"Alright guys, play good out there! It's just like practice, yeah?"
Inside of the changing room on the other side of the stadium, the Head Coach of Western Zeta Armadillos concluded his briefings with words of encouragement for his regulars.
"""Yes, sir!!"""
In front of him, a group of fully armoured players replied loudly while wearing their yellow-and-brown exosuits with a cartoon armadillo logo on each shoulder.
Although the fighting spirits were there, the Head Coach knew that the odds of his current roster winning against the Illusions were still rather slim.
As the Head Coach he had not been sitting idly by in his preparations for this tournament.
Through his own channels, he had managed to obtain the recording footage of the enemy's friendly spars against the Delta City's Magnolia Thorns just the week before.
And what he had discovered through the recording had stunned him completely.
'Even the new 1st and 2nd year regulars of Ravenville were already a cut above ours in terms of skills and performances...'
Before watching it, the Head Coach had actually retained a little bit of hope that Ravenville's new regulars wouldn't be as solid as their last year's counterpart.
He had also been secretly hoping that the levels of their rumoured two new Starseeds had simply been too hyped up and were still nowhere near the level of a normal Tier-1 school's regular sophomore players.
But alas,
As a Tier-1 college's Head Coach himself, there was no way that his observation skills wouldn't be able to recognize that those wishes of his had not come true this time around.
Just from what little he'd seen of their plays, he could already accurately judge that Irvine Lang and Medea Dormer's levels as players were in no way inferior to the rest of Tier-1 schools' new season's regulars.
They could even be said to be better because in most player's cases, their early years in college were one of their fastest growth period!
'Monsters, the whole lot of them...!' He cursed silently in his mind.
The worst thing to all these, was the fact that even though most trained eyes could easily see through Ravenville players' caliber, there's still little to no new information regarding the limit of their current combat prowess!
'The Young twins can now play more independently, but that was it... Most of their points in that friendly match were scored through their tactical plays using the terrain, that damned Lark!'
"..."
*sigh*
'Alright calm down, it's not like they're the perfect team either...' The Head Coach regained his composures after a couple more breaths,
'I still don't know what's the deal with that Irvine Lang kid, but even though he's proven to be somewhat proficient in combat, his solving speed still leaves much to be desired for the level of this tournament... Leave it to a team like Ravenville to let someone like that become a Solver.'
'And the genius Medea Dormer, last time, it was very clear that she still hasn't adapted well enough with the terrain herself. Understandable since the environment directly counters her long-range shooting style-- All in all...'
"Remember guys," The Head Coach opened his mouth and reminded the team one last time,
"The other team's got 2 freshmen students in their roster!"
"Now being Starseeds, they might be called geniuses, but in the end, compared to the rest of Ravenville's older regulars, those two would still be the easiest to deal with for us!! So follow the plan!"
""Sir!"" All the players in the room replied at the same time.
During this moment the Head Coach seemed to notice the hesitations in the team Captain's eyes, so he turned to him and asked,
"What is it?"
"I mean... Isn't it weird though, coach? If those 2 freshmen are really the weakest link among their regulars, why would they still put them in the active player line-up for this match?" The Captain voiced his suspicions.
Official matches for Battle Arena allowed each team to have 15 players registered for tournaments.
But for each match of the tournament, a team could only have 7 starting players and 5 substitues totaling to 12 players who could play.
The other 3 people within the team who weren't chosen for that particular match could only stand-by on the sidelines without playing in the match.
This arrangement of having an extra 3 players were actually designed for when accidents occur during combat, relating to larger type of injuries towards one of the team's players.
In such cases, one of the 3 people could then stand-in for the team's next match without the team having to lack 1 substitute player in their line-up.
As such, in this format, for every match during the tournament, the team's manager or Head Coach would have to re-submit their regular players' names for which 12 to become the team's active players for that game.
And in this opening match, the Armadillos had already received the other team's current line-up, where both Irvine and Medea had been arranged to play amongst the 12.
This had somewhat contradict the Head Coach's words of saying that the 2 freshmen were the weakest of the other team's regulars. Which was why the Captain had asked to confirm.
"..."
"Heh, isn't it because they're underestimating our team in favour of nurturing their future stars?" One of the teammates beside him interjected with a bit of taunting tone in his voice.
"Is that really the case--"
"Either way." The Head Coach suddenly interrupted,
"Do you really think that those two are gonna be harder to deal with than the likes of Baron, Clint Silver, or the Young brothers?" The Head Coach reversed the Captain's point of view back to him.
"Well-- No, but."
"Then we can only stick to our plan and do our best. Look alive people! this is the Regionals! It's not like we're getting eliminated here in any case!"
""...""
"...So what do you say? Are you going to just keep worrying about in here until the match start?"
"""No sir!!"""
"Then let's show them what we've got!"
.
.
Before long, the pre-match preparations were quickly finished up on both sides by the referees.
In official Crowned matches like this one, to prevent any leaking of information during the preparatory phase, the placing of multiple towers would always be handled by the match referees after being given the coordinates on where to install them by the team.
Only after all 6 towers had been properly installed would the two team's starting players would then be called out onto the field.
And the time for that was exactly now.
*FWEEEEEET*
A loud ringing sound of a whistle resounded from the referee station a little ways above the actual field.
After the team of referees had all left the field, one amongst them had blown onto the whistle hung around his neck to signal the starting players to come out.
On the audience seat, Althea watched on with both excitement and nervousness in her heart.
Although it couldn't be said that this was her first time watching a live match, it had truly been a long time since the last time she'd done so during her childhood.
The first time had been when her parents had brought her and her brother into the Z Stadium to watch a match during the holiday.
That moment had been the very first time Althea had gotten acquainted with the sport and had been blown away by it. Back then, she hadn't yet tried to hide her passion for the game.
That memory had been the first and last time she had watched a live Battle Arena match before today.
Right now though, Althea was reliving that very same experience she had felt way back then.
When a line of people started coming out from both side of the field's entrances, she quickly tried to locate if her brother's suit number was amongst the group of black-and-grey armoured players that came out.
Surprisingly, it didn't take long for her to find him!
The main monitor was currently showing a zoomed-in view of both team's players coming out.
And as the camera started panning outwardly to show more of the area around...
[15]
Althea had quickly found the number #15 exosuit at the very back of Ravenville's line of players!
"He's starting the match...!" When she'd located her brother, she almost couldn't keep herself still and jump out of her seat.
Thankfully, the looks of some college students sitting around her brought herself back to reality fast enough to avoid any embarassing events from occurring for her.
'Irvine's a starter!' She still murmured excitedly to herself.
Ever since the Magnolia's friendly match, the two of them had traded several messages back-and-forth exchanging their views with regards to the progression of that spar.
And through such exchanges, Althea had slowly become less and less awkward in her support for her brother, at least throughout this past week.
She had started to pay more attention to any news regarding college Arena and the Tier-1 League that Irvine and Ravenville was participating in.
Whenever she would find any obscure stories regarding some Tier-1 colleges within Zeta City, Althea would first share the source of it to Irvine in hope that it would be able to help in some way.
She must admit that she had overdone it a little bit in this aspect.
.
"It's starting..."
""RAVENVILLE!""
Before Althea could go any further into her own world, the increasingly loud talkings and shoutings from the people around her once again diverted her attention back into the main field.
In the home ground, the supporting yells from several groups of college students surrounding Althea were almost deafening to her ears.
On the other hand, she could feel that she was slowly reliving the atmosphere and excitement she had long since forgotten with watching a match live!
"Good luck!!" "Get a 5-point lead!!!"
'...So cool....' Althea mumbled under her breath.
.
On the field, the 6 total Guards from both teams had taken their positions beside their tower posts, getting ready to push the button on top of each tower together to signal the start of the match.
Seconds trickled by, until eventually,
[5...]
[4... 3... 2...]
[1...]
*BEEEEP*
[MATCH START]
*SWISH* *SWISH*
Following the robotic voice, on the field, silhouettes of several figures quickly shuffled through the walls and doors of run-down apartment buildings in stealth.
On Ravenville's front, Irvine, Derrick, and Naomi were running together to reach the open halfway line even a second earlier.
Just like the second half of the spar against Magnolia, Ravenville's advance group this time consisted of the same 3 people working together.
'It's the same formation as that match...' On her seat, Althea had also noticed this detail as she watched the figure of her brother running down a narrow alley together with two others.
As the three reached the open clearing of the halfway line, they quickly located 3 other people in yellow exosuits on the other side of the abandoned park just like they'd anticipated.
Seeing the other party's arrival, Derrick reacted by first taking his position at the front of the other two!
However, outside of his expectation, the other team had also swiftly changed their initial formation the moment they'd seen them,
The 3 advance group of the Armadillos suddenly charged through the distance between the two parties without hesitation!
As one of the two Fielders that was taking point on their charge, the Captain of the Armadillos etched the Head Coach's words from before the match in his mind,
(The Starseed Irvine Lang seems to favour fighting even though he's supposed to be a Solver, let's put this to our advantage...)
(How?)
(If he's retreating when you advance, that means he's luring you away to break our formation by acting like a docile Solver getting cornered, don't engage him when he does this...)
(When he sees you neglecting him, he would eventually have no other choice but to take the initiative to confront you. Now at this time, you should fully engage yourself to him!!)
(You're at Stage-3 while he's still a Solver in the end. Which means his HP getting decreased would be a far more advantageous for them than for our Second Fielder taking damage!)
(Just make sure to not break formation if he tried to lure you in and the trade-off will be to our advantage!)
(...Yes sir!)
The Captain nodded to himself when he had finished remembering the plan.
In this first halfway line battle, the three of them were to disrupt the other party's flow by keeping their formation tight!