“Do you really think getting Calisco the extra-large order of kettle chips is going to make her go any easier on you?” Sage asked Det quietly, as Tena and Calisco chatted on the other side of the training room. The size of a small elementary-school gym, there was enough room for multiple sparring pairs. It also—apparently—had defensive magics like the arena did. Both to protect the building and the people using the space.

  That only meant Calisco and Tena would go harder to give him some bumps and bruises. He didn’t really worry about either of them taking it too far—not even Calisco, despite her usual behaviour—but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t make it hurt a bit.

  “I don’t think it hurt,” Det said, rolling his shoulders as he stood up, his paintings directly on the floor completed. No need to waste scrolls when they weren’t in a real fight. Painting directly on the floor or wall was just as good. That done, he looked over at Tena across the room. “Hey, you ready?”

  “For a repeat of the first time we dueled?” Tena said, a cocky smile on her face.

  “Preferably no cheap shots,” Det said, and Tena winced at that. Yes, she’d won the fight, but not in any way she was really proud of.

  “What’s our goal here, anyway?” she asked, stepping out from where she’d been leaning against the wall. Behind her, Calisco slid down to the floor, one hand on her stomach.

  Hah, maybe the extra kettle chips did serve a purpose! Or, could’ve been the second po’boy. Meh, either way.

  “Aarak uses sand,” Det explained. “He can control or bend it, whatever you want to call it. I’ve seen him making small walls of the stuff, and also spikes of it he’s able to manipulate. I was thinking…”

  “Both offense and defense,” Tena interrupted. “Respectable. I can make some crystal daggers and throw them at you, if you’d like. Weiss, can you heal him taking a dagger in the face?”

  “Uh…” Weiss said from off to the side. “Maybe not the face. Or the heart. Or the… the guy parts.”

  “Why not?” Calisco said. “Not like he needs them.”

  “She has a point,” Sage said.

  “Not helping,” Det interrupted.

  “Anywhere else is okay?” Tena said.

  “Try not to make it lethal?” Weiss said.

  “More than try,” Det said. “I’d rather not…” he cut off and leapt to the side as a crystal dagger streaked past him to hit the wall. Thanks to the magic of the training room, the dagger itself shattered, leaving not a single mark where it’d struck. “I wasn’t…”

  He didn’t get to finish, Tena’s other arm snapping forward to whip another dagger in his direction. ReSouled reflexes rolled him out of the way just in time for the weapon to ricochet off the floor right where he’d been.

  “The plan…” Det said.

  “Is more fun than I expected,” Tena said, additional daggers forming in her fingers before she flung them at him. “This is… great… practice… for me… too!” Each part of the sentence came within another speeding weapon.

  Det ducked to the side of one, twisted sideways to narrowly avoid the second, then dove to avoid the third and fourth. Another roll got him out of the way of the fifth, just barely in time. As soon as he got back to his feet, he held up a hand for Tena to stop.

  Instead, he got a dagger through the palm, and had to lunge to the side to dodge the following throw that would’ve caught him in the throat.

  “Tena, what I wanted…”

  “First blood is mine!” Tena said with a cackle, arms pumping and hurling missiles at Det in a non-stop stream. “C’mon, Det, dodge more. Make me work for it.”

  And, dodge Det did, because he had no damn choice. His free hand ripped the dagger out of the palm of his other hand, a splash of blood streaking across the floor, before he snapped it back at Tena. Like some kind of action movie, his throw met one of Tena’s mid-flight, shattering both of them. Too bad for Det, Tena had a lot more, and they just kept coming.

  They were also getting closer with each throw, her ReSouled body refining her technique and aim as it learned how to be better. Frankly, the only thing keeping Det from doing his impression of a pincushion was that fact this his body was also learning.

  He was getting better at predicting where Tena would throw by her windup. The speed she moved her arm told him the speed the dagger would come at. That flick of her wrist at the end of the throw? That foreshadowed if the dagger would spin or streak.

  If anything, the fact he was in danger while she was just having fun made his body learn faster than hers did. Taking the injury to his hand—it stung, but not much else—had told his body this wasn’t just a game. He had learned how to bleed less, but that didn’t mean he wanted to bleed at all. His body agreed, and would help him avoid that.

  A step, step, dive, roll, spring and sprint combo got him out of the way of barrage of daggers, the weapons falling behind his own tempo. That seemed to piss Tena off, and the cackling of joy turned into grunts of annoyance as Det actually stopped while he waited for her next daggers to come at him. One dagger per throw became two per hand. That upped her rate of fire—so to speak—significantly, but brutalized her accuracy.

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  Thanks to the early practice learning her throwing motions, the additional daggers didn’t do much to threaten Det. The randomness of where the second dagger from each hand went took him a few seconds to get under control, but once that was done, Det against paused while he waited for Tena’s next throw.

  “Tena, what I was hoping you would…”

  “Don’t get cocky!” Tena interrupted, going from two daggers per hand to three, one each between a pair of fingers.

  “Look out now, Det!” Sage laughed. “She’s angry.”

  “But I don’t want her angry,” Det said, eyes flitting to each arm as they both came forward at the same time. Since Tena had been throwing one arm at a time before, this new technique had him hesitating. That didn’t help at all when suddenly six knives were snapping in his direction.

  Straight up, the only thing that saved him from taking a hit right there was how off-balance the throw made Tena. One dagger skipped off the floor in front of him, barely missing his calf, before he decided to dart to the right. Two more daggers had gone wide to his left, and he leapt between the three on the right side.

  That wasn’t the end of Tena’s change in throwing style. Before, she’d stood in one place like a turret, arms pumping out a stream of projectiles that always came from the same direction. That made it easy to predict the angle of attack every time. Now? Tena was moving and throwing at the same time. Not as much as Det was, running, diving, and rolling to dodge, but instead stalking after him at a growing pace.

  She changed it up between throwing with one arm or two, making Det dodge anywhere from one to six daggers at a time, and even started adding under-and-side-arm throws.

  Det managed to stay ahead of things for another ten seconds, until his foot came down on one of the many crystal shards he’d avoided. Suddenly off-balance, his ankle tweaking as it resisted twisting, he couldn’t move quite the way he wanted, a knife punching into the back of his shoulder. The flash of pain made him grimace, and he let the slight inertia of the hit pull him forward into a roll.

  That choice… sucked. The crystal shard broke off in his shoulder, another wave of pain before his body supressed it. The warmth of blood ran down his shoulder inside his tight shirt, but he couldn’t pay it any mind. More daggers were coming, and all he had in front of him was the wall.

  She’d herded him into a dead-end. Glancing back, he could already see the angles of her next throws, six daggers clutched between her fingers, and two already coming straight for his back. No matter which way he turned, she was going to cut him off.

  So, don’t turn.

  Trusting in his ReSouled body—and an unhealthy amount of anime he’d watched in his past life—Det took one last sprinting stride, then leapt. Straight at the wall. His lead foot met the wall four feet up, while his other foot wheeled up with the momentum needed to flip him head over heels. At the same time—upside down—his hand snapped out, catching one of the daggers meant for his back. A heartbeat later, his feet hit the ground again, impromptu backflip completed somehow, and he spun and threw with all his strength.

  On both sides of him, all six of Tena’s thrown knives struck only empty air, while her face went from triumph, to surprise, to shock. She had more knives in her hands, but hadn’t thrown them, believing she’d won. That left her exposed and vulnerable to her own weapon streaking back toward the center of her chest.

  “Wha…?” she started to ask before an explosion erupted in front of her, annihilating the crystal in a flash.

  “My turn!” Calisco called out.

  “Let’s not…” Det started at the same time the other woman stepped out from behind Tena.

  “Explode!” Calisco interrupted, and a pulse of magic went out from her hands. Immediately, something condensed to Det’s sense beside him. Even feeling that—and trying to move—he wasn’t fast enough to get away, the concussive blast folding him around it before hurling him to the side like he’d been thrown.

  He hit the floor, uniform smoking—while his ribs felt like he’d just been kicked—and rolled three times. Ouch, was all he had the time to think, that same compression of something forming right next to him. Arms around his head, he rolled one more time, getting his back to the explosion that shot him sliding across the floor this time.

  Leftover crystal daggers rattled along the floor as his body swept them up. Friction decided to finally get involved a few seconds later, and Det used it to get his hands and feet under him. He came up in a four-limbed run, just a second before another explosion ripped out right beside where he’d been a second ago. The force of the blast pushed him forward, getting him up to a run, but wasn’t enough to hurt this time.

  Which was good, because he was definitely going to bruise from the previous two. A fourth was on the way, forming right in front of Det.

  Of course, she actually listened to my advice to put her explosions in front of her target.

  Det’s foot twisted on his next step, whole body torquing as he forced his body to change direction. Not a moment too soon, either, with the explosion ripping apart the air a few steps from where he’d turned. Concussive force washed over him, feeling like a barrage of half-hearted punches against his entire side.

  “You dare approach me?” Calisco said as their eyes locked, Det’s change of direction sending him directly at her. The cocky grin on her face told everybody exactly how that was going to go, with more energy pulsing from her hands. Space compressed immediately between them, a blast easily twice as powerful as any she’d used so far in the battle, and three steps in front of him. Her eyes darted left and right. Which way would Det dodge when this one went off? She was waiting for it. Ready.

  The BOOOM of the explosion shook the training room—maybe even the whole building—and Calisco’s head pivoted side to side, watching for his roll.

  She should’ve kept her eyes straight ahead, as Det barreled straight through the explosion with his arms in front of his head to weather the blast. The uniform across his forearms was gone, the skin beneath torn and burnt, while his chest felt like it was on fire. Ribs had to be broken, his breath already blasted from his lungs. His upper legs weren’t in any better shape than his arms, his pants looking like he’d had a bout of big, green, and angry.

  Except, none of those things were what finally caught Calisco’s attention when he erupted out of the smoke not even three strides from her. Nor was it the crystal daggers he’d picked up and hidden during his slide. No, it was his eyes. Locked on her. Unblinking. Unfazed. Unstoppable.

  The eyes of a predator, with her the prey.

  Instinct had her lifting her foot back a step, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  From where his arms had crossed in an X in front of his face to protect him from her explosion, his hands snapped forward. Crystal daggers held upside-down, the two weapons streaked in for her neck from opposite sides like pincers.

  She had nowhere to go. No explosion to save her. No snarky comments came to her lips.

  Det struck, red blood blossoming beneath the tips of the crystal daggers.

  Just the tips, Det having stopped his attacks just short of driving into both sides of her throat.

  Like that, everything in the room paused, the two of them locking eyes while the other four stood frozen.

  “Looks like I win this round,” Det said.