♡ Deianira ♡
On the last day of the tournament all the girls were beside themselves— even me. The scariest part were the fights, and stare downs. Alliances were being broken, and people's true colors were starting to show.
Three huge things have happened in the past 48 hours. For one, someone played a deadly prank on one of the Hipsters, leaving her hairless and badly dehydrated. Now she is in the hospital and out of the running. I had my suspicions on who it was but, since the girl was unconscious and there were "no witnesses", it would be difficult to investigate.
Then, Caitlyn finally confessed that she had found her mate, which happened to be Jeffrey Peterson— Adrian's amazingly hot cousin. Marilyn and I were the only ones other than Adrian and the Selection staff who knew about it,. She trusted us enough to tell us that, and I admired her for making the right choice and choosing her mate. He's hot anyway...
Lastly, there's been an attack on one of Alpha Ferreiro's colony packs in Southern California, not far from Liam's pack. (By the way, colony packs are smaller packs that are ruled by an Alpha who lives in another location.) There were a lot of people here in East Texas who had connections to this colony pack. In fact, they were so furious that Alpha Ferreiro has gone to his war chamber to investigate and call the shots leaving Adrian and his older sibling responsiblity over the East Texas pack while their mother deals with the other colony packs.
However, tonight was the last event and Adrian and his siblings believed that it would be best to continue with the tournament. People needed to be distracted, to help prevent mass panic.
Today most of the girls were given orders to go and spend time out in public instead of cooped up somewhere in the Resort or Training Center. It turns out that it was actually a secret test and Marilyn and I passed with flying colors.
We decided to go to the arcade and take a walk through the park. To be honest, we spent most of the time taking pictures and signing autographs. I got to hold a little baby, and play basketball with a few middle school kids. Meanwhile Marilyn danced with senior citizens, and played hopscotch with little girls. We had no idea that we were being filmed the entire time, and we sure didn't know that we would be receiving twenty-five grand each for being ourselves.
Della, was pleased with the good publicity and predicted that I would see very positive poll results. Meanwhile one of the Barbies took a huge hit since she was caught being extremely mean to the clean up crew in one of the movie theaters.
So after the ugly prank, the colony attack, and the secret challenge people were starting to seriously lose their minds.
I waved as Caitlyn got in the car to return home, she made a statement explaining that she no longer wanted to be apart of the Selection because the entire process was too much for her. She couldn't handle the pressure and she was afraid that she would be wasting her time when her true mate was out there somewhere. She had bowed down gracefully, and now she had the next plane ticket home. It was all part of their plan to avoid a big scandal.
Meanwhile Marilyn and I have been keeping a close eye on Brooklyn who has started forming alliances with other girls. It was interesting to see how she manipulated them and even caused some of the disputes between the other groups. Then after it all she would come over towards Marilyn and I, and pretend that it didn't happen— and we pretended that we didn't notice it.
"So do you think you've made the cut Deianira?" Brooklyn asks. She knew that I was worried about eliminated since I placed fourth in the last event. I was pretty sure I didn't make it but I needed to remain positive.
"I can't be certain at this point, but I hope I did. I don't want to be cut out just yet, especially since I've worked so hard to compete." I sigh.
"What was your ranking last time Brooklyn? I don't remember what it was." I tried not to smile, since I knew that Marilyn had just delivered a powerful blow to Brooklyn's false pride and intimidation tactic.
"Well I was ranked at 14 before but after the past few events I've definitely racked up more points. I'm pretty sure it was enough to make the cut," She says as we put on our track suits.
Adrian had an announcement to make and I had a feeling there would be another competing event.
One last chance to move up in ranks...
We walked into the briefing room and sat in the seats towards the front. Just before Adrian walked in, another fight broke out between two of the jocks. When Adrian caught sight of the two girls sprawling on the ground,he exploded.
"That is enough!" He boomed. His voice silenced the room and commanded the attention from everyone there. The two girls scrambled to their feet, and tried to regain their composure.
"I am sick of all of this shit! Cut it out now. I swear on my life that the next people to fight or pull some dumb prank are going to get their ass shipped home! Do you all understand?" He yells.
"Yes, Adrian." We all say in unison. I couldn't say that it wasn't funny to see the wide eyes and trembling hands of the girls. They hadn't seen Adrian's explosive Alpha side, and I'd dealt with it several times so I wasn't scared at all—well maybe just a little bit.
"Good. Take a seat you two." He orders as he walks towards the front of the room. He stood in the center, with his face stone hard. There was still fire in his eyes but when he looked at me they softened for a moment, just a second.
"Now, I was extremely tempted to cancel this last event, but that would go against my better judgment. I had designed it as a gift to you all for working hard but now it's no longer for your benefit. You're doing this as a distraction tactic for the viewers." He starts. Soon Josh joins him at the podium with a basketball in his hand.
"Secondly, there's been a change in regards to tonight's elimination. You are no longer being eliminated based on points and there will still be six eliminations this week."
The room remained silent, and I tried not to show how much I was panicking. If the eliminations weren't based on our points...well then there's almost no way to even know if you were safe or not.
"Tonight is going to be a charity basketball event. There are going to be three rounds where you will compete for money. This money will then be used to assemble a team of professionals who will go head to head in the final game that will air tonight at seven." Adrian continues and finally goes towards the podium. Where he pauses to look at everyone's worried expressions.
"There will be four opportunities to earn this-" he pulls out a silver plastic card with a gold heart and bird wings. "These are immunity cards, and the only thing that will keep you away from the chopping block." Adrian slips the card back into his pocket before he clasps his hands together.
"This is the last thing I'm going to say before I let you choose your teams and get ready..." He scans the room once more, before his eyes meet mine.
"Be on your best behavior."
With that he leaves the room, and Josh stays to give us further instruction. We were given the chance to "choose" teams, choose leaders, and decide on a name for our group.
Since Aubrey already had three jocks siding with her, most of the other girls begged to take one of the four remaining spots on her team. However, the first thing she did was offer Brooklyn a spot, who didn't even hesitate to say yes. She shrugged as we looked at her impassively, it was part of our pact, and I thought it was better this way. Then after Aubrey had her pick, the rest gravitated towards us.
Aubrey laughed as she walked between Marilyn and I. She threw her arms over our shoulders and smiled as she whispered,"Hey girls, I just figured out the best name for your team. The Geeks and Leftovers!"
She giggled as she brushed past us to choose their logo and team color. I turned over to our team, who hung their heads low. Oh no...
I tried my best to remember names. There were three Einsteinettes, Jane, Lucy, and Michelle, and two Hipsters, Blair and Jenny. The last girl was Max. She was the one who was caught fighting before Adrian exploded.
There were only two girls beside Marilyn and I who had placed in the top five in a tournament event, and that was Jenny and Max. Max had placed second in track, and won first place in swimming, while Jenny placed second in flag football since she was on my team. Since Aubrey had all the big winners on her team, it was obvious that they all underestimated our ability, but I knew very well that we still had a good chance.
Marilyn kills the silence by finally speaking up. "So guys I heard that the other group chose to go with the Dream Team as their name, anyone have ideas on what our name should be?"
Jenny raised her skinny arm and waved her hand excitedly. "What about the Black Widows? Our colors could be black and red, and we could have a cool spider web, on our uniforms." I smiled at Jenny, since I thought it was a cool idea. Sexy and dangerous...I really like it.
"We could also be the Angels...Our colors could be white and gold and we could have the letter A and with a halo around it," Jane says shyly. She pushes up the rim of her black glasses and fiddles with the silver bracelet on her wrist.
"Any other ideas? I was thinking we could go with something like Charlie's Angels or Victorious Secret." The girls giggle and I shake my head in amusement. Seriously Marilyn?
"Deianira? Any thoughts?" Marilyn asks.
I smirked having thought of the stupidest names that popped into my head. "What about No Balls Allowed? Then again I'm kind of liking Balls of Steel..."
The girls erupted in laughter and from my peripheral vision I could see Franco and Josh laughing near the window.
Marilyn shakes her head and rolls her eyes. "Shall we take it to a vote?"
The girls decided on Balls of Steel to my surprise. I thought Victorious Secret or Black Widows would win. We went with red and black for our colors while our logo, the Superman symbol, was blinged out with cubic zirconia.
Since it was only two in the afternoon and our competition didn't start until 5, we had three hours to run drills on separate courts in the training center. None of us had any clue what to really expect, so we just worked on the basics: passing, dribbling, shooting. It turns out that Max is really good with shooting with her average being seven out of ten, while Marilyn's average was about six out of ten. Meanwhile, I topped them all with my eight out of ten average, since I had plenty of experience shooting hoops. It didn't require strength or speed, just skill and aim.
After gauging each other's skill and coming up with basic plans everyone voted on team captains which turned out to be me and Max. Marilyn, didn't want to be the leader since basketball wasn't really her thing. She knew that the captains had to be the strongest.
I couldn't say that I wasn't pleased with my role as Captain, and I was excited now that I had people on my team who believed in me. I just hoped I wouldn't let them down.
When we entered the locker rooms, our uniforms were waiting for us. We slipped them on and took pictures outside with our photographers. Then we walked onto the court ready for the final showdown