The moment the gamesmaster's shout had disappeared from the air, a change swept over the arena. The air around seemed to pixelate, and a surge of magic blanketed the field. Faster than Hawthorne could blink, a city - created from nothing - had sprung up around him, cutting him off from every other participating mage. He swung around, staring down the empty cobblestone streets and watching for a flicker of movement, a sign he should run, or... well, he supposed fighting was an option, given the circumstances.

The elaborate cityscape was captivating, and Hawthorne found himself turning in a slow circle, taking everything in, from the pointed spires adorning the tops of buildings to the network of bridges that crisscrossed the skyline. It looked like any grand city in Fiore, and that was the amazing part - how realistic it was. It was powerful magic that crafted this, powerful magic he was quite glad he wouldn't be encountering from an enemy mage. He hoped that was the case, anyway.

He almost missed it when the announcer's voice once again boomed above him.

"Everyone in the stands, please watch what happens in the town through lacrima vision. The ten contestants won't be able to know where the others are. The hidden rule is very simple."
Hawthorne's ears pricked, and he swiveled round to face where he thought the announcer's voice emanated from, as though that would allow him to better hear him.

"You will be doing hiding and seeking at the same time. You have to find the others in the town and give them an attack.. You can use any kind of magic. It doesn't matter whether you get injured or not; the person who launches an attack first can get one point."
Simple enough, Hawthorne mused, running a hand through his hair to stay his nervousness.

He felt rather naive in the next second, though.

Much like when the city materialized, he felt bundles of magic popping up all around him, and as he jerked back, surprised, hundreds of clones appeared before his eyes - clones of his fellow competitors, as well as himself.

...I look like a mess, he internally sighed, seeing what his nervous energy had down to his hair. It stuck up in odd directions, curled close around his ears. He was glad he couldn't see any panic in the eyes of his clones, though he doubted that really reflected on him. Every clone had dead eyes, as far as he could tell.

"These are your clones," the announcer went on cheerfully. "If you make a mistake and attack the clones, you'll be counted off one point. So start! Disappear in silence! Just like a black cat hidden in a dark night! Hidden - start!"

What was the point of staying hidden? You may keep from losing points if you could throw off the others, but at the same time, if you never made a move yourself, then you wouldn't gain any points, either. Hawthorne frowned. This was such a reckless game - perhaps Sky would have excelled at it after all.

First thing's first, he decided, slinging his shield onto his back. Get out of the crowd.

If he could find a good vantage point, then he could start looking for inconsistencies within the throng of clones, perhaps pick out the real mages that way. After a quick search of the area, Hawthorne weaved through the crowd overflowing through the street and ducked into an alleyway, where he swung himself up onto a ladder that stretched down from the roof. Hand over hand, he climbed up until he could hop over the ledge and maneuver himself onto the roof.

He crept up to the edge of the roof on the opposite end, making sure he remained within the shadow thrown down by the adjacent building to his right, and peered down into the streets below. Clones, clones, clones - they marched on aimlessly, facing forward, eyes blank, expressions neutral. They looked identical to their real life counterparts in every way, so much so that if Hawthorne had passed a clone of Eve on the street, he would have instantly tried to strike up a conversation with him, believing it to be the real deal.

Oren probably thinks this is so cool.

He looked for something, anything, that would set the real mage apart from their clones. A twinge, a smile, some unnecessary action that he could point out as different. But no such luck. This street seemed entirely populated by wandering clones. He'd have to try somewhere else if he wanted to score any points in their thirty minute time frame.

Brow furrowed, Hawthorne was just about to make a leap down to the next highest roof when he froze, head snapping around to follow a shadow, a flicker at the edge of his peripheral vision. It moved through the crowd, soundless and smooth, but he couldn't get a good look at it. It was too fast, too able. He didn't know everyone's magic that was participating in the games, so he wasn't sure who possessed some sort of speed magic, but he thought it was as good a chance as any to make a move.

However, before he could even begin to plan out his attack, the blur suddenly leaped from the crowd - straight up and onto his roof. He staggered back as a fully-grown tiger sprang at him, barely managing to pull off his shield and thrust it ahead of him to block the glinting claws from ripping into his chest. The tiger pushed off from his shield and danced back, tail swishing, head lowered, strangely golden eyes staring at him intently.

"Who..."

A flare of pain erupted from Hawthorne's entire body, and he dropped to a knee, though that was more from shock than agony. He'd blocked the attack, so why...

Though his head swam, his eyes settled on the tiger in front of him, and his mouth fell into a sharp line.

"So I lost a point," he guessed, and something akin to smugness lit up the tiger's molten eyes.

In the next instant, Hawthorne found himself in a completely different part of the city, circled by unfamiliar buildings and notably lacking in any monster-like felines. He scanned the crowd again, looking to see if had to worry about any more surprise attacks, but, coming up empty, he let his tense shoulders fall as a pent-up breath left his lungs.

There's someone with animal possession magic in these games, then.

That was the only explanation he could conjure for the unexpected tiger suddenly appearing in the stadium. Those golden eyes... looked incredibly similar to those of the Polar Fox contestant. Major Knox, if he remembered correctly. If that was the case, he was a smart man, taking the form of such an impressive hunter to seek out the others. A heightened sense of smell would likely be able to detect the real mages among the fakes, given that Hawthorne very much doubted whoever cast the spell had paid attention to such a minor detail. So much magical energy would have had to have been expelled to create this many clones in the first place; they would probably have cut corners wherever they could to make it more manageable on the mage responsible for the spell.

That gave Knox quite the advantage in a game like this.

As Hawthorne was merging with the crowd, deciding that it was his best option at the moment, he head jerked up as something cold and wet landed on his forehead. He blinked. Snow? That was unusual, to say the least. Was it part of the game, or...?

He spun around, his lips curling up slightly as he noticed a number of mages - equally confused - standing in the crowd, including Eve, who crouched low to the ground, hands pressed to the cobblestones. If Hawthorne had to guess, he'd say Eve was the one who summoned the snow, though the reason why eluded him. Well, until he saw one of the remaining mages - the Mermaid Heel girl - shiver quite violently as a result of the sudden onslaught of frigid air.

Eve was weeding out the real mages using simple biology.

Impressive.

The young Blue Pegasus mage wasted no time in picking off the other contestants he came across in the crowd, racking up points and eliciting high-pitched cheers from the audience, both for his cunning and his cuteness, the latter of which Hawthorne wished they'd let up on. But when he launched one of his magic-imbued snowballs at Hawthorne (who couldn't really help but sneeze, as he wasn't exactly a winter person), the blue-haired mage managed to duck out of the way, resisting the urge to simply have the snowball glance off his shield, and the attack hit one of Gray's clones square in the face.

Eve winced, clutching at his arm, but he offered a bright smile to Hawthorne as he rolled to his feet.

"Nicely done, Hawthorne," he said. "I admire the quick reflexes. And I like the irony," he added, nudging his chin at the flattened Gray clone, now lying spread eagle on the ground.

Then, in a flash of light, Eve was gone, though Hawthorne thought it wouldn't be long until he was back in the fray.

From then on, with everyone practically giving up on the plan to hide it out and wait, Hawthorne was caught up in a high-speed battle of hit-or-be-hit. He scored an attack on Gray, who was busy glaring at Lyon while the latter shamelessly flirted with Juvia even while he attempted to pound her with an ice hammer, but lost to the girl from Mermaid Heel, as she'd apparently taken note of - or at least been told of - his weakness and blew him a kiss from across the street. He'd panicked, going stiff, and then was lucky enough to be hit with a barrage of giant carrots.

That, he thought, was probably his most shameful moment of the event thus far, and he knew Cross would be waiting to tease him about later that night.

Hawthorne, face pinched in a frown of concentration, rolled away just after he'd swung his shield into the back of Knox's head. The tiger had been too distracted in stalking the girl from Mermaid Heel to notice Hawthorne creeping up on him, and a glimmer of satisfaction trilled through Hawthorne once the feline had disappeared. He wasn't a petty person, but he felt he owed Knox something for getting the jump on him so early in the event.

That accounted for everyone, he thought. He'd hit or been hit by every wizard here - except for Rufus, the Sabertooth mage. In fact, Hawthorne couldn't remember seeing the strangely-dressed man anywhere in the city, and he'd seen the majority of it with how many times he'd been teleported to random locations within its limits.

He'd been trying to keep track of how much time they had left, and he realized with a start that only a few minutes remained in the event. Just because he hadn't seen Rufus didn't mean the man hadn't been active, but for the last fifteen minutes or so, every mage had been gathered in the center of the city - or thereabouts - in an all-out brawl to claim as many points as possible. Rufus hadn't been present in all that time.

So Hawthorne couldn't say he was all that surprised when everyone's attention shifted to the highest building in the magic-made city, where Rufus stood perched at the very top, fingers pointed to his temples in a show of concentration.

"Memory Make..."

Hawthorne nearly flinched, his jaw clenching, hands fisting. Memory Make was a type of creation magic - lost magic. Extremely rare, and extremely difficult to master. That Rufus possessed such monumental magic... Sabertooth was just full of surprises, it seemed.

Gritting his teeth, Hawthorne jerked his head around, looking for a place to hide. Despite what he'd said before, he saw no value in sticking out at the moment, as he suspected Rufus already had a lock on him, and probably every other mage in the vicinity. He didn't want to lose a single point, even if he wasn't aware how many he currently had, because that could knock him down who knew how many places, and he needed to do well for Starry Rose. He couldn't get--

A blast of magic enveloped Hawthorne's body, without warning, too fast for him to dodge. He bit back a shout as he crumpled to his knees alongside Eve, overwhelmed by the pure power of Rufus' attack. Gravity forced him down further, and he threw out his arms, slapping his palms to the ground to keep from face-planting into the road. His whole frame trembled with the echo of pain and power, and Hawthorne bit out a curse beneath his breath. He felt himself disappearing, and he chanced a look at Eve who was already looking towards him, just as bewildered and just as upset as Hawthorne.

Then, he was gone, and the announcer was shouting over the roar of the crowd.

"He... He got them all! In one instant, he took the lead! That's the power of Rufus! That's the power of Sabertooth!"

And what a power it was.

Hawthorne, crouched now in new location, glared upwards at Rufus, who still looked down on the scene, a slight curve to his lips. He couldn't see his eyes from here, but Hawthorne would have been surprised if they weren't sparkling with arrogance. He was very aware that he outranked the rest of the competition in terms of magical ability, and he reveled in it.

While Hawthorne was contemplating just how he could land a hit on a man who could disappear into a memory of himself, an echoing horn blew through the arena, announcing the end of the event.

He timed that perfectly...

Rufus' first and only attack had left them all scrambling to find one another again, with little to no time to launch another attack of their own. He racked up nine points in a single go, and lost none of them throughout the entire game.

Whatever Hawthorne's score was, he knew it was nowhere near Rufus'. He'd be lucky to land among the middle of the pack at this rate.

The city began to dissolve around him, and Hawthorne straightened up, slipping his shield once again onto his back.

"And that's the end of it! There are the standings!"

Hawthorne glanced around until his eyes settled on the scoreboard positioned above them. He flickered through the guilds, finding his own ranked in seventh place, just above Polar Fox and the two Fairy Tail teams, which meant he'd only netted Starry Rose four points in total. His shoulders sagged. Couldn't he have done better than that? If he'd only just kept his guard up, he could have avoided so many of the hits people landed on him.

"This is just the first event, so these rankings can still change at any time."

Eve waved Hawthorne over, looking rather exhausted and bruised from his experience in the arena. Hawthorne didn't feel much better himself; he subtly rolled his shoulder, wincing at the pain that flared through his upper arm and his back. He'd slammed it into a wall after taking one of Eve's snowballs earlier, but he hadn't noticed how badly it hurt until now. Still, he mustered a congratulatory smile for Eve as they met up.

"Fourth place. You deserved it, Eve."

"I thought you would have gotten fifth place at least, Hawthorne," Eve replied with a frown. "It felt neck-and-neck between us for a while.

"Yeah, well... I'm just unlucky, I guess."

"Just as we all expected, first place goes to Sabertooth! Too bad for both of Fairy Tail's teams. They came in behind."

"That's such a shame," Hawthorne muttered, furrowing his brow at the jeering crowd. They didn't offer a shred of sympathy for Fairy Tail; really, they seemed glad that Fairy Tail had proven they were just as weak as the previous years they'd entered this tournament, like they couldn't stand the thought of the guild regaining its former glory.

"That's popularity," Eve corrected, raising a finger importantly, as if he were delivering sage advice for a devoted crowd. "Only the strongest guilds appeal to the public. And the most beautiful, hence why we're so loved by Fiore. Fairy Tail hasn't proven they're back to their former strength yet, so no one's going to stand up for them" - he rolled his eyes as Natsu's bellowing voice rang through the field, shouting obscenities at the crowd - "except for their own members."

It made sense, which was why it made Hawthorne sick. Fairy Tail, whatever Oren or Sia had to say, was a good guild, full of good good people. He remembered reading stories about them when he was a child, how often they saved towns and pulled off miraculous jobs. They didn't deserve such harsh, inconsiderate treatment simply because they weren't viewed as strong anymore.

But, he supposed, this wasn't something for him to worry about. Not now, when he had the rest of the games to focus on. And with the first battles of the day coming up, he had to be ready in case his name was called. While he was bordering on exhaustion and very much not looking forward to another fight, he wasn't given much of a choice. If someone wanted to see him duke it out with another mage, he was going to have to do it, and he was going to have to win. To redeem himself, and prove - much like Fairy Tail was trying to prove - that Starry Rose was worthy of making it into these games, that they were worthy of winning.

"C'mon, Eve," he said, waving his hand for the twenty-three-year-old to follow him. "We should get off the field. They'll be starting the battles soon."