Unlucky 14

[Babs Seed]

(The fifth in the wee hours of the morning when the list is posted. Open to everyone including professors.) 

"Oh buck."

Cursing wasn't normally something the filly would do aloud but this called for it. Decked out for her early morning classes, Babs was staring at the recently posted list of fighters. Her olive green orbs stared unblinking as she read the top of the list over and over and over and over again. She swallowed nervously, touching the list gently with a caramel hoof. 

The list read as follows:

"Good Morning students,
The following lucky 14 students have been hand chosen to participate in the first ever Friday Battles.
Please report to the locker rooms at 7PM sharp to await your fight. This fight will not be to the death as some of you have speculated.
Enjoy your day!
Babs Seed (Earth Circle) vs Scootaloo (Fire Circle)
Arietta (Earth Circle) vs Sync (Fire Circle)
Twilight Sparkle (Water Circle) vs Pinkie Pie (Fire Circle)
Astrid (Fire Circle) vs Wolfsbane (Air Circle)
Stitch (Air Circle) vs Wee Dingwall (Water Circle)
Jack (Air Circle) vs Kristoff (Earth Circle)
Luna (Fire Circle) vs Wizzer (Earth Circle)"

"I gotta fight Scoots? Oh no..."

[Twilight Sparkle]

Twilight had come into the library with the intent of retrieving a book for the advanced magic class. She thought it would be a wise idea to bone up on other spells that might be useful, and as she made her way over to the many shelves of books she caught sight of Babs. That was Apple Bloom's cousin, wasn't it? She thought so, anyway. Twilight hadn't had the pleasure of meeting Babs for herself yet. Still, the little filly looked rather distraught about something. Curious to know what it was, the young unicorn decided to take a look.

"What's the ma..."

Twilight's question died on her tongue when she saw what Babs was looking at; the dreaded list. She scanned over the text at the top, cringing slightly when she realized that fourteen of the students would be fighting, and proceeded to look down the list to see who was involved. Were it possible, her fur would have gone pale when she saw her own name listed. As for her opponent...

"Pinkie? She's here? And I have to fight her?" Twilight asked. Her ears fell back and a look of dismay formed on her face. She couldn't fight one of her best friends. She couldn't! Pinkie wasn't as strong as Applejack, nor was she as fast as Rainbow Dash. In fact, aside from parties and her typical Pinkie randomness Twilight was uncertain of what skills Pinkie possessed at all in terms of defense. Needless to say, the unicorn was not looking forward to the match. She didn't think she would be able to lay a hoof against Pinkie, much less try and blast her with magic.

...

Behind the two girls, Sync stood further back and smirked a little. The list had been posted, and he was keen on reading it. Maybe, if Yulia and Lorelei smiled upon his bad fortune, he'd be able to try and eliminate himself early on. Maybe his opponent, if he had one, would be some brutal individual who would show no mercy. Oh, Sync would love that. He'd fight with all he had, obviously, but wouldn't mind if he died in a particularly tough match. As he strode up to look at the list, he caught sight of his name. Good; at least the ones in charge were smart enough to realize he was looking for a fight. His opponent, on the other hand, made him appear confused.

"Who the hell is this 'Arietta' person?" he wondered out loud. Evidently, she was from the earth circle. All Sync could do was hope she was some kind of tough opponent and didn't make things too easy for him.

...

"Gaba?"

Stitch, too, had seen the list. He was on the wall at that very moment and tilting his head this way and that as he looked over the listings. He was going to be involved in an early fight, which didn't bother him, but who was his opponent? He'd never met a 'Wee Dingwall' before... Strange. Very strange, indeed. Maybe they'd get to meet before the match? Well, whatever the case, Stitch would be lying if he said he wasn't just a little excited about the whole thing. ...Only a little, though. Stitch didn't know if he could bring himself to kill anyone. Knock unconscious, maybe, but kill? Probably not.

[Arietta]

Behind the rest, Arietta had silently come in. She approached the list and looked at her name. She knew that she would have to fight sooner or later right. But to fight against someone from the fire circle? She had no idea how to respond to that. Hopefully the first fight wouldn't be too bad. 'Who the hell is this Arietta person!?" a voice asked outloud breaking her train of thought. The girl turned to see a young boy green hair and looking very confident. "Uh, I'm Arietta." she said. "You must be Sync."

---
Jack had heard the commotion about the fights going on and decided to come and see what the fuss was about. The dreaded list was up. His blue eyes fractically searched. He was fighting a kid named Kristoff. Probably human, Jack would have to be sure not to use his powers that much. Though there wasn't much he could rely on. Thankfully, he didn't see Elsa's name up there just yet. 'Good. At least i will have time to teach her before this goes on.' he thought. 'Hopefully i won't end up in a coma before our first lesson.'

[Scootaloo]

"Oh, hey Babs," Completely unaware of what the other filly was looking at, Scootaloo trotted up behind her friend. The pegasus girl's uniform looked a little worse-for-wear by this point; not trusting herself to be able to redo the tie if she took it off and not wanting to be bugging Babs about it every day, Scoot had simply kept her uniform on at all times, including sleeping in it. Bearing this in mind, it was no surprise at all that the clothes were looking rather rumpled.

She opened her mouth again, to ask what the Manehattan crusader was looking at, when she figured it out for herself. The fight list... for a moment, Scootaloo could have kicked herself; she had completely forgotten about staying up the previous night to find out who was responsible for posting it, and she doubted any of her fellow crusaders had tried it either. Her purple eyes traced the list, looking to see if she could spot any names she recognised; and did, almost immediately.

For a long moment, Scootaloo felt as stunned as though she had just been slapped. She and Babs were being forced to fight? The winged filly glanced across at her friend, feeling a horrible tightness in the pit of her stomach. Though she had known this could be possible, she never dreamt it would come about so soon. Babs was her fellow Cutie Mark Crusader, her friend; despite that back when the had first known Babs, Scootaloo would have been only too glad of the chance to give the other girl what she had then felt that she deserved, now the pegasus couldn't imagine hurting her.

"What are we going to do?" she asked Babs desperately. Aside from point-blank refusing to fight, which Scootaloo was sure would have unpleasant consequences, she was drawing a blank on how to avoid this.

[Deleted]

All the mountaineer wanted was to grab a book or two for studying, and then he could go on with his life. But instead, a small group of students gathered 'round and looking at something. Wait. Was it important? With a hefty book under his arm, Kristoff decided he should go on ahead and check out what was going on. His heart stopped when he figured out what everyone was gawking at.

The fight list.

His round eyes looked over the list, and much to his dismay, he found one name on there that he desperately wished wasn't there. Kristoff. He read the list over and over again, wishing he hadn't just read his own name. Maybe there was more than one Kristoff in the school that just so happened to be in the same circle as him? No. That wasn't the case. As much as the blonde wished that was the case, it certainly wasn't. A look of disbelief crossed his face. All he could do was stare at the list. Words wouldn't come out of his mouth. The only good thing to come out of this was the fact that it stated that it wouldn't be a fight to the death.

He squinted in hopes to get a better look at the names. Panic had taken over, and it seemed like the only two names that popped out to Kristoff were Jack and Kristoff. Who was Jack anyway? A dog? A human? A unicorn? "Are you serious?" His voice was quiet, just barely above a whisper. Hopefully, he wouldn't get beaten to a pulp by whoever he was fighting.

[Babs Seed]

Babs could only turn a pair of sad, large emerald orbs towards Scootaloo. She bit her lower jaw tightly before searching about, looking from face to face to face of the fighters chosen to brawl in the first fight. This wasn't a game. This wasn't like the Unicorn Games, a book she read in school. She wasn't the lead character. She was just blank flank Babs Seed who'd been chosen to tear apart her friend. Secretly though Babs was grateful. If it had been Apple Bloom she'd have refused out right. Run and hid. Sweetie Belle was too weak, she'd have refused then. But Scootaloo...

Scootaloo might have been an even match-up for the female.
Still that didn't mean she was happy to fight her. "I...I dunno..." she mumbled, "I dunno..."

****

"OHMIGOOOOOOOOSSSSSHHHH TWILIGHT!"

Twilight would have a pink hurricane hurling herself at her in a few seconds. Pinkie was so excited to see her best friend among bestest best friends. The formerly antisocial unicorn had been brought out of her shell by Pinkie and her buddies. Pinkie bounced up and down on Twilight gently. "Oh Twilight! I'm so happy to see you! Isn't this fun? I'm in the fire circle, which I thought was silly! Why's it called a fire circle huh? I'm not on fire! Heeeeyyyy you have a blue tie! That means you're in water circle! Do they let you swim? I love swimming! Hey what's everypony looking at?"

Pinkie pounced over to the list before her eyes grew wide, ears flopping down.

"...Wha...what? Twi...Twilight...?"

[Scootaloo]

Scootaloo's tiny wings fluttered in aggitation and she began to pace. There had to be some way to get out of this, she didn't want to fight Babs - and not just because she had a sneaking suspicion that the Manehattan filly would probably end up handing her her own rear in the fight. She didn't want her newest friend to go back to being an enemy again. If they could have just refused to fight at all, Scootaloo would have; but though nothing specific had been said, she was sure that there would be punishment waiting for them if they tried that. And given that the people running this place were twisted enough to pit them against each other, she bet that whatever it was, she wouldn't want to experience it.

Catching sight of Twilight present, Scootaloo almost suggested to Babs that they ask the older mare's advice - after all, if anyone would know what to advise them, it would be the smart unicorn - however it looked as if she had her own set of problems right now, so the young pegasus figured it was probably better for her and Babs to work something out between them. Though she hadn't the slightest clue what.

"We could... only pretend to fight?" she suggested, not sounding particularly hopeful about the idea. Would that even work? How could they stage it to look realistic without hurting each other? She fully expected Babs to shoot the idea down in moments. But the only other option she could see was that they could just grit their teeth and pound each other as they were clearly expected to do and just hope all their bruises healed again later; not an appealing prospect at all. And if that wasn't bad enough, would they even be able to remain friends after beating each other up?

"Come on, we've gotta think of something," she urged Babs desperately.

[Deleted]

Wee Dingwall had intended to come down the library sooner, but once again his blue tie had proven troublesome. But, once it was tied to his satisfaction, he headed over to get a look at the fight roster posted there. The diminutive Highlander made his way through the crowd, and gazed rather dully at the list. Even after he spotted his name, he just continued to stare, almost disinterested. Fighting was nothing new to him, and this fight wasn't even going to be to the death. More like a training bout, if anything. But, still, he had no idea who Stitch was, or even what he was.

He looked away from the list, letting his eyes rove over the rest of the people gathered in the library. Most of them seemed to be nervous, but there were a couple of exceptions. But which one of them was Stitch? Or were any of them his opponent?

"Anybody know if Stitch is in here?" he asked, still looking disinterested. he couldn't help but wonder if they would be given weapons, or if those weapons would be wooden, or blunted.

[Deleted]

Jack glanced around, hoping to at least get a glimpse of his opponent. "Is there someone named Kristoff here?" he asked, so far almost everyone had found their opponents. The pink haired girl known as Arietta did not look confident, not that Jack blamed her. The green haired boy, Sync, he was guessing seemed cold and no doubt with that attitude he would be merciless. The ponies were conversing with each other, two young ones were worried about the fights, again jack didn't blame them. But the white haired youth wanted to at least know what his opponent looked like.

[Sync]

Upon hearing the little voice speak up, Sync looked down to acknowledge the one who had spoken. The second he did, though, he had to laugh some. Pink hair, small stature, equally pink eyes, and a little voice? This girl was expected to be his opponent? How old was she, anyway? She couldn't have been that much older than him, could she? What a ridiculous concept! Sync could hardly contain himself he was so amused by the idea.

"You? Fighting me? That's hilarious! I don't see what they expect you to do to me. I could probably kick you into next week without even breaking a sweat!" Sync laughed. He knew better than to underestimate an opponent, but in this case he just had to. She was so short and quiet! What could she even do to him when he had martial arts and magic on his side?

...

"Meega Stitch," Stitch said, raising his paw as he climbed down from the wall. So the blond who'd spoken was Wee Dingwall? Stitch looked him over, frowned for a moment, and tilted his head to the side. How was this even going to work? It would hardly be a fair fight if Stitch relied entirely on his full strength and abilities. What was the academy thinking by putting him up against a human, anyway? This was bad... Very bad...

...

"Pinkie?" Twilight asked. She knew she recognized the voice, and she would have said something, but the pink mare had gone off on one of her usual rambles about this and that. Every so often the unicorn would try to interject, only to be interrupted by another statement. Finally, though, it seemed that Pinkie had seen what was happening on the list. The way Pinkie's ears drooped only made Twilight's heart sink further. The two friends were going to have to fight, and the unicorn hadn't the slightest idea of what they were going to do about it.

"I know, Pinkie... I saw the listings, too. I don't know what we're going to do about this, though. I don't want to hurt you. You're one of my best friends," Twilight said. Maybe if she just used some kind of teleportation spell on Pinkie... Would that even work? Twilight didn't know.

"There's got to be some way we can do this without hurting each other."

[Deleted]

While still trying to comprehend how he was picked out for the first fight, his own name brought him back to reality. Someone was asking for a Kristoff. He couldn't help but assume that the boy who spoke up was Jack. The blonde locks shifted slightly when he turned his head to view the boy.

"Yeah, I'm Kristoff," he said, his tone definitely not cheerful. He looked the boy up and down. His hair was as white as fresh fallen snow, yet he was obviously around Kristoff's age. The ice harvester found that to be strange, but he made no such comment aloud. He readjusted the book he held while he spoke once more.

"I'm gonna take a wild guess here and say that you're Jack."

[Deleted]

"Yeah, that's me." Jack said with a tiny smile. Kristoff looked to be around his age and had very blonde hair. He had been hoping that there was another jack around somewhere, but no, sadly he was the only one. Try as he might, looks like he would be fighting. He switched his staff between hands and held one out to Kristoff. "I guess I should wish you luck huh. We both could use it right?" He hoped that the fights wouldn't cause rifts between friendships, and while neither of the boys had met before, Jack thought Kristoff seemed like a nice guy.

---
Arietta's eyes narrowed, and her cheeks puffed out a little bit in anger. Sure, she wasn't strong or as smart as other people but there was one thing that she knew. She was not going to be laughed at. "Well, if you are so sure of yourself, then you have nothing to worry about right?" she asked, raising a pink eyebrow at Sync. Most people would have seen this as a bit ridiculous. It would be like fighting with a toddler. At least in the older kids point of view, and probably in Sync's. Arietta had been hoping to give Sync a chance but now, now she just wanted to beat him. "If you are so sure of yourself, then I won't hold anything back in the arena. I expect you to give me the same respect Greenie." she spat the last word in disgust.

[Pinkie Pie]

"Pinkie?" Twilight asked. She knew she recognized the voice, and she would have said something, but the pink mare had gone off on one of her usual rambles about this and that. Every so often the unicorn would try to interject, only to be interrupted by another statement. Finally, though, it seemed that Pinkie had seen what was happening on the list. The way Pinkie's ears drooped only made Twilight's heart sink further. The two friends were going to have to fight, and the unicorn hadn't the slightest idea of what they were going to do about it.

"I know, Pinkie... I saw the listings, too. I don't know what we're going to do about this, though. I don't want to hurt you. You're one of my best friends," Twilight said. Maybe if she just used some kind of teleportation spell on Pinkie... Would that even work? Twilight didn't know.

"There's got to be some way we can do this without hurting each other."

"I....I..."

Pinkie's lip quivered. "I don't understand. Why would they make us fight? Why Twilight?" She looked at Twilight with very wide blue eyes as she moved closer to her friend. She looked on the verge of tears as she sat down. She rubbed her eyes with her fluffy pink tail.

"Besides," she said, "You can just blow me up with your magic! And I wouldn't want you to get hurt if you don't make me explode. I'm scared Twilight. I'm really...really...really...s-s-s-s-scared..." Pinke blew her nose in her tail before turning and looking to Twilight again.

"You're the smart one Twilight," she said, "You'll make it better, I know you will."

*****

"We could... only pretend to fight?"

Babs gave a weak smile. "Y-yeah. Only if I win." She gave a tiny grin, trying to lighten the mood before placing a hoof on the pegasus' shoulder. "It'll be okay, Scoots. We'll...we'll figure sumthin' out." She swallowed.

"yeah...yeah maybe if we just pretend ta fight they'll leave us alone, right?"

[Scootaloo]

Purple orbs blinked as Babs actually agreed with her. "I thought for sure you were going to tell me that idea sucked," she stated ruefully, rubbing the back of her neck with a hoof. Babs must have been just as desperate for a way out of this as Scootaloo herself was if she was seriously considering that lame idea of hers. The pegasus supposed she shouldn't have been surprised, but a small part of her almost was. After the way Babs had treated them at first, she had almost thought the earth pony wouldn't have minded the chance to go back to that; she was glad, however, that wasn't the case. "Unless we really made it look good, I don't think anyone would even buy that," she admitted.

But what else could they do? Scoot was really struggling for ideas. The people in charge wouldn't just let them refuse, she was certain; it seemed impossible that the two of them wouldn't end up facing each other in combat before the day was out. They should have planned for this contingency before it happened, Scootaloo thought, because right now she was too on-edge to think of anything decent. Looking at her friend, the winged filly could only think of one thing to say.

"Babs... no hard feelings if we actually do have to fight, right?" Having to fight Babs was bad enough. Losing her friendship into the bargain would only make it even worse. Even if one of them did beat the other senseless - well, Scootaloo wasn't at all sure how forgiving she'd be if it was Babs who came out top. But she hoped that they would be able to pull through it.

[Babs Seed]

Babs smiled weakly. In her ego she assumed that she would indeed beat Scootaloo. But she didn't want to. She didn't want to stomp on the flightless Pegasus anymore than she wanted to fight anyone. Her ears folded back, keeping her hoof on Scootaloo's shoulder. She nodded, feet pressing back in the ground, letting out a sigh. "Don't worry, Scoots," she whistled, "We'll get out'a dis in one piece. Af'ta all it ain't a fight ta th'death, a'ight?"

She sighed, blowing up to get her hair out of her face. "Yeah...yeah...we're gonna be a'ight."