As soon as the Nova declared that the competition had started, Blair watched as all of the other champions started sprinting making their way towards the entrance like they were in a race, while their teams just stood there awkwardly watching themselves be abandoned.
"Wait, what are we supposed to be doing?" Blair leaned over and whispered to Vanagloria. "Should we be running too?"
"I don't know. Just in case we are supposed to be running, we should start creeping our way over for a head start." Vanagloria whispered, taking a careful step toward the entrance.
"Ok I'm down." Blair followed behind her grinning.
"Come on guys." Vanagloria whispered to the rest of her team, who were just staring at them.
Samsara smiles, grabs Spectre's hand and happily starts making her way over. Spectre was still very drained, being almost dragged by Samsara who didn't seem bothered to do so.
As Nova walks over to her team she looks around at the other teams of teenagers just standing there. "Oh yeah, follow your champion. They should be showing you to your house, but it looks like they had a secret bet they didn't include me in."
"They didn't include me either." Thanatos said, who was still standing by his team gloomily.
Blair watches the champions as they get smaller and smaller as they race to the entrance of the colosseum. Now that the colosseum was mostly empty, she could see how big the colosseum really was. It looked much bigger than a track field, in fact Blair estimated that if one were to run around it like it was a track field it would measure out to be exactly a mile.
Now standing halfway to the entrance was Vulcan who was bent over breathing hard, defeated. It was clear his muscle weight was a bit too much for him to carry on a run.
"Boys, let's at least jog over to Vulcan." Martyr says to the rest of his group despite the fact he was talking to 3 girls and 1 guy. He was jogging slowly to let a still groggy Spectre catch up.
"Why are you guys running?" Vanagloria said as they caught up to Vulcan, leading the group.
"The faster you get out of this place the better the traffic will be exiting the city. Also people are going to be crowded outside the place to try and meet all of us. This happens every year and none of the teams prepare for it." Vulcan said, still catching his breath. "They haven't realized yet that their teams weren't following them to the entrance. I tried yelling at them but I don't think they heard me."
"Oh uh… so you want us to run too?" Blair asked. She was caught off guard by his answer. She hadn't even thought much about what to expect after the event.
"Yes, people want to meet all of us." Vulcan had his hands behind his head, taking deep breaths in between talking. "I want you to get out of here as soon as possible. Actually scratch that, I want you to get out of the city as soon as possible."
"Listen to me." Vulcan said preparing for another sprint. "From the looks of it the crowd hasn't made their way down to the entrance yet. The people you are going to be dealing with are the people who didn't get picked. They might try and hurt you, avoid them as much as possible. Just run to your cars, you guys do have cars right?"
"I have a truck parked in the back." Martyr said. "I don't know if it will fit all of us."
"Ok, some of you will ride with me then. I have a minivan parked right by the entrance. Spectre you should ride with me, it looks like it'll be a bit much for you to run all the way over to the back of the lot."
"I'm fine with that." Spectre was also out of breath, leaning on Samsara for support.
"I'm going with Spectre." Samsara said, wrapping his arm around her shoulder.
"I can make it over to the truck for sure." Vanagloria said.
"I guess I'll go truck as well." Blair said, not wanting to let them get separated for a second time today.
"Ok it's settled then. Three in each car." Vulcan said.
He started to quickly walk towards the entrance, clearly not wanting to waste any more time than they already were.
"Martyr, I want you to just drive straight when you get out of the parking lot. Keep driving until you get a few miles out of the city, take no turns, just go straight. We will all meet up outside the city, then I will direct us from there."
Martyr was following behind him, listening intently. "Ok sounds pretty straight-forward."
"Was that a pun?" Vanagloria grinned to herself.
"What? Pun? What are you tal… oh wait…" Realization dawned on Martyr's face.
"No time to be making dumb jokes Martyr! start running!" Vulcan yelled, scaring the two of them into a run.
"It wasn't even me, I didn't even know what I said!" Martyr said like a kid who just got told on by Vanagloria who was snickering at him getting in trouble.
"Bye guys! Good luck on finding us!" Blair waved back while she picked up the pace trying to catch up to Vanagloria and Martyr.
"Bye!" Samsara waved back, she also grabbed Spectre's half-limp arm and waved it for him.
As she turned her head back around, Martyr and Vanagloria were far ahead of her. Despite their scwabble just a moment ago they now seemed to be taking Vulcan's directions very seriously.
Blair kicked into a controlled sprint to catch them. She was confident in the fact that she could catch them, but the suit she was still wearing was making it way more difficult than it had to be. She would've changed earlier at the colosseum but her extra pairs of clothes were in her backpack in the truck.
Blair caught up with them after running around the marble floor Vulcan destroyed. The very front of the colosseum seemed cleared out a bit as a crowd of protesting teams of elemental teenagers made their way towards the champions who were just now turning back and shouting at each other to do so.
As the group of three stopped outside of the colosseum, a scarily quick Artemis soared over their heads back into the colosseum. She was followed by a very serious looking Kryphia on makeshift ice skates, who skated through their group not saying anything.
"Where's the truck?" Vanagloria was trying to look over the crowd into the parking lot.
"It's all the way in the back, it's not next to any other cars. Here just follow me." Martyr started running over towards the crowd that now had a lot of people facing towards the colosseum.
As Blair and Vanagloria followed behind Martyr, he shoved people trying to grab him, creating a path through the madness.
There were knights of all different elements separating the crowds. They were all clad in armor, ready to stop anyone who started to get violent.
"There she is, there's the lightning thief!" Some random voice from the sea of people shouted.
"It's Vulcans team!"
"It's the earth girl!"
Every time a new person shouted, more heads turned over towards them.
Vanagloria started really picking up speed after hearing those voices. She started taking detours through cars and people, panicking trying to find the quickest way out.
Blair was still behind Martyr and Vanagloria by quite a bit, she wasn't drawing as much attention as those two but whenever one of them would successfully pass somebody they would turn their head towards Blair. She was also going very fast, moving her arms, bobbing and weaving through the crowd. It probably would've felt awesome if it weren't such a dangerous situation.
Every time a hand shot out to grab her or a foot shot out to trip her it just made her go faster.
After about a minute of non-stop running they made it out of the crowd.
Martyr pointed. "There's the truck!"
Blair started to pick up the pace as they were now onto the final stretch to the car, it was one big open path now, no people, no cars, just fifty meters of open road.
Martyr stopped a few meters before the car, pulling a keychain out of his front jean pocket and tossing it at Vanagloria as she ran by, who just barely caught them. She ran right into the shotgun, throwing the door open and jumping in.
As Blair ran past him he turned around facing the crowd they just ran through.
"Get in!" Blair said, opening the back door.
"No, you get in!" Martyr said, still facing the crowd that was making their way over. "I'll be in the car in a second."
Blair hopped into the back of the gray truck, slamming the door behind her.
"What is the… what the fuck is he doing?" Vanagloria said after unlocking the front door, looking out the blurry back window of the truck.
Blair looks back just in time to see Martyr sweep his arm out in a huge arc, producing a beautiful wall of floating fiery mist in front of him as his hand flies by.
Martyr runs back, throwing the front door open. "Keys!" He says as he hops into the driver's seat.
Vanagloria hands him the key chain with an assortment of about 3 keys on it.
Martyr takes one look at the keys and shoves a silver key into a hole next to the wheel. The car wakes up as he twists the key, the engine making a low rumbling noise. All of the buttons come to life up in front.
Martyr moves the stick back and starts to turn the wheel, backing up just barely touching the cloud of mist coming down onto the ground.
The more the mist falls onto the ground, the more a sharp cracking and popping sound starts to come from outside of the truck. A few people who try walking through get knocked over by the exploding powder. Which scares the crowd from coming too close to the orange mist that blocks them from the truck.
Martyr swerves the wheel to the left, making a sharp turn onto an empty main road ahead of them.
"Holy shit, what was that move that you did?" Vanagloria said, amazement painted all over her face.
"It's like a bunch of little firecrackers. It doesn't hurt much and it scares people away so it's like my version a smoke bomb."
"PERSON!" Vanagloria shouts pointing a finger at the front window.
The truck swerves into the lane right of it as Martyr almost hits somebody crossing the street.
"Shit Gloria, calm down. You screaming is gonna get us into a crash more than that person was." Martyr said after a deep breath.
"Sorry..." Vanagloria said submissively.
"We should slow down though, we don't have to go this fast." Blair said, holding onto the backs of their seats for her life.
Martyr was definitely speeding, the city was very empty compared to the morning. The streets were practically empty but to Blair it didn't justify them driving this fast.
"Aight I'll slow down a bit, but we gotta go. Vulcan is pretty serious about us getting out of this city as soon as we can." Martyr let off the petal a bit.
"Alright, just don't get us in a crash." Blair said, putting on her seatbelt realizing in the heat of the moment she completely forgot too. "Also put a seatbelt on, both of you."
"What's that?" Martyr asked, looking genuinely confused.
"Yeah I dunno what that is either." Vanagloria said. She had shrunken down into her seat, guilty of her impulsive action.
"Oh no." Blair started to stress out, realizing she might be in more danger than she had thought. "How do you not know what a seatbelt is?"
"How would you know, didn't you say you've only been in a few cars your whole life. Plus I feel like if it's that important I would've known about it a long time ago." Martyr went straight through a red light as he was criticizing Blair's driving knowledge.
"I took a class on cars. It's the belt thing that keeps you from going through the front window in crashes. It's really important." Blair said, reaching forward to pull out the seatbelt on Vanagloria's seat to show to Martyr. "Do you not need to know the ins and outs of a car to get one in Deimos."
"Nah I taught myself." Martyr's eyes glanced over at the seatbelt for a second, and immediately snapped back on the road. "Oh, that thing! Yeah I've seen my mom wear that before. How do I use it?"
"I think you tie it to the stick or something." Vanagloria now has the seatbelt in her hands, looking at it trying to figure out its secret.
"I'm too tired to have this conversation right now. Just focus on the road right now." It has been too long of a day for Blair, on top of the fact she was dead tired from her sprint. Now that the adrenaline has worn off she was just tired, so tired she could fall asleep right now.
Honestly she wasn't even mad at Vanagloria for not knowing because the only vehicles she had been in were buses.
"But you made it sound like it was pretty important." Martyr was moving his hand behind him.
"Well you shouldn't try wh… whatever, I'm done. I'm just gonna go to sleep." Blair leaned her head against the window and closed her eyes.
"Just don't crash the car, that's all I care about."
"Trust me I'm really good at this, I've been driving for years now." Martyr's voice sounded confident enough to reassure Blair of her safety.
"We'll keep it quiet for you." Vanagloria said.
"Ok thanks guys, cya later."
"Good luck."
"Goodnight."
The humming of the truck was very soothing, along with the random yet controlled bumps in the road made for a very soothing atmosphere in the darkness. Her mind drifted away, thinking about how nice it was to rest once again. It felt like nothing else in the world mattered other than her being able to drift away into a deep sleep.
…
An unknown time later Blair wakes up to a destructive cracking sound.
She shoots up instinctively, not even knowing what happened. The noise still resides but instead as a deep rumbling.
"That got you too?" Martyr said still driving but much slower than he was earlier.
"What the hell was that?" Blair said, still trying to process what was happening.
The windows were completely pitch black, when they left the city it was still the afternoon but from the outside of the truck it looked like she woke back up at midnight. Even the inside of the truck was very dark, the only light she saw were the headlights in the front painting a broken down country road slowly running underneath the truck.
"Can you give us some light Blair, the one from you sleeping was light we were using to see." Blair had never seen it but Vanagloria and other kids at the orphanage always told her how her hair and skin gave off a little glow when she slept.
"Here's some light." Blair holds out her hand and concentrates a bit of energy into her open hand, causing it to give off enough of a glow to illuminate the inside of the car.
"Oh that's so much better, trying to look in that dark was hurting my eyes." Vanagloria looked very satisfied.
"That's cool and all but where are we? Because I have no idea." Blair asked.
"Oh we've been outside the city for like a half an hour now. We got out a few hours after the city lights turned off." Martyr said.
"We have just been looking for a gas station or restaurant to stop at that's right off this highway."
"BOOOOOOM"
A flash of light breaks through the dark, revealing the open valley all around them for less than a second.
"Holy shit!" Martyr said angrily after letting out a high pitched "AHH" for his normally deep voice.
"Was that you Gloria?" Blair asked.
"No, we're actually just in the middle of a storm right now." Vanagloria said much to the surprise of Blair. Now that Blair thought about it, she noticed the light pitter-patter rain hitting the roof of the car. It seemed to be picking up speed and volume as time went by.
"I can back her up, it's not her, but don't give her any ideas." Martyr was laughing a little himself, he didn't seem too embarrassed by his girly scream.
'BOOOOOOOOM.'
The menacing dark clouds above the truck show themselves in the yellow flare.
"That was way too close, we gotta stop somewhere soon." Vanagloria said. Her normally wavy hair was starting to stand up. "Blair can you get me a hairband from your bag, my hair has been doing this randomly ever since I got my element. It's really starting to annoy me."
"Yeah I got… wait, my bag is in the trunk. Wait shit, there's stuff in there that will get destroyed by the rain!"
"Don't worry, we stopped a few minutes ago to put the tarp up. Actually we moved all the bags in the back in the trunk to give you more room." Martyr looked proud of himself.
"Dammit I didn't even think to take out hairbands then." Vanagloria looked very disappointed in herself in contrast, running her hands through her now fuzzy hair in an attempt to hold it down.
'BOOOOOOOOM.'
This time the lightning landed way too close to the front of them making them all jump. Martyr slammed on the brakes causing them all to shoot forward being saved by their seatbelts. A slamming noise came from the back of the truck as all the bags slid forward hitting the wall of the trunk.
The rain had gotten so intense now that it sounded like a group of people were jumping on the top. It made it very hard to hear much of anything.
"Hey, you were right the seatbelts really are necessary." Vanagloria looked down at hers in astonishment. Her hair was now fully standing up and sticking to the roof.
"Oh my god. You guys put them on." Blair said, very surprised.
"Yeah we figured them out a little after you passed out. Honestly though, that still kind of hurts." Martyr put a hand on the part of his chest that the seatbelt just violently pulled on.
"How did I fall asleep, I should've made sure you two had them on." Blair was trying to process the fact that she almost let her two friends die.
'BOOOOOOOOM'
'BOOOOOOOOM.'
'BOOOOOOOOM.'
A torrent of lightning falls in before their eyes, each bolt twice the size of Vanagloria's previous.
Blair takes her eyes out of her arm that she put up to shield her eyes from the onslaught of flashes coming from the front window.
A silver and gold chariot stood where the lightning had just struck.
Three horses stood in front, attached by gold reigns. Neither were normal horses either, these were horses made out of pure elemental energy.
One horse made of pure wind.
One horse made of pure light.
One horse made of pure Lightning.
The swirling seas of elemental power form a very defined strong shape of the majestic animal, huffing and scratching their hooves across the now destroyed road below.
Atop the chariot was a god of a man staring down at the truck below, clad in shining silver and gold armor reflecting light of the headlights back onto the road before him.
In his right hand he held a 8 foot long electric gold spear with runes inscribed on the tip.
Before any of them are able to say anything about the scene being presented through the front window, a bellowing voice echoes across the deserted valley making its way inside the truck.
"VANAGLORIA!"