"Why did I strike myself with lightning? I don't know, it sure as hell felt cool. The doctor told me to put on a performance, soooo that's what I did." Vanagloria thinks as the sky above her starts to clear.
It didn't hurt Vanagloria which is a good thing. For sure.
It didn't seem to hurt anyone else which is also good.
The crowd was left speechless which might be a good thing but it also might not.
Honestly it didn't matter to Vanagloria right now. She was on top of the world.
Normally all of this attention would've gotten to her. She was never good in front of crowds, not at all. But the confidence she had right now was trumping any sort of fear.
All the sand that used to surround her was all blown away revealing the now singed concrete below her.
She pulled her hand down from the sky as she realized she had basically been posing for a few seconds.
The sky starts to clear up and the spectator stands start to chatter again.
Kryphia, now standing quite far away from her, looked completely speechless. A very big achievement for Vanagloria to have gotten this type of reaction from one of the most legendary heroes on the island.
"How's that?" Vanagloria says grinning.
The tall woman with the light blue ice dress/armor collects herself and wipes the sand out of her face. "Well I'm picking your team for my team of choice for sure. I just kinda wish you didn't get so much sand on me."
"Oh really?!" Vanagloria says with pure glee.
"Yeah, actually I think most people in my situation would've wanted to have less sand in their eyes." She says with a bit of sass, knowing full well Vanagloria wasn't listening.
"I rest my case your honor, I will now go and leave the rest to you."
Up in the champions stand, Dr. Dread hands the microphone over to Nova, the light champion, who is also completely dumbfounded. He walks behind the balcony into the dark room behind it, disappearing.
"Well this is certainly a first." Nova says into the mic, trying to think of how to even comment on what just happened. Even looking completely speechless she still looked very regal.
Anyone in this room would be able to tell she was the champion of the most powerful capital on the islands. She had cold silver eyes, the exact same color as her hair and crown. When Vanagloria got to meet and shake Nova's hand backstage her first thought was "Wow she looks like a metallic Blair" except Nova is just slightly taller, a lot more powerful and royal as hell.
Kryphia comparably was a lot less regal and champion like.
She looked young for her age which Vanagloria figured out was 40 the hard way. Kryphia still seemed like a cool person to her, but even Vanagloria could tell she was getting annoyed by her, especially after she asked for Kryphia's age.
Vanagloria just had to know, she can hold back her curiosity most of the time but Vanagloria was stressing out while they were waiting underneath the stage and the question just blurted out. Plus Kryphia is a celebrity that Vanagloria might never meet again so she gave into temptation.
Kryphia was a part of the most famous groups of hero's to ever walk the islands. They are called the "7 legendary hero's of old" despite them being selected only 20 years ago at the 400th annual Champions day. They were better known as "Divergence" back when they were still a team.
That group takes up the most of the champion spots today. The other champions that are a part of that group are the rock champion, Vulcan, Nova the light champion and the air champion, Styrmir.
The group split up after the Exterminatus event caused by Flügel, the former leader of the group, the previous Fire champion and known now as the Executor Void.
The other two members of the team, the dark member Bia, and the forest member Scylla were killed by him.
Together they had a member of each element and were generally unstoppable. The contribution of Flügel alone was more than enough to catapult the team into unfathomable realms of power.
In the 2020 recorded years on the islands, only few people have been recorded to have a similar strength to the one he possesses.
It's a miracle that everyone on the islands are still alive where a mind-broken champion of that strength still roams around.
…
So it's not a stretch to say that just for being the second strongest on that team, Kryphia is one of the most famous people on the islands.
Although her power now had diminished far below what it was years ago. The fact that it used to be a debate if her or Flugel were stronger was the best example of her power.
But it's clear after 20 or so years of being a champion along with the shit she went through with Flügel, that she's a little worn down, physically and mentally. Still a massive honor to have her be the one to give Vanagloria her shot. If anything, Kryphia felt more badass when she didn't care about much.
"I can't wait to tell Blair everything that I did in the past few hours." Vanagloria thinks, looking over at her new group. She could just barely see them all the way by the entrance of the colosseum.
"Wow I guess I'm really about to meet my team finally." Vanagloria hadn't really prepared for this. She had prepared for meeting them with Blair but she didn't expect herself to be separated from them.
"Vanagloria, that was an amazing performance and I look forward to what you will show for us later. But I am going to have to ask you to go find your team and stay with them for the time being."
"You got it." Vanagloria gives Nova a thumbs up as she starts to walk back towards her team with a skip in her step.
"Kry, please come back to your throne please, it's time."
"Yup." Kryphia sighed as she got ready to make her way over to the stands.
Vanagloria stops mid-way to watch Kryphia as she starts to pick up speed.
Kryphia starts to run full speed towards the entrance, the same direction Vanagloria went in. Just before she gets off of the elevated surface she puts her out and shoots out ice to form an ice slide directed up towards the other champions. As she starts to go on her slide she turns around, her momentum pushing her up the slide backwards. She puts out her hands again right before she reaches the end of the slide and then shoots out two giant water bursts down towards her feet, powerful enough to send herself flying through the air towards the other champions.
After a few flips and another burst of water she casually lands on the floor right next to her chair.
"Wow." Vanagloria whispers to herself.
It was quite the display of her hybrid elemental powers of ice, a combination of water and rock, not to mention she also as a small amount of forest element.
Being a hybrid of elements really rare. Typically people are born with only one element, which takes up about 70 percent of the population. The odds of getting more than one can be increased if the parents have two different elements, but still wildly rare enough to be considered a birth defect. But to have a hybrid that takes 3 or more different elements is exceptionally rare. No one has ever had all 7 elements at once.
"I guess I'm one of those now." Vanagloria happily thinks to herself.
Lightning: Air, Light, Fire.
Lightning was actually so awesome to get, she felt like she couldn't contain herself, partially the reason why she did strike herself with lightning.
She must've freaked out for like 5 minutes straight after Dr. Dread told her she had lightning in her DNA.
Vanagloria had dreamed of the elements she could've gotten and this one was by far the one she wanted the most. It was her favorite to watch in action in battles or even read about in the legends of the islands. It was just so cool seeing it in the old tales of Zeus or Thor, raining bolts of lightning on their enemy's or watching the more mordern speed demons that dominated the fighting scene.
She couldn't think of a better element for herself.
Not to mention she was only half lightning.
The other half was from her parent on earth.
Vanagloria had always been a huge earth nerd. She had always been able to hyper-focus on researching it just because of how interesting it was and how it affected the islands.
The islands were practically replicated in it's image, ways of life and inventions completely copied from earth.
Although, as much as she liked being half from earth, it didn't seem like everybody did.
Vanagloria gets a few mean looks as she swiftly walks by the other groups. The more she looks around the more she realizes how many eyes are on her. Her performance got the attention of the entire arena, even after that very fancy move by Kryphia she could still feel the pressure of all the judging eyes in the arena.
"All eyes on me." Vanagloria whispers to herself, looking at an extra big mean looking group that's mostly filled with people who look like they have light powers.
When she turns her head to look back at the entrance, she gets tackled with a hug by Blair almost knocking her over.
"That was so amazing Gloria, I'm so happy you also got a light element. And to have it be lightning of all elements… it's too perfect." Blair's voice was shaky from all the different emotions she was experiencing at the moment. Her hair smelled rusty for some reason, maybe it was her own?
"I got really lucky, that was the only shot of lightning element they had. I'm suprised they even had one." Vanagloria said trying to keep herself from getting emotional in the middle of the colosseum.
Blair starts to pull away from the hug to let Vanagloria free but once they are face to face Blair's expression turns from a sweet smile into concern.
"Oh my god, Gloria. One of your eyes changed color. Your right eye is pure gold." Blair said, staring right into Vanagloria.
"Wait seriously?" Vanagloria said, getting excited. "That's actually awesome, I gotta see this. Where's the nearest mirror?"
"Welcome to the 404th annual champions day."
Nova's voice booms across the colosseum, scaring Vanagloria.
"Ok let's worry about that later." Blair said, rubbing Vanagloria's back.
"So if you guys couldn't tell this is Vanagloria." Blair said jokingly. The whole group must've followed her because the group of three were already right in front of her.
"That was awesome, I don't even know how you did that." Said the tall dark skinned guy in front of her that could only be Martyr.
Vanagloria was immediately caught off guard by his appearance. He looked like he already was some sort of knight or champion. He stood at almost a foot taller than her with a really good build. Not like a bodybuilder or actor type of good but still better than most of the other contestants around their group, or really any guy she knew from her school.
She couldn't believe this was the guy that Blair had said she should try and get with during the Vying. Vanagloria was more than happy with how she looked and all, but this guy was way out of her league for sure. There was a very big gap between him and her three ex's she wished she'd never dated. He seemed more comparable to one of Blair's numerous ex's.
"Oh uh… t-thanks, it felt pretty awesome." Vanagloria said, trying to keep her cool.
"How did you even know how to control it that well? When I got my shot I couldn't figure out how to use my fire powers for like a week. Maybe it adjusts to people from earth quicker."
"I don't-i don't really know, it just kind of happened. I think they put extra in that shot, all that electrib… all of that electricity just kinda came out in a big burst, I still feel full of energy." Vanagloria's stutter was starting to frustrate her once again.
Vanagloria always got wild amounts of confidence in moments like those. Moments under pressure where she really got to prove who she was.
She felt like a badass so she kept on doing what she thought would make her even more of a badass which eventually led to her striking herself with lightning.
The only problem is where was her confidence right now. Talking to Martyr.
"Oh also guys Kry said she would pick us!" Vanagloria remembered, instantly making her forget about the hot guy right in front of her and bringing back her confidence.
"Wait really?" The rest group said in unison. It made Vanagloria realize the two others next to Martyr.
They were definitely Samsara and Blair, her other two teamates.
"Now before we start picking teams I must explain the rules of the Vying so be patient."
"Oh shit, uh… we can talk about it later."
"Normally we would be picking 7 teams, but this year Styrmir has decided to not show up for reasons that will not be revealed at the moment, so because of that we will have to work with 6 teams."
"This also means we will lose one rotation, because our contestants will not be visiting the air capital."
The crowd mumbles to themselves, seemingly disappointed.
"As you all should be aware by now, each rotation of the Vying will have our contestants visit a new capital, proving their skill and morals to that city's respective champion through whatever trail they see fit."
"If a team or singular contestant is able to prove themselves to a champion, they earn an elemental medal. Five or more will be an instant admission to the hall of fame."
"At the end of the Vying, champions will be able to ask for recruitment in their squad of knights."
"Each team will be provided with a home to rest for their week break in between rotations. Each rotation will give teams a week in each capital and as soon as the competition starts, the contestants will have until the end of this week to prepare for their first trial."
"Since there are an even amount of teams and rotations this year, we will have teams stay on one island for the first 3 trails and visit those capitals then move to the next island and visit those 3 capitals, rather than have them potentially move to a separate island every trail."
"Ok now that we have the rules out of the way we ca…"
A buzzer immediately comes over the speakers followed by a second not even a second later.
Over the TV Vanagloria could see Nova trying not to get frustrated at her contemporaries that couldn't wait for her to finish her sentence.
"It appears some of my fellow champions have already chosen a team."
"How are we gonna settle this Kry? You wanna do Rock Paper Scissors?"
A male voice came over the speakers. He sounded very happy with himself.
The camera pans over to the right of Nova to show 3 chairs, 2 of them had a champion on them. They were Kryphia and the rock champion Vulcan.
Vulcan was a short guy but incredibly well built, he looked like a professional bodybuilder with royal ground themed clothes. He also had incredibly dark skin, he wasn't black like Samsara or Martyr who had typical brown complexions, the rock champion's skin was closer to the actual color black than brown.
The two champions were staring each other down, Kryphia looked even more annoyed at him than she did with Vanagloria. Vulcan had a giant grin, clearly having a lot of fun screwing with Kryphia.
"Whatever, just take them."
Vulcan shoots up from his seat in a boast of victory, putting both fists high above his head. His mouth is wide open, presumably screaming something but the microphone still at his chair doesn't pick anything up.
"Vanagloria you can take your team out front, Vulcan will meet you there."
"Hell yeah they will!"
Vulcan had taken Nova's microphone. Nova didn't even look annoyed like Kryphia did, her brown face stayed in what Vanagloria liked to think was her resting 'I don't want to be here' face as she glared at him for the short time he was at the microphone.
He waddled behind her chair, disappearing into the room behind the champions connecting the balcony to the inside of the colosseum.
"He's like one little black ball of energy." Vanagloria heard a female voice come from behind her followed by a small chuckle from a guy's voice she hadn't heard before either.
"Well I guess we go meet him." Blair looked back at Martyr.
"Ok let's go guys." He said, directing the rest of the group by pointing towards the entrance.
"Where are we even supposed to meet him?" Spectre said entering the hallway between the stadium outside.
"How is he even supposed to get down here?" Samsara chuckled.
Vanagloria looks over at Samsara just in time to see a shadow go over her head.
'BOOOOOOOM'
The ground in front of them cracks as the figure in front of them crashes down from above them.