The Balzec trials

After walking inside, James and Verity noticed that the inside of this place felt like a colosseum, and that it possessed seats for spectators on the outside, while the inside was just a sandy floor. James wondered when this fake colosseum was built, considering Battlefield was only like a year old.

James and Verity moved to some of the spectator seats, where they saw some other obvious competitors were sitting. They had to wait for Ebony, after all. The competitors were sitting in an especially extravagant spectator's booth. James wondered if they were told to sit there, or just picked it because of how nice it was. Either way, he wasn't complaining about it.

After sitting down, James started to size up the competition, (Verity was sitting kicking her legs, all happy). James noticed that some of them had on costumes, presumably for the reason that they were cosplaying their decks. He thought they just looked stupid though. There were ones in regular clothing too, but they honestly didn't look like much. James did notice that the ages ranged from teenager to old man, Although Verity was the youngest there by far.

Nobody particularly caught his eye until he spotted a teenager with longish silver hair, wearing a black jacket with a tuxedo theme. He had his hood up and seemed to be listening to some kind of music, using oversized headphones. James discreetly craned his ear to hear what he was listening to, and to James's surprise, it seemed to be classical orchestra. For some reason, James felt like this competitor needed to be taken seriously. They had a dark look in their eyes, but it also felt naturally confident.

James heard a stomping noise coming his way, before mentally telling himself to take three guesses while sarcastically rolling his eyes over to the noise, which surprise, turned out to be Ebony. Everyone noticed, and looked at Ebony, except for the teenager, who barely glanced before closing his eyes again, seemingly lost in the music. Ebony didn't even seem to notice as she grumpily sat down next to James.

"Ugh, this sucks. You know what I had to do!? I had to beat at least three people just to come in! God, what a drag." Ebony said angrily. James raised his eyebrow; it was only like 15 minutes. Ebony noticed James's disbelief, before answering his unasked question.

"Well, ok, one of them didn't want to bother with a battle, and the other guy remembered he had an appointment. He was gonna skip it if he was allowed in but battling just to enter? that was too much hassle for the guy, so he left. The last guy though, I had to beat. I had unusually good luck, and he seemed to have pretty poor luck. anyway, it was still a drag, ok?" Ebony said, her machine gun speech returning.

James mulled Ebony's response over. He noticed that Ebony's speech was returning to when they met, and she didn't seem as frustrated with James as usual. Maybe she was warming up to him.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Balzec Trials Tournament!" An announcer from out of James's view said.

James and a couple other competitors got up to see who was speaking. Lo and behold, there was a large, gilded box near the top of the colosseum, and it was hosted by a man who was trying so hard to be fancy it was nearly comical. He was wearing a (clearly fake) tuxedo with the world's most ridiculous top hat, and a pointed mustache that was so perfect it was obviously groomed to hell before the guy got on stage. James looked around, noticing that very few spectators were actually in the audience, but the announcer didn't seem to care.

"Now, let me introduce the competitors! First, we have Conley from Whenway!-" An old man sighed with exasperation before getting up and walking out of the booth, waving his hand half-heartedly at the crowd, "Secondly, we have Serna from Deagentown! thirdly we have-" By this point James tuned him out.

James once again gave a side-eye to the teenager, who had one headphone out and wasn't looking particularly happy at the moment. He wasn't angry either, just looked like he was slightly inconvenienced.

After about 27 competitors were called out, the announcer finally reached the teenager.

"We also have-... Oh... um..." The announcer suddenly faltered. He immediately perked himself up, but he was still a bit off. "We have Maine from... Greden city."

All the spectators suddenly looked a bit shocked. Even the other competitors looked at Maine with a strange look. James could understand why. Greden City was actually a small town nearby, where there was nothing but the poor, and those were the best people living there. It's lack of any kind of authority made it a haven for criminals and murderers, the old-fashioned kind, not the Battlefield kind. In fact, James knew that Battlefield was straight up illegal in Greden City, which was basically the only law that was enforced there. James didn't really care about whether this teenager was a criminal or not, just curious about how he even got a Battlefield deck.

The teenager looked around at the shocked and strange looks, and merely shrugged. He started to whistle as he was walking to the middle, where the other competitors were waiting.

"Um... Next, we have Ebony, from Whenway Alley!" The announcer stated, trying to direct attention back to him. It worked only slightly, but Ebony didn't seem to care. she seemed to be more fixated on Maine, just like everyone else.

"*ahem*, Uh, let's see here... Ah! Next, we have Verity from Whenway Alley!" Suddenly, it was as if Maine didn't exist anymore. Everyone turned their head to look at Verity.

Apparently, Verity was more well known then James gave her credit for. Because it seemed everyone knew that Verity was a legendary player. James was also called to the middle, and a couple people also turned to look at him with disbelief. He wasn't as famous as Verity, but he was known at least.

"Well, I certainly know that this is going to be an exciting tournament! Let the games begin!" The announcer basically shouted. The crowd surprisingly started cheering, where earlier they barely could be bothered to.

Something told James that the announcer was right.

This was going to be exciting.