“Hello, folks, and welcome back to another rousing round of the tournament!” Jeff shouted into his microphone; “Today we are going for another game. It’s Mi-”

“No! No, we are not!” Dra hastily interrupted his fellow commentator. “By the correctness of the dictionary, did you forget to read the memo again?” the lizardman asked and pointed at the talking cards they were always holding. Dra actually looked at these notes of cardboard, .Jeff might as well have held a second microphone.

“Uhm,” the announcer stopped his hype train in the station as the onlookers below murmured, displeased with the delay. Quickly, he went over the card. “Okay, sorry folks, the game got delayed due to organisational reasons; we are doing the group fight today as scheduled… Yo, it was an honest mistake, you tossers!” Jeff shouted against the boo-ing from the audience.

“Entertainment addicted peasants,” Lydia mumbled. “Not satisfied with people fighting for their amusement, they seek that they make a fool of themselves as well in the process.”

“Oh shut the fuck up, anal queen,” Thana, balancing on the back legs of her chair, feet lying on the table, said; “They are just enjoying themselves.”

“Their amusement is a politically important event.”

“Pretty sure the average folk here is not German, why the fuck would they care about who gets on that glorified chair you keep on blasting on about.”

Lydia was starting a retort but then reminded herself who she was trying to convince. Instead, she sighed, “You can continue in your anarchistic ways.”

“I am not anarchistic, I just don’t give a fuck about politics in total.” Thana leaned back in her chair so far that it should have fallen over already. Only her heel on the table creating a considerable counterforce kept her in a fragile balance. “Why the ever-shitting cockbiscuit should I? Not like you can enforce your dumbass rules on me.”

“Thana, we all know that you are pretty strong,” John said, “but don’t forget the true monster up there.” He was pointing at Romulus, who was currently looking at Jack sitting in his giant hand. The sparrow had been hit by a series of gusts that forced it to land on the platform Romulus was on. It had clearly been the emperor’s own work as he had gone ahead and caught Jack the moment he had set as much as a foot on the balcony.

John had waited for the emperor to speak up since, and when he did, the words were clear, “I have heard about your incident, John Newman. An elemental skipping ahead two steps of power is practically unheard off, forcefully no less. It would have been interesting, if it hadn’t been accompanied with the threat coming from the first foe. It is to your luck that the corruption that entered our world was so minor I felt content watching you sort it out yourself.”

Why did they keep calling the Lorylim ‘the first foe’? John would need to ask Lydia once he was done getting lectured.

“Accident or not, if you summon even a speck of these foul beings into my city again, I will scrub that impurity from earth before it can spread to anything. I have no intention of your leniency chipping away at the current lock on them. If the taint remains on your Undine and I find out that you haven’t taken care of it… that’s your end.”

John felt a chill running down his spine despite him trying his best to remain composed. He spent a lot of time worrying about things, but he usually didn’t let stress impede his everyday life. Here he had an ultimatum from Romulus himself. He wouldn’t get any second chances.

“Until the last doubts of her corruption are cleared, I will not allow you to fight,” Romulus voice seemed to reverberate in the little sparrow and reach all the way into his real body, “and - you - won’t. This group fight will be happening without you.” Jack nodded to the best ability a sparrow could, beak flying up and down. They had come to that conclusion without Romulus’ input, but this was a one way communication, and John did not feel like he could get away with being sassy right now.

The already giant of a man was bending over his small bird form and caged Jack in the shadow of a colossus. His eyes, lying in a face torn with the wrinkles of a wise man in his middle-age, bored through the sparrow and right into John. The few hundred metres between them felt like a non-existent distance to him. Truly, to the emperor it might as well not have existed.

“And let your princess know that her painting arrived. Her grandfather was nice enough to bring it himself,” as if on signal, the old king stepped out from the hallway behind them.

“You still like being flashy, don’t you, Rom?” Frederik teased his friend and fell down into an empty chair.

“It is one of the few entertainments left to me,” Romulus returned in kind, his tone friendly and his face lighting up as he sat up straight.

John had trouble seeing the same threatening man. Just a simple change of demeanour and the Apex seemed like he had been replaced by someone else entirely. Dismissed, by means of Sol flicking Jack off her contractor’s hand. The sparrow cut through the air like a wildly fired bullet until John finally stabilized the path, finding himself on the opposite side of the arena.

‘I am incredibly sorry for all of this,’ he heard Undine say in his head.

‘As you should be,’ John told her. ‘If we just cooperate, hopefully this whole thing will stabilize and blow over with the few scars that remain.’ He didn’t realize that the word scars was both incredibly fitting and probably hurtful until Undine was already flushing their bond with increasing shame. A quick probing and she found that John hadn’t meant it that way. ‘Good thing that misunderstandings can be avoided this way,’ he thought as Undine relaxed again.

‘I will be cooperative in any way that is necessary,’ she ensured.

“Okay, so, group fight,” Dra took over the announcing duty, while Jeff continued to argue with a particular loud-voiced member of the crowd. “We are facing off a 3vs3 situation. Normally, the two teams would now get 5 minutes to get their line-up ready.”

“Yes, well,” Jeff took back up  his duty after giving the audience one last glare; “But you folks probably remember the little run-in with recruitment difficulty Lydia had during the announcements. Thanks to her missing the deadline, the enemy will have the advantage of this fight to pick their team after hers. Therefore, she will now get 5 minutes, and then the enemy will get another 5 to respond once she announces her picks.”

“Enjoy these commercials while that break is happening.”

“So, Lydia…” John picked up the conversation once the announcers shut up. The princess’ lips angrily pressed together as he reported the breakdown of Romulus reprimands.

“So, he not only went ahead and ruined all my obscuration plans but also invited my esteemed grandfather to watch me lose?” Lydia ended.

“Well, the odds are certainly stacked against you…” John agreed. He himself, the second strongest fighter in their team, wasn’t allowed to participate, they still had no idea what power Alexej had, and they were the first to pick their line-up. From a tactical situation, they were not exactly blessed.

“You fuckers should stop worrying,” Thana laughed, her feet flying off the table and the front legs of her chair finally reconnecting to the ground; “What do you have me for? I will take their crown licking asses and whoop them until they are redder than the blood pumping through their miserable little hides.”

“You certainly will need to partake in this fight,” Lydia agreed, “and I refuse to lose in front of Frederik, with or without Romulus’ intent to humiliate me. Nia, you and I will accompany her.”

“Sure,” Nia agreed with a nonchalant nod. The blank blonde had just been walking rounds around the table and looking at things with an unnervingly relaxed behaviour. Alternatively, she was so tense that she couldn’t sit still. It was impossible to tell with her.

“Whaddabout me?” Rave asked.

“Correct me if I am wrong, Rave, but you are working on some new techniques, aren’t you?” Lydia pointed out. “It would be unwise to reveal the existence of such to the enemy ahead of time.”

“I guess that’s true,” the techno-lover nodded.

“The basic strategy is easy: all we need to do is make sure Thana can eliminate the enemy unobstructed. As such our first priority will be Maximillian, due to his gravitation magic. Nia that is your job, you have taken him once, you can do it again.” The pariah confirmed with another nod.

“Like I can’t just murderfy him myself,” Thana cackled.

Lydia gave her a warning glance, “You might be strong, Thana, but your powers are primarily based on your physical strength and movement. You can’t use your magic effectively if you don’t use gestures either. While I doubt that Maximillian’s current power is strong enough to make you immobile, the possibility exists.”

“Sure, sure,” Thana waved off, folding her arms behind her head afterwards. She obviously didn’t even give the possibility any time of day.

“Don’t be too arrogant,” John threw his hat in the ring, and Thana’s cocky expression quickly changed into sad shock.

“Don’t you believe in me, John?” she mumbled, all quiet and miserable.

The bipolar display tugged at his heartstrings, that was for certain. “That’s not the problem here, Thana. You should just entertain the notion that the enemy actually has a plan to deal with you,” he explained.

“Ah, yeah,” Thana went right back to cackling. “They would, or at least they really fucking should. If they don’t, I am going to tear them a new asshole. Okay, leaving things up to the bleached blonde bitch over there then.”

“…My hair is not bleached,” Nia pointed out.

“I don’t fucking care!” Thana shouted back. Blinking slowly, her head tilting in confusion, the pariah stayed silent while staring at the bloodmage. “Stop doing that, it’s creepy!”

“Anyway,” Lydia forced the conversation to remain on topic. “Nia’s job will be to obstruct whatever attempts at slowing you down exist. I will provide back-up on that front. Thana, you will dispose of the enemy as quickly as you can. Are we clear?”

“Orders received,” Nia said. “Crystal fucking clear,” Thana grinned.

A signal from Lydia later and the commentators desk hovering down to them, and Jeff shouted the results into the microphone, “The team of the Secundus candidate has been made clear. It’s the tiny psychopathic Thana…”

“He did NOT just call me that,” Thana growled and jumped off from her chair; “He keeps calling me that! I AM NOT THAT FUCKING TINY, YOU COCK-GOBBLER! I will…!”

A cascade of threats was shouted up to the announcer’s desk while John did his best to calm her down. Jeff just wanted to continue talking but was interrupted by Dra. “…Jeff, I recommend you stop calling her tiny.”

“Huh, why is that?”

“Because you won’t live a week after the tournament if you keep pissing her off like this.”

“Pooooooint taken and ignored,” Jeff laughed it off, checking if his hair was still in the ridiculous upwards style with his hands.

“Moving on, it’s Thana, the princess Lydia herself and the blank soul Nia. Let’s see who Maximillian fields against that line-up. What do you think, Dra?”

“Well, Alexej is most-likely going to partake in this battle. His whole reason for being here has to be to win the group fights, otherwise previous actions wouldn’t make sense. Aside from that, they will want someone that can fight Nia, so either Ankleshanker or Mario due to them not being as reliant on magic. It will be hard to counter both the incredible threat of Thana and the magic eradication of Nia with just three people,” the lizardman analysed and took a sip of his ginger ale. “So my money is on Alexej, Mario and Ankleshanker. If they equip their physical fighters with glass again, Lydia becomes less useful. I have to wonder why they decided to field her over John Newman. Maybe his power level is overhyped after all?”

“Well, we won’t get a chance to see that today, but the hype in this stadium is real, right folks?” Jeff worked up the audience, the same one that had been boo-ing at him just a few minutes prior. They were now applauding like that had never happened. Fickle, that is what an audience was. Always incredibly fickle.

“Ah, it seems Maximillian made his choice!” Jeff said upon seeing the king of Viena raise his hand.