Power of the Gods

Chapter 2

The courtyard of the school was covered in a cobblestone floor and had an large, old fountain that sprayed water every now and then on unsuspecting students that happened to be walking by. Many of the students at the school were messing around with their friends, or practicing their magic or combat skills with weapons or animals for the upcoming Team Placement tests later on that day.

The Team Placement test is conducted by the school to find how well a student can control their magic and how well a student can fight during combat. The teachers place students in a combat simulator where they will have to fight against multiple robots that are self-adapting and will slowly get harder to beat the longer the fight takes place. Students are put in against these robots in multiple waves. The highest difficulty of these waves being wave twenty. No one has ever been able to beat the simulator before on its highest difficulty before.

Of all the students in the school, there are only two that have ever gotten close to beating the simulator before. Their names are Porter Valume and Kylan Valkyrie, and they are the two meanest and strongest of all the students at the school. It is because of those two that everyone is scared just to enter the hallways. The school has been divided into two territories leaving the courtyard as the only neutral territory in the school. The West side of the school has been declared by Porter and his gang, while the East side has been declared by Kylan and his gang.

Justin and Alpha walked by some of the training students. "Oh yeah," Justin said. "I almost forgot the tests are today. I still need to register."

The two of them walked over to a floating keyboard with a hologram of two silhouetted figures standing next to a big trophy. Justin pulled out his ID card and put it into a slot on the side of the key board. A thumbprint scanner opened up. He scanned his thumb and pulled up the registration form for the test.

"Let's see..." Justin said as he looked the form over, reading it out loud. "Type of combat style: Weapon, magic, or animal partner?" He thought about it for a while. "I think I'm gonna try all three again," he looked at Alpha. "What do you think?" He asked. Alpha covered his head with his paws. "Oh, thanks for the support," Justin said. "I know that I always do this, and I know we never get to a very high difficulty, but I think it's good to see how far we've advanced in our ability to adapt to different situations in battle."

Justin finished filling out the registration form and pulled his card out of the keyboard, logging off. Alpha nudged his arm and pointed at a vending machine, whimpering.

"Oh! That's right, you haven't eaten yet have you?" Justin said as he walked over to the vending machine. There was a large screen on it that showed different kinds of candy and chips on it. Justin swiped the screen to the right, pulling up images of different animals.
"Let's see..." Justin said, thinking out loud. "Wolf...wolf...wolf...here we are."

Justin tapped on a picture of a wolf and inserted his money. Almost immediately, a bowl came out of the bottom and slid on the floor to a stop in front of Alpha, who quickly began eating his food. It wasn't long before Alpha had finished the bowl and licked his snout.

"Better?" Justin asked. Alpha nodded. "Good, then how about we go get some of my stuff from my locker before the tests begin."

Justin and Alpha walked out of the courtyard and into the hallway of one of the buildings. The hallway wall was covered in a long line of lockers, each row occasionally being separated by a classroom door. They stopped in front of Justin's locker, his name flashing on the locker door. Justin leaned over and activated a retinal scanner on the door, it scanned his eye before showing a green light and unlocking his locker.

Justin opened his locker, revealing a pile of books, a mirror, a first aid kit, a two toy pistols in holsters and two plastic katana's in their sheaths they were practice versions of the main weapons that he used during the Team Placement Test. He looked at the books and heaved a sigh of relief. "At least the tests will be all day, so we don't have to go to any of our classes this week," He looked at the toy weapons. "And if I can get a high enough score, and show them that I can handle being in a fight, they might actually let me keep the real weapons I use in the arena."

As Justin pulled out the toy weapons, an announcement came on over the loudspeakers. "Attention students," came a voice out the speakers. "This is Principal Gaildan speaking. I would like to inform all students that the registration period for the Team Placement Test has now ended. All students who have competed the registration form and are taking the test, please report to the Battle Simulator Arena with your weapons or pets to go over safety regulations and rules. The roster will also be posted there with your name and what number combatant you are."

"Well, you heard the man," Justin said, looking at Alpha. "Let's go take a test." He closed his locker, and headed towards the Battle Simulator Arena with Alpha close behind.

The Battle Simulator Arena was a huge dome and somewhat resembled a professional football stadium, except that where the seats would be located were huge walls of indestructible, one-way mirrors where the students who had either already taken the test, or students who were waiting to take their test could watch the others taking their tests. The entire test was run through a control room that was as hard to break into as a bomb shelter, it was a large room that stuck out into the arena, but had walls of holographic screen displays showing every inch of the battlefield and multiple keyboards that they use to control obstacles. There was also a big red button in a glass case in the center, this was a kill switch to shut down the test in case a students life was in danger. It was outside this room that all the students were gathered to hear the rules before the tests would begin.

In front of the crowd of students stood the test supervisor. The supervisor was a woman who radiated power, she had bright green eyes, pitch black hair that was tied back in a bun. She wore a blood red suit, red lipstick, glasses and she carried a clipboard with a pen behind her ear. She is also one of the only faculty members that could be considered as the scariest person in the school.

"Alright," she said. "You should know the drill by now, but for those of you that have never taken this test before or happened to forget, my name is Vice Principal Stancher. I am the supervisor for the Team Placement Tests and will not tolerate any misbehavior." She glared at everyone, making them all grow silent. "Before you enter the battlefield, you will trade the training weapons you have and will be given your weapons of choice, unless of course you have gone past the tenth wave, in which case you should already have your weapons with you. Once you have these weapons, you will enter the battlefield where we will count down the first wave from ten. We will supply you with a fresh box of up to six fully loaded clips of ammunition for those of you who are choosing to use firearms. Also, we would like to remind the firearm users that you might want to conserve your bullets as you can only destroy the robots with firearms should you hit them in the correct weak point. Please note that your life will not be in danger. You will be wearing these heart monitors," she gestured to multiple trays that had what looked like watches on them. "We will be using these to help determine when we should shut down the simulator, which reminds me, any students using animals as combat partners, we must inform you that if your partners are severely injured, we will pull them from the simulation to our medical area where we have healers on standby to assist them. A word of advice, if you run out of ammunition, it is your job to use your magic properly. Avoid wasting all of your energy in pointless attacks, study your enemy."

She pulled up a screen on one of the windows. It was a list of all the combatants with numbers next to them. "These are your names and the order of combatants. Refer to these so you can be prepared when we call you. We wish you victory and hope that no one disappoints as we begin your testing now."