Chapter 83 The Game Of Tag— Conclusion

Five minutes had already passed and yet, after such a short time, Satoshi, Hiroshi, and Sana were the only ones left who hadn't been caught. They were able to survive up until now but the situation has changed. Currently, everyone is targeting them in a race against time as to who will be able to tag them first. It would be a great honor to tag the remaining players after all, and it seemed like everyone was thinking the same thing.

"What should we do now? Should we just give up?"

"No," Satoshi simply said. They've gotten this far after using their plan. And now, it's time for them to survive as long as possible before the Principal and the others it's managed to tag them. Doing so was easy, they just had to hide from plain sight and continue moving around while watching out for their surroundings. But they knew for sure that the Principal could sense where they were and he was just waiting for them to let their guard down.

"Do you need anything else?" Sana said, glad that Hiroshi finally woke up and the awkward atmosphere manifesting from them disappeared completely. "I have about three buffs left, all of which are superpower buffs."

"It's all right, I don't need anything yet. So, what's the plan, Satoshi? How do we intend to hold out for a time?" Hiroshi said. Whatever it is that Satoshi planned to do, he decided to support him since that's the closest he could get to victory. If it meant swallowing his pride and licking Satoshi's foot, he would gladly do so if it resulted to him getting better results. And right now was such a time. Even if he wanted to separate from the group and do his own thing, he knew that his survival will drastically increase if he stuck to Satoshi like glue. It may be an underhanded tactic but right now, he wanted to win no matter what.

"Can you dig a hole big enough for the three of us? Not too deep though." Satoshi asked Hiroshi.

"Sure, why?"

"We'll stay there until time runs out."

Hiroshi nodded, pressing his palms on the ground while he tried to make the earth do his bidding. Pretty soon, a hole was getting dug. It won't be long before they could conveniently stall while everyone desperately tried to search for them.

For starters, Satoshi's plan is to let Hiroshi dig a hole, then the three of them will stay there while he covered the hole with water affected by his 'Droplet' familiar. With this, no one would be able to find them. Even Kurogami won't be able to sense them even though they'll be only a few feet underground.

Then again, it's such a cowardly and underhanded tactic to do, but that would net their victory no matter what so Satoshi was quite pleased with his plan.

SMASH!

But just when his plan was starting to materialize, Hiroshi's face suddenly got buried on the ground as the Principal appeared out of nowhere and smashed him. Red Velvet was also thrown out of the way when Principal Sai Tama blew her away by back-slapping her shoulder. "So this is where you were," The Principal muttered.

The Principal then let out a shout, calling everyone to where he was. In just mere seconds, everyone surrounded Satoshi with the intent to capture him. Of course, whoever touches him would be the real winner of the training session since he was the last man standing. And not only that, everyone unanimously agreed that Satoshi was the last boss of the training session for some reason. Even the Principal was in on it. After all, he could've easily tagged Satoshi and then proceeded to tag Red Velvet and Hiroshi.

It was a scene straight out of a movie where the protagonist makes his final stand against a horde of enemies. Satoshi felt his determination and adrenaline welling up inside him as every lesson his dad taught him replayed in his mind. He didn't know whether he was ready or not, all he knew is that he should survive as long as possible— and he could only do that if he were to squeeze every ounce of his skill.

In a split second, Satoshi jumped up and rode on his Nailgun just when the Principal and Siril charged at him. He was unlucky though since Kurogami managed to freeze one of his Nailguns since its shadow was on the ground. With only one Nailgun on his right leg left, he flew upwards, summoning his White Lion since it was more comfortable to ride on its back. He didn't call back his Nailgun though since he could still use them to shoot at the others and limit their movements. The next thing he did was to shoot some Nails at Kurogami so he would lose focus, and then the other Nailgun was free. Now he was a flying tank that shoots nails and lightning.

,m Out of all the participants of the game of tag, only two of them could actually fly— Siril and Kuroe. Well, Principal Sai Tama technically couldn't fly but he could jump really high. He didn't want to try it out though since he was susceptible to the lightning attacks of the White Lion. Jumping towards Satoshi would one hundred percent give him electrocution.

As for Siril, he was basically sitting duck in the air. He may be fast and bulky, but he was too big of a target. One command from Satoshi and he would be riddled with nails all over his body.

In short, it was all up to Kuroe to bring Satoshi down on the ground.

While everyone eagerly waited below, Shiroi and Hiroshi started shooting projectiles towards Satoshi, hoping that one of them would at least hit. Satoshi deflected them with the nails he shot from the Nailguns though, but he was having great difficulty dealing with them while avoiding Kuroe's projectiles as well. Thanks to Satoshi's familiar Dex, Kuroe's psychic attacks don't work on Satoshi anymore. But that's because Kuroe wasn't using her maximum power.

"It won't be long before my familiars run out of energy... assuming that they run out of energy. By then, what should I do?" Satoshi asked himself as an ice spike whizzed past his face.

"Satoshi, come down here and run like a man." The Principal screamed, making Satoshi stop in surprise.

That window of opportunity was more than enough for the Principal to jump up and try to reach Satoshi. But Satoshi was quick to react and he jumped out of his White Lion and dove headfirst towards the ground. He then called his White Lion back Orb Oboros and summoned him again so he won't fall to his death.

Crack!

For some reason, Satoshi felt chills run up and down his spine as if something wrong was about to go down. Before he knew it, he impulsively ducked and that made him tilt too forward that he fell on the ground and the White Lion stopped going forward.

But he was a moment too late. As soon as he fell on the ground, Fuuka appeared out of nowhere and fell on top of him, his face buried on her chest. His face reddened at the sudden event and he didn't know how to react. His first instinct was to get up and run but then he thought that doing so would just hurt Fuuka since she fell on him. In the end, he resigned to his fate and stayed lying down.

"What just happened?" He asked inwardly. It was all too sudden that even his fastest of impulses and instincts couldn't react on time.

"Um, sorry, are you okay? I still couldn't control my powers that well." Fuuka gently said as she slowly stood up and offered a hand towards Satoshi.

'A girl's hand? There's no way!' was the first thought that occurred in his mind so he just effortlessly stood up without taking his hand and decided to dust himself off. "No, it's all right. That was quite a nice surprise attack. I didn't even see it coming."

"No, I'm sorry. Are you hurt anywhere?"

Time took a standstill as everyone watched the scene unfold in front of them. They couldn't believe that Fuuka, of all people, was the one who managed to capture Satoshi. She managed to get the trophy under their noses by 'teleporting' or something along those lines towards Satoshi. Hiroshi and Shiroi were speechless as well since they were the ones who desperately shot at Satoshi while Kuroe did her best in distracting him and sneakily trying to tag him.

"And that ends our Game of Tag for today. Satoshi, your plan would've worked perfectly had you covered all the holes on it. You're already a pretty good superhero, even more, powerful than most professionals. One piece of advice though, it will be better if you expand your arsenal of familiars if possible because that will help you in the long run. It will also give you infinite possibilities in formulating plans and such."

Clap! Clap!

"That's it for the Game of Tag, you're all dismissed. Please keep in mind all the advice I gave you and contemplate on it over the weekend. I wish you all the best of luck in the upcoming inter-high tournament!" Principal Sai Tama continued before he turned around and exited the Training Center.