The finals match was about to begin. We managed to squeeze in a little bit of practice the day before. Seeing the competition, we probably need it.

Phyrra and Yang made it to the finals round along with me. Three out of eight contestants were from Beacon, so we stood a pretty high chance of winning.

The rule for the finals is that there is no time to prepare for the fight. You would immediately start the fight as soon as your opponent was chosen.

All eight were lined up at the center, which was all the space we would be given to fight, unless you were capable of flight.

The dial began to spin.

'Watch this be me.' I joked.

As luck would have it, the first dial stopped on my image.

'Kill yourself! Stupid randomizer!' I cursed.

Now to wait for my opponent.

The dial stopped on the image of a girl with purple hair and the name, Andromeda Asteris, underneath it.

"Will all other combatants please exit the field." Port instructed.

Everyone else left, leaving me and Andromeda standing in the center.

The platform began to rise above the arena and the lights flickered dramatically, eventually staying on.

"Three..." Oobleck began to countdown.

I quickly tried to find a piece of music from a playlist.

"Two..."

"Okay, this one." I said, tapping on the label 'Virtual Riot - Lunar'.

"One! Begin!"

-(play song)-

As always, I attacked first.

Launching a projectile at my opponent, before quickly jumping off of the platform and staying in the air using blasts from the O-D's.

The explosion caused shards of metal to be thrown in every direction. However, Andromeda remained unharmed.

She held out a rod with a spatial design on it.

Probably used that to deflect the attack.

The ends of the rod extended to become a double-edged trident.

She made a taunting motion with the trident.

"Alright, if that's whatchu want." I said.

Drawing energy to the Destroyer bow from the forcefield that kept the spectators safe, I aimed the source of the output directly at her.

"Get ready for this one."

My finger was halfway through pulling the trigger before Andromeda shot to the side, barely avoiding the light-speed beam which disintegrated the spot she was on only a moment ago.

"That was 70 pulses per second." I commented.

"You got lucky, that woulda killed you."

"So, you're not holding back?" She asked.

"Well, you better not either." I responded.

"You wish!" She said smirking.

She pointed the trident in my direction.

Something in the night sky began to glow brightly. Looking up, it was the moon.

"Wait for it."

A rain of meteor-like projectiles descended towards my current position.

"Lunar flare."

Taking evasive action, I shot to the other side of the arena as the attack went through the spot I was in seconds before.

Andromeda redirected the attack towards me using her trident.

The lunar flares changed direction, going under the raised platform and up, over towards me.

I had no choice other than to shoot them down.

Using as little aura as possible, I released the beam towards the oncoming attacks. The beam was enough to stop the flare, which scattered into thousands of tiny glimmering shards.

Distracted by the beauty of the destruction, I was not able to detect another attack quickly approaching from my left. The meteor stuck my side, before several more appeared to come from the skies over the colosseum.

In an attempt to recover, I flew around the arena, dodging and countering the meteors that appeared so often, I forgot the real objective.

I stopped my flight, before speeding again, towards the platform where my opponent controlled the attacks.

The impact created during my landing on the edge turned the platform into a catapult, flinging Andromeda into the air, where she surprisingly stayed.

She was now using her trident as the platform.

I blasted towards her, the Destroyer as my arrowhead.

She flipped, using the tridents' handle to block the Destroyers' blade, stopping the attack completely. She returned to an upright position before slashing her trident from left to right.

More meteors rained down. I transformed the Destroyer back to its bow form and shot the meteors to shards.

"I noticed that your weapon fires quasars." Andromeda commented.

"What about it?"

"Just wondering."

Andromeda made a sphere with her hands. In between them, a miniature black hole materialized. She pulled her hands away from each other and created another black hole with the empty hand. She was able to manipulate them with one hand.

I prepared myself to dodge, assuming she was about to throw those things at me. I was proven wrong moments later, when another meteor shower and lunar flare, along with several other events, rained down from the sky, colliding with the two black holes.

My eyes went wide when I realized what she was attempting.

The attacks were a source of 'food' for the black holes. When enough material is orbiting the black hole, they will begin to generate more and more heat. Eventually, there will be too much material for the black hole to consume, resulting in a quasar.

"Boi, hail naw!"

I fired another beam.

The beam deflected off to her right. I fired several more beams, all of which deflected off to another direction.

The two black holes began to glow from the heat. The other attacks began changing course towards me.

I had a hell of a time dodging meteors, flares, beams and other meteorological events. Each attack that succeeded in hitting its target, shaved small slices of aura off of the ever-shortening, yellow bar that indicated my aura. Realizing that I have lost more aura running and dodging than from the attacks themselves, I decided to stop running and face the problem.

I returned to the platform, but instead of the attacks following, they returned to the skies.

"This match has gone on for too long, don't you think?" Andromeda said.

"Uh-huh. I agree." I replied.

"Then let's finish this!"

Andromeda levitated further up the arena. Her palms began to emit a bright, white glow, similar to the stars in the sky. The skies above the colosseum began glowing as well.

Me too I guess.

Drawing energy from the same source as before, I channeled all of it into the output. But I realized that was a mistake, as the forcefield might not be strong enough to keep the spectators safe from either of our attacks.

Not wanting to risk harming anyone other than my intended opponent, I returned the energy, and more, to the forcefield.

I figured that maybe I could survive the oncoming onslaught, or maybe not. But before Andromeda's wrath came raining down, an idea hit me. Literally.

All of the attacks from before and new ones collided in the platform that hovered above the arena. The giant, flaming asteroids and flares combined with several beams of different sorts all came down for the most beautiful finishing move.

Only, it didn't finish anything. I was in the middle of it all, yet remained unharmed. Most of the attacks were energy-based, so all I had to do was absorb them using my aura, channel the energy into the Destroyer and fire straight up to vaporize the solid, physical attacks that would otherwise crush me, along with the playpen I was on.

The barrage ended. Most of the platform around me was destroyed and had fallen off. Only a portion was left hovering.

If Andromeda is shocked, she wasn't showing it, but she knew that her only chance now would be melee combat.

"Is it game over or what?" I commented.

"It's not over until one of us falls." She replied.

I nodded, then blasted towards her, the Destroyer outstretched and glowing green.

A shockwave ripped through us as our weapons collided. I recovered and fired the thrusters on the Destroyer, the green blade spinning like a saw as it fired off projectiles.

I hurled the Destroyer towards Andromeda like a shuriken. She blocked the blade using the shaft of her trident. The Destroyer ricocheted off of her weapon and back to me.

I caught the Destroyer and stopped its rotation, the force and sudden stop caused me to tumble in midair towards Andromeda. Slashing in every direction, Andromeda was getting pushed further and further back. One large swing accompanied by the thrusters on the Destroyer depleted my opponents' aura down to 18%.

My O-D's fired, shooting me towards her. I immediately brought my feet up from behind me to form a flying-kick. As expected she blocked the attack using her trident.

As my feet collided with the trident, I fired the O-D's again. The force of the blast sent me back towards the partially-intact platform and Andromeda into the forcefield.

-(End Song)-

"Double whammy!" Prof. Port announced.

"Omega has emerged victorious through aura level and knockout of his opponent!" Oobleck stated.

The audience cheered. I sighed in relief and threw my hands up in victory.

After I put them down, I looked over at my aura level.

28 percent! Not bad.

The platform began to lower. I hopped off and walked towards Andromeda as she was dusting herself off.

"GG." I said as I held my hand out.

She looked at me awkwardly as we shook hands.

"What does that mean?" She asked.

"Oh, it a uh... term that we use which means, good game." I explained.

"Okay, well...GG...I guess." She said.

We walked back to our entrances to the arena to sit back down with the rest of our teams.

The teams from Beacon congratulated me as I walked back to my seat next to Fia. I simply nodded at their complements.

"Well done!" Fia exclaimed when I got settled down.

I sighed again. "Thanks."

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"Nah, nothin'. I'm just tired. My aura's at 28 percent, maybe less, from that battle."

Ꭶ   Ꭶ   Ꭶ

"Do you want to go back to our dorm? We can watch the rest of the tournament there with Gabe and Cyan." Fia suggested.

"Yes, actually, I was about to ask you about the same thing." I replied.

Fia stood up before saying,"Well, then, we should go during the intermission."

I nodded and got up.

We left the colosseum after saying goodnight to our friends who were staying.

We found a small airship and boarded it, along with several others who were returning to the academy and to Vale.

The ship docked at the cliff and some passengers, mostly students, got off along with us to return to their dorms.

Walking the rest of the way to our dorm, we knocked at the door to our dorm to have it opened by Cyan, who immediately congratulated me for the victory earlier.

I entered the room after Fia and Cyan shut the door behind us. Gabe then stood up from his spot on Cyans' bed and also congratulated me.

"That was a pretty close match and Andromeda was a pretty tough opponent, but you managed." Gabe commented.

"Yeah, well, luckily it was her I had as my opponent. All the other ones rely on physical attacks and close-combat isn't really my best suit." I replied.

Gabe nodded.

"I should probably get out of this. It smells burnt." I referred to my attire.

"Okay, but if you don't mind, I've got something to tell you once you're done with that." Gabe said.

"Aight then."

After having done that and all of us getting settled on Cyans' bed in front of the computer in our pajamas, Gabe asked me,"Remember that talk we had before coming here right?"

"Which one?"

"Where we discussed the fact that if anyone is going to be harmed because of us, that we would leave. Remember that one?" Gabe said.

"Yes, I do. What about it?"

"Since we made an appearance at the Vytal festival tournament, would that not give us away? If the White Fang are still after us, well...you, and for sure they would have been watching everything that happens during the festival, then they would know exactly where we are and are most likely going to resume their hunt." Gabe stated.

I sat in silence. That was true. The White Fang would be watching and that means they do know where I am, endangering many innocent citizens and students.

"Alright, how about we tell the rest of the team and we'll handle this potential problem as a team." I suggested.

Gabe nodded, "You should do it now, during the intermission while you have time."

"Aight."

I turned to the girls.

"Hey, uh...do you guys have a minute?" I said.

"Sure." Cyan said.

"Okay. So, we have a bit of a problem. Before we came to Beacon, me and Gabe over here, we decided to come here not only to learn and train, but also to escape the White Fang."

"Really?! Why? I might know something about it." Fia said.

I almost forgot that Fia was once a member of the White Fang.

"I was being 'hunted' and was, maybe still am, a major target of the White Fang after they found out about my semblance, which is the ability to absorb, release and transform energy. I guess they might've come up with something that requires something of the sort." I explained.

Fia gasped, "Yes! Yes, I-I do remember!"

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Fixed the ending.

Definitely better than the other one.

Cliffhangers are always good. Makes you wanna read more.

2245 words.

If you did not know, the edited part starts at the 'Ꭶ' symbol.

Chapter 14 is underway.