The ghost system

21

"I'll fight with you guys." Joel nodded earnestly.

"I'll try my best." Nim sighed still looking downward. This first match had been pretty painful for her already, Rhys could understand her reluctance but that really wasn't what he needed. He needed someone who wanted to fight and could actually fight. Not a healer who had no battle sense at all. If only the poison generation girl had been on their team...

The last couple of barriers were switched off in quick succession of each other, and medical staff rushed in to heal the injured people. Round 1 came to an end and round 2 began shortly.

Rhys watched from the edges of the gym while the new pits were being formed. It was pretty cool to see the floor panels closing up again and sealing off the 24 pits that had been there. After some mechanical whirring and churning noises were heard under the floor, the panels opened up again to revel 12 match pits this time. The pits were almost double the size of the first round and had more space around the pits so that people could spectate.

The large screen at the front of the hall displayed the 12 groups that were still in the tournament. Groups: 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 12, 13, 17, 18, 22 and 25.

A mini draw was displayed in the screen, where two groups were randomly paired together as opponents. Everyone was holding their breath and praying that they were not paired with team 25; Connor's team. Among those was Rhys. He did want to fight Connor but not right away. With the way things were with his team right now, if they were paired with team 25 they would lose instantly.

Rhys and most of the others collapsed to their floor in relief when they saw that they were safe, however one unfortunate group stared at the results on the screen with lumps in their throats. The board read: Team 18 vs Team 25.

Rhys was pretty surprised to see that Connor's opponent was actually the poison generation girl and her team. From what he had seen of her so far, he could tell she had a strong mentality. Little things would not break her. Even when she saw the result of the random pairings she did not despair and curse like her teammates, one of whom practically collapsed when he saw that he would be fighting against team 25. She was resilient and Rhys could not help but admire that about her. He would have loved to watch her match but he had a match of his own to get to.

"Dude hurry it up." Sampson was crude as ever as he hollered at Rhys from across the gym.

Rhys jogged his way over to their new match pit where his team and their opponents were already waiting.

As Rhys ran past the side benches he had no idea of the eyes that were watching him.

"I'm telling you man, I went right through him. He didn't even move or doge when I came at him. It's like he's not even there." The guy gripped his hair in his fist, annoyed that he wasn't explaining what had happened very well.

"He's telling the truth, Grey. I kept my eyes open the whole time, and I swear to you he's made of smoke or something because we went right through him. When we turned around he already had our flag in his hand."

The water manipulator, Grey,  who had fought against and lost to team 12 was trying to pry the information of exactly how they had lost out of the responsible teammates. However what they were saying didn't make any sense. 'A guy made of smoke' what the hell did that mean?

Instructor Zora was discreetly listening to the trainees conversation while looking over the single document that had arrived on her desk this morning. A concerning document to say the least. It had been something like two years since a student had been put on the termination list, and never in her ten years at the Military college had she seen a freshmen on the list.

Even more perplexing than the idea of a freshman on the list was that his ability was not listed. At her level of clearance almost nothing was restricted information, and yet his ability and how he had gotten it been blacked out on the document.

She had been keeping an eye on him all morning. And she had been relatively unimpressed until she had seen the end of his match. From what she had seen, it really did look like what the boys had described. But she had never heard of anything like that, an ability that made him, untouchable...? Did it apply to just humans or objects as well? What about barriers...? What about energy? Most of the abilities on the market had been thoroughly research and were explainable scientifically, but an ability like this... it didn't even remotely make sense.

She would make sure to watch his next match and see for herself exactly what type of being he was that the military considered his life a threat. If she agreed that he was, well then, she would be more than willing to take the matters into her own hands. For the sake of Earth and humanity she would do whatever needed to be done, even murder.

She clutched the military tag around her neck and breathed in deeply.

'Killing fellow humans is noble if it's done with the permission of the military.' She repeated the words she had been taught growing up at the private military orphanage.

'The military has everyone's interests at heart.' She spun her tag necklace in her fingers, an action that always proved to calm her down.

'The military takes care of me, so I must take care of the military.'

'I love the military.'