“Hang on tight. I’m going to take you directly to the Coliseum.”

Candi clung onto his neck and tried not to close her eyes. This would be the third time that she traveled in his flying arms.

“Is this how you and your guests normally travel from the Landing Field?”

He laughed.

“No. Usually we take a hover pod from there to wherever we need to go, but we also don’t normally get shot at while attempting to land.”

“Why were they shooting at us?”

He laughed.

“They know they can’t hurt me with their puny weapons. It was just to stall for time.”

Candi nodded, not quite understanding what he meant by ‘stalling for time’ but she was too distracted by the view below her to ask.

From the air, his world was an orderly grid of greens and blues, with yellows and pinks interspersed.

They were flying low enough so she could see the rectangular plots of what she supposed were agricultural farm grids.

There were also dense tree tops which looked amazingly like densely clustered broccoli heads from her vantage point.

It was a short flight.

The agricultural and forested lands gave way to perfectly aligned streets that were grids of squares and rectangles up until it got to the coliseum. Then the streets spiraled towards the circular opening of the coliseum, looking like spokes on a round wheel.

“Hang on. We are going to drop directly in through the top.”

“Why?” Candi protested. “Can’t we walk in through the doors like normal people?”

“We’re out of time. Look. All seven contestants are already standing on the dais.”

Candi’s eyes grew round with amazement. The bowl-shaped coliseum was completely filled with spectators! At the center was a huge round dais upon which a small group was standing.

The noise coming from the spectators was almost deafening. They were cheering and hollering at the seven who were standing there.

“Looks like their plan was to waylay us long enough to disqualify you from the initial qualification round.”

“What—what does this round require me to do?”

“Oh this is not even part of the seven competitions. This is just to check credentials.” He laughed.

“What credentials?” Candi gasped. She didn’t have her wallet on her with all her identification papers from Earth. How was she supposed to prove her identity?

“Your Avgo credentials. When the judges ask you for it, call to the Avgo and have it hover over you in the same way you showed my father.”

They were approaching the top lip of the coliseum and Slate began to shift her body from his grasp.

“Hang on. I’m going to drop you down into the dais to join the other women. Get ready.”

Slate banked around the coliseum and swooped down.

As he soared over the heads of the contestants, he lowered Candi to the ground. Once her feet touched the dais, he let go.

At the speed they were traveling, she had to run a few steps and then drop into a roll to slow her momentum down.

Once she had stabilized her body, she sprang back up and stood, waving up into the bright blue sky at Slate to indicate that she was perfectly fine.

He waved a hand in acknowledgement as he continued spiraling above the coliseum on his large bat wings, casting a dark shadow over everyone below.

The crowd went wild!

Above the sound of the whooping and hollering of the crowd was the announcer.

“Oh My Stars! I can’t believe we have another contestant! Ladies and Gentlemen! It looks like we have an eighth and final contestant to join the group on the stage this beautiful summer day!”

More cheering, more clapping, more stomping of the feet.

It was the kind of cheering that spectators and audiences gave to their favored teams. They were here to watch an exciting show and this most definitely started the show with a BANG!!!

“Wow! What a stunning turn of events!”

The announcer projected his voice above the roar of the crowd in the coliseum as the visuals zoomed in on all eight contestants on the dais.

The faces of the 8 women began rotating around the coliseum in extreme closeup.

Candi saw her face among the eight on the huge virtual screens and struggled not to laugh.

The women standing around her were coiffed and prepared with exquisite care from the tops of their heads to the perfectly manicured tips of their toes.

And here she was, with her windblown and wild looking blonde hair, no makeup, and wearing a white burglar cat suit that was anything but glamorous.

Thank goodness this was not the beauty contest or she would have been disqualified immediately.

“This is turning into a wild hot development, People! What was supposed to have been only seven contestants has turned into a spectacle!!!”

He growled with excitement, the sound reverberating throughout the entire coliseum.

“The EIGHTH contestant drops down from the sky in the arms of none other than our very own Prime Warrior of Erenveil, Prince Slate!”

WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!!!!

The crowd screamed in adoration, waving their arms in wild anticipation.

“What a lucky girl! What a once in a lifetime opportunity to be that close to one of our devastatingly handsome Princes! Oh My Stars!!!”

“Now that all the contestants have arrived, let’s introduce each one, so you can begin to pick your favorite candidate! Of course, the final judging is in the hands of the judges, but we can still have a public favorite contest, yes we can!!!”

The announcer began to joke and chat with the audience.

The spot where Candi stood was, accidentally, at the front so the visuals paused on her quite often. Being literally dropped from the sky also boosted her visuals quite a bit.

She looked around at the audience. They were mostly humanoid in shape but there were quite a few that definitely did not look human.

There were flashes of lights and columns of colored smoke spiraling upward into the blue sky. The cacophony of noise and smoke and lights was dizzying and discombobulating, but it was also energizing and awe-inspiring.

The round white dais she was standing on along with the other seven contestants had seven small round platforms, all of which was occupied by a contestant. She was the only one standing in front of them without a small round platform to stand on.

“Ladies and Gentlemen! Here is the run-down on the contestants of the Avgo. This is not, I repeat, NOT their rankings since we have not yet started the judging process. This is simply the order in which they arrived onto the dais.”

“Are we ready???”

YEAAAAHHHHH!!!