The Starlight Poetry Slam

Ty arrived moderately early; it seemed like a handful amount of volunteers, teachers and students had already begun to trickle in for the show. It wasn't nearly as crowded as he anticipated, though, and hoped that more people would eventually find their way down to the ballroom.
Grasping his bag of assorted foods, Ty made his way up to the judges table, pleased that he had gotten such an important part in this activity. Of course, he decided early on that he would have to be the blunt judge that spoke the truth. His fellow judges didn't look like they had what it took to really tell the contestants what they thought.

Plopping himself down in his chair, Ty's pale eyes wandered restlessly around the room as he dutifully ignored the other judge, searching for anyone he might know. In particular, one person. Not finding his roommate's familiar face, Ty's forehead creased momentarily, wondering why he would even look in the first place. It's not like the boy mattered to him or anything.
The room smelled good, anyway, and at least it had that going for it. There was even a little bar area for drinks, and Ty allowed himself to be impressed by the efforts of those who set all this up. Better than he had expected, anyway. A tiny volunteer trotted up to his seat to deliver hot chocolate, darting away as soon as the cup hit the table.

Bored already, Ty set his head on his hand, staring up at where the stage had been set up. "Ah, this is boring. When can we start?"

Aurélie Fée Perrault

Aurélie neither knew nor cared about the identities of the other judges, with a single exception. According to her sister, that arrogant mage she had quarreled with months ago had also signed up as a judge. Since the golden haired young lady actually wanted to participate in this event, the very idea of him being present was infuriating. There was a rumor circulating, however, that he had dropped the position at the last moment, or so she had heard. Hopefully, it was accurate but Aurélie knew better than to get her hopes up over such loose information.

She took her seat on the end of the judges' table, casting a cursory glance at the two people who already sat there. One, she recognized as her math professor. The other was a student she was unfamiliar with. Probably nobody worth too much of her attention, then. Still, it would impolite to remain silent while a question was being partially directed at her.

"Wait a while longer," Aurélie said patiently. "I do not believe that all of the contestants have arrived yet. Certainly, the other judges have not." But really, it would be no great loss if that arrogant man were to never show up.

Perhaps I should have him for tea, the golden haired young lady thought. Which was her way of mentally saying I should have him gunned down. There were telepaths around, after all. It would be no good if anybody were to hear that stray thought.

Someone was bored? Already? Well, that was going to be fixed in about three seconds!

Three...

Two...

One...

The moment one of the patients muttered 'contestants', the double doors of the poetry room burst open with a mighty kick and a roar of laughter came from the entrance. Light poured in from the outside, framing his hulking figure in a brilliant glow! Of course, people probably had a hard time seeing him from the entrance so he stepped further inside, oblivious to the nerd just inches away from beind squished behind the door. The poor thing trembled as Cross confidentally ran his thumb along the brim of his black scout cap. All eyes were on him now--mostly the students that came for the competition. "HAHAH! Cross Stark, ready for action!" He boasted, throwing his hands open, the thick tail of his trench coat flowing with his open-armed pose. He smiled big, pearly white canines glistening.

Some of the audiance gaped, others groaned, and all the scrawny nerdy-students gaped and basked in his glory.

He pivoted upon his heels, spinning and stopped, brandishing a fresh red rose to the nearest pretty lady...Who looked absolutely stumped. He winked with that swagger of a smile and pushed it into her hands. Suddenly he leapt for the stage, covering a considerable amount of distance and landed, boots thundering against the wooden floor! He grabbed up the mic, chuckling and full of confidence now that he was on stage.

Now people could get a better look at him and his trench coat, the olive drab tanktop, dogtags, and the loose dark blue cargos stuffed into his ankle-height boots. The leather gloves groaned as his hands balled into fists. He smashed them together, apparently ready to deliver an ass-beating. In a sense, that's exactly what he came for even though it looked as if he were ready to beat someone and strip for others at the same time.

The nerdy and creepy girls gushed over his solid biceps that flexed when he snatched up the mic, tensing his rolled up sleeves! He noted one of the creepy girls with braces eyeball him in that way and eagerly swiped her tongue over her big lips. She even grinned, exposing the mess of braces underneath. He began to sweat just a bit, slightly uneasy by such a sight and decided to focus on the judges instead. Once again he was smirking, loving that he was the focus point on the stage...

...Wait, the stage? Since when did fighting rings look like opera stages? And what was a stool doing here? Prop weapon?...But it's so tiny. His eyes drifted down to the tiny black stool and looked as if he were scrutinizing it for being so small. That was alright though, he didn't need furniture to beat the tar out of someone. It was a slam for crying out loud! "SO!" he pointed at the judges, basking in his glory, "Who's poetic-ass do I have to beat today! Bring it on!" He smacked his fists together, creating a BOOM from the mic that made quite a few jump. " Hey! It's YOU," his meaty finger now focused on Ty and Cross grinned. "Ready for round two, huh?! Ahahah! Come! Let us battle with the poetic movement of our fists!"

Poetry...Ahh, yes true art indeed.

Zero had arrived shortly after Cross easily sneaking in unnoticed. She was calm and collected. Poetry was her thing. She had just received an 'A' on her last English assignment with almost full marks. How hard would a poetry slam be. She looked at the stranger on the stage. A student she'd seen around but showed little interest in. She creeped over to a corner close to the stage. No one had noticed her which was good. She'd rather remain anonymous until the actual competition.

The behavior of her competitor defied logic. It was a poetry slam. A peaceful artistic art form to be expressed by words through competition...not beat-the-crap-out-of-your-opponent competition. She sighed keeping her thoughts to herself not caring about the mind-readers they can confront her if they want.

She watched on her mind racing through logical formulas and situations that she could possibly be put in. She thought of possible rhymes and poems and match-ups. Of course her strategy was simple. To enjoy herself. She rarely showed emotion even with what she wrote. This would be a good opportunity for her to mingle and make friends and open up even if just a little.

Ambrose gave a small weary sigh as he walked into the room, and quickly found himself regretting his decision. He was sure of his ability with words. He was a superb writer in every aspect. He was a natural. However, he did not like others watching him. He did not like people judging and criticizing him. He didn't handle it very well. Still, he had to bear it, as there was no backing out now.

With a quiet scan of the room, he walked in and found a seat, awaiting the competition to begin. Perhaps he could get this over with quickly, like pulling off a bandage. The faster you got it dine and over with, the less it hurt. However, he doubted very much so that it would be like that. It would probably be a somewhat lengthy event, and besides, the whole point of this was to be heard. People couldn't necessarily hear if your words were flying so fast that they came out as a jumble of noise.

He gave another weary sigh, then slumped a bit in his chair. It would be over soon, but not soon enough.

Torix was running a bit late as a result of trying to convince a certain student to go to the poetry slam—which sadly failed. Oh Ashton—that boy really needed to get out more. Oh well. Torix would not let his failed attempt to get Ashton to do something besides study all day get in the way of enjoying the poetry slam.

Torix himself had signed up to be a judge at the poetry slam on a whim after hearing about it. He liked the idea of the school trying something new, and figured he might as well be a part of it. Plus, having a background in theatre gave Torix a certain degree of poetry knowledge as well. He had spent time with some of the greatest known poets back in the day. Like, say, Shakespeare? But, you know, no biggie.

Also, a poetry slam was not simply about the poetry itself, but the presentation. That was where Torix would very much focus as a judge. Hundreds of years of acting meant that Torix could tell who was sincere during their performance, and who was just yelling for the sake of yelling.

He just happened to enter the ballroom as Cross was enjoying himself way too much on the stage. Was this the poetry slam, or did he accidentally end up in the middle of a wrestling tournament?? No, no, he was definitely at the right place…whether Cross was in the right place was up for debate.

“Heh. Poetic-ass,” Torix chuckled to himself as he joined the other judges at the table.

“Is this guy actually a contestant, or did he just jump up there for shits and giggles?”

Pham Thi Anh Sang

Anh Sang all but skipped into the room, butterflies flocking behind her. Seeing all of the people already in the room made her a little nervous but mostly, it just made her really excited. Probably, it wasn't the greatest idea for a ten year old to be in a poetry slam, especially since English wasn't her native language, but Anh Sang didn't care. Honestly, she was only there because she was bored, and also because she recognized Mister Cunningham's name on one of the fliers.

She didn't know if she could get away with putting Vietnamese and Japanese into her poetry but she'd most likely try it anyways. It wasn't like she thought she could win. After all, the other people there were older than her. If they couldn't beat her, then that would really, really funny. So funny, actually, that Anh Sang was going to try really, really hard to win!

The girl had come in behind a green or blue haired person which was just sooo cool! She had meant to go up and ask him about that but when she saw him again, he was sitting at a table with Mister Cunningham and some other people already. However, by that point, the person with the awesome hair was no longer the focus of Anh Sang's attention. That now went to the really muscly guy on the stage. She had no idea what he was talking about, even though the words made sense to her, but it sounded kind of nice. In a weird way.

Bouncing up onto the stage next to him, Anh Sang stared up at the funny muscly guy with wide eyes. "Hi, you're cool!" He was kind of scary, too, but he wasn't dinosaur scary so that was fine. "I'm Anh Sang!"

There was an awkward moment of silence…

…Then someone coughed, others chuckled, and he could have sworn someone farted somewhere across the room. No, that was probably him being suddenly nervous because the judges were looking at him funny…And why weren’t people dressed up for a beat down? Why was he the only one? Then the swag-looking guy chuckled after putting a bit of extra distance. Good. He didn’t look like a brawler anyway. He must be the referee. Then another guy made a remark about shitting and giggling, earning an ‘ew’ look from the big man. Freakin’ gross man, get a job. Nobody should be giggling and shitting at the same time. That was just…weird.

Speaking of weird, things began to grow more bizarre when a bubbly girl approached just to tell him how cool he was. Of course he was cool! Right now, she was feeding him some praise and he touched the rim of his hat in that ‘cool’ fashion with a chuckle of his own. ”Why thanks, sweetheart! I’m sure you know by now…” Little did he know, swag-man was approaching him while he flexed his muscles. ” And if you don’t know by now, YOU’LL DEFINITELY KNOW BY TODAY THAT I’M CROSS ST—Hey, c’mon man!” the mic was taken and now he was being shooed off the stage…Which was surprisingly easy to do even if Cross stood nearly a foot and a half taller than most people and probably weighed about a sum of four people combined.

Then he began talking. Who was this guy anyway? He was talking like a nerd…and then he talked about the rules. The..rules? Poems? It slowly started to piece together with an audible click in his head: This wasn’t a god damn fight match…THIS WAS TALKING ABOUT TOUCHY-FEELING THINGS IN…ART—WHATTHEHELL. His eyes grew big. Crap…Crap, crap he didn’t know a thing about p-poetry…or even understand the ones he read. All he could think was Nope, nope. No, no, no, no, no. Nope, nope, Shit. Well god dammit it was too late to back down now and Cross by default never backed down on challenges period. That would damage his reputation! No…No he wasn’t going to back down. He was going to BEAT THESE NERDS WITH WERDS!

And hopefully nobody was looking his way because he pulled out the black stool hidden in his trench coat and calmly placed it aside in a casual I wasn’t going to hit the host with this chair way. They didn’t even notice the stool went missing! He was hoping to draw first blood…But dammit, he had to do it…the fruity way.