"Excuse me? What did you just say?" She fumed, knitting her brows in agitation.
"You heard me," he replied in a deadpan manner. "You're a spoiled, self-centered, entitled brat," he finished, causing the woman before him to clench her fists in rage...
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The preliminary rounds continued on as one by one, half of the contestants were eliminated, leaving thirty-two trainers left in the conference championships. Felicity had just finished trouncing her opponent, marking the end of the first round of the preliminaries. A one hour intermission had begun which meant that battles would resume again at one o'clock sharp. Thus far, Seth and his friends had managed to make it by the first preliminary bout as they'd all hoped and were spending the break in a manner of their choosing. For Seth, that meant taking time to study up on possible opponents for the next preliminary match.
As he looked at the board, he saw that there were only a few from Allie's competition left in the conference including himself. Grayson was on the list as well as two others named Vincent and Hugo. After his match, Seth had been able to watch their battles to determine just how much of a threat they posed. He'd battled Grayson before and knew exactly what the man was capable of. They had battled once over the course of his journey and based on that, Seth determined that he was quite possibly one of his biggest obstacles when it came to the final requirement of the contest.
Hugo looked as though he'd pose a problem as he'd managed to make quick work of his opponent without too much difficulty, and after getting a better look at him, Seth recognized him as the other trainer that he'd met at Viola's gym. Then there was Vincent, another powerful trainer by the looks of things who also, like Hugo, managed to overwhelm his opponent and come out victorious. They were both cunning and, by the looks of things, very thorough with the training they gave their teams.
"Looks like I've got quite the road ahead of me don't I?" Seth said to himself as he looked at the remaining contenders.
"You say that like you don't relish the challenge."
Seth turned his head and looked over his shoulder, unsurprised to see his mentor standing just a few feet behind him. Mathilde smirked when she caught his eye, and walked casually up beside him and looked up at the standings that were posted.
"Don't you have wedding duties to attend to or something?" Seth inquired, arching his brow as his teacher gave him a side-long glance.
"I do, but there isn't anything that says the bride-to-be can't slip away for a bit now is there? Mine and my husband's wedding, our rules," Mathilde said grinning. "Besides, did you honestly think I was going to miss any of this? What kind of teacher would I be if I skipped out?"
"Point taken," Seth replied while looking away. "So... about what happened last month...."
Mathilde sighed and placed a hand on Seth's shoulder while gently tilting his head up to look her in the eyes.
"You needn't worry about it. If you're worried that I'm angry with you for what you did, you should know that I'm not angry at all. I had a feeling that something like that was going to happen, so I left it up to your discretion," Mathilde replied, letting go of his chin and smiling.
