Crusader University

Chapter 7: Upgrades, Upgrades, Upgrades

I woke up to the sound of my alarm blaring, I responded by smashing the alarm accidentally.
I looked side to side, startled by the noise. And figured I should get ready for the day. I showered, brushed my teeth, and got dressed. Once I sat down in the kitchen and ate cereal as I watched people pass by, getting ready for the day. Once Phoenix and Elijah got done they followed me out the door, and we walked to school together.
"What do you think we're gonna do today?" Phoenix asked, trying to break the silence
"I don't know, but my body still hurts a bit from recovering, so I hope Justin will take it easy on us" I said stretching my arms
"Justin never takes it easy on us" Elijah butted in
"That's true" I said, my hope crumbling.
We entered the school and instantly got stopped by Justin
"Where do you think you're going?" He said with a devilish smile, that only meant one thing.
"To class?" I said sheepishly
"Nope, not anymore!" He declared
"Why not?" Elijah said agitated.
"Really!?" Phoenix asked, excitedly.
"Go to the gym, and sit down at the bleachers" he said turning us around.
I instantly deflated at that moment, and trudged myself along to the gym. When we entered the gym I looked and saw Jayden and Darryl sitting down, talking.
"What's going on?" Elijah asked
"We don't know either" Jayden replied with his head resting in his hands. We watched as all of our other classmates confusedly walked into the gym asking the same question we asked. Until the final person walked in, Daniel
"Hey guys, what's going on?" He asked with a slight lisp
"WE DON'T KNOW" erupted the entire gym
"Jeez, okay"
Finally Justin walked out of the lockers wearing his full costume.
"Alright!" He said, clapping his hands so hard they echoed throughout the gym
"So, I talked to the teachers and they all decided this was the best choice..."
"Who here knows about the Crusader University Herculean Tournament?"
Everyone's hand raised, including mine
"Really, everyone here knows?" He said scratching his helmet
"I kinda had a thing here, I prepared it" he said sounding kinda down
"Whatever, I'm still gonna explain it."
"The Crusader University Herculean Tournament (CUHT) is a tournament where students from every class compete, and the class that wins competes against each other. To prove who the best of the best is. And I'm sure you've guessed, but first years almost never win the tournament. So that's why we're here, for your entire school day, you'll be training, so we don't loose. Again"
I felt all the blood in my face leave completely
"6 hours. Training. With. You?" I squeaked
"Yup, and we're gonna be training you to your bones, to really strengthen those powers, luckily I'm great at that" he said giving me the most obvious wink of all time, that caused a few classmates to stare at me weirdly.
"Now let's begin!"
He immediately started placing us at stations he set up before we got here, each having something weird around them. Jayden, Phoenix, and Ember were waiting around a hot tub. They had to use their fire and electricity under water, strengthening it. While I was standing next to extremely heavy weights next to Tiffany, Gabe, and Matt.
(I'm guessing you could tell what we had to do.)
(If you guessed lift incredibly heavy weights with our powers, you'd be right!)
Elijah, Bowen and Jace have to spar since their powers more relied on their tech. Justin also helped them with his own personal strength training he does to help build up they're dexterity and things. Every so often students were able to head Mr. Leo's, if they wanted to upgrade something about their tech/suit
But for the next 2 weeks we trained like hell, Even during the weekends kids were still figuring out how to train along with doing their homework (we still got homework from our other classes) and we all found out interesting things about our powers. Like me, I learned I could create energy spikes from the floor by stomping my feet. And I learned that I can build up my percentage by running around or moving and I can get to a 20 percent punch by doing this, without hurting myself. (And it works with any energy, like Jayden's Electricity or Darryl's Spiritual Energy.) And Phoenix learned an ability where he pokes someone in the throat and causes them to be immobilized for a small amount of time. Jayden learned to control his static electricity to the point where he can control static cling. He can shock two specific items of any sort. When he zaps them, they become oppositely charged, and fly towards each other and stick together until he changes their charge. Elijah created a new suit that looked a lot more animal-like. It had a panther shaped mask that was red and black, and the claws were now attached to the fingers of the suit. He also has a new weapon, one of his chains has a blade attached to the end of it. And let me tell you you do NOT want to be in the way of it when he starts swinging it. Even though it may not be mentionable, every single one of our classmates were noticably stronger and all had better suits. Everything was good, until Monday came around. We all took a seat on the bleachers and waited for Justin to tell us what stations we were going too today. But instead he made a much different announcement.
"We're gonna do something a little different today" he announced
"As we all know, the tournament is this Saturday"
"So me and the other teachers agreed that we give you guys a...fitness test. So we can see if you're ready for the tournament"
"Is there any questions?"
I was the only one too raise my hand
"Yeah, what's your question?"
"Why did you say fitness test like that?"
Then he had an evil smile for a second, that he choked down before everyone else saw it
"You'll see in a second" he finally announced
"Follow me to city-B" he said as he walked off without a warning
We all clambered down the steps trying not to trip as Justin kept walking.
"Come on people! Pick it up!"
After about 2 minutes of blindly following Justin I realized we were back at the fake training city we went too on our first day of school.
"Split into teams of 3" Justin said simply as he took us to the room with the cameras
We all confusedly separated into 5 groups of 3 with one team having an extra member (I obviously went with Phoenix and Elijah) and we each chose what team number we'd have my team got number 3.
"Team 1, you may enter the city"
"What are we supposed to do?" Asked Daniel
"You'll see" Justin replied with an evil glare.
I watched the cameras and saw Daniel and his team walk throughout the city looking extremely confused. Then I heard a cackle of thunder as I saw Ms Rain launch down and proceeded to do what could only be described as the pure concentrated power of a hurricane blasted at three 14-15 year olds.
"Do you all see what's going on?" Justin shouted over the thunder and heavy rain
"Take a closer look!"
"See! She's wearing a Flag football flag!" He said pointing a red blur on the screen.
"If you manage to grab one of the teachers flags you pass the test!" He announced
Daniel, Bowen, Gabe, and Jace trudged in the room drenched with water, I could hear random buzzes of electricity coming from their costumes as they sat down, defeated. I shuddered and tried not to think about that happening to me. I looked on the screen and saw Ms Rain blowing a kiss to the camera and she walked off, the sky clearing as she did. I saw as team 2 went up this team has Jayden, Matt, and Darryl so they were pretty stacked. When they walked out the camera room Matt and Jayden Instantly flew up to the top of a building and Darryl followed along by climbing the building using spirit snakes. Once they all reached the top they scouted out for their rival, but all of a sudden the building began to rumble and shake there was a mechanical whir as the building collapsed and on top of the rubble was Mr. Leo in a mech suit laughing maniacally.
"Jeez, how many teachers in this school enjoy terrifying their students?" Asked Jason
"You'd be surprised" Justin said looking back at him.
The entire fight consisted of Darryl and Matt trying to distract Leo as Jayden tried to short circuit his mech by blasting him with electricity. And after the mech collapsed into pieces, sizzling and cackling with electricity. Matt used his telekinesis to grab his flag.
"Team two wins!" Justin announced, followed by cheering and celebration by the team. Mr Leo pulled out a remote from his tool belt and pushed a button and instantly all the pieces from the mech clanged together with electro magnets.
"Woah" Jayden and Matt both said in sync, sensing the power of the magnets. They walked back into the main room and were met with cheers and applause by the rest of the class.
"Thanks" Jayden said as Darryl did a sarcastic bow as if he just got done paying an epic solo in a band. I started to smile until I remembered that we were up next, my stomach contorted and knotted as I thought of the idea of failing in front of my class. But I sucked it up and watched as the door opened with an electric whir in front of me. I walked off next to Phoenix and Elijah, and the match begun. Phoenix hopped onto one of his clouds, and Elijah swinging on his chains. And I put 10% throughout my body and ran between them, we ran laps throughout the city, but nothing happened. We were all confused, and I jumped up to them
"Do you guys-" I said as I fell back down
"Notice anything-' I said jumping back up
"Different?" I said after my final jump
"Nope" they both said in unsion
I let out a sigh of annoyance as I continued to run. After a little bit of running I looked up to complain to them, but Phoenix was missing
"Where'd Phoenix go?" I called out to Elijah
"WHAT?!" He shouted back down
"Where did Phoenix go?!' I said louder
"HUH?!"
"I SAID, WHERE DID-" and instantly I saw Elijah get snatched up by a purple blur.
I felt all the blood in my face leave as I stopped moving to twirl around looking for whoever just stole my friend.
"Hey! We're not doing a buy-one-get-one-free sale today!" I announced to absolutely no one
"Give me back my Elijah! I don't think he has his Permanent Resident Card, and I don't want to send him back to his home county yet!" I shouted. All of a sudden, I heard the roar of wind, so instinctively I slammed my foot down and created 10 foot green energy spikes to grow all around me causing the mysterious purple man to crash into a building behind me. I raised my foot and instantly the spikes went away. I began to scale the now smoking building from the man sized hole in the center. I propelled myself upwards and jumped through the hole in the building, doing a little roll as I landed (I was quite proud of that roll, thank you very much!) And crouched down a little bit to check my soundings. Then, I got tackled by the man and I got a good look at him, it was Nightmare. The number 1 hero himself, and the flag I had to grab was around his waist. I stared at him in pure shock as I used my built up kinetic energy from running and hit him with a 20% punch, launching him away from me, but as he crashed through the wall, he created a glowing purple tendril and swung through the building, crashing through a few walls and swinging back up, using that momentum to kick me, propelling me out of the building instead. I skitted across the road like a pebble across a lake. But it's okay! A super nice light pole broke my fall. (OUCH!) But as I scraped myself off the freshly Austin shaped light pole. None other than Mr purple jump rope plopped down to the floor to greet me.
"Y'know, I expected a bit more from the so called heir to Omnius" he said cracking his knuckles
"Speaking of Omnius..." He continued
"The ring that gave me my powers" he said flaunting his right ring finger as if he just got married.
"...was the species that worshipped Omnius when he was a god"
"Is that so?" I said tauntilgnly
"Well let me return the favor!" I shouted as I jumped in the air, firing green blasts at him. Nightmare tried to create a shield but the shield faltered and flashed on and off. Eventually going away entirely causing him to have to dodge out of the way instead.
"What was that!?" He shouted at his ring as he looked at the smoking black splotch on the concrete created by my blasts.
"What do you mean you refuse to create a weapon that could harm him?!"
He paused, probably listening to whatever Agony was explaining to him. And just in time, Phoenix and Elijah pulled up, flying and swinging towards me at high speeds. I got extremely happy at the sight of this, knowing that I have much more of a chance of actually winning this now. Finally nightmare managed to shut up agony as Phoenix and Elijah landed. Without missing a beat Elijah got into the action, shadow dashing towards nightmare and slashing at him with his chain-blade nightmare created his own chain in return and countered Elijah with it, throwing him back. He tried to use the chains against me but instead they faded away. Then Phoenix jumped in, grabbing his bow staff that was shrunken to fit in his ear and increased it to be the size of an arcade machine and whapped it at nightmare, causing him to get launched backwards, Elijah managed to wrap his chains around nightmare and brought him back in, allowing me to lunge at nightmare and grab his flag. I raised it up as soon as I grabbed it and waved it at a camera, a horn blared from the loud speaker as Justin announced "Team 3 won!" I heard cheers from my other classmates from his microphone in the background. And I felt a giant wave of relief, knowing I succeeded. Phoenix went to nightmare and grabbed his hand to help him up.
"Thanks Phoenix," he said a little disgruntled
"Your skill with shrinking and growing your bow staff has improved a lot, I'm glad our training is working" he said putting a hand on his shoulder. I had a little smile on my face watching this happen, because this guy was my enemy just a minute ago. But now he's complementing my friend on his ability to beat the snot out of him. Me and Elijah waited for Phoenix and Nightmare to finish talking before we flew/ran back to the camera room, and we were met by a bunch of applause. And random pats on the back as I walked to my seat. Surprisingly, the following matches were uneventful, besides the match where Justin fought, after he told his new victims to enter the city, he snuck out behind them.
"Don't say anything" he said in a jokingly threatening way. But as Justin left, Daniel put on a fake voice and used the loud speaker to warn the victims that Justin was the one with the flag. (They still didn't win) and it was such a a struggle not to laugh since Justin couldn't figure how who did it, (Daniel has sonar powers, but he can also control his voice and do really good impressions) Justin eventually figured it out, but it was still funny nonetheless. After the tests were all over, Justin announced the end of training. We were ready for the Tournament. And we were gonna win.