Hey :D I am happy to say that I managed to get this chapter done in time for a weekly upload (dance)

However, the next one might be a little late, because I was stuck on this chapter for a while. 

Please comment and vote :D

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‘Well, who do we have here?’ Tom said, his voice echoing through the silent room, behind him were four more Elementalist. When he saw me I could see the shock, and another emotion that I couldn’t quite place flash through his eyes, but it passed quickly and he was smirking at us again.

Diego stood up and glared at Tom, the two of them having some kind of stare down. I looked over to see Holly still lying on the ground. I groaned inside. If she doesn’t wake up, we really will have absolutely no chance of getting out here alive.

I contemplated whether we should try shaking her awake (I never thought slapping people is a good idea. First it can hurts as much if you hit elsewhere and it’s just plain rude.). However I will leave that choice up to Owen. I needed to concentrate on fending off the six people in front of me with Diego.

‘Hello Tom.’ I said, giving him a mocking smile while he frowned at me in return. Diego raised his eyebrow at me but I kept my attention on Tom. We needed as much time as we can.

‘Beckett.’ He replied, saying my surname in his accent. I gave him a pointed look while ignoring the flips my heart was making when he said my name.

‘I can’t say I am glad to see you.’ I said, smiling smudgely as I took in his dust covered hair and cloths. His frown deepened and I heart Owen snickered behind me.

‘You two know each other?’ Diego asked, his voice curious and slightly strained. I speared a glance at him and nodded. Did he not know? I thought the news of what happened in the dinning room and the whole Mr.-Andrewson’s-tutees thing would have travelled around the entire school by now.

‘We are in the same tutor group.’ Tom replied before anyone else could. I saw surprise flashed across Diego’s face but it quickly turned into a frown.

‘Guys, can we please move on, we are not having a chat room here.’ The girl behind Tom said. I gave her an evil look. She totally ruined my plan of staling for time. She saw me giving her a look and returned it with a smudge smile and a raised eyebrow. Argh.

Come on Holly, wake up! I glanced back briefly and saw Owen was gently smacking her cheek. I tried not to roll my eyes as I turned my attention back to the group of people in front of me.

‘You don’t need to wake her up.’ A guy next to that evil girl said to Owen. ‘You can do that after all of you get disqualify.’

I took a step in front of them blocking his view. ‘Oh yeah?’ I asked, crossing my arms over my chest glared that guy. No one talks to my teammate like that and get away with it. He looked surprised at my aggressiveness, and I could see a hint of smile on Tom’s face at my retort.

Huh.

The guy who spoke looked questioningly at Tom, who immediately dropped his smile and gave him a small nod without taking his eyes off me. The guy took a step towards me.

‘Yeah? You think you can stop me new girl?’ He said, crossing his arms as well. I raised an eyebrow at him. So after all the rumors he heard about me he still wasn’t afraid of me? I guessed my reputation isn’t as bad as I thought. Good.

Taking a step forward I looked at him right in the eyes. ‘You should be afraid of me.’ I told him. In all honesty he should be. I didn’t even know what I am capable of.

He uncrossed his arms and raised them slightly away from his body, and earth started to gather from the surrounding as a tiny, earth-coloured spinning tornado and onto palm of his hands. So he was the one who protected Tom from the fallen ceiling.

I immediately set up a mind wall between him and me. I had never fought with an Elementalist before so I had no idea how they operate nor how they attack.

Putting my right foot back I readied myself for his attack. The little spinning balls had swelled into the size of a watermelon. Smiling wickedly at me he raised his right hand and toss the mini-tornado to me with the other one hot on its trail.

The ball immediately flared up to form a proper tornado careering towards me. I could felt Diego readying himself next to. I realised with a jolt that Diego’s mutation didn’t extend enough for him to be able to build a mind wall.

The force of the first tornado push me backwards a few steps, but it wasn’t as bad as I anticipated. The second tornado hit and I slide back another few steps but it was mainly to reduce the force of impact. My mind wall still remained intact. The only problem was my headache had just worsened.

The boy’s expression had dropped into a serious one as he shook both his hands in turn and started gathering more earth. I turned to give Diego a look and he nodded. Even though I could hold him back perfectly well, there were still four more of them that could attack us.

Diego threw a piece of concert over at them but that evil girl and another guy deflected it off with a jet of water. So she’s a water Elementalist.

The remaining girl stepped forward and placed both of her hands either side of the guy and the intensity of the sucking of earth materials increased. Dust began to rise again decreasing the visibility of the room to a point where I could barely make out their stiletto.

‘Owen, are there anymore of them?’ I asked, raising my voice. The tornado was creating quite a racket as it collect things from around him so the likelihood of us being overheard was slim.

‘There are three of them to the left.’ He shouted back, hovering over Holly to stop her from flying away. The power of those two combined was sucking so much earth from this ruin of a room that the debris were starting to fly up and spiral towards him.

Pulling a piece of particularly large concrete out of the spiral I flung it down towards the place where Owen pointed out and made sure it drag on the floor. I turned and Owen nodded at me. Good, so those were taken care of.

The flow of earthy materials was getting stronger and I had to put a mind wall around all of us to stop us being blown away. The ground underneath us began to shake and I exchanged an exasperated look with Diego. The wind whipped my hair around and in my face. I spat out a mouthful of my own hair. What the heck was going on?

‘They are retreating out!’ Owen shouted, I groaned and started feeling out for that guy’s mind. And what I found was bad news.

‘They lost control.’ I shouted over the racket, strengthening the mind wall around us. I could feel the thoughts of the Elementalists slowly fading away. Which meant they had gone far now. It was just us against this man-made natural disaster.

‘Guys, any bright ideas?’ I shouted, narrowly dodging the piece of giant debris that almost flew straight at us. Holly was starting to stir from all the commotions, but her power won’t be much help in this situation.

‘Hold on until it stops?’ Oscar shouted back, I would normally turn around and rolled my eyes at him, but I was too busy keeping us alive.

‘Even if we don’t make it through this, their base is as good as destroyed.’ Diego shouted in an attempt to make us feel better. I kind of did, but it would have been so much better if we can make it through this. Then we would truly be legendary.

‘Watch out!’ I screamed as the now full-sized tornado careered towards us, and that was all I had time to do before we were ripped from the ground and plunged high up into the air.

My mind wall broke in three seconds flat and we were torn apart. I heard Diego and Owen shouted something but couldn’t make it out with the wind blowing in my ears. My body felt like it was being pulled from everywhere and I had to keep a skin-tight mind wall around myself to keep from being knocked into pieces by all the debris caught in this super big whirlwind.
Fighting to keep myself in the game I lost counts of how many pieces of concrete I had dodged. Every second seemed to last a million years and every move increased the screaming headache inside my head. When a particularly large piece of concrete flew straight at me, I couldn’t muster any more energy to fight and I black out just before it reached me.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I was jolted awake by the impact of myself landing on soft ground. My head felt like it was hit by a sledgehammer and my mouth was as dry as a parchment and tasted like sand. I tried swallowing some saliva but almost ended up choking myself. There was sand in my mouth. I immediately turned to my side and spit the mouthful of sand out, in the process I opened my eyes and saw that I was laying in the middle of the stimulation room with no sand in my mouth or anywhere near me.

Damn this stupidly realistic stimulation.

I opened my eyes and were immediately confused by the scene unfolding in front of me. Everyone was standing still in their spot, their face a picture of confusion and bemusement, probably mirrored in my own face. Everyone started looking around and I realised that they weren't seeing the stimulation anymore, everyone was out of the game.

With great effort I pulled myself up to a sitting position and looked around me while trying to ignore my pounding headache. Teachers were speaking into their communicative devices and students were starting to congregate into their groups, buzzing with questions.

'Are you okay?’ a hand came into my line of vision and I turned up to see Mr. Oscar smiling at me. I didn't even realised he was there.

‘No.’ I groaned, taking his hand gratefully. He laughed and pulled me up from the ground.  I was still slightly wobbly on my feet but despite that I was starting to feel a little better. I looked around trying to find my fellow group mates, but the scene was too chaotic.

'What's going on? Why did the game stopped?' I asked, Mr. Oscar shook his head at me. He didn't know either.

'I was just waiting for you to either get disqualified or hit the button here.' He replied, when I gave him a shock face he smiled back. 'The whirlwind was pretty impressive, and there was no way you will survive through that.'

Shrugging I turned back to survey my surrounding whilst Mr. Oscar talked into his device. I tried to eavesdrop on what he was saying but the surrounding was too noisy in both sound and mind.

'Everybody, stay calm.' Mr. Andrewson's voice boomed out from the speakers and everyone quieted down. 'There was an error in the system and the stimulation program shut itself off to repair. I am sorry to announced that this game is terminated.'

Angry shouts and protest noises immediately broke out between students. My eyes widened and I threw a disbelieving look at Mr. Oscar, this was simply unacceptable, I was just getting into the game!

However Mr. Oscar wasn't looking at me, he was frowning into his hand-held device he looked back up at me. ‘Did you press the silver button at all?’

I shook my head, he studied me for a while and spoke into his device, saying something about me and glitch and stuff. Now it's my turn to frown. This can't have anything to do with me, right?

'I got to go now, but here.' He said, taking something out of his pocket and gave it to me. It was a clear sealed bag containing a few tiny brightly coloured circular pills. I looked at him questioningly.

‘It will help with your headache.’ He said giving me a knowing smile, but the sign of a frown still marked his face. ‘You were not hurt enough to get disqualified yet, and you didn’t press the silver button, it was weird how the moment you land the whole thing went off.'

My heart skipped a beat when he said that and my grateful smiled froze on my face. So it was me. I needed to cover myself.

‘Maybe something hit the bracelet.’ I said, as calm and normal as I could. Mr. Oscar's face lightened up as he walked away, believing my lame story.

Almost out of instinct I looked up at the control room and saw Mr. Andrewson's eyes staring right into mine. He gave me a pointed look which send chills down my spill. I realised that even though I managed to mislead Mr. Oscar, Mr. Andrewson knew full well that this error was all because of me.

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haha, I bet you guys didn't see that coming ;D