A False Start Toward the Future – by CrimCat
Jayne was ready. At long last, in mere minutes they would be called down, and their role in the tournament would begin. It had been a long trek—basically an adventure in and of itself—to make it all the way to this gigantic, terrifying, city… but it was here that their legacy would begin. They smiled at their partner, Languravi. He was calm and collected, always cool. Their goal was to make their partner known as The Languravi (and eventually The Languraw and The Langurana [Or was it Languaranana? They never remember how many -na’s are on that stage]), thus they never gave their partner a more personal name. They were confident that their partner would be the measuring stick his species was known by.
To calm their nerves, Jayne focused inward on the difficult training the duo had undergone for the past two years. …Wait, they HAD trained for this, right? Memories of TV, video games, comics and a dizzying array of thousands of bags of consumed potato chips swarmed through their head. Oh wait, no there was that time, yes, on the field… oh right, they decided to head back in because the sunlight was bothering their eyes.
Jayne told themself to just breathe. Obediently their lungs took a breath, followed by another, and another, and they just kept coming entirely too rapidly. Okay, this is fine, they urged themself to look to their partner, to be reassured and escape this definitely-not-a-panic-attack.
Languravi met their eyes, they drew on how calm he was, how collected and… IS THAT PITY!? They screamed not entirely silently nor entirely in their own head: Noooo, don’t look at me with such judgmental and dismissive pity, I can’t withstand that right now!
A moment later, Languravi produced a metal flask out of nowhere and took a long drink from the obvious contraband held within. And thus, they found themselves thoroughly distracted by wondering how the heck he managed to find booze, let alone sneak it into the prep room for the tournament. Followed by the horrified realization that this was probably why their partner seemed so unflappable, followed by openly freaking out wondering just how drunk he was.
They tried to quash it all down, bottle the fears and concerns no matter how increasingly rational and obvious they were. It didn’t matter anymore; they were as ready as they were going to get. This would be the start of their legacy and together with Languravi they could handle anything this tournament would throw at them. They were here to win! And with that self-affirmation, they were called to the field for their slot in the preliminaries.
Two minutes of pure nope later, they found themselves in the stands instead.
Jayne managed to convince themself that that little boy with the Raivalp was just freakishly strong, but no he was taken out in mere seconds in the next round of preliminaries and the commentator said something about that being one of the most disappointing matches yet. Jayne was quite certain that everyone in attendance glanced at them when she said that, despite literally no one doing such a thing.
The one that knocked out Raivalp was taken out in the round after, followed by the one that took them out losing. Finally, that person got seeded into the tournament, where the next day they would lose on their second match. That victor, at least, with his Cervistral, made it into the Top 4 of their tier of the tournament.
By that point, Jayne felt like the greatest failure of an AetherRen in history. Languravi’s drunken snores were a poor balm for the sting of abject and complete failure.
By the time the duo had returned home, Jayne had mostly gotten over the pain, as long as they didn’t think about it or remember their haunted dreams. They had rediscovered their determination. They had learned their lesson. Next time would be different, they would truly be ready by then. There was another—admittedly smaller and less prestigious—tournament in the area in a little over eight months. If they trained hard, they could truly be ready by then.
…But they decided to start tomorrow. Languravi had already produced a bottle of wine out of some hidey hole, after all. Plus they did miss multiple episodes of their favorite shows during the travels for that tournament… And indulging in just one bag of the new limited edition Nacho Flavored Beef Bowl flavored potato chips they had been looking forward to couldn’t hurt, right?
Fin.
(Originally published on the Aethermon Discord server.)