The Balzec Tournament Part 1

The way the tournament would be played was a lottery system. All the names were put into a hat and randomly pulled out for the brackets. Perhaps not the most elegant system, but it worked. James Verity and Ebony got placed in three separate brackets, meaning they would not encounter each other until basically the semifinals. That was more than okay with James, and he could have sworn he saw Ebony breathe a sigh of relief. The games were to be played so that the only stakes were that the winning player could move up in the tournament, while the loser couldn't. James didn't think it would work, but shockingly it did.

The first few rounds went by uneventfully for James. He squashed nearly all of his competitors with relative ease. Same for Verity, and interestingly, Ebony. James noticed that Maine also clearly crushed his opponents when they tried battling him. His deck seemed to be themed around music, which James supposed made sense. Also, another surprise competitor turned out to be the sandy haired teenager that was manning the booth for the legend players. James believed his name was stated as Quin. He wasn't beating his opponents with ease, but he could steadily hold his own.

After a while, there were only five players left, that being Quin, Ebony, James, Maine, and Verity. the announcer seemed to notice that they had an uneven player count, so he decided to ask one of the players to leave. Shockingly, Ebony volunteered to quit the tournament early, which surprised James a bit. But, when he saw Ebony leave go to the spectator's ring, he noticed a large smile on her face. James figured that she actually had the time of her life, playing this game basically for fun, with no strings attached.

Finally, the match-ups were James vs Quin and Verity vs Maine. The first round would be Verity vs Maine. James wasn't too worried about that round, mostly because nothing in any of the games indicated that Maine was a legendary player. James was fairly certain he could also easily beat Quin, but then again, the fact that Quin got to this point surprised James in the first place.

Verity and Maine stepped into the middle of the Colosseum, where all the battles took place. James and Quin moved into the players spectator box, being the only two left in there, it was slightly uncomfortable for both of them, for separate reasons. James was an anti-social creature by nature, and Quin still hated James's guts.

Maine and Verity sized each other up. Verity was smart enough to realize that Maine was a little different than the other competitors she faced, and Maine had a different look in his eye than he did for the rest of his foes. They both were taking each other seriously, and their fierce scrutiny of another even alerted the crowd, who barely paid attention to any of the other battles. The crowd grew during the course of the tournament, slowly growing larger until they actually looked like a crowd. James figured that was because of the two legendary players in the tournament.

Maine looked at Verity for a moment, before fully taking off his headphones. James sat up a bit straighter at this gesture. The whole tournament, Maine was wearing those headphones one ear out, most likely listening to more music instead of caring about the game all that much. James wondered if he only took his headphones out for players he took seriously. Then James remembered that this wasn't some movie and that the guy was probably hot from wearing those earphones all day.

Maine looked at Verity dead in the eyes, before smiling.

"It seems the show is about to begin Verity. The stage is set, and the orchestra is about to play." Maine said, smiling with a predatory look in his eyes.