Element

4-Competition

Competition: The action or activity of competing against one another.

The announcer, who Aero had learned was the dean of the school, explained the rules and procedures. While others looked bored and annoyed of probably hearing this every year, he payed close attention to every word uttered out of the dean's mouth. Due to prone-awkwardness Aero had but little choice unless he wanted to embarrass himself in front of thousands of teenagers.

The rules were simple: Freshman go first and each student gets sixty seconds to get through an obstacle course using their powers; whom ever does it the fastest without messing up wins. Although, first you are to get dressed into a gym outfit for whatever Shifter group you belong to. For instance, Aeries were in all white, Wetters in all blue, Firings in all red, and Naturings in all green. Then, you meet back up in the amphitheater and get in line with your Shifter group.

Simple, right?

Wrong. Aero managed to get himself lost trying to find the way to the locker rooms from the amphitheater and someone who works at the school found him awkwardly wandering about, peeking around corners and hallways. They kindly led him in the right direction after he had spent a full three minutes mentally cringing at himself. Once Aero was in the locker room, it got even worse. Along the walls were shelves of the different colored gym uniforms, tucked neatly into a number of cubbies. With common sense, he acknowledged his was most likely the white.

Once he had gotten his uniform in the right size, Aero went to go find a place to get changed. Now, normally, guys are pretty casual about changing in front of each other except the occasional penis jokes thrown in here and there. However, Aero was not one of those people. In fact, he was so socially challenged he decided to use the shower stall to change in. Most of the time he would just use the restroom to change, but they were all taken. So, everything was fine and dandy, having just got his shirt on. That is, until he tried to get his pants on and did this little hop, only for his foot to miss the hole entirely and get caught on the fabric itself, making him slip and hit his back on the shower handle.

Water was pouring all over him, drenching him in the uniform. Aero gave out a very "manly" wail in shock, and heard the room go dead silent. This was until some random guy yelled out, "You alright, mate?!"

At this point Aero was completely done. He had reached the point where his dignity had gone down a drain into a pit of depressing darkness. With a walk of shame, Aero came out of the shower stall with his uniform dripping and looked like the equivalent to a cat after being forced into the bath. Everyone stared for a moment, taking in the state of shame Aero was currently experiencing. Then, all at once, the laughter had commenced. One guy doubled over, slapping his knee and falling on the floor. Another was a little slow, not understanding why everybody had lost it and asked, "Why did you shower in your clothes?"

Aero face-palmed.

~~~

The obstacles were more daunting up close than far away. You could see the struggle to complete it just by standing next to it. Aero watched as student after student tried to complete it without fail; there were none. If that didn't say something, he didn't know what did.

The next girl to go for the Freshman was from the Firing. She was short, slim, and had a mop of curly, raven hair. Her skin was dark and beautiful, and her overall features didn't seem very intimidating. She stepped onto the starting mat, eyes going into focus on the course in front of her. You could tell she was mapping out her strategy mentally.

The room was silent. If you were to drop a pillow, you could most likely still here the plop. Then, like a cry of screaming banshees, the crowd started screaming and cheering once the buzzer blared throughout the room. She was swift, quick on her feet as she shuffled through obstacles. Flames blasted out that danced out of her palms like magic to anything that got in her way. One minute it was there, the next it was ash.