After a water break, the first 42 students who finished the obstacle course are called together at the podium. Takara looks around at her opponents. Most of her class and those in 1-B have made it to the second round as well as various others.

The crowd in the stands finds their way to their seats, ready and eager for the second challenge. Kumarēza and Chemex take their place at the microphone.

"Welcome back for the second event of this year's Sports Festival!" Chemex exclaims, causing a raucous cheer to go up around the stadium. "Our frontrunners of the obstacle course will now be pitted against each other yet again! But how?"

"If you turn your attention to the screen..." Kumarēza gestures grandly behind him. The display once again circles through many possible games, each raising the anticipation of the next event.

With a loud crack of fireworks, the screen presents, "Extreme King of the Hill."

Chemex cheerfully announces the game and begins explaining the rules. "You will group up into fourteen teams of three and battle it out in the arena to gain the most amount of points as possible. How do you get points, you may ask?"

The students' history teacher, Fissure, steps out from a tunnel and stomps his foot on the ground. The earth rumbles beneath the students, and many struggle to find their balance. Around the arena, large mounds of dirt ascend. They morph to plateau at the top. Takara does a quick tally to count 7 hills in total.

"You will have ten minutes to accumulate the most time atop a hill you can," Kumarēza continues. "As long as one member of your team has a foot within the circle, your time will count for that hill. More people on the same hill won't help your score, though it may keep you from being unseated."

Some game facilitators run in from the sidelines and begin spray painting around the tops of each hill, making colored circles. "The colors represent different time multipliers. The yellow hills will not multiply your time at all." He gestures to the four small hills on the outskirts of the arena, each with a yellow circle around the top. Takara expects it would take her three steps to get up the shallow incline.

The science teacher interjects, grabbing the microphone, "The red hills will double your time, and the blue hill will multiply the time you spend on it by five! These multipliers can be added if your team chooses to split up. For instance, if you have somebody on the red hill and somebody on the blue, your time will be multiplying by seven!"

The two red hills settle themselves closer to the middle where the looming blue hill gathers everyone's focus. The slope is incredibly steep, and the tall plateau doesn't look to have a large diameter. Even so, the students set their sights on it, knowing that taking control of that hill is the surest way to win.

"You have ten minutes to pick your teams and develop a strategy," Takara distantly hears Kumarēza say. "Get moving!"

A mad dash ensues for people to group up. Takara frantically turns, looping her arm with Aiya's. "You'll be on my team, right?"

Aiya's attention is drawn away from something else and down to the shorter girl. She blinks to refocus her pale eyes. "Sure," she affirms with a smile and nod. But there's something about the way she purses her lips that seems off to Takara.

She glances behind her, gaze settling on Aiya's twin. Of course, she silently admonishes herself. Kaede walks to the edge of the arena with Ohara and Ozaki. In a team game such as this, the twins would usually be the first to pair up. But given present circumstances...

"We should invite Morita," Takara suggests, figuring the best way to get Aiya's attention away from her sister is to get her head back in the game.

However, when Takara sees the girl in question, she finds Morita has already found a team. Morita gives Takara a friendly wave of good luck, which Takara reciprocates.

"What about Araya?" Takara asks instead.

They both look around the milling students. Aiya's wings perk up as she exclaims, "He's over the–" She blinks, and her wings flutter as she hesitates.

"What? What's wrong?" the brunette inquires, standing on her toes.

Aiya shrugs, wings drooping. "He has another team. Oh, wait!" With a pointed finger, she directs Takara's attention to a lone student walking the outskirts.

"Endo!" Takara cries out as she rushes over, pixie in tow. The girl startles, shadows flaring. "Endo, do you have a team yet?"

She straightens her posture, light shining hopefully in her eyes. "No, no I don't. Do you guys need another person?"

"Yeah, we'd love to have you on our team!" Takara exclaims, dragging them both into a tight huddle. "Alright, so what's the plan?"

•°•☆•°•

As the ten minutes for planning tick away, the fourteen teams line up around the outside of the arena. Kaede glances around the grounds to where her sister waits with her team. Where Kaede picked a team for strength and adaptability, Aiya seemed to only pick her friends.

Ohara and Ozaki crouch into a ready-position, and Kaede flutters her wings as the countdown begins. Ohara reaches into her side pouch, hand already disappearing into a photograph. Ozaki sprouts a sunflower on each palm.

"Let the second event...begin!" Kumarēza announces, sounding off a loud buzzer. The teams surge forward.

Ozaki takes the lead for his team, aiming straight toward the middle hill, rimmed with blue. He fires seeds in his path that sprout into a line of giant sunflowers, rising steadily with every step, taking him up to the top of the hill without having to scale the steep sides. On the ground below runs Ohara, broadsword in hand, chopping the stems so nobody else can use them to get up. The thick green stalks remain rooted. Above, Kaede scatters pixie dust on the cut flowers, floating them up to the sky.

Ozaki lands on the blue hill first, and their timer starts ticking, going up by increments of five seconds. He keeps his hands open, firing seeds at any student that dares get close.

Kaede swoops down and picks up Ohara, depositing her on a floating flower as the pigtailed girl summons a firearm from her side pack and gives her teammate some cover fire. As stated in the rules, she can't use any lethal bullets. But that doesn't mean the projectiles won't hurt.

Kaede snatches a thinner flower from the air and begins batting away opponents as they try to rush the center hill. In the first fifteen seconds, their team has taken a commanding lead.

Further away, Takara's team has split between two hills. The brunette tries to hold her own on a yellow hill while her two teammates fight a couple other teams on a red hill.

Takara covers her arms in jade, batting aside projectiles and delivering devastating blows to anyone who comes near. A boy raises rocks from the ground and creates phantom arms with them, fighting to push Takara off. She feels her foot slip over the edge as one punches her square in the face.

She tumbles backward as the boy's team takes the hill. She rubs her jaw and pushes to her feet, running back to the mound. A girl on the team with large flat antlers charges her.

Takara extends all the jade on her body, ready to take on the brunt of the attack, but the two connect with much more force than Takara expected. Ramming into her head-on, the girl with the moose mutation sends Takara flying back.

Her head slams onto the rocky terrain with a crack, and her vision blurs with tears and spots of darkness.

"Takara!" Aiya screams. The moose girl scampers back up to join her team as the pixie flies over. "Cover the hill, Endo! Are you alright?"

The brunette nods meekly, and Aiya hauls her up by hooking her arms under Takara's shoulders. They stumble up to the red hill where a student tries to ambush a preoccupied Endo.

Aiya leaves Takara at the base of the hill to soar up and kick the student away. She flares her wings as the opposing student lunges. Swinging her foot around, she lands a hard kick to the student's abdomen, sending them flying back. They never even had a chance.

The student lands with a huff, and Aiya returns to help Takara climb the hill. "Do you think you can stand?"

Takara rubs the back of her hand where a lump is already forming. "Yeah, I'll be fine. But we need a new plan."

Endo shoots projectiles of light at an approaching team, and they scatter. "I have an idea to get us to the blue hill," she mumbles, focusing on holding back the other team. "I don't know–it could–it might not work."

"Worth a shot," Takara replies, pushing to her feet.

Aiya shrugs as she kicks away a student trying to flank them. "What else are we gonna do? Defend this red the whole time?"

"Alright," Endo says. Her light wavers for just a moment. "I need one of those leaves."

The team looks over to the lobbed off stumps of giant sunflowers leading to the center hill. Some were pruned high enough they still have heart-shaped leaves on them. They wave lazily in the wind kicked up from the commotion.

"Aiya?" Takara suggests as she blocks a sharp projectile with her protected arms. "You can get in and out quick."

The pixie just shakes her head. "Kaede's covering the hill. And if she sees me coming, she'll target me. Besides, with that flower she's swinging around, she'll have the advantage of reach."

"Alright, I'll do it, then," Takara declares, jumping from the top of the hill. She lands in a roll and takes off running before anyone can protest.

She aims for a stem with a particularly large leaf. Bullets rain down from above, and Takara flexes her muscles to keep her jade extended, covering the top of her head with her arms. She hears the plastic beads plink off the stones and figures they must hurt pretty badly if someone gets caught with them on her bare skin.

A golden wall hits her out of nowhere as Kaede descends, sunflower swinging in a powerful arc. She whacks Takara back, but the girl just gets up and keeps running.

Kaede sighs, as if the girl should have known better. She swings the flower around again, but Takara dives forward to grab the stem.

"Gotcha!" She yanks hard and pulls Kaede in. With a loud crack, Takara headbutts the pixie, causing her to drop from the air and land flat on her back. "Nothing personal," Takara calls over her shoulder as she continues running for the larger stems.

She keeps one arm over her head as she slices a massive leaf from the plant. It's even larger up close; she could use it as a small blanket. She runs back to the red hill where her teammates continue to fight. Sunflower seeds chase her back as a warning.

"Alright, I got it," she calls, scrambling back up the hill. "What next?"

Endo flicks her wrist at a team, and all three get knocked back with flecks of light. "My quirk has a lot of really...odd uses. I can do this thing where I can condense my light onto a plant. It's, um, I call it Photosynthesis 'cause like the light and the plant and...you get it. Anyways, I'll help you get to the center hill. Just keep the leaf over both of you and run as fast as you can. Don't stop."

Aiya and Takara share a look. Endo's hands shake as she reaches out for the leaf. Not a small tremor either. The shadows curl and lash out frantically, as if they can sense their restraints are about to be removed.

The two girls huddle under the giant leaf, holding it over their shoulders like a shawl. Before their eyes, Endo's light starts to gather on her hands. It drains from her face and trickles down her arms like water on spiderwebs.

Takara briefly recalls the last time Endo did something like this during training. She called it "going dark." She also said it was dangerous. Takara tightens her grip on the end of the leaf.

The blue light bleeds from Endo's fingertips to the surface of the leaf. The plant shines with a brilliant light, turning many people's attention to the team. A murmur of astonishment arises from the crowd.

Takara spots the team Endo had knocked over regaining the space between them. Two additional teams charge toward the girls.

"Hurry," Takara warns, voice tinged with worry. One or two teams they can handle, but three?

Endo doesn't respond. Her entire silhouette wavers, the darkness more brave in venturing out. It wisps along the girls' faces, sending a chill down their spines. Takara has never noticed how cold the shadows were before.

Takara watches a serene look overcome Endo's face as she whispers one word.

"Go."

The light winks out from her eyes.

That's when everything goes dark.

Featured Character: Kazumi Endo
Quirk: Light and Shadow
Likes: Yoga