The Hothead and The Ice Queen

Sixteen

"Five! Four! Three! Two! One!" I would just like to say that my school was filled with psychopaths. From the teachers, all the way to the students. They counted down like it was New Year's Eve, but instead of the ball dropping, the dummy got shredded. And they cheered!

As predicted, Lash and Speed were the villains, which was a bit concerning in and of itself if you asked me. Wasn't anyone concerned at their determination to defeat the heroes and let an innocent person– I know it's a dummy! – be shredded? Honestly!

"This is not settling my nerves," I whispered to Warren.

He didn't respond. Instead, he placed his large, calloused hand on my jumping leg, melting away the anxiety, and it stilled.

The villains jumped up and bumped chests in celebration. "Hey! What's up?" Speed pumped up the crowd as they basked in the praise and applause.

Boomer's whistle shrieked, settling everyone down. "Ramirez! Hamilton! Your citizen has just been mulched because you failed to defeat your villains!" As the aforementioned pair helped each other to their feet, Lash and Speed shared a short brotherly handshake with prideful smiles.

"All right, next round," Boomer announced. "Speed, Lash, you wanna be heroes or villains?"

Speed shrugged as if it were obvious. "Villains."

"Yeah," Lash laughed.

Are you kidding me? No one else is worried about this? It can't just be me!

"Ooh, there's a surprise." Boomer marked something down on his clipboard. "All right, who do you want to beat next?"

Speed pointed at the stands, right at Will, and he stated, "All right, we'll take little Stronghold and uh... Let's see..."

"And we pick Peace!" Lash declared.

Even though I was expecting it, it still felt like a punch to the heart. Anticipating this, Warren just clicked his tongue and stood from the bench as excited murmurs traveled over the bleachers. This was it.

After Warren walked past me and stomped down the steps, I followed him down and joined my friends. We were all ridden with anxiety. Layla and I wound up clutching each other's hands as Magenta gripped my shoulder. The boys legs shook the entire bleachers.

As the boys slipped on their protective gear, the plates in the scoreboard flipped from the previous challengers to Stronghold and Peace, and the clock was reset to 3 minutes.

We waited with bated breath as the boys crept into the arena. Boomer leaned forward in his high-standing chair and instructed, "Hothead! Stronghold! You're the heroes!" While Warren listened intently with a dark, serious look on his face, Will fidgeted with his gear. Then I saw Gwen across the arena, giving him a cutesy, flirty wave, which he returned.

"Hey!" Will jumped at Warren's sudden growl. "Get your head in the game."

Will released a nervous breath and shrunk in on himself a bit, and I sighed dejectedly. The possibility of Warren or Will being hurt was increasing with each passing second. Please let me be wrong.

Then my eyes landed on Morgan, who was on the other side of Penny. Her favorite hobby was glaring at me with narrowed eyes and a permanent scowl. There was no way to prevent my eyes from rolling back into my head. And I fixed my gaze on the fight.

"You have three minutes to immobilize your opponents and save the citizen!" The dummy dropped from the ceiling until the end of the rope. Hovering over the giant shredding machine, it began its all too familiar, continuous robotic 'save me' cry. "Ready! Set!" – the spikes whirred to life– "Battle!"