Code of Shadows

Three Down, One to Go (Part 32)

"Hey Bethabara! How is it going over there," I shouted. All three of the patrol on the plate turned towards me and scowled.

"We are going to beat her to pulp aren't we Damian?" a boy asked. The other boy on the plate laughed.

"Definitely," he said.

I smiled, but it probably looked more like a grimace. "You have to come and get me first!" I said.

The only girl on the boat kicked off of another plate, and the three Bethabara patrol trainees started to come at me. I got down low, and waited for the impact, watching the three people in front of me the whole time.

The collision came just as I had expected, and the Bethabara trainees stumbled to try to regain their balance. I took that moment to eliminate them. I pushed the two boys of the sides of the plate, but by this time, the girl was up with her sword at the ready. We circled each other on the plate cautious of the other girl.

The girl struck first, and I parried, not before she snagged my limp arm, and drew a little blood. I cursed under my breath.

The girl became confident really quickly, and charged me expecting me to stop her full blown sprint, but I didn't. I stepped out of the way, and the girl went flailing of the plate. I turned and pushed off of the plate I had come on. The Grianan girl was waiting in the shadows of the tower with the flag. When I was within 3 feet of the tower  plate the girl jumped, and pushed the plate in the right direction as she did so.

We drifted at a moderate pace towards the bank next to Grianan territory. The Bethabara trainees were too busy with several other groups to notice that their flag was gone. The plate was now getting close to Grianan territory. I turned to the girl.

"Dove!"

Dove turned to me, she was breathing hard. "Nice of you to drop in when you did. I would have been toast if you had waited a second longer."

I smiled. "That's what friends are for, right?" Dove laughed, then took a running start on the platform, and landed on another platform. I followed suit. As soon as we landed a loud buzzer went off in the Bethabara section. Strange, why didn't that happen for Bromley? This finally caught Bethabara's attention. As soon as they saw us, they screeched at us, and howled insults. I sighed.

"I swear over a thousand insults have been thrown at me today," I said. Dove only grimaced.

Several people on Bethabara's team started to cry, and the other enterprises tried as hard as they could to get off of Bethabara territory. When the last non Bethabara trainee stepped off of the plate, the Bethabara section dropped into oblivion, just to be replaced by more Grianan territory. I took another look at the battle field, and gaged the winnings. Grianan and Peyton were in the lead with 3 each, and Manuae came in last with only their own plot of land, or should I say sky.

The standings changed not even two seconds after I had made the chart in my head. All of Peyton changed into Manuae. I groaned. This was one of the enterprises I had hoped not to face, but at least I wasn't up against Eaton, or Peyton. I evaluated the Manuae area. There were now several clouds without people on them, and I turned to Dove.

"Lets get onto one of those things," I said. We took a running start, and the rest of my group joined us. They all looked a little more beaten up, but over all, unharmed.

"Cait, you know that you left us to deal with several Aimons when you did your 'save the world' act?" Peira said.

I laughed. "Well it looks like you survived just fine."

"Yeah, I guess we did," Tristan said light heartedly. We stopped by the edge, and waited for a cloud to float our way. I evaluated the numbers now. Both Manuae and Grianan were almost equal in numbers and injuries. This was going to be an interesting fight.

I looked up at the clock in between two sets of stands. I gasped. We had been fighting for 30 minutes and counting. Wow, this battle was going quick.

I watched as our groups pulled into their original formations. I caught the attention of another offensive group, and motioned them over.

They came running, and our small 6 person group doubled into 12.

"We lost 4 of our teammates to injury, they are on denfense right now, so we combined to make one team..." a tall, and to other peoples standards, handsome boy said to me.

"I guess that works," I said. "Now, onto the next problem. If you get even remotely near anyone on these clouds you get pushed off, so lets avoid that. If you happen to come close to one of them, just stay low, that will solve the problem.

"Now, we are going to create a formation to penetrate theirs. We are going to put two people on a cloud, and then we will create an arrow-ish looking shape. The top cloud will be our key. We will trick them into thinking that the cloud has only one person on it. The other person will be laying in the mist of the cloud. The lead person will step onto another cloud, and they will send the 'empty cloud' towards the enemy, where they will send it towards their own base to keep it from us. Like they are doing to that group right now." I pointed at a Grianan attack group that had just lost a cloud from jumping to another one. The enemy took the cloud quickly and sent it towards their base, were there was no one. "We will just need to keep them distracted long enough to steal their flag and get out."

"Who will sneak behind their defenses?" A girl from the new group asked.

"Umm... Dove, she stole the flag from Bethabara by being sneaky. Any objections?"

There was a steady course of No's, Nopes, and heads shaking. "Okay then, Lets get started." Our group split down the middle, and we all headed towards the closest cloud. It took about 10 minutes for everyone to find a cloud, and for our group to position ourselves into a formation.

Our advancing unit was slowly gaining the attention of the Manuae defense. They reacted quickly, and had a counter formation ready in seconds. We drew the attention away from some of the small attacks, but that didn't create an advantage. As soon as the Grianan trainees saw our strong hold, they came to join us. I scowled, they should know better. By the time we had floated into fighting range, everyone on both sides was ready.

We were feet apart when Grianan started to attack. I jumped onto an enemies cloud, and pushed Dove nonchalantly towards the tower. I watched Dove get shoved through their defense without as seconds thought.

It took a moment for the people on the cloud to realize I was their. As soon as I had landed, all eyes turned toward me like blinking flashlights.

"Seriously people, do you have to stare?" I asked. They blinked at me. "Okay no answer? That is fine." I lunged forward and pushed two trainees off of the cloud.

That officially broke everyone out of their daze, and all sorts of chaos broke out.