The Olympic Village

"As you can see, I'm not the most popular person with the rest of the world right now." Shadows shuddered. But started dancing randomly around, blowing kisses into the crowd. Then, she spread her arms out and pretended to flap wings and blow fire at the audience.

The crowd seemed to like it, cheering at Shadows' pretend-firebreathing. "I think they think the dragon is our mascot." Kelly tipped her standard-issue XL-Olympics-uniform fedora at the crowd and twirled. "This is so fun!"

"I wonder what they are going to think of when I start doing all of the events...... Especially considering I'm the leader of one of the sections of our country. But might as well keep their excitement up while I can." With that Rae soared up higher so she wouldn't hit her teammates below. She made two, double bladed swords and started to spin them around. In Rae's mind she was reinacting one of her battles on Lyoko. To the crowd, it just seemed like a routine to show off the glistening blades made out of ice.

"Eh," Shadows said, absentmindedly nodding at Kelly's uniform. "Probably the same way they'll feel when they see me, the leader, doing some events. But we're a small country, we need every athlete we can get."

She eyed Rae over and shrugged. "Though they're probably going to be more surprised to find a dragon doing the events." Shadows sighed. "I wondered what these were like before we started showing up."

"Totally boring." Kelly declared. "I bet they're secretly glad to have us here. Opening Ceremonies are usually so boring." She stared at Rae's performance. "Oh, wow. Our mess-up is definitely not getting into the media today. Instead, we'll be known as the country with the super cool dragon. Nice!"

"Nice save, Eil!" said Jell.

"What would you do without me? Well besides being ruled under Atlas' iron fist." Rae smirked as she threw both blades into the air and they turned into a mist.

Cya watched the spectacle going on with interest. She really couldn't tell from where she was what was going on, but in was interesting, to say the least.

"Um, well I don't think I would be ruled," Shadows said, "but I would definitely be the laughingstalk of the world."

Soul conjured up another cup of tea and drank.

"I'd be okay with the whole Atlas ruling thing provided I got a good position." She shrugged.

Cya heard the last part of Shadows' conversation. "If we were under Atlas, we wouldn't survive long enough to become a laughingstock," she said.

" I don't want to even think about what Atlas would make Me do if he took charge of XL." Rad shuddered at the thought.

"I don't want to think about it, period."

Cya closed her eyes, blocking out disturbing thoughts from her mind, before opening them and smiling.

"Guys!" Kelly jumped up and down. She pointed to the confetti that was suddenly raining down on them. "It's confetti! And ooh, there are so many different colours too. How sparkly." She nodded her approval, grasping at the air happily.

"YAY CONFETTI!" Soul danced around in it happily.

Cya began jumping, trying to catch the confetti, giggling. "It's like someone destroyed a rainbow, and these are the remains, floating down on our heads!"

"Or like someone smashed a rainbow-shaped pinata!"

Shadows waved the flag and looked up at the explosion of shiny that crowded her vision. It was gorgeous.

"Ooh, rainbows." Kelly sighed. "It's so pretty! Can we get a rainbow-shaped pinata for our XL winners' celebration?"

"I don't have one. Maybe soul or shadows do," Cya remarked, sitting down to count the number of confetti that she had caught.

The number would sufffice.

She smiled and waved at the sky, as if thanking it for it's gift.

"I will come up with one Cya! Never fear. I have my ways..." Soul trailed off with a somewhat sinister smirk, not even noticing that she was rubbing her hands together in a sinisterly villainness kind of way.

"So what now?"

Kelly inched away from Jell. "Um, Jell, that look on your face...?" She decided against saying anything more and instead moved next to Cya. "Hmm, I don't know. I know we keep on marching for a bit, but I've never actually been in an Olympic Ceremony before."

"Huh?" Jell turned to Kelly and blinked. "Um, anyway. Nor have I. I missed the parade last time."

"Yeah so did I." Rae stated as she did a flip in the air to get all the confetti out of her scales.

"You can reminisce later, Shadows," Snickie murmured as she began dragging her along with one arm, catching up to the rest of the XLers. "We're holding up the entire line again."