Chapter 11: Selena's Aftermath

“We have our first Sea sphere user!” yelled the priest. Selena opened her eyes. She had chosen the Sea sphere she had seen from earlier. “Now please place it on your body,” the priest instructed.

Selena remembered Ailita, and placed the sphere, symbol facing up, on the top of her left arm. The sphere was cool to the touch as it made contact with her skin. In that instant, she felt cool, calm waves crashed over her head. In that moment, she felt weightless and the clouds on her mind seemed to fold away. Her moment was gone and the priest gestured for her to return to the cube. She lazily walked back to her cube still feeling the effect of what had just transpired. Once back in her cube, she watched the weird guy pick an Earth sphere. Selena was glad for a split second that she was not going to have to deal with him again. She then also was relieved mentally that she would not have the same magic as him.

Eventually, everyone had chosen their spheres and had marched off the stage and back into their cubes. With a dismissive wave from the priest, the cubes took off floating back towards the ring of the remaining competitors in the sky. It seemed as if they were going to rejoin the main circle of cubes, when at the last moment, the cubes settled a few meters underneath the other ones and formed their own, smaller ring. Selena looked up to see Michael staring back down at her. He didn’t seem to be mad or sad, just a stare searching for acknowledgement. She, showed him her wrist with the Sea logo, shrugged her shoulders at him, and mouthed, “whatever.” It was not like she had done anything wrong, so she had no need for an apology. He nodded at her and she really wondered if he had even caught what she had said. “Whatever,” she thought and sat down.

She started to reflect on the race. Her anger started rising up within her because she had lost. “Coming in second is still losing because it’s not first,” she said to herself. “Ailita cheated by being nice. That was it.” She vowed never to be fooled by the Protogenian ever again and sat down. She also swore to herself that when she won, to rub it in the Protogenian’s face. Back to the race, she realized that she was done and didn’t have to do anything anymore! It was glorious. She was going to take a looooong break because she couldn’t be bothered to do anything else. Laying down on the bench, she turned to one side and breathed a contented sigh of relief.

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Michael took a long breath after seeing Selena come back. He didn’t quite catch what it was that she had said but, he wasn’t sure it was anything good. It was probably sassy and sarcastic. That seemed to be the only mode she ran on. Though, now that she had her sphere, he needed to think about what to do next. He had figured that there would be a full set of spheres after each round! Now he was screwed because what if a round just came with an entire batch of spheres of the same element? “Crap,” he muttered again. Well, Selena had chosen the sea sphere which was what he wanted so… His mind drifted back to the original elements that they had all wanted… He was left with Light or Flame if he didn’t interfere with anyone else, and they with him.

Sitting down on the bench provided, he thought about what he had just seen. For a mouth like a firecracker, she hadn’t been too tough when it came to actual combat. She was still lacking in that department and they would definitely have to make sure that she could fight and handle herself if they wanted to win. She did however, possess inner strength when it came to standing up to those who looked down on her as well as when she was given the upper hand. She took down that weird deranged guy and left his face pretty banged up. Thinking of him, Michael made a mental note to keep an eye on the weird guy if he could. Thankfully, more than anything else, the audience had loved her when she fought back as well as her rant, so that had to get them some sort of a favorable ranking as a team.

The scene with the Protogenian though, was a different story. Michael covered his face and groaned. Selena had really messed up there when she let her guard down. Michael was definitely going to bring this up to Selena and have a one-on-one talk with her later.

“Now then… what do I do?” he questioned himself. He started an internal dialogue with himself. “Light is okay, but I’m not sure how I feel about using it as my primary magic. Fire is okay as well, but I also am not terribly interested in it either.” He kept going until he realized that he had no idea what the magic looked like in action, nor the higher level spells, which were the ones that mattered later in the race, so he really had no idea what either sphere held in store for him.

Michael looked over at Luna who flashed a very large and sweet smile followed by a wave. Glancing over to his left, Jodoc was smiling at Michael and then turned to look out towards the stage. Iovita waved at him and made a gesture that Michael interpreted as “You can do it!”

“Man she really is cute.”