TEAM WORK MAKES THE DREAM WORK (Part 2)

&$sorry for the late post&$

"Looks like you guys are in a whole lot of trouble. Personally, I think you failed to grasp the gravity of the situation, hence the reason why it's only South we are facing," someone from the back said, and Jay Winkling made his appearance.

"Knowing you, I bet you anticipated this, didn't you?" Griffin snarled. Jay laughed it off, right before ordering both East and North students to attack us.

Looking at the group to face us, I could see around four power houses amongst them, with the other few not just some extras either. I know I can handle my own against one of them, but acting defensively to try and stop them from grabbing the flag, that's a different case.

Two of the powerhouses immediately attacked Clive, who, even without weapons was formidable, but against two, even he would have some problems. Another one attacked Kira, no doubt something that was thought out after her performance back in the rain forest. And finally, I was to face the last one.

She was a North student with large beefy arms that even for a girl was a little too much. I have no idea what her ability is, but that evil smirk she's giving me tells me that she's not just doing this for the flag.

"Let me guess, you have some personal vendetta against demons that took your home and killed your parents and now you want revenge blah, blah, blah, yeah, I've heard it all. Can we just get to the fighting part?"

"Hmph! When you put my goal up like that, it sounds like I'm the villain here," she surprising spoke with a soft voice.

"Sorry, girl. You're not the first one, nor will you be the last one, to come up to me and try to kill me. I'm used to it at this point,"

"Oh yeah? Well, contrary to the previous people you faced, I am by far the–"

"–strongest one you will ever face, gosh! Again, can we just skip all that and move on to the fighting? Time limited, and all that,"

Her face scrunched up in a frown, then she plunged her hands deep in the ground. Great, another earth ability user.

Two large fists of earth all came up to attack me, but I easily dodged them and circled my way around to the girl. There's one thing this types don't realize is their weakness, and that's they have a long cool down, especially inexperienced students like this one right here.

I threw a punch straight for her head before she could come up. I'm sure she was thinking she could take my punch head on with all her muscles, so she must have been shocked when she flew a good distance away and rolled on over to a tree.

"What the hell?! How are you stronger than me?!" she exclaimed in anger as she slowly used the tree as support to get up.

"Honey, please. You may be stronger than the average demon , but I'm a demon royal. I've faced larger beasts with more strength and power than you when I was five. This is just a walk through to me,"

That got her mad. But facts are facts. You can't just be a demon royal without power. You'll give the other demons the chance to take that from you, together with your life, so pain inducing training was all I was given since I was born, being the daughter of the Demon King and all.

"I'LL SHOW YOU!"

She started controlling a huge amount of earth magic, trying to form a huge wave of rock to crush me, but...compared to the dark elf's wave...

*sigh*

I blinked right behind her with my new skill, something that I've been training myself for a while ever since I learnt that I can't keep depending on my sword's ability.

"You earth users always forget something. You need time to build up your attacks!"

I smacked her head right to the ground, making the North student pass out immediately, but not enough to kill her.

"That was a lot more time than I would have liked to invest in this fight. Now, to protect the...ah...where's the flag?" I wondered in shock as I stared at the empty pole gaping back at me. I turned all sides looking for the culprit and saw that everyone of South was busy trying to defend a nonexistent flag.

"I made the same mistake twice! That has always been my downfall, not looking at my surroundings! Think Emily, remember those red team members who came for the flag,"

Thank the demon lord, we demons have good memories. Now, looking at those that were around here, yeah...most of them were busy, there's the girl I knocked out, the power houses with Kira and Clive. All that is missing is...

"Where the hell is that little weasel!"

"Where are you going Emily?!" Griffin called to me, "We need to stick together!"

"Jay has the flag!"

Griffin cursed out loud in anger, then punched the kid that was fighting him straight in the face.

"They planned this from the start, didn't they?! Alright everyone, new plan. Get the flag! But before that, make sure you help everyone around you. I'm sure that these monsters aren't the A team that was sent, just the distraction,"

"Yes sir!"

I joined Clive in his fight, and together, we made quick work of everyone that had remained back to slow us down. Just as Griffin had said, they were a good bunch that came to fight us off, but this was not nearly enough to be their aces.

I tightly bounded the captured students and tied them next to the pole.

"Alright everyone, now that that's done. Let's go get our flag!"

"YEAH!" we all cheered with enthusiasm. I wonder what Max would have said if he knew we had lost our flag just moments after the event had started.

***

*Back to present time*

*Max's pov*

***

"What a bunch of losers," I said to the stupid students I was looking at now, "Hey general, are they going to lose marks because of this?"

The probe took a long time before answering, "Yeah kid. They kinda are. Sorry, was a little busy looking at the blue teams assessment. What were we doing again?"

He already forgot?! After bringing me all this way to the red teams headquarters?!

*sigh*

"We were supposed to be monitoring the West students general, hence calling them stupid for their selfish act,"

"Oh, yeah, yeah, right. So, where are they now?"

"Right now, they are close to their destination, almost like they know its exact position.

"That's probably because they do,"

"Explain, general."

"We planted our own traitors in both teams to bring some sort of disunity from both teams. After all, we must prepare any outcome, even betrayal,"

"...you really put a lot of thought in this event didn't you?"

"We are training the next generation so, yeah. And praising me ain't going to get you out of your work load,"

"Tsk."

The general had me follow the offensive team of blue, which was basically the entire West class, as they made their way to the opposing side's flag. They had a lot of mistakes on the way, falling into a lot of traps around, leaving me to do all the heavy lifting.

There goes another one! What sort of traps are this? At least they are nonlethal or we would have had bigger problems in our hands. First, before anything else, I had to make sure that the West students were willing to rescue their classmates. If they left it to me, that was another marks deduction.

Of course they helped their classmate, or at least tried to, but couldn't. They cared about each other, that much I'm sure, now if only they could reciprocate that love to the South students, maybe this competition wouldn't have looked so grim for them.

"You know what to do, Max. And no funny business. I'm watching you," the probe said.

"Yes general. For the tenth time, I know what I should do,"

"Just checking,"

"Just checking," I mimicked after turning my com off. What a load of bull that general has me doing. And for free too!

"Hey, need a hand?" I asked the students once I came down to them.

"Not from you," the West representative shooed me away.

"Again, it's not in my job description to care about you too, but it is to save you sorry arses. Now I'm just gonna do what I've been doing and completely ignore your existence. We good?"

"Hmph!" he scoffed.

I pressed a button to my side and the trap released the caught student. Somehow, it was made to hold a monster in place, and with its impressive amount of time, it could even explode at will. Thankfully, that explosion part was removed from it. Probably.

Sure, I should press the button when they are helping their friend to make their work easier, but I'm not so merciful. They're the snobs here, I'm just doing what little I could to annoy them.

"You'll never win at this rate. You've already lost points for moving all alone, are you gonna risk this too?" I whispered, away from the probe's watchful eyes.

"We don't need baggage to hinder us,"

"Keep telling yourself that, maybe it will actually bring you some points. Thought I doubt it,"

I flew back to the probe, then heard something quite interesting.

"So South lost the flag,"

"That fast?" I asked, surprised with the general's words.

"Indeed. That East representative, Jay, was it? Just came up with a brilliant plan and snatched it from right under their noses. They seem to have gained some motivation from that. At first, I thought they'd split up and one group will go for the flag and the rest would deal with the distraction squad,"

"Wait, they didn't do that?"

"Surprising yes. Actually, they all stayed behind to finish off the attackers, then all headed for the East representative together. Almost like they knew the goal for this event,"

"General, are.... are you accusing me of something?" I cautiously asked.

"I mean, they are your classmates. And, maybe you have a...hello? HELLO?!"

Yeah, so my com is off in case you are wondering. Anyways, I knew Jay was going to be a pain in their side, and I was right. It's good that Griffin noticed earlier on what all this was about. But losing a flag is a failure for them. Speaking of flags...

"Ouch! That's gotta hurt. Wait, that West student wouldn't be able to handle... Ooooow! He'll feel that in the morning,"

I was watching quite a show as the West students struggled to fight with the tough defense North and East had put up. And they were losing terribly.

From the way North and East were fighting togehter, you couldn't even tell that they were from different classes except for their shirts to distinguish them cause that amount of cooperation should be illegal. The west students weren't overwhelmed because they lacked skill or because they were outnumbered.

It's just that they were well covered with the opposing team. I could see that the West representative was left to Flavo, who I'm sure wouldn't have too much trouble with him, but still had a few people by his side. I noticed the same girl from before whom I saved from the great lizard, was trying to do the same thing she did at the ice field, masking her presence, but looks like North were prepared for her too.

"What is this?!" she exclaimed in shock when she was caught in a trap.

"One of the special 'training equipment' the head general talked about. We found one unmanned, and still good, so we had this brilliant idea to place it at the pole, in case someone like you managed to evade our eyes," a North girl said, who I just now realized was the one protecting the pole.

"How were you guys ready for us?!" the West representative asked in anger while blocking the flames Flavo had just throw at him.

"Simple really, we knew you would never cooperate with South, and we took that to our advantage. And we also prepared in advance just in case you two did cooperate, though now I realize there was no point for that. I mean, you would have had a real chance to win if you had joined with South, but... "

The bushes near the North representative shook and suddenly, Jay appeared with the blue flag in his hand, beaten, bloody, but nonetheless with the flag. And a proud smile to show for it.

"I didn't expect you to be that beaten up,"

"South. They still had some fight in them. Thankfully, due to the other students we planted near here, they were able to distract them for me,"

Flavo turned back to the shocked West representative's face, and with a smile said...

"We win."