Entrance examination (part 3)

The nurse explained that the student escorted an injured person into the room and then pointed to the girl laying on the bed, and that shortly after, he started kicking up a storm.

Hirowa released his hold on the student a bit and asked him, "care to explain yourself young man? Start with your name"

He reluctantly spoke up, "I'm Koda Tamahiro, and that's my twin sister Rezu Tamahiro."

"What exactly is the problem Koda?" He noticed Koda had calmed himself down, so he released him from the smoke and it dissipated.

"For an institution that prides itself in being the best, the examination was too risky. Too many thorns in the first part and then some of us had to expose the wounds we got from the thorns to water. The worst of all, those bears hit my sister. Why did you make it that dangerous? Do you not care about the safety of your students? And then she makes it to the medics hut and the damn doctor is not even here, with no state of the art equipment in sight. So how exactly are you the best?"

As he finished, the doctor, Hirime Kosu walked in and sighed as she walked towards the unconscious Rezu. She had overheard some of what Koda said.

Hirowa spoke again, "I told you the Academy only accepts the best of the best didn't I? Didn't you think that statement also includes the members of staff?" As he asked this, Hirime touched Rezu and a green light began emanating from her body, her wounds closing up as it did so.

After a few seconds, she regained consciousness. "Where am I?" She asked.

Hirime responded "You're in the medics hut. That was quite a blow you took to the head. How do you feel?"

" I feel great, doesn't feel like I was injured at all. Thank you doctor"

As she thanked Hirime, Koda turned back to Hirowa and bowed his head, slightly ashamed. "I apologise for my rudeness. I was only concerned about my sisters health"

Hirowa smiled, "that's quite okay young man. Let's go back outside. Miss Rezu, you too"

After they took their seats on one of the benches, Hirowa finally addressed the whole group.

"Congratulations on making it this far. Im guessing you're all rested and refreshed. Firstly, I just wanted to say the vast majority of you made that test harder than necessary."

The students looked at themselves because they didn't know how it could have been any easier. Hirowa continued, "Firstly, the thorns. You could have avoided them or made it easier for yourselves if you climbed the trees. Assuming you did that, you would have seen that you had to swim for the next portion of the examination. Those of you who think ahead would've noticed that there were several items needed to make a raft scattered around the forest, so you could have avoided swimming. Avoiding swimming meant those wolves wouldn't have been a problem because they were programmed to go after students who were wet and cold and therefore, had a lower temperature.

The only real problem were the bears. However, you should've realised that defeating them wouldn't be easy and you should have prioritised escaping instead. A lot of students decided to fight them head on and they ended up not finishing.

I understand there are some of you who were concerned that the bears could have caused severe injury but stationed at numerous locations were medics who were monitoring everyone and would have intervened if there were any life threatening injuries."

As he said this, a lot of the students there felt embarrassed that they didn't figure this out, including Rando and Yashiro. Koda sank deeper into his bench.

"But now that's over and done with, let's move on to the final part of the examination. There are 30 of you here. You will be split into 6 randomly assigned teams. When I am done, your group number will appear on your pads and you will go to the designated meeting points.

The last phase is quite simple, 1 team vs 1 teacher. The goal is to have at least 2 members of your group get past the teacher and into the gate or safe zone they're guarding and then your team passes."

As he finished speaking, numbers began appearing on the pads the students had, as well as where they had to meet the other members of their teams.

Yashiro was the last to get to the meeting point and as he approached it, he noticed that neither Rani nor Rando were there.

[As I thought, they were most likely watching us and saw we have been together since the start and decided to separate us], he thought.

He also noticed a familiar face from his current school, though they didn't speak at all, he wasn't surprised to see Sando Kyojiro.

A few seconds after he joined the other students there, Hirowa started to speak again.

"Group 1, your assigned teacher will be me, group 2..."

Rando was too surprised to acknowledge the teacher his team was up against, because he was looking directly at Mika. Who again was dressed in all black clothing.

He couldn't believe she was there. It now registered to him what that familiar sensation was he was feeling earlier was.

"Group 3, your teacher will be Ichisuda Motokishi..."

[Where have I heard that name before?], Yashiro asked himself.

"Group 4, your teacher is Zuno Shisuki, Group 5, Takari Matsura and group 6, your teacher is Tokiho Rarada.

Everyone get ready, you start in 10 minutes"

As Rando was about to say something, Mika started walking away towards the area the pad said the battle would occur.

"Hey, where are you going?" Rando asked," we need to make a plan"

"Let her go, we do not need her" Dota said, in a slightly aggravated tone." Let's start with introductions, I'm Dota"

"I'm Rando"

"I'm Murake"

"Chibi"

"the girl who just walked away is Mika. Guys, I believe it would also be helpful to know each others powers" Rando said, "I can turn any part of my body into steel"

"I can manipulate the air" (Dota)

"I can create illusions" (Murake)

"I can communicate with animals, but I don't see how that's going to be useful here. I haven't seen any animals." (Chibi)

"that's okay. Let's try to make a plan based on those powers" Dota said, as the group walked towards their battle ground.

"by the way, Dota, is your leg fully healed?" Rando asked

"yeah, thanks for asking"

As each group introduced themselves to each other, Yashiro's group decided to check out the area they were meant to go against Ichisuda.

His group consisted of him, Sando (who has the ability to create and manipulate fire), Koda (who can control rocks), Shihata (whose power is clairvoyance) and Fukuma (who had cyberkinetic abilities allowing him to control electronics)

"here's the plan" Sando said,smiling as he did so "since he doesn't know what powers we all have, we all charge at him and hit him with everything we have got"

Shihata responded, "that's not a bad plan but what if he knows what powers we have?"

"That's possible" Yashiro added, "Mr Hirowa did say they were monitoring us incase we had really bad injuries"

Sando shook his head and responded to Yashiro's statement "Well, I thought he was talking about the medical staff "

Koda joined in,"Regardless, I think I can do something about that uncertainty. I have this move i like to call rock prison. I can trap him in that and 2 of us can try to get past him before he has a chance to break out. If he does we can then hit him with all we have got.

"sounds like a plan" Sando said, as he thought to himself [I hope he's strong, I haven't let loose in a while]

Fukuma nodded in agreement.

A few minutes later, a woman with a megaphone walked out and told the teams to go to their respective battle arenas. All of which were located in a forest on the other side of the huts, opposite the forest that contained the bears and wolves.

As she finished, the students began making their way to battles, most of them nervous.

TEAM 1 (Rando's Team)

When the other 4 students got to the arena, they found Mika standing by a tree.

Rando tried speaking to her but she looked the other way and ignored him.

"teams get ready...," the woman with the megaphone said again, "Begin"

As soon as she said this, Mika dashed forward, faster than the others could anticipate.

As Hirowa spotted her, he thought to himself [Just one person? Is this some sort of Tactic?]

He released a cloud of smoke from his body that spread towards the clear path Mika was running through.

[a smoke screen? That's not going to be as effective as he thinks] she thought to herself, as she continued to charge through.

As she entered the smoke screen, Hirowa smiled and swirled smoke around the wrist of the hand behind her, then hardened it.

This stopped her from running and also stunned her because she wasn't expecting it, she turned around to see what was around her and at the same time, he formed a huge fist with his smoke behind her, hardened it and directed it at her head.

Also, as this was happening, Hirowa noticed something moving towards him at a very fast pace.

As the smoke fist was about to hit Mika, Rando leapt past her and punched the hardened fist.

Hirowa was unable to keep the hardened form of the smoke due to the force of Rando's punch and loosened his hold on Mika.

As he landed, Rando grabbed Mika by her hoodie and sprinted backwards. He veered right, into the cover of some trees and threw Mika down in front of him and she slid across the ground.

She rolled backwards onto her feet and was visibly pissed off

"Do you really want to go right now?" She asked, as she got onto an animalistic stance and her long black hair rose like she was in the presence of an electric field. Her bloodlust was so much that Hirowa felt it from where he was.

he thought to himself, [how can this much bloodlust be coming from a student?]

He still hadn't moved at all, he just spread his smoke even more towards the direction Mika and Rando were in.

"Mika, you need to calm down. We are on the same side here. He was about to immobilise you and we need you if we are going to win this" Rando said, reassuringly with his hands slightly raised to indicate he didn't want to fight her.

"I didn't ask for or need your help "

"I don't understand, why are you trying so hard? You got an automatic admittance into the Academy at the flowing fist tournament but you gave that away. Why? "

As he asked her this, her hair dropped back down and the bloodlust disappeared.

"What I do is none of your business Rando"

He walked closer to her "I'm surprised you even know my name"

She didn't respond to him, so he continued.

"look, Mika you're strong. Undoubtedly so, but I don't think you're going to win against Mr Hirowa by yourself. If we work together though we might have a chance and you can go back to being a lone wolf immediately after"

She thought about it for a few seconds then sighed because she noticed smoke slowly coming towards them.

"fine. What do you suggest?"

He turned around and also noticed the smoke. "Let's regroup with the others and formulate a plan based on what powers you have. Which is what exactly?"

"Shadow manipulation. That's the best way I can describe it"

As they ran back to where the others were waiting, she reluctantly told him a small amount of the abilities she had that could be used to get past Hirowa.

He relayed this information to the team, and he, Chibi and Dota created a plan.

When they came to the open path this time, they stood in a horizontal line side by side and area was filled with smoke.

They looked at each other and nodded, indicating they were commencing their plan.

Dota stretched his hand forward and released a massive gust of wind towards Hirowa, who was roughly 50 metres from him, pushing the smoke aside towards the trees in the process.

[interesting. Trying to prevent me from using smoke] Hirowa thought, before moving forward towards the students.

Chibi and Rando charged forward.

As he ran towards them, Hirowa felt something off and stopped. He looked left, then right again just in time to see Mika running from the trees towards him. She lunged, raising her hand in a fist as though she was about to punch him, he raised his hand to guard but instead of punching, she coated her hand in darkness and grabbed his arm. Most of the shadow like thing that was around her hand went into his arm and he jumped backwards, inspecting the arm.

As soon as she did it, Dota pulled his arm backwards and a soft wind brought Mika back towards him. Chibi and Rando were still running forward.

Hirowa looked over to where Dota and Mika were and saw the figure he thought was Mika fade away.

[ An illusion?] Hirowa smiled, [These guys are better than I thought]

As Chibi and Rando were about to go past him, he released a trail of smoke too fast for Dota to counter that trapped them by their necks but to his surprise, they faded away too.

He noticed the real ones were in the part of the forest Mika emerged from.

"Tsk" He said, in annoyance and was about to charge after them.

Mika held out the hand that was previously coated in 'darkness' towards him and her hair rose again.

Hirowa felt something tugging at him and suddenly he was lifted off his feet as he hurtled towards Mika.

As he got close, Dota slammed a gust of wind from above into him and he landed hard on the ground.

Mika quickly moved closer to him.

From the floor, he released a massive cloud of smoke and hardened it immediately, entrapping Dota, Mika and Murake, instantly immobilising them but leaving space for them to still breathe.

He got up and dusted himself, his sunglasses were broken and he looked angry.

As he attempted to go after Chibi and Rando,

An announcement came from the megaphone,

"Group 1 passes with two students across the gate"

Hirowa smiled to himself and said silently, "Well played kids, well played"