The first to arrive was a party of four ten-year-olds, all in t-shirts with cute little dog pictures. Really. Ten. Years. Old. The very sight of the children on the not-at-the-moment-bloodied sand of the arena made Mary sick. It would be cool in the original one, as it was mostly a historical monument, but here… Ok, people died at the original one as well, and they may have had a higher grand total of deaths, but it was long ago, and for all she knew, this replica was active… And used by people much, much younger than her...

Mary stared at the children incredulously. Surely, they should have at least one hero with some experience? Or at least one that entered puberty? They darted straight for the child with a scar. Roy, was that his name? Well… Mary didn’t want to be too pessimistic, but from whatever angle she looked, it seemed like they all had their mid-life crises when arguing over unfinished porridge. She felt particularly bad for a little girl with a flying saucer above her shoulder, just like Mary's, who looked just as happy as Mary too. There was a chance that if the party was young enough, they wouldn’t be expected to face the same challenges as others, but...

“Next!” The clipboard operator made it official.

The next party barely looked underage at all. Two boys and a girl, with matching black leather outfits, supplemented with occasional silver spikes. What was it with black colour that made it everyone’s favourite? I mean, it looked cool, but it got warm really quickly, and for crying out loud, they were basically in the middle of a desert... They looked the selectees over and asked Dennis a couple of questions, completely ignoring the rest. From what Mary understood, they wanted a healer, but Dennis would only go for a carry position. For what reason he would want to become a porter rather than a doctor escaped her understanding.

“Next!” The woman really knew how to use her voice.

Still, the boy wasn’t wrong when he spoke about second offers - he got the first one fairly soon, and from a decent-looking team no less. After not nearly fifteen minutes, it was down to Mary, Paolo and Martin - Melanie somehow twisted her way into a party that looked so wizard-ish that Mary was actually surprised that they didn’t have long, grey beards. They would look less out of place on their teenage faces than bare skin did. Mary wished she knew how many parties were waiting in line - that would give her some indication of how much she should be worrying by now.

There was one party that particularly drew her attention. Most people so far didn’t show off any abilities - there was one kid that floated a foot or so above the ground, and a few displayed some unnatural appearance bits like shining eyes. And then, he arrived.

“Next!” Came the perfectly familiar voice of the clipboarder. Mary started to wonder if she had been using magic - each time the voice came in the exact same height, exact same volume...

First came a team leader, and he seemed normal enough. Well… normal given the circumstances, and in modern clothing contrasting with the arena’s ancient feel, but still. Mary was almost bored at this point, despite all the stress, and a single glance at the guy told her that it would stay that way. But then…

The boy was around her age, wore simple jeans and a dark leather jacket. There was something floating around him, like a swarm of golf balls, only… extremely not golf balls, since from what she read, those were supposed to fall into holes, and for that, they’d need to have at least some regard for gravity. Small, white, round-ish pinpricks of light casually followed the teenager as if they had nothing better to do. It creeped her out for some reason. It might have been due to all those little lights around the boy, but his shadow seemed not to fit the silhouette nearly as close as it should have.

What struck Mary as strange even in this place was that he kept his eyes shut. He seemed to orient himself around pretty well, though. Once he came closer, Mary got a better look at the swarm-ish, shine-ish oddity and took a step back - they weren’t exactly round, they looked almost like… eyes…

“... and so, we’d like a healer. Though, to be honest, we could use anyone, really.” The leader gave them the usual pitch, half of which Mary missed entirely. She perked up at the last bit - it was as close to an invitation as she got so far. And the leader was of the smiling kind, which was just right for her. Maybe she could…

The shining points vanished, and for a moment, Mary saw the same light shine from below the strange boy’s eyelids. It was orange-warm, but that was probably due to passing through the flesh. Still… yup, creepy as heck. Mary glanced nervously at the leader, who didn’t seem too concerned. More like… impatient?

“We’ll take Paolo,” the creepy one announced. It sounded neither like a question nor an invitation. He simply stated the fact as if expecting the universe to go along with it. The strange light quickly died down. Even then, Mary wouldn’t mistake him for anyone normal. There was something within that boy, something she couldn’t describe. He seemed out of place, but usually, that meant that someone should simply be somewhere else, and that was not the case here - there wasn’t a single place that Mary could imagine this particular boy belonging to.

The leader paused for a moment, then shrugged and turned to the pale kid. “You heard him. Wanna go with us?”

There was a visible hesitation on Paolo’s face, but not for long. They looked competent, and competent most likely… hopefully… meant able to survive. The two of them trailed off to the clipboard operator to make things official, but the creep lingered a little longer. Half turned away so that only Mary would see his face, he opened his eyes and looked straight at her. Or, well, so she assumed - his eyeballs were pure black, and she couldn’t be sure. Actually, Mary was completely sure anyway, but that’s beside the point. The strange void stared at her in a way that she could almost physically feel. She was sure that if she held that gaze long enough, she would end up consumed by the blackness, never to return to the world of the living.

“See you in three days,” he whispered and shut his eyes again. In seconds, he was surrounded by the white swarm again. He didn’t look back… or maybe he did. Mary couldn’t really tell which way the floating stuff was directed.

“You know,” Martin said to her once the party left, “I should probably envy Paolo right now, but I really don’t.”

Mary couldn’t help but agree.

“Next!”

Martin was chosen shortly after by another two-person team. They looked like siblings and apparently wanted a carry for a change. They exchanged a few words with Mary, but it was obvious who they’d go for from the get-go. So, Mary would be chosen last. What a surprise. She… she would be chosen, right?

“Next!” There was that voice again.

Well, maybe she should think of something positive. Yes, positivity. Positivity was good. At least there weren’t any lions behind the metal gates placed into the walls, sharpening their claws to cut her skin open. So much positivity. Oh, and there weren’t any sharks in sight either…

She didn’t know what to do with herself when more and more parties came and went. There was something in quickly fading memories of her training about getting a party, but it was mostly the “it is very important” kind of stuff, not “here’s how to do it in three easy steps:”.

And so, Mary tried to smile more.

“Next!”

Then she tried to look professional instead.

“Next!”

Maybe it was Mossie? Did it make people uncomfortable around her? There wasn’t much she could do about that…

“Next!”

And then, slowly, a sinking feeling introduced itself to her stomach. Why couldn’t Bromman give her a quick rundown of using a first-aid kit instead of useless advice?

“Next!”

Mary didn’t know how long the queue was, but her legs, still not entirely recovered from yesterday’s staircase hiking, were already staging a coup against her. At some point, she stopped looking up when the clipboard operator yelled, “Next!”. The parties stopped trying to talk to strike even the most polite conversations, opting to leave as they got a look at her.

She failed. She wasn’t going to get any party, and Bromman would be disappointed in her, and she couldn’t even remember what would happen to her at this point, and -

“So, I guess it’s just you and us, isn’t it?” A friendly voice said in front of her.

She looked up to see a kindly face that would probably be best described as older-brotherly. As expected, there was an entire body attached to that, and it didn’t spoil the impression. Somehow, the boy’s leathery armour even boosted the feeling. A couple feet behind him stood an older-sisterly girl with a skirt that could probably better serve as a blindfold given its length. The top didn’t leave much to the imagination either. If her silver-ish hair was even just a bit longer, it would probably provide more decency than that scrap of fabric. Back home, if Sister Angelica could see her, she’d probably have a fit. Heck, even Sister Katia wouldn’t just walk by if she saw Mary wearing something like that...

“What do you mean?” Mary asked, blinking the tears away.

“We were the last in the queue. It’s either going with us or a loner’s short career, honey.” The girl answered.

“And as you can see, we don’t have much of a choice either, so let’s just make it formal. Would you like to join our party?” He said, stretching a hand towards her.

Mary paused for a second, then took it. “As long as I don’t have to wear what she wears.”

The girl laughed at the comment, and all three went to sign the papers.