Superhero CITY - The Test

Chapter Seven (edited)

The suits were everything I'd hoped for.

Sleek charcoal black that fit perfectly, and was according to the girls "much more fashionable" than our normal school uniform. A thick strip of cerulean blue ran down either shoulder from our collars to our wrists that identified our team in a shiny, scaled pattern.

Our boots felt like sturdy leather, but adjusted instantly to the shapes of our feet and legs. They were completely smooth other than two stitched grooves that ran down the front of the shins and appeared like armoured guards. Even under the harsh, artificial light they glimmered a pale, soft yellow gold, and I knew that under the natural sunlight in the arena they would be devastatingly blinding. Already we had our first weapons.

I looked at my teammates, "we should polish the blue scales. If they can reflect as much light as our boots, then they can distract our opponents in battle."

The soles of our boots were the same shade as our suits, a sleek charcoal. They looked smooth from the side, but had deep grooves carved into them that would increase our grip enough that we would be able to avoid slipping over in all but a flood. They would also hopefully increase our friction enough so that we could run up walls.

Our gloves were the exact shade and material of our boots, except without the incapacitating gleam that would have had the light dancing off of their surfaces. They held no form of ornamentation; grooved, embossed, layered or otherwise. Yet at the tip of each finger, too small and thin to be visible unless your eyes were only inches away, were tiny metal plates that I knew could conduct an electrical charge on command. Or, for Allison, increase her ability not be improving its strength or duration, but by reducing the cost it would have on her body.

Our belts, too, were pale gold. They dimly gleamed like tarnished metal, and even though they felt cold to the touch, they moved seamlessly when we bent ourselves into awkward positions and got back out of them. I couldn't see anyway for them to attach to things, so I guessed that they contained a weak electromagnetic pulse.

We looked good in our suits, and hopefully we'd chosen colours unique enough that none of the other competitors would have the same ones. Looking across at the other team, I felt that we just might have.

They had gone for stark white boots and gloves with sunshine yellow stripes and flame orange belts.

Once we'd all been suited up, Miss Summers clapped her hands once to draw our attention. "Now that that's done, I think it is time you chose your weapons, yes?"

None of us could keep the wide grins off of our faces as we exited from the shared changing room back into the main one.

Spread out in every surface horizontally and vertically that we could see and reach, various weapons were displayed to us all. The majority of the students had gone off the pick from the more advanced technology, leaving only two other teams to look at the more old-school weaponry.

That was how we'd get our advantage in the first rounds of the Test.

Everyone wanted the fancy gizmos, and expected for their opponents to have them as well. If we went traditional, then it would knock them off guard and we would be able to play it to our advantage. We'd also be relying a lot less on defences and offences that relied on not short circuiting with the worst of timing. Like what could happen if our gloves accidentally released an electrostatic pulse in the wrong moment during the heat of battle.

I might not want to compete, but I was competitive. If I had no choice in this, then I intended to win as many rounds as I could. I knew the rest of the team felt the same way I did; Chuckie and Allison wanted to prove their own worth, that they were more than just their parents' son and daughter, and to Natalia, we were about to enter into her life's dream. She wanted us to get all the way to the top, to be offered sidekick positions as soon as we graduated.