to Dad’s reaction to this.
I was pulled back into the conversation when Kara added, “Oh, and the last Carter, Switch, makes portals.”
Kara pointed at the screen again with her pen. The student in question, a cocky-looking blue-haired girl, had already portaled the rescue target a safe distance outside of the force field blocking her off without even bothering to penetrate it. From there, Carter’s team was a lot rougher than most in how they treated their rescue target, tossing her back and forth between team members with little concern to her actual safety. They were supposed to be the heroes this round, but they weren’t really acting like it.
“If we’re on villain status when we fight them, she’ll probably try to portal in and grab the target from us,” I theorized. “Look. She’s also using it to displace people and confuse them. That’ll be annoying.”
“So is she the main target?” Andie asked.
I frowned as I thought it over. “I don’t know yet. Anyway, it’s obvious Carter’s going to win this. They’re toying with Osata, so there is a good chance we will be fighting them sooner or later.”
“Agreed.” Eric nodded. “They give me the willies. I’m not sure what’s up with them, but whatever it is, they’re obviously a big contender.”
The entire arena roared, and I looked up in time to see Oliver snatch the rescue target and zoom them both to the safety line. The match was over, and they’d beaten Osata with five minutes to spare. Oliver let the rescue target go and lifted his massive mech arms into a cheer. The audience roared again in approval, and the rest of the Carter team joined him for celebrations.
As the first to be knocked out of the competition, the Osata team was not nearly so enthusiastic. I watched them trudge back towards the exit with a pang of sympathy.
“These matches are back to back all day long, so Carter isn’t done yet,” Eric pointed out. “Whoever wins this needs to have a lot of stamina because a single loss is all it takes to knock you out of the tournament.”
“We’re not losing,” I said firmly.
“Well, if nothing else, we’ve got you for confidence.” He chuckled.
Gemma peeked in from the doorway. “We’re up next. Get to the field.”
After a short round of prep, we were soon surrounded by thousands of hungry fans still riding the high of the Carter match. We were on defense this time, playing as the villains. Our enemy was another small academy from a city called Caset. They heralded from a small archipelago far to the south and, like Osata, largely kept to themselves. For them, the best defense from the Brand was to blend into the background.
We were going to kick their asses.
Clapping my hand into my fist, I cracked my knuckles and tried not to look too eager to murder the enemy. I had a lot of aggression to burn after what happened earlier.
“Kara, you and Andie are on defense as usual,” I said. “Protect the rescue target.”
“Got it,” she said through the comm in my ear. “You powering up for this one?”
“No,” I said with a shake my head. “If we make it to the finals, I’m going to need it. These matches are all back to back, so I won’t have time to rest and recover if I waste it early.”
“Makes sense,” Matt muttered. He was to the right of me, and his sister was behind him to back us up.
Above us, Aylin pointed at the entrance gate. “Ten seconds. What is our plan, Starlight?”
“We
knock them all out and end this early.”
And then the doors opened, and the Caset team charged forth. I had to give them this, though all our information played them up as a minimal threat, they didn’t carry themselves that way. They charged in a straight forward rush for our defensive line with a cry of “For Caset!”
I admired their spirit, but their tactics? That had a lot to be desired. I glanced behind me to Eric. “You’re up, sparkplug. Light ‘em up!”
“With pleasure, Nick!” Blue lightning crackled up and down his form, gathering into his palms before, right when the Caset team hit mid-field, he thrust his arms upward. A mighty surge of electricity exploded into the sky, a tremendous burst of energy that exploded through the sky with a roar of thunder… before raining down sparking death on the Caset team.
Eric’s control had gotten impressive over the last semester, and this thunder attack was a sign of that control. First, because it took a lot of skill to channel his power through the atmosphere and back down, and second, because he could modulate his voltage enough to stun instead of outright kill the four Caset students he blasted with it.
“And I was hoping this would be a real match,” I muttered under my breath. I gestured forward and raised my voice. “Okay, team! Let’s finish this off! Aylin, Kristen, Matt, let’s go!”
With that, our offensive wing rushed forward. Aylin hit first, crashing into a particularly brutish bull-headed man like a glowing comet, and Matt in his full werewolf form was close behind, taking the big guy’s legs out to take him the rest of the way down. That left a gun-toting tech genius that was unfortunately wrapped in metal.
Kristen took her down with a snap of her fingers, while I got to dance with their captain, a speedy martial artist who didn’t quite have enough speed to be super. He wasn’t half-bad. If he had been fighting someone else, he might have had a chance… but he was fighting me. Ever since I could walk, I was being trained to fight, to either take my role as my father’s heir or to stand among the world’s greatest heroes.
I knocked the Caset captain out in forty-eight seconds.
I sighed, still eager for more. I wanted a bigger fight, but the Caset team hadn’t proven a match for the seven of us. Hell, even just one of us. Eric had managed to take out four alone with a massive thunder attack. His electrokinesis had improved over time to be one of our most devastating abilities, and he could unleash it at full blast several times a day now. He was clearly quite proud of himself as he mimed the attack to Kara with excited mock-explosion noises. You wouldn’t know he was one of our most dangerous team members by the way he went on like a happy-go-lucky goober.
“That was so cool! I’m gonna call my mom. I need to know if she saw it.”
“She saw it.” Kara chuckled as she gave him a one-armed hug. “She was in the audience. Did a lot of very proud screaming with Adelaide.”
Eric, of course, was already dialing his mother on the phone as we headed back into the staging area. “Mom? Mom, did you see that? I’m so awesome!”
I heard a tinny, ‘Yes, honey, of course, you are,’ and I smiled. I wasn’t satisfied by the challenge of the match whatsoever, but the crowds approved of our performance, shaking the whole arena with their cheering, and I was damn proud of Eric’s improvements since I’d first met him. He could carry half the team, given enough time and effort.
We headed towards our room in the staging area to come across Inferno’s team headed out to the field. They didn’t block our path the way Carter’s team had. In fact, they almost seemed hesitant to approach us. I wasn’t sure what it was about, but I could guess.
“Did my father send you?” I asked matter-of-factly.
The black-and-red-haired girl from before closed the distance between us. She had red ribbons in her hair, her eyes a matching blood red. As she extended a gloved hand to me, she said smoothly, “I didn’t properly introduce myself, my lord. My name is Akemi.”
“Uh… hi, Akemi,” I said, feeling awkward as I took the offered hand. It was warm and slender in mine, and when we shook, her grip was slack. “What do you need?”
“Your father, Lord Inferno, blessed be his name, once again requests your presence… should you wish to join him, of course.”
“I am actually busy right now.” I gestured around the area. “We have to prepare for our next match, so I’m not sure--”
“My lord Inferno, blessed be his name, does not wish to pressure you,” she cut in and smiled sweetly. “A no will suffice for now.”
Matt shoved in front of me and crossed his arms like a big guard dog. It was endearing how quick he was to defend me, even if it was also a little bit irritating sometimes.
“The answer is no,” he spat.
Like my father before her, Akemi didn’t deign to acknowledge Matt’s presence. Instead, she simply waited for my answer.
“Yeah, I just can’t see it happening right now.” I shook my head. “Sorry, but the answer is no.”
“Very well, my lord,” she said with a bow. “I will pass on the message.”
“I’m not your lord,” I said with a wave. “You can just call me Nick.”
“That would be too rude to bear--”
“He’s not your lord,” Matt said, cutting her off with a hiss.
Akemi’s red eyes slowly scrolled across each of us and landed on me again. With a mysterious little smile, she said, “Isn’t he?”
As Akemi’s back turned on us, my nightmare replayed through my eyes. Me on a throne. My father dead. The world in flames.
I needed a moment to collect myself and push down the twist in my guts, so I made an excuse and tucked off into the locker room. It was Aylin who found me a few minutes later. I was so busy staring up at the monitor as it showed a marching band outside of the arena celebrating the ceasefire, I didn’t even notice her.
They were performing a song that was a hybrid of Alexandria’s thematic strings, and the Brand’s rolling drums. One half was dressed in blue, and the other in red. I tried to happy about these little hints of peace, but I could help but be worried about what Dad was really planning. He just couldn’t be giving up on taking over everything. He never gave up at anything, and all that made me think of was how much he wanted me to take over the Brand.
Aylin sat down next to me and didn’t say a word. The silence, despite its nature, was comfortable. With a sigh, I crossed my arms and leaned against her. She wrapped a loving arm around my shoulders and simply smiled.
“I understand what you are feeling when it comes to your father,” she said, and as I turned toward her, she continued. “I was very much in the same place on my world, and I did not want it.”
Glancing at her, I studied the lines of her face and frowned. “You haven’t spoken much of what happened to your home. Of… why you left. You were running from someone?”
“I was.” Aylin’s lips twisted unhappily, and the shadow of terrible memories dashed across her pretty glowing eyes. “And perhaps, someday, I will develop the courage to say more,” she whispered. “That day is not today, Starlight.”
“But you… understand,” I said as I twisted around to face her fully. “You handled my father so well back there. You know how to speak to people like that.”
“I… have known his type,” she confessed. “Are you… are you well, Starlight?”
I wanted to tell her that I was perfectly fine, but my actions of late had proven otherwise. I wasn’t sure. I was more than ready for the tournament, but I wasn’t ready for what it represented.
“I’m Alexandria’s champion and heir to the Brand,” I whispered. “The ceasefire exists because of me.”
“You say that like peace is a curse,” Aylin said as she began to gently rub my tense shoulders.
“You… you don’t understand,” I huffed. “Triton and my father came some kind of agreement, and I know that I was at the center of it. It’s the only thing they have in common, and it’s past due that I took my place in the Brand, if you go by what Dad wa
nts, and--”
“Triton would never put you in a position you would not agree to, and certainly not without your consent,” Aylin said firmly. “Do you not trust him?”
I stood and began to pace. Of course, I did, but I also understood the value of having someone who wasn’t insane on the throne of my father’s empire. It was going to come up if it hadn’t already, and I wasn’t ready to deal with it.
“I do,” I said after a moment.
“Then, what is wrong?”
“I… I died the last time I stopped him...” I swallowed. “What if next time, that isn’t enough?”
“Starlight.” Aylin forced me to stop pacing by darting in front of me. She crossed her arms and stood firm. “You need to relax. We all need you focused and ready for the tournament.”
“I know, I--”
“Shh. No more negativity.” She put her finger on my lips and smiled. “Repeat after me: everything is going to be alright.”
I breathed in deep, held it, then released it. “‘Everything is going to be alright,” I repeated.
“Again.”
“Everything is going to be alright, Aylin.”
“That is good.” Alyin put her hands on her hips and looked proud. “My Starlight is fierce and ready for battle. Feeling better?”
“I…” I was surprised to find that I actually was. It was a bizarre weight lifted off my shoulders for the moment. “Yes. Thanks.”
Aylin gently clapped me on the back with a slim, violet hand and smiled. “Do not worry so much about your future, Starlight. It is time you focused on the present course instead. We need you focused and ready.”
“And I need you,” I whispered without thinking. I blushed because it was far truer than I’d intended.
I wasn’t sure if Aylin caught the slip, but she nodded and smiled nonetheless. “Of course you do. We are a team, after all.”
11
A few minutes later, I found myself heading towards the stands by a rather spirited Aylin, who claimed, “Watching your enemy from a back room gets you nowhere. We are having fun today, Starlight.”
