Chapter 5: Orientation [2]

Like taking a second serving at a social function, no one wanted to be the one to take the initiative. But as soon as someone shouted, "He took my tag!" the fight was on.

In catfights like this, agility was key. Thus, though the average age of the room was 13 or so, a few daring 12 and 11 year olds were the ones making a breakaway. I also noticed a lot of plain stupidity, gloating around in place after snatching a tag, only to be losing their own a moment later.

I saw someone rolling on the ground to avoid loss after getting surrounded. I'll keep that idea in the back of my head. What was I doing? As any 24 year old surrounded by a bunch of 13 year olds in this situation would do, I was destroying them.

Wherever I walked, only ruins were left in my wake. Okay, perhaps that's an exaggeration. This was turning out to be easier than I'd thought. Though some kids were abnormally fast, or hit like a sheep in the summer, but generally they were pretty easy to handle.

Just as I was thinking it was too easy, a spotted a few older teens across the room. They looked like they had teamed up, smart move. And it looked like I'd finally caught their eyes.

Well, there weren't many others left anyways. It's good that the prey decided to walk up to me. Saves me some trouble.

They communicated amongst each other in muffled whispers until a boy, who looked to be the leader of this ragtag group, gave some commands and two of them spread out to finish off the rest while three of them, including the leader, decided to approach me.

Oh what cockiness you have! All the more fun to break them in. As they get closer to me, the leader of the group jumped in.

'He's pretty fast. I can see why they chose to follow him. But that's about it.'

As he held his hand out to grab my tag, I slapped his hand away. Or at least I tried to, but his momentum was carrying him forward and I was forced to sidestep.

I was lucky that worked out for me. It seemed he wasn't used to his speed quite yet. Otherwise, that might've gone much worse for me.

I caught Miss Elena from the corner of my eye, giving him an approving look. That's good. The better he is, the better I'll look after whooping his ass.

As I'm thinking up a line to make an impression, I'm met with the other two members. As I take a closer look, I can see that they're twins. I've got to watch out for their teamwork.

But contrary to my expectations, their teamwork isn't anything fancy. Locking shoulders, they ram me with unexpectedly high force. As I'm knocked back, I realise the need to buy time to get back on my feet.

"You guys don't seem all that used to your abilities. Are you sure you're enough to take me on? For all you know, I might be hiding my own ability."

The leader doesn't seem to take the bait, only waiting for a second to catch a breath. The twins aren't as bright though, and they eagerly reply.

"Even if we're not totally used to it, it's more than enough to take you out!"

Such polite opponents. Waiting for me to finish talking, answering my provocations. Seems like I'll have to show them something fun.

While I'm waiting, I give a dumb look to the leader as if to say, 'Why isn't he attacking me?' He looks back at me with a mocking smile as I hear two sets of footsteps behind me.

I play into his hand, rushing forward to snatch his tag and find a way out of this encirclement. With a look that says 'Got you', he jumps away to reveal the twins behind him. How funny of him to think I didn't see this coming.

It might've given me some trouble had he chosen to go behind me but I figured he was confident enough in his scheme to not worry about me backing out. As I was prepared for it, I leaped in his direction.

This seemed to have caught him unawares as I hooked onto his chain and swiped my hand, opening it to reveal his tag. As his mouth lay agape at this development, I'm surrounded by the rest of his teammates.

Reminding myself of the mental note I took earlier, I decide to roll out of the situation which doesn't look to be going in my favour. But as I roll away, I feel several hands clawing at my back and one of them pulling on my chain for a moment until the feeling subsides and I stand back up, my chain devoid of a tag.

'Guess that wasn't the best course of action, antagonising such a large group,' I mutter to myself, my face showing a mocking smile. I guess I should've been more careful.

As I crawl my way to the person who used to be the leader, I introduced myself.

"Hey, the name's Abdur Rahman. What's yours?"

'Dammit, I forgot I was going to be the silent and brooding type. Curse my extrovertedness!'

"I'm Miguel."

"A pleasure to meet you. That was a good fight. How'd you get so fast?"

"Yeah."

'And now this guy even took my idea! Gah! I'll definitely make him pay for stealing my idea later.'

As we looked on, the fight seemed to be coming to an end. The bullheaded twins seemed to be the winning side as they wore down the other two who clearly did not have any experience working together.

"Looks like it's finally my time to shine," I said to Miguel while I got up and made my way towards their fight.

As the twins finally grabbed their opponents' tags, I walked up to them and bashed their heads together. They thought everyone else had already been eliminated, as I planned.

As an old coot once said, 'Fool yourself to fool your enemy.'

I fished out my own tag from my pocket to show it to Miguel, who had a very confused expression until then, and calmly took both the twins' tags. Everyone had assumed that someone else got my tag. In the heat of battle, this kind of miscommunication was common and I was banking on that.

"Abdur Rahman is the victor of this orientation brawl."

As Elena yelled out my name, everyone in the room looked towards me, to which I just responded with a casual 'yo'. Hopefully, this'll keep any annoying people away from me.

I turned to Miss Elena, "Now about that request…"