Martyr always wanted to become a hero.
Being stuck in that horrible city block wasn't the life he wanted. Thankfully he was finally able to find some friends that would join him on the trip.
He met Spectre and Samsara a few years ago through one of his best friends Calamity. Spectre and Samsara had always gotten along with Martyr but they didn't hang out with each other a lot for a very long time, until recently where they had a conversation about their future.
None of them wanted to admit to the other that they had plans to try and enter the Vying at first because usually the idea is met with pessimistic remarks on the chances of it actually getting in. This was a problem especially in poor communities of the islands, as there had been very few knights and champions that started off poor.
Once the idea came into the conversation after none of them thought of real jobs they wanted to pursue. They had a very riveting talk about how they could team up and turn their passions into reality.
The conversation reminded him of a girl he met on a school field trip over to the light capital years back. She was the first person outside of his mom that he was able to talk to about the competition. They met randomly outside a store selling things from earth.
Blair had been sitting down at a picnic table outside the store when Martyr noticed her.
Martyr was separated from his friend group for the moment, looking for a bathroom in the city but couldn't find any. When he saw Blair and her appearance that gave away her light powers, he just assumed she lived there so he approached her and asked her for directions.
At the time she must've been 14 or 15, Martyr never bothered to ask her age after he sat down to talk with her.
Neither of them remember how they got to the topic but they ended up having a long talk about how much they wanted to become hero's. The conversation ended with them exchanging mail addresses to talk to one another again.
After his friends eventually found him at the picnic table, they took him away to go explore more of the capital. Him waving bye to Blair was the last interaction the two of them had in a while.
Martyr sent a letter the day he got back from the trip but never received one back.
After Martyr talked to Spectre and Samsara about their ambitions. The conversation with them made him remember the address he had written down onto a napkin.
He had always assumed he never received a letter back because it was hard to get letters over such a long distance and Blair either didn't receive the mail or saw the letter, responded back and it never reached Martyr.
So that day after the big talk, he decided he was going to send another letter. The team of Martyr, Samsara and Spectre was short of 2 people so it worked out perfectly as he knew Blair had a friend that wanted to join as well.
Although Martyr wanted to have Calamity on their team, the other two weren't allowing it so he had to compromise.
Martyr wrote in the letter about a plan to get some of her friends together and the three of them to make a team that could participate in the competition. There was another field trip coming up in a few weeks so he also wrote a place for them to meet up together and talk about it more.
When the day of the field trip finally came, the group of them waited for what seemed like hours for the mystical girl to show up.
Once she did eventually show up they had a talk that seemed to last hours. Blair apparently did see the letter and sent one back and got worried when she didn't get one back for the longest time, until a few days before the field trip where she got incredibly happy at the fact that Martyr didn't ignore her and it was just a mistake outside of their control.
After they left the field trip and went back home they sent letters to each other every week leading up to the event, the two of them planning out all the things they needed to bring and prepare for the event. Leading them to where they were now, telling the story to the rest of the group.
"I'm sure you guys already had a pretty good understanding of how that all came to be but that's it from our perspective." Blair said to her sleepy group of friends.
By now they had all gathered around in a circle with a small fire created by Martyr as if they were camping out. The lights of the colosseum had been turned off and the roof had been closed so it was very dark in the colosseum.
With the exception of Samsara and Spectre still sitting in the cloud chair, all of them had their own plastic chair and blanket to sit in. Even Spectre was awake by now, still sipping on his hot chocolate.
"I still can't get over the fact that you were outside the store with Blair that whole time. We were like 10 feet away from meeting each other then." Vanagloria told Martyr. She had to be woken up for the story by Blair who got zapped in the process.
Vanagloria hadn't been using her new powers because she still very much wasn't in control of them. Every time she tried even just producing a little bit of electricity between her fingertips, she would end up almost hitting somebody with a small bolt of lightning.
"Honestly I think it's a lot cooler that my first impression of you is always gonna be you striking yourself with lightning." Martyr said.
Martyr saw a lot of potential in her, the confidence she displayed earlier seemed out of this world to Martyr and single handedly convinced him that Vanagloria had something special.
Martyr valued confidence over everything else. Most of his training was focused mentality over physicality. He obviously still trained physically but a higher priority for him was being calm and confident in fights.
For him to see Vanagloria exert such natural confidence while the whole world was watching her impressed Martyr beyond just the sheer power she now possessed through her electricity.
It was weird to him how different her and Blair are. Blair spoke more calmly and focused opposed to Vanagloria who talked fast almost with a stutter. Blair had a way more soothing atmosphere compared to Vanagloria's energetic and impulse aura.
Although he liked that energetic nature from her. Martyr appreciated people who could be collected but always preferred when somebody didn't seem so perfect. At times he found it intimidating to be around people like that.
Martyr was enjoying spending time with her.
Out of all the new people he was meeting today Vanagloria was probably his favorite.
Suddenly the final buzzer finally goes off, interrupting their conversation from going anywhere else.
"I choose the group of mostly light contestants, by the center."
Martyr looks down to see an extremely annoying looking group of kids in their late-teens that now have the arena lights focusing on them. There were eight of them, 5 of them looked like they had light powers, 2 of them dark and a big familiar looking fire guy in the middle.
Martyr had noticed them before eyeing down Vanagloria as she was walking back from her big moment. They looked like they were a good pick when it came to strength, they all looked well trained, but most of them looked like they came from extremely rich families.
Martyr had seen them presenting very few of their powers, they looked like they were mostly talking to themselves and judging the other groups. He even saw them shooting beams of light into the ice slide Kryphia made at the start of the competition. He thought that their attitude would cause them to not get picked but Nova seemed to have different plans.
He couldn't get over the fact that the fire guy looked familiar. Martyr had seen him somewhere, he just couldn't put his finger in it.
At the moment it didn't bother him that much though, his worries were somewhere else.
All of the teams had been picked.
And none of them had Calamity in them.
He had been scanning the crowd from the balcony for her the whole time. But not only was it hard for him to even see the contestants at this distance but there were just so many of them.
"Maybe on the way out…"
Nova stands up.
"Now that all of the teams have been selected, national champions day is over."
There are a few cheers from the crowd as people start to make their way outside of the colosseum.
"I would like the rest of the chosen teams to make their way towards the middle. The rest of the teams, I ask of you to make room for them and move towards the walls as you exit the colosseum."
As Nova walks past her chair Kryphia stands up to talk to her. "What are you thinking? Those kids look like brats."
"It's my 3rd time choosing a team to celebrate, I think I might challenge myself and see if I can turn those kids into real heroes." Nova says, making a small smile.
"Alright then." Kryphia says lacking faith in her voice. "Good luck with that, just try not to make them a problem for my kids."
"I'll do that if you can make another one of those ice slides down to the arena." Nova negotiates.
"Like I wasn't gonna make one anyways." Kryphia says walking up to the very edge of the balcony, putting her palms out in front of her.
Ice cold air starts to create a mist around her hands as she concentrates her energy into her hand.
She then squats down and puts her hands to the corner of the balcony, forming ice around it. The production of the ice starts to accelerate and the veins in Kryphia's hands start to turn a whitish-blue the more and more power she puts into the ice.
When the block of ice gets big enough to hold someone onto it Kryphia grabs onto the side of the ice creating walls to the sculpture. Martyring a half cylinder type of shape.
She then sits down onto her ice sculpture that is still accelerating in its growth, then she starts slowly sliding down the sculpture of slippery ice.
Kryphia starts to accelerate herself going down legs first. Her hands above her head still create ice faster than she is able to slide down.
Martyr marvels at the process that must've taken so long to master, he had seen a lot of crazy water powers being demonstrated today but this one effortlessly beats out everything he's seen today.
When she reaches the center she barely misses Nova's team of light brats. It surprised a few of them, causing one of the light girls to dramatically jump into the one of the light guys.
"I honestly don't even blame her." Says Nova as she starts to slide down herself, standing and holding onto the side to not ruin her sparkly dress with white gemstones patterned out along the bottom.
Each one of the champions follows behind Nova, with the exception of Thanatos who just floats down over like before.
"Guys I'll go wake up Vulcan, while I do start making you way down." Martyr says getting up out of his chair.
"lesss go." Vanagloria said, getting up from her chair.
"It hurts to stand." Spectre groans as he uses his legs for the first time in hours, blanket still wrapped around his upper body.
"Come on, don't be a bitch." Samsara said, while directing him over.
"Okay." He said unashamedly.
Martyr makes his way over to the throne of the sleeping champion and pats the top of his bald head. "Hey we gotta go."
"Ugh." He grumbles as he gets up from his sleep, slumping out of his chair.
By the time the two of them made it over to the slide, the last one in line, Vanagloria, was starting to slide down.
Martyr passes by the slide to absorb the fire in the middle of the plastic chair camping site they made.
"Wow we made a mess." Martyr says to himself as he looks at the crumbs of food laying over the clean marble floor.
Martyr makes it over to the slide just after Vulcan is done tumbling his way down, landing on his back.
Martyr grabs on the sides of the ice and starts to slide his way down.
As he starts to pick up speed he starts to panic, the ice was really slippery which was nice because there was no sticky rope burn that normal ice would've given. But this, by being so well textured makes Martyr pick up speed much faster than he would like to, not able to slow himself down by grabbing onto anything because the ice was so slippery.
Martyr had a very sloppy landing, falling right on his ass.
He heard snickering coming over from Nova's team.
"Nova better clean up their act quickly, before I have to." He thought as he glared over at them.
Martyr already had too many bad encounters with rich kids like that at his school. He didn't want to have to repeat them again.
A very drained looking Kryphia puts her hand onto the slide, melting the ice and turning it into a floating column of water. The floating water then is sucked into the palm of her hand, disappearing seamlessly into her skin and re-energizing Kryphia. Once she was done, it was as if the slide was never there.
The 6 teams were now each standing on a side of the hexagon shaped elevated ground. Martyr's group looked very small in people compared to the rival teams that had mostly 7 or 8 in their groups
Nova shoved her way through her group causing them to quiet down. She walked to the middle of all the teams, right where Vanagloria had left her scorch mark. Nova was the only champion not standing in front of her team at the moment.
"Now it's time to get your rotations." She raised her voice, not loud enough so the unselected teams walking by couldn't hear her but just enough so all the teams on the hexagon could.
She closed her eyes and extended out her arms, with her hands wide open. Her palms start to produce light. The light starts to gather together, getting denser and denser. It starts to take shape becoming more and more solid until she holds in each of her hands three cards. Each card seems to have something already inscribed onto them.
Nova opens her eyes again. "These cards will have the order in which your team travels to each capital written on them." She walks over and hands her own group a card.
"Since we have 6 rotations this year, the first three will be on one island, meaning your team will always be on the same island as two other teams." Nova walks over to her left and hands Kryphia a card.
"Because of this, the houses we built for you will be very close to the houses of the other two teams." She walks further to her left to hand Vulcan a card, Martyr peers over his shoulder and sees the order of the elements written on it. "Forest, Rock, Light, Dark, Water, Fire."
"The houses will be in a spot hidden from the media so no strangers or news stations will visit you. There will also be an non-lethal weapons training area, a race track and a basketball court for training and exercise on break days." Nova hands a card to Thanatos, which looks like it's almost floating in his transparent hands.
"I'm sure many of you are aware of the tragedy that happened 5 years ago on the previous champions day. Where the fire team assassinated the forest team overnight, as a way to eliminate competition. We will obviously not tolerate any sort of fights whatsoever and if anyone initiates any fight, they will be punished accordingly." She hands a card to Enyo, which looks incredibly small in her giant bronze gauntlet.
"And of course speaking of tragedy's, as much as I want to keep this a secret from the public I have to at least tell all of you for the safety of Borealis, Australis and potentially even earth." She puts the last card in the glove of Vega and turns around to face the rest of the group.
"There have been sightings of the Executor Void in the past year." This statement caused mumbling across the teams.
"Oh no." Martyr thought to himself, immediately his heart dropped at the thought of having to fight the madman to protect the group. Fight was a strong word though, run would be more appropriate.
"Now that sounds like a lot but this is actually less than usual, but this still means he is out there and at any time he could strike. We still don't have the means to fight him yet but we have created something to defend against him." Nova said, trying to settle them down.
"The champions already know this so this is a message to the contestants. We have built underground bunkers based after earth's nuclear bunkers for the civilians to hide in while us and our knights find a way to solve the disaster."
"DO NOT! I repeat, do not try and help us with Kratos, he is simply just too dangerous. Your jobs in that situation are to stay inside the bunkers and maintain order." Nova tone has gotten more and more serious.
"I wouldn't call him by his god name." Kryphia quietly told Nova.
The teams had gone completely silent, letting Kryphia's warning be heard by Martyr.
"Right… don't help us with the Executor Void, Voidwalker, Flügel, Xraq, the Dark Messiah, whatever dumbass name he wants to be referred to nowadays." Nova, the reincarnation of Nike, the goddess of victory sounded extremely frusterated talking about her brother.
The CEO of Pleiades sighed, bringing her voice down to its normal volume. "Anyways… I'm sorry to make this more serious than it had to be, but this is the true responsibility of being a hero. If anyone would like to opt out right now before the competition starts, do it now."
Martyr looks around to the other teams. Most of them seem content and not fully shook by the news of the most dangerous mass murderer to ever live. The only team that didn't seem to take it well was nova's group, who were now very quietly whispering to each other.
"Good." Dramatically extending out her arms once more. "I think I have said everything that needs to be said."
"Let the competition for glory begin!"