The Human Vs The Wolf

The night was completely uneventful for Azreal. Lako and Mako had come to visit but they only paid attention to Asbiom, Mako had wanted to go over to Azreal but after hesitating for awhile he just left with his brother.

And nothing else of interest happened with him.

In the back room, Kakar and the lioness spoke for a few hours constantly going back and forth until the lioness relented.

.....

The following morning at the crack of dawn people were already forming lines in front of the arena, the lines were incredibly neat, there was no pushing nor any shouting.

If you weren't from the town it would look quite creepy but these people had already fine-tuned there own little system as well as the ones put forth by the arena.

The gates opened at eight a.m sharp, going up in either groups or as individuals people slowly began buying tickets.

Looking at it from above on one side of the gate everything was quiet and orderly while on the other side it was the total opposite.

The host stood In the middle and wait for quite a few people to enter before speaking.

"Welcome! Everyone, please find a seat we'll be starting in the next few minutes"

After saying those few words she walked out of site leaving the people who had already entered to pass on the message.

"Ooooww I can't wait!"

"I know how you feel! I've got goosebumps just thinking about it, goosebumps!"

"Have any of you guys decided who you're betting on?"

"Nah I don't think I'm gonna bet again after how much I won yesterday, I'm feeling too good to risk it"

"Psssh that's you, I'm putting everything I have on the white bear!"

...

Slowly people trickled in through the gate, filling out the seats.

When more than half the seats were filled the host came back out.

"Good Morning My Beautiful Friends! How are you all doing today!"

The crowd cheered in response to her words.

"Good Good! All of you sound so happy today. And that laugher, mhmmm, sounds like the laugh of the rich!! So don't forget to place your bets! Now I know you've all been looking forward to today right?"

"Yea!!!"

"Come on lets gooo!"

"Hehehe sounds like you guys are ready to roll! Yea?! Yea?!? Okay! This year we're gonna be doing things a little bit differently so before I explain I need everyone who plans on betting to go place their bet on who they think the overall winner will be!"

When the crowd heard this they began to grumble while some moved to go place their bets.

"Come on guys don't be like that! When I explain what we have planned all of you won't just be laughing like the rich, you'll be rich!!"

It took quite a while but finally, everyone who was gonna place bets did it and came back to their seats and unlike yesterday there was no mix up in the tickets everyone got the one they desired.

"Good, now that your all finish I'm gonna ask you to look under your seats and you'll find four little tubes with four openings and some marbles, the first tube going from the right is for the wolf! That amazing creature that ripped apart its opponent without even taking a humanoid form! How amazing is that?!?, the second tube is for that spectacular bear who crushed those two participants in the blink of an eye!! Can you imagine the amount of strength in that body?!, then for the third we have that human, the human that can turn itself into a ball of fire!! Who can stand up to such a thing?! and for the final opening, you'll get to decide that for yourself."

Hearing her speech the audience members began taking out the tubes and the marbles from underneath their seats, as the host continued to speak the people began to feel better and better about who they placed their bets on.

"Alritey! Everyone this is how we're gonna do it, each person take one ball and drop it in any one of those tubes that represent your favorite participant. The two participants who get the most votes will face off for you today!. And after the first match we'll decide on who moves on directly to the finals. So you see this year we're giving you total control, now as I said before only use one marble if you use more than one now then, later on, you won't have a say in what happens"

The crowd marveled at the tubes beneath their seat, this was the first time they'd be able to choose who fights, didn't that mean that they could steer the competition in a way so that the participant they placed their bet on would have an easier chance?

Majority of the crowd thought like that but the masters thought differently.

"Look how excited they are! It's kinda sad in a weird way"

"Huh? What do you mean Chidi?"

"Well think about it, when has the arena ever put itself in a position where it might lose? Giving them the choices? As if! Probably for the first match they'll give them what they want but for everything else, their gonna steer it in the way they want, I mean I won't be surprised if they don't put two of the participants with the highiest bets for overall victory against each other"

"But how can they control what everyone votes on?"

"Haha the way I look at it that's the easy part, first look at how the host spoke based on how she described all the participants the most exciting match would be the human against my wolf! And second and the simplest who's the ones counting the votes? It's pretty obvious that they are gonna probably weight the marbles or something, I doubt they'd be dumb enough to count them"

...

"Okay everyone calms down, remember the order I told you, first is for that amazing wolf, second for the strong bear and third the human fireball! Okay everyone one place your votes!"

...

The arena was operating in pretty much the exact way Chidi had described, he had caught a majority of the major details and what he didn't wasn't really important.

In the excitement most of the audience failed to realize that the two weakest participants weren't being mentioned. They were only given three choices and those were the three favorites.

....

….

…

"Okay thank you all for voting! The first match we'll have the Human! Against! The Wolf!"

The crowd erupted into cheers while the masters just smiled it was exactly as they had expected.

"Now everyone go place your bets while we get everything ready!"