September 28th, Tug-of-War

Master Boucher and Master Dalrymple gathered the two guilds together for a quick announcement. "We will be having our next competition of the day!" Master Boucher exclaimed. "It will be a Tug of War!" Whispers rippled in the two guilds. "These competitions will be team-building exercises between your own guilds. No working together with the opposing guild. If we catch you doing so, you will be disqualified." All nodded in agreement, who would betray their guild and work with the other guild? Whispers of "as if" spread through the crowd. Now, the act was forbidden. It was war, and they had to win. They were the best guild, and now was their chance to prove it. "Now, it is imperative that the Alpha boys line up over here," and he pointed, "And the Gamma boys line up over there." And he pointed again. The male apprentices lined up in the assigned areas and grasped the rope. The Gammans snickered.

"We are so gonna win!" grinned a Gamma boy, "There's no way they can beat us! Not after all we've been through! They may have won the basketball contest, but strength is our thing." They all laughed, though inside they were worried. Losing this would symbol the loss of the war, it would mean Alpha was the best unit. They couldn't have that. This caused tension to grow between the boys, more than there already was. The Alphans, aggravated and ready for competition, squeezed the rope even tighter. If they won, they would be the best unit. They would win the unspoken war, and bring victory home. Master Bottino stood in the middle of the rope and held it so that no member would begin early. He glanced at Master Dalrymple. He nodded.

"Begin!" yelled Master Bottino, and he dropped the rope. Immediately, force was applied and both sides began to pull with all their might. Heavy breathing was heard all around, breaths of determination. Suddenly, the silence was broken by cheers of encouragement. There were many grunts in the air, but this was no competition. The Gammans seemed to pull harder. Worried, the Alphians tried even harder and pulled with more persistence than the world has ever seen. The Gammans were shocked, they were no longer easily pulling. The Alphans were finally putting their all and the Gammans were pulled forward suddenly. Still, it wasn't enough. It went back and forth between the two, but all of a sudden the winner was obvious. With one final pull, the Gammans sent the Alphans to the ground. All at once, the Alpha boys collapsed with a depressed sigh. They didn't notice anything strange except for the fact that they had lost. Meanwhile, the boys on the back of the Gamma side were confused. At the last second, when it seemed the Alphans had won, they felt like there were more people than before helping them. Yet at the end when they turned around, the strange presence was gone.

"That was so unfair," and Alphan groaned. "I was watching at the end, the Gammans were almost doubling us."

"What are you talking about? I was watching at the beginning and there were more of you!" A student of Gamma angrily replied.

A few if the girls that were watching were confused. At the beginning, it had seemed as if the Alphans would win with their great numbers. Yet at the end, it seemed like the Alphans were a small sandcastle getting crushed by the tidal wave of Gammans. The numbers seemed to have changed but they had watched, both at the beginning and end all the boys had participated. No other could have done it, there were no girls going in and no other units in the park. Or were there? Once in a while a person meets someone who supposedly was in their unit but they had never met. One girl thought. Pushing it aside, she thought, Maybe those people simply weren't in any classes with me.

Interrupting the girls' thoughts, Master Dalrymple ordered the girls to do what the boys had just done. The girl, dismissing her earlier thoughts quickly went to her side, ready to pull with all her might. The Gammans, looking at the numbers, quickly noticed there was double the amount of Alphans to Gammans.

"Oh no! There is so many more Alphans! What will we do?" One Gamman panicked. The other Gamman quickly went to calm down the frantic one.

" Well, just because they have big numbers doesn't mean they're strong. We should think of a strategy. Hmm, maybe we should grab the rope and run the other way?"

"That's a great idea!" Choruses of agreement filled the air as they prepared to run. The stood one on the left, one on the right, one on the left, one on the right, and on and on. Only the ones in the back turned around so the Alphans wouldn't copy them. Master Bottino held the middle once more.

"Ready, set..." the Alphans and Gammans were both ready, waiting. However, just before Master Bottino said go, all the Alphans felt a strong tug. The Gammans were confused too, none of them had been pulling. Until they saw a monster of a girl that no one recognized.

" What are you doing?" a Gamman asked, "Lord Bottino hasn't yet said go! We want to win but not by cheating!" The girl paid no heed and pulled as hard as she could. Everyone was wondering who she was and what she was doing.

"Go!"At that moment Master Bottino let go, causing most of the Alphans to be thrown off balance by the girl. Regaining their footing, they attempted to pull it back. All the Gammans forgot their suspicions of another unit at the park and got caught in the heat of the battle. But it seemed as though the Alphan's numbers were lessening while the Gammans were increasing. Suddenly, the Gammans pulled, causing the Alphans to go flying forward. It happened so fast, that nobody really could understand it. What had caused the Gammans sudden increase in numbers and strength? Even the Gammans were baffled. They had thought the Alphans were going to win, but they didn't. The Alphans marched up to the Gammans in protest.

"You cheated! You started early!" The Alphans yelled at the Gammans. "That was no fair! Plus you had more people than us." They all stared grudgingly at each other. "This is why we don't trust Gammans!"

"No way, you so had more people anyway! None of us started early!" The Gammans shouted back. They stared back. Quickly, it became a full out heated argument. None of them noticed the one girl who hadn't joined them, until a soft cry filled the air. Both guilds spun around, to see, a single girl laying on the grass. Her golden locks gleamed in the sunlight as she tried to hold back her tears of pain. In their argument and fury with each other, one of the apprentices had been hurt. Both sides quickly went to comfort the one apprentice as she tried to remain strong. When the Gammans had pulled, she had fallen over. The rope had cut her neck, giving her a rope burn, and then some other apprentices had collapsed on her.

Not wanting to become a damsel in distress she had not said anything. Now a group of apprentices accompanied her to the healer. There she was treated for her burn. It was also then, that the two guilds began to realize how idiotic the war between the two units were. In their blind fury, somebody was forced to pay the price, and it wasn't fair for her. They all acted so selfishly and didn't realize what idiots they were being in the heat of competition. Both guilds decided to meet up again, and talk it out.

"I think we should find more peaceful means to end this war. Somebody got hurt, and we never meant nor thought that would happen. Both of our units are the best, so can we settle with that?" The Gamma student leader asked, hoping that the Alphans would agree. Everyone looked around ad nodded in agreement. A chill of unhappiness from an unknown source blew through the air, but nobody seemed to notice. "But don't worry, we can still have some friendly competitions." Little did they know, it wouldn't be friendly for long, that they would once again, be at each other's throats.

"I agree. I always thought that both our guilds were the best, but I heard that you thought your guild was better so..." the Alphan replied confused.

"Wait what? We never thought that... What does that mean? We thought you started thinking that. Also, you kept using the swings for a long time too, and we wanted to go on."

"Oh, we wanted to go on the seesaw. You kept using that for a very long time. You didn't ask us. We would have let you on! Basically, you wanted the swings, we wanted the seesaws. That was a really stupid argument, wasn't it!" The Alphans and Gammans couldn't help laughing. It was so idiotic, their argument. "It was really pointless, wasn't it?" And they all giggled. "Let's agree never to fight over something so stupid ever again!"

"Agreed!" they all shouted. Cold whispers rippled in the crowd of Alphans and sent a chill down the spine of all that were standing there, but they ignored it, believing it was the wind. Happy chatter filled the air as the peace between Gammans and Alphans was established once more.