Winter knew. She already knew. There was a reason the three of them were prisoners to these bracelets. A logic behind the colors. There was a connection here. One that Winter, did not yet know the nature of. Sam and Jax had never been in a team together, yet coincidentally this year they were. The person in control, predicted the outcome. They weighed the risk. It was all to produce one thing: the purple flame. That fire that matched her bracelet. What was her role to play in all of this? Who wanted to make sure she found out?
For a few moments, Winter could do nothing more than get lost in the labyrinth of her thoughts. She tried to figure out the puzzle that someone set in front of her. Winter remembered herself when a dagger nicked her ear. She spun and saw another team approaching them, emboldened by Winter's advance. Jax and Sam crouched into defensive positions, ready for the attack. Out of nowhere, morning turned into night. Either someone manipulated the sky to gain an advantage under the shroud of darkness or the teachers decided to make things more interesting by impairing their vision. Winter heard hollering and brought her attention back to the ground. The team circled Jax and Sam's station like a flock of hungry vultures. There was a boy at the head of the pack, blonde haired and average height. He faced his team and called out, "Finally we knock these two down a peg. Take their flag!" Winter could tell he was of the dumb arrogant type. Winter watched as he turned his greedy eyes onto Jax and Sam. The leader shouted a war cry and his team sprung into action. The sparks rose again to protect the flag. A lanky girl with a weaker version of the telekinesis Winter had witnessed minutes before, threw boulders at Sam and Jax. The boulders were easily caught and the trajectories were reversed. There was a shorter girl with the power of speed who appeared. The leader whispered something in her ear. As a pre-emptive measure, Jax materialized ice on the ground to reduce her speed. Winter blinked. Jax and Sam were elementals too? Elementals were relatively powerful, but even more so when the elements were not the limit of their abilities. For Jax and Sam, they barely scratched the surface of their power. Winter swallowed. There was nothing for her to do, but she needed them to win. The odds were purposefully stacked against them. They were being attacked from all sides, completely outnumbered. She couldn't fight alongside them, because that would counteract the weak act she put on during practice. She had to take a different approach. Winter snuck away from the site of the confrontation and waited. She observed as one of the attackers shapeshifted into a tiger and bolted at Sam. Before its claws were able to sink in, Jax shifted. A light shot out of his hand, singeing the tiger's fur. It fell to the ground and transformed back to a feeble looking boy. Winter etched his appearance into her mind as a healer scampered out of the shadows to attend to the boy. When she thought Sam and Jax were sufficiently distracted, Winter edged closer. She crawled toward the flag. Again, she plunged her hand into the purple embers. Just as she wrapped her fingers around the flagpole, a rough hand yanked her wrist. Her whole body jerked. Winter gasped softly and found herself staring into fiery, all-consuming red eyes. There was unusual movement from the shadows and Winter found herself shouting, "Look out!" just as a red haired girl emerged and sunk a dagger into Sam's forearm. He released his grip, his blood spilling from the wound. The girl and the dagger had disappeared. Winter drew closer to him slowly. Sam glared at her. She rose her hands to placate him as she would a wild animal. His hostility didn't ebb. Frustrated, Winter pulled his arm. Sam's anger was contagious. So much so, that Winter had a strong urge to punch something. Instead, she examined the deep gash. Winter positioned her hands over it gently and closed her eyes. When she looked down at his wound, there were no remnants of an injury. Satisfied, she pulled away from him. Sam maintained his expression of disinterest until rushing back to the battlefield to Jax's aid.
Winter rubbed at her wrist. She slipped her hand through the blaze and tugged on the flag. When it was in her hands, she slinked away towards a stack of crates near an edge of the battlefield. Winter noticed something shimmer and she reached out her hand. There was a crackling sound and she flinched back. Winter picked up a jagged rock and tossed it near the shimmer. A ripple moved throughout the blackness. The battlefield was enveloped by an impenetrable forcefield. It made sense. It was there to protect the onlookers from the chaos inside the field. Winter stared at it. But it was also to prevent anyone inside from getting out. Her eyes roamed back to where the discord ensued. She heard an angry shout. It was Jax. He had just noticed that their flag was gone. Winter tightened her hands around it. The fighting went on until the leader of the offensive team realized the flag was missing and that their energy was being wasted. Winter waited as the arrogant boy motioned his hand, "Find the person who stole it and bring them to me." His team moved like water, absorbing his every word. They moved at his command, dispersing to find the purple flag. Winter stayed where she was a little while longer, regarding each person who came into her field of vision with caution. She leaned forward. Upon further inspection, Winter realized that there were a few people popping in and out of view who didn't seem to be taking part of the war. They wore the same black training suits the rest of them wore, but donned no armbands. Winter watched as one shoved a weak seer, one who could foresee the future, into a strongarm. The boy's teeth were knocked out as he sprawled on the floor. They were instigators. That was how the headmaster eliminated the weak teams from competing. That was why the same team won every time. It was set up to be that way from the start. Was this common knowledge? Winter studied Jax as his brooding form paced back and forth, furious at the loss of their flag. That's what Leo meant when he said he would find out more on the field than off. He was going to prod into the minds of the agents the headmaster placed on the field.