ONB Tournament Entry

Burt finally arrived at the Colosseum dome, falling onto his hands and knees in exhaustion. He'd run all the way there from the metroline, and he felt like his knees could give way at any second, landing him face-flat on the floor. The room he'd entered was already very crowded, so he could only assume that fighters had begun to assemble for the first matches. "Look around, Exxy," he gasped between breaths, moving his PET around to give her a panoramic view of the other operators. "These guys are all our competition. Not one of em stands a chance against us, but here they all are, anyways, in case you want a look at them."

Exorcist yawned, waking up from her nap groggily. Her eyes opened with a start, greeted by a new surrounding and also new power that she didn't feel she'd had when she fell asleep. "Burt, did you install something while I was asleep? This had better not be a prank or something dirty," she asked with a suspicious glare, crossing her arms across her chest.

"No, no, my sweet navi! Those are all new upgrades that I installed while you were resting your head in slumber," he laughed, adjusting his glasses and showing her the cartridges he'd slotted through. "You're now faster, more endurant, and have available to you new and powerful skills! I even modified your charm cards to some extent." At this point, he still hadn't gotten up off the floor, so he finally hoisted himself up, pulling off his scarf by accident due to having accidentally slapped one palm down upon it. Grumbling, he wrapped the wool scarf back around his neck.

"Oh, well thanks, then. I feel a lot better now, ready to take on anyone!" Exorcist smiled, beaming brightly. Burt twisted up and held his hands to his face, appreciating the smile more than anyone else could (or ought to). "But um, speaking of which, who is my first opponent?" she asked, lifting her hat momentarily to get her hair just how she liked it.

Burt didn't have an answer, so he strolled on up to the announcer who was presenting people with their match-ups. "Excuse me, beautiful," he told the woman with a psuedo-suave flip of his hair, followed by an overdone flip of his scarf; if he'd had any other flaps to flip, he might have flipped them too. "I need to see that sheet of paper... Ah. The guy's name is Orthos. Sounds like a real nobody," he snorted, crossing his arms confidently.

"We can't count anyone out without knowing... uh... well, anything about them," Exorcist coughed, realizing that the statement should really be obvious to anyone with half a brain as it left her mouth. "At any rate, she said we needed to sign in, right? Sign in quickly, then we'll move to the back room and jack in."

"Ha!" Burt snickered, looking down the list of names as he grabbed up the pen for the sign-up sheet. "Look, that Orthos guy isn't even here yet! What if he's a no-show? That'd sure be lucky for us, eh?"

Exorcist sighed, shaking her head in disagreement. "No, I wouldn't personally appreciate it. We came here for training, right? We aren't in this for prizes! If we miss out on any competition, then we'll have defeated the purpose of my participation in this tournament," she explained, tightening up her bow to seal her hair into its long tail.

Burt shrugged with a low frown, sprawling his surprisingly articulate signature across his designated space. "Well, now all we need to do is to proceed into that back room and jack in, eh?" he laughed in a light, carefree tone, strolling on past the woman into the next room. Looking around, Burt saw many terminals, although only a few were occupied. "Ha ha ha! It'll be just like teaching for a podium. I'll be right in my element for this competition!" the teacher smirked, propping up his elbows on his terminal as he jacked his navi into the net.

Leon waded through the sea of bodies and other obstacles to the line, and through the line to the desk.

"Looks like we're up first..." he absently muttered while he signed in on the sheet. Or rather tried to. The pen he grabbed didn't want to write on the paper. He shook the pen vigorously a few times and tried again with minimal success. He found a corner of the paper and scribbled in a circle a few times until the pen started to work again, and finally signed his name.

"Well, I hope that isn't an omen of things to come," Miyu said quite flatly. "If it is we might as well go home now."

Smirking, Leon replied with his usual sarcastic and smart ass tone. "Please, that was the crappiest and least creative omen ever then. If you want an omen, wait till we find our jack in place and see if they spelled our names right."

Leon walked through the door to the next room and looked for their terminal. Finding it, and their opponent already there and waiting, he walked over to it while jacking Miyu in from a ways away. As he got close, he nodded silently at the opposition and looked him over. After a few seconds of arguably awkward silence, he added "Leon, nice to meet. And good luck today too."

Miyu meanwhile looked around the arena they had jacked into. "What a bland place. And what an unfriendly looking guy over there." Miyu looked to Leon. "Well, I guess it's now or never," she said in a noticeably shaky voice.

"Nervous?" He asked in his usual tone, laughing a bit afterward.

"No... just excited." She replied in a matter-of-fact way. "I haven't gotten to beat anyone up since I was sent to take out Junior and ran into Celeste and him."

"Guh!" Leon choked, almost losing his balance as pounded his chest and coughed a bit. "Well... I guess it's god to know you're not going to be scared, heh."

Rose arrived at the colloseum early enough. She had taken the liberty of driving all on her own, and thanks to the incredible amount of people who had run or taken the bus, finding a parking spot wasn't nearly as hard as she had feared.

However, upon arriving inside, she learned that the first round was to be seperated into blocks, and she wasn't in the first one, either.

"Great, so now we get to sit around for a round and wait out turn." SummonerMan had commented.

"Well, it's better than missing the Tournament; would you rather I hadn't shown up?" Rose retorted.

"Well, I never consented to this." SummonerMan replied.

"Whatever. This is still good for us."

"And how so?" SummonerMan questioned.

"Well, for one, it lets me observe more battles. Two, I can take more time to get visuals on the Operators. Three, we can watch and check out some of the tactics these guys use. Which can help us find out what these folders are capable of, and we can use that knowledge to our advantage in the finals."

"Ugh, fine." SummonerMan replied. "You win this time, Reporter. Go ahead and take your pictures, I'll be checking out the field, players, equipment, and plays."

"Well then, I'm covering this issue, and after that we'll get back to you for sports." This statement was accompanied by a wink, as Rose thought herself pretty witty for poking fun at his sports analogy. SummonerMan just sighed.

Rose proceeded to check out and record the names of the combatants, and who was fighting who. She linked them to the e-mail addresses listed on the BBS, and mentally noted "I can always check DimensionMan's reviews as a possible source."

Rose noted a few more things to herself as she made her way to the spectator lounge.

"Hmmm... seems your arena is set up now, Junior. Let's get to it. You go in and introduce yourself while I go and see about claiming whatever folder they set us up with." Wes instructed.

"Sounds fine." Junior nodded, plugging into the net and searching out his allotted battlefield.

From out of the massive throng of people, a loud voice rolled out over the gabble:

"Yo! Hey! Out of my way! I just farted there, you better move! Oi! Beat it!"

Finally forcing his way through the crowd, slightly winded, Steve dusted himself off and straightened his glasses as he fiddled with his ponytail. He was slightly nervous, and the best way he'd found to fight nervousness was blatant asshole-ery and egotism.

"Move it, masses! I'm a competitor! Seriously! I just ate chili and a chalupa! Clear out!"

He made his way to the sign in area, and scrawled his name in it's place.

"Let's get going, Druidman." He glanced through the crowd and saw a few familiar faces.

"W-wow...." Aida gasped as she wandered through the long line of people. "I d-did-n't expect it to be s-so..."

"So crowded?" Capuchin finished, "Come on Aida, its a tournament. Of course its going to be full of people. Think of it! Two navis going head to head, the thrill of the competition....AND THE REWARDS! Oh sweet sweet chips!"

"I-is that all you can think about?" Aida asked as she finally emerged at the counter. "U-umm....I'm here to sign in...Aida and Capuchin."

"I don't think you have to wait." The monkey navi announced as her head moved to a pen and sign in sheet laying in front of them.

"O-OH!" Aida immediatley made an apologetic bow, "I'm sorry about that." She quickly signed herself and Capuchin in then immediatley scurried out of the line and into the next room. "That was q-quite embarrassing..."

"Forget about it." Capuchin assured, "You'll make up for that later."

Soryu's feet softly hit the ground, as he landed from the air, outside the building as he had arrived at his destination. Slowly he walked in and, not wasting any time, immediately went for the receptionist. "Hey," Soryu said and slid a business card towards her that had the required information, "This should suffice." Without waiting for a reply he went to the nearest chair and sat down on it with legs crossed.

"I-I knew this would get t-too much, Gosthe!" LinkMan shouted, holding a pillow program over his head to hide under.

"Quit your whining," Soryu commented and looked around at the competitors, "These are grasshoppers. Mere prey." He started to laugh loud after boldly stating this, his shoulders shaking up and down with the rhythm.

"You're scared too, are't you..."

"Shut up, Link... I wonder if that receptionist is seeing someone."

Virgil got off the Metro and headed towards the receptionist. "Hope I am not too late for this." He mumbles to himself, pushing through the crowds. He finally reached the counter and proceed to sign in, receive the folder he was to use, and went toward where his match would be held.

Sieg strolled nonchalantly into the crowd, led by... well, this'll need some explanation.

There are people who like duckttaping things together, when they could just buy replacements from the price of the tape. There are people who get lost in their work, and need alarm clocks to know when to sleep. And then there is Sieg, who took the sacred art of absent minded tinkering to new levels. Some people suspect that like dinosaurs, he has a brain in his ass to take over the control of his legs when his "normal" (note the quotation marks) brain is interested in something else. If we can believe these people, Sieg's legs were guided by the... ehm hind-brain, probably feeling out the way by concentrating on the waves echoing from the ground (like earthworms and some other sub-terrain bugs), since he didn't even bother to raise his head to look around.

Miraculously, he didn't bump into anyone. Good thing too, because he was preoccupied with last minute tinkering of the PET. While walking (his tongue licking his dry lips in concentration), a miniature screwdriver between his thumb and index finger was spinning wildly as it screwed something that looked like a cooling fin onto the device. When he reached the counter, he took the tool into his mouth to free up his right hand, filled out some random paper that was thrown his way (while trying to continue spinning the screwdriver with his tongue... a split second later he mused that he could have just taken the pen in his mouth as a shortcut), then went down the hall while continuing to adjust parts on his personal terminal.

Valkyrie gave voice to her amusement over how natural her operator was at pocketing office pens, but Sieg just continued to the battle scene, while his subconscious mumbled something vaguely thanks-like.

Louis threaded his way through a particularly large crowd of people to reach the path to the front counter, but paused on the walkway to straighten out his beige suit. "Good lord, the entire town's been jammed with tourists ever since this tournament started." grumbled Louis with a scowl on his face as he tried to fix a wrinkle in his tie.

"Hey, at least the cafes are doing well because of it." responded Sommelier, trying to draw a silver lining around Louis's dismal cloud of thoughts.

"Remind me who I left in charge?" asked Louis.

"Ferdinand." answered Sommelier promptly.

"... This is not going to be a good day." groaned Louis. "I'll be lucky to even have a business to return to after this..."

"Now, now, just leave the cafes to the people there. We're here to win and advertise, right?" explained Sommelier.

"Yes, I suppose. There's nowhere to go but up if we win." nodded Louis as he stepped up to the counter, pulling a pen of his own out of his breast pocket and signing his name in on the list. He was then pointed to his battle room by the receptionist, and Louis was on his way.

Chad stumbled into the room, barely still breathing by the looks of it "Chad... Satyr... here... for... Split.... .....man" He managed to gasp out before signing his name on the sheet. There was no time to waste or he was going to be disqualified...

(OOC: LET'S JUST PRETEND THIS HAPPENED EARLIER)

With every last bit of pre-tourney business wrapped up, Sabrina made her way over to the dreaded piece of paper, and signed her name on it. And without another word, she made her way to a nice jack-in port to send her Navi to the battle.

Polonius enters the room with a bit of an uncomfortable stumble, shaking his head as he looked around. "P-p-polonius Carbonium here for DNR.EXE in the Second Block M-match..." he responded to the counter person, signing in as he went to the terminal for his match.

Wes withdrew Junior and began to walk off.

"So why did you suddenly change your mind about fighting?" Junior asked.

"Because if we didn't, you'd have had to fight either Daisy or Red next and that's more pressure than I think you can stand in one day. Besides, its not worth fighting some idiot who thinks its a good idea to test the strength of an opponent who tells them that they're not using full power." Wes scowled, "We gave him all the advantages we reasonable could and they were still just a finger's tap away from dying."

"Well, to be fair, not everyone uses their fingers to attack and also, it'd be losing, not dying." Junior corrected.

"Whatever. We don't have time for this." Wes's PET beeped and looking down, he noticed they have recieved money for participating, "Feh, a consellation prize? We could make way more than this in the time that fool was wasting. Like I said, not worth it." Wes headed for the metro, planning to just ride until he cooled his head.

Mazer walked into the large room, and picked out the easily seen roped off area towards the counter. He walked over to the counter, and placed his PET on the counter with a smile.
"Good afternoon! I'm Mazer Patrovski, and I'd like to sign in for Machman.EXE's match today."

After a few minutes, Mazer was directed to the competition terminals and jacked in.

(CRAP SAME AS CEREAL)

A brief flashback later, Shigeru walked in the door, signed in, and proceeded to the spectator lounge.

Damian singed in as he walked to the arena...

Duke wandered into the room, looking for a moment as though he had no idea where he was or how he got there. This only lasted for a moment, however, before he made his way to the counter and signed in, then wandered off to the spectator lounge.

"Na'im bin Shaitan," Na'im said as he signed in and stopped in front of the door towards the arena. He took off his jacket and held it with one hand as he made it hang over his shoulder. "Let's see how this will go, Djinni," he said and entered the room.

Trenn walked back out into the main lobby of the Colosseum, looking a bit flushed. He quickly jotted down his and Soundman's names on the sign-up sheet, then walked back inside.