With a deep breath, I stepped out into the light and the scowl I wore melted with the shadows, turning into my signature grin. I waved my arms in the air, basking in the cheers of the crowd. I felt invincible, even if it was just a false sense of security.
AU gestured to the other side of the Coloso where another country joined me in the light. She had told me that there were a few potential gems that she wanted to test first so they were probably countries many didn't focus on. That meant that their Awakening and combat abilities were basically gonna be a mystery.
This was going to be exciting.
The country that stood before me was a lanky one. He was around my height, maybe a bit taller than me but I found his expression the most peculiar. It was a mixture of awe and boredom, conflicting emotions but they somehow showed very clearly.
"Our first brave contender is one with much hidden potential. Please welcome your classmate, Netherlands, in the ring!"
A round of cheers rolled through the arena and he tugged the turtleneck collar a bit higher.
"It's a pleasure to come face to face against you," he spoke softly but somehow carried a powerful force with the words, "I have admired your feats of greatness for a long time."
"Oh you flatter me," I replied with a laugh, "I look forward to seeing what you have up your sleeves!" I replied with a firm handshake, "Let's have a good time."
We finished a quick stretch and warm-up before going to opposite ends. Five and AU worked together to give the wheel a mighty spin which decided what was going to be strapped to me. A bronze colored clasp was fixed onto my wrist that would temporarily hinder the flow of energy randomly, so I basically couldn't trust my own powers because they might fail at any moment. What a pain.
"Awww... I was hoping for your special-complete-shutdown cuff," Five pouted before AU silenced him.
"Now the rules are simple. You will fight the best you can, making sure not to injure one another too much. If you find yourself out of the center platform, unable to move or fight on or surrender, the match will end. My colleague, FVEY-"
"Call me Five," he quickly corrected, a bit annoyed that she got that wrong.
"Er- Five will be the referee for the match and he can stop the fight at any point when he sees fit. Without further ado- you will begin at the sound of the distant bells!"
The energy of the students slowly dimmed as anticipation silenced all their idle conversations. The slight, cold breeze pulled the clouds over the stadium bringing a chill up everyone's spine.
Before we knew it, the Academy chimes signaled the start of the battle and the cold was forgotten about. Immediately, I dashed forward to close the distance between us to hit hard and fast.
"Go a bit easier on them. Push them just hard enough to get the best performance out of them," a voice in the back of my mind reminded me and I skidded to a halt, "Give them the first move."
Netherlands had put his guard up but made no move to attack. Perhaps he was a defense specialist like Russia? In any case, when he saw that I had stopped, he pressed forward cautiously, as if testing the waters. Nothing much had changed about him so I wasn't sure if he had activated his Awakening yet or if his Awakening was inconspicuous.
My first job was to test his close combat abilities. I advanced forward and threw a quick strike at his side but he reacted quickly and made a counter strike, turning to protect his backside while throwing a considerable amount of force behind the punch.
Not too shabby, smart move, I thought to myself as I twisted around his vision to avoid his attacks. This fight was going to be one that kept me on my toes. As we exchanged blows, I could tell that he was well trained in self defense and key opportunities for offence. Pretty nice but I have to admit it was a bit too rigid for my liking. Unlike my style or Russia's style, which could fluently adapt at a moment's notice but it was probably something that would improve with experience. Still, it was working well for him at the moment.
He locked his arm around mine to secure a solid hit but I whipped my wrist out of the hold, grabbed onto his wrist and flung us apart.
"Not bad, not bad at all," I grinned as I wiped a bit of sweat off my chin. I rolled up my sleeves and as my hand touched my arm, a prickly burning sensation began to itch at my arms.
At first, everything looked normal but upon closer inspection, I could see a thin crystalline layer crumbling over my skin and it was starting to sting a bit.
I glanced up at Netherlands where a pressed smile played on his lips. He held up his hand where he let a small trickle of the same tiny white crystals slip through his fingers.
"Tch-," I hissed as I confronted him again but as time went on, my hands, my arms and my leg started to flare even more. It began to feel so bad that I stumbled away from offence to defense. The white crystal shell was now clearly visible and it looked like it was growing.
"What the hell is this?" I growled as I tried to scrape the crust off but to no avail. This was most likely the work of his Awakening but exactly what was it? Netherlands pulled off his coat and flung it to the side, the insides dusted with white. His blue skinned arms were also covered in patches of the same crystal but it did not seem to bother him at all.
It itched, it burned, it was starting to hurt as it rubbed against my skin. All I wanted to do was to get rid of whatever the fuck this was. With a bit of concentration, the skin under the crystal began to glow, as I poured my energy into specific areas to burn it away. To my surprise, it did nothing at all and the crystal crust continued to spread.
"Salt," Netherlands explained as he stepped forward as small white waves rolled next to his feet like the dunes of a desert, "I has a very high heat tolerance and can put out fires if you have enough of it."
He walked over to a fallen pillar that sat just by the sidelines and placed his fingers on it. Slowly, the marble pillar crumbled and fell into the waves, turning into salt.
"Holy shit," I exclaimed as I took a couple steps back. Now I was getting a bit unnerved and stared at the patches of salt on my skin. Was I going to crumble into salt now? How the hell did such a dangerous Awakening go unnoticed? Or were there more restrictions he wasn't telling me?
I didn't have time to ask because the tide of white surged towards me to swallow me whole. I leapt into the air and with a burst of energy concentrated in my legs, I propelled myself out of the way just as more waves came. I ran around, dodging as sending occasional attacks towards the other country but a curtain of salt would always rush in and block. Of course, I could never stay in one area for long with the tides of salt coming for my ass. Meanwhile, even my Partial Awakening was at the mercy of the stupid clasp and my Awakening would flicker, causing me to stumble on multiple occasions. The wind that slowly began to pick up did not help either. It just helped blow the salt into my face.
AU trained her eyes onto the contender as she stared into his potential. He was performing well, better than she had expected but there was still far too many barriers that held him back. His possibility of victory wavered at around 40% but as time went on, it slowly began to drop.
"No doubt he's already feeling the strangely quick Consequence of his Awakening," AU murmured to herself as the country's royal blue skin started to bloom with more and more white patches.
Finally, I turned and sent a small Firebomb (that contained no Sunfire because it was still too risky) and scattered the wave of salt like dust. I didn't like running but in reality, I wasn't able to move much anymore. The crooks and joints of my legs were almost completely encased in a hard rocklike case, making it stiff and painful to move. Especially because my skin was already irritated by the salt.
I really needed to get this off.
"What an interesting Awakening," I laughed as I tried to hide my struggling, "So you infect people with your touch and watch the salt tear them apart? But I'm guessing that inanimate objects will just crumble to salt instead."
Netherlands was looking a bit shaky and he began to sway. The salt was also starting to move more and more sluggishly but there was one more move that Netherlands had in his arsenal. The salt had spread all over the platform at this point and it began to condense and form the shape of tulips until a field of white tulips covered the ground.
I wasn't sure what to make of this until a burst of white made me jump back. The tulip had exploded, forcing me to move out of the salt cloud's way. But then...
I looked down where I had leapt and sure enough, I had stepped onto a few more tulips. They were basically landmines.
"Oh man, this ain't good-" I grumbled as I zipped through the field, doing my best to avoid any tulips but they were everywhere. Some of the salt condensed into thin pillars that came crashing down on me but I used them and sprung higher and higher into the air. I glanced down at my legs as a sharp pain ran up my skin. From under the salt, I could see a small trickle of blood. It had broken through the skin.
To make things worse, my Awakening flickered and disappeared as I lost my footing. I stared at the white tulip field that I was zooming towards, knowing if I fell in, I was a dead man. Unless I could get rid of the salt, or at least render it useless.
There was just one last thing I could think of, but it would not be easy at all. In fact, I was almost certain it wouldn't work but YOLO!
I closed my eyes and let loose. No boundaries, no restraint. I think I did my job well enough. I'm sure AU probably had enough time to observe so now it was time to show off a bit. One moment, I was freefalling through the cold winter air and the next, I was glowing like the sun hidden behind gray clouds.
With a thunderous boom, I hit the ground as the stone floor cracked under me. I had to increase the temperature more and more before the clasp could stop me. Luckily I had not used much energy at all beforehand so it was not too hard until I went from blazing yellow to hot white, matching the salt as it began to gather around it's Awakener to protect them from the heat. The light was so intense and the heat was so bad that the students closest to the platform crawled back as far as possible. Five grabbed AU and gently herded her away, shielding her as they went.
Finally, a resounding shockwave crashed over the stadium like thunder and I finally let the flames disperse and smoke and steam funneled up into the buzzing air.
I stood there motionless as I stared at my feet where pools of molten salt and bronze swirled into the cracks, hissing as they went. The Netherlands staggered to his feet, using his coat as a barrier to knock over the scorching salt that had shielded him. He looked at me in awe before slumping onto the ground with a sigh.
"Aren't you going to keep fighting?" I asked, puzzled.
"No no. It's over," he rasped, as he gestured to a cracked line that used to run unbroken around the platform.
"I'm out."
It took me a second to realize what he meant and when I did, I stumbled over and flopped down beside him and laughed.
"That was a good game. You really surprised me out there."
"Agreed. But I never had victory in mind. I just wanted to test how much I had improved since the start of the CAS."
We lay there in silence for a bit longer before AU, Nurse WHO and Five joined us down on the ground. Netherlands was handed a giant jug of water because he was extremely dehydrated (courtesy of his consequence) while I got an earful from Five about my stupid decision to melt my restraints and almost searing everyone's face off and etcetera etcetera.
I held out my hand to the other country and helped him to his feet. A singular person's soft clapping echoed from above and I gazed up to see a familiar face.
Russia sat above everyone else on the Coloso walls with a faint smile on his face as his round of applause rang in the silent stadium. Slowly, one by one, people joined in and the crowd came to life with congratulations.
I took Netherlands by the hand and raised our arms into the air in celebration. Netherlands stared in awe at the cheering crowd and sniffled a bit before tears of happiness began to flow against his will.
"It's raining?" he sighed as droplets fell from the strangely vibrant sky, washing his salted tears away.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Wooo! We start the Ranking Tournament Arc off with a battle yay!
And a new country debut, so exciting! I want to thank a wonderful friend who helped me design Netherlands and is helping me to design a bunch of others. I appreciate it so much.
Now I kind of want to make little character card thingies.
Here's Netherlands:
Jkjk. Here's the sketch for now cuz I'm so goddamn tired and lazy.
Update: Done yay
Anyways, I'm just gonna type a few more words just because yes, I want to get to 2500 words for no reason in particular. Ok bye.