“They’re both getting serious now,” Yamin mentioned, tensing up as she gazed down on the battle from the stands. “Indena’s been controlling this whole fight. Even after Yalda powered up, Indena still had the edge.”

  “Even with her combat mode, she’s still struggling to even things out, no?” Marek said. “I’m surprised Indena is so much stronger than Yalda.”

  Yamin shook her head. “I don’t think that’s exactly the case. We’ve seen Yalda rip doors off walls before and carry us around while doing it. Strength isn’t the issue… It’s speed.”

  Miss Lauri made a nod of approval. “Indena’s quickness is certainly giving her an advantage. But if she gets hit, even if just a little, it's devastating to her.”

  “Oh dear,” Adalyn uttered. “I believe she showed that when lil’ Yaldy gave her a good kick to the nose.”

  “She did start bleeding,” Yamin added. “On the contrary, notice how much abuse Yalda’s taken in the amount of time the fight’s been going on. I know she can tank a lot of damage, but I’m pretty sure Indena isn’t even dealing much to begin with.”

  “Do you think Yalda has a chance then?” Marek asked.

  Yamin put a finger to her chin and tilted her head up. Her eyes closed as she considered his question. “Not this fight, no.”

  “And why is that?” Lauri’s brow raised.

  “Yalda’s going to focus on pushing herself for the remainder of the match. She’s known to burn herself out pretty bad when up against a challenge, so her stamina is what Indena is really trying to outpace. As long as Indena can avoid getting hit, she just needs to wait for Yalda to run out of steam.”

  Lauri had a flattered smile, clapping for Yamin’s deduction.

  “My little girl is fight savvy? How did this happen?”

  “Uh…” Yamin, the pacifist, certainly didn’t find any pleasure or gratitude in her mother’s accolades. “I… uh… I… I don’t like fighting or anything, I was just watching and putting all the stats together, you know?” she waved her hand and turned her head away, as if trying to avoid a foul odor. “It just makes sense and all.”

  “My prediction is the same as yours,” Lauri said. “However, remember that Yalda does have a dense array of tricks up her sleeves. If she can find a way to utilize that to close the gap, she stands a chance.” A conflicted look spawned on her face as she turned back to the arena. “Some of those tricks she might not even know of just yet…” she mumbled.

  “Yalda is best when she’s unpredictable,” Marek commented. “But she’s fighting someone who’s been by her side the whole time, so being unpredictable is going to be difficult.”

  “I’m rootin’ for lil’ Yaldy!” Adalyn pulled up a tiny blue flag with angel wings and a halo on it. “Gotta’ support the underdog, especially when they’re my lil’ honey pie.”

  Yamin turned to her with concerned jealousy spilling over her face. “Wasn’t I your little honey pie…?” As Yamin uttered those words, her face grimaced and she turned away. “Did I actually just say that? Yuck!”

  Adalyn was all smiles, flattered to hear Yamin’s jealousy spark up. “I’ll call you whatever you want, lil’ Yamy!” Adalyn darted at her for another hug. “You’re so adorable!”

  “N-no,” Yamin shook her head. “It’s just, if you're going to call us weird things, please be consistent. It’s hard to keep track of who you're talking about.”

  With all her might, she could hardly keep away Adalyn from wrapping around her like packaging paper, but a mysterious dark force lifted from the inner depths of her backpack and quickly repelled the incoming woman.

  “Oh dear,” Adalyn playfully said, being pushed back into her seat. “Lil’ Yamy’s gotten stronger too, hasn’t she?” she snickered.

  ~☆☆☆~

  My combat mode was really incredible. I just felt so much more alive, like all my senses kicked into overdrive and made the whole world clear as day. That came with a big downside, considering how easy it was to burn out. But I’d been training with it, and using it in actual combat zones, so my ability to use it was getting better by the day.

  “You ready for more?” Indena’s head lowered as her grin grew. Her combat stance tightened and she prepared for what would happen next.

  I didn’t look at Indena like she was my friend right now, I saw her as an enemy. She was powerful, well above my skills, but my hope was that my combat mode would give me a shot at beating her.

  Indena’s form was well balanced, but her body was frail. She had a habit of keeping her heart tilted away from combat, meaning her right side was usually facing forward. She kept a foot back to help her spring in whatever direction she needed to attack or escape from. She primarily focused on kicks, which meant her arms were usually left to do any blocking for her. Getting through her defenses would be tough, but I knew what to do here.

  At speeds comparable to Indena, I flew in and was on her in a split second.

  She anticipated a punch as I reeled back, but instead I grabbed onto her arm and flew her up into the air along with me.

  “What the hell is this?!” she looked absolutely mortified as she failed to escape my grasp.

  “Aerial Spin!” I shouted the name of this attack while spinning upwards in the air, then twisting my body around to nose dive into the ground. “Super Piledriver!”

  I dove down in a corkscrew and landed us right on Indena’s head, kicking off her and flipping a few meters away back to my starting point.

  “C'était magnifique!” Marek euphorically clapped his hands. I got the idea to do that move from him when he did something similar to a bull. “Beautiful work…” he wiped a tear from his eye.

  “Yeah, but is Indena okay?” Yamin asked, carefully looking down to see if Indena was breathing.

  “Chah!” Indena coughed up blood, but quickly got back up. “Not gonna’ lie, took you long enough to figure that out.”

  I smirked confidently. “I’ve played enough video games to know how to deal with turtlers and block-meisters. They fear getting grabbed.”

  Indena smirked now, just as confident, likely because she was already plotting a counter. “Let’s see if you can do that again.”

  Taking her bait was the last thing I wanted to do, but unfortunately the spirit of the challenge was to do it anyway. I needed to see how she could get around it in order to figure out how to counter that counter. That was the essence of martial arts.

  This time when I made an attempt to grab, she was all prepared for it and slapped my hand away with an explosive flaming backhand. I was stumbled, and this time she grabbed onto me.

  Rather than throw me, she turned me around and pressed her knee hard against my upper back, jetting herself and me up into the air and jetting once more down to make me come crashing on my face.

  But just before I landed, I shot a blast from my mana cannon to prevent my body from fully colliding with the stone floor. The powerful stream exploded and gave me enough leverage to lose Indena’s hold.

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  Now that I was back on my feet, I went in and tried to utilize my speed and the cover of the rising smoke to attack Indena.

  There was a lot of dust kicked up from my cannon firing, but I could see her red IFF outline at the very center.

  She didn’t expect me to fly around her and come in from behind, so I got a free punch off on her back. Moments after she was back on the defensive, just barely able to deflect my attacks.

  Her speed and agility were still high, but she was losing her edge. She was on the backfoot.

  “Yeah!” Yamin cheered. “I mean… I think Yalda stands a chance.”

  “Don’t be so quick to assume that,” Miss Lauri said. “Yalda’s utilizing a lot of surprise attacks to catch Indena off guard, and Indena’s getting tired, but I’d hardly say she’s done yet. She isn’t even angry.”

  “Huh?” Yamin tilted her head, followed by everyone else tilting their heads like her. “What do you mean?”

  “You’ll see soon enough…”

  Indena made a fruitless attempt to punch me, but I slipped past it and got a good punch on her. That was the catalyst for me to begin another array of punches right up close and personal. My consistent forward motion forced her to step back so she could reel in her arms for defence.

  “To hell with this!”

  *BOOOM!*

  Another explosive wave exploded out of her body, this one even more devastating, causing me to get launched into the protective barrier around the arena.

  “Gah!” I bounced off it and landed, only barely catching myself using my wings.

  Indena brooded her anger as she quietly took on a new stance, posing her arms carefully with one forward, bent in with the hand straightened upwards… And the other arm back at her side and in a fist.

  “Bronze Dragon Style!” she announced. “Fire Element!”

  The right hand she held up and straight burst with flame. Soon that flame spread across her whole body like paper starting ablaze. Fire energy especially concentrated around her hands.

  Miss Lauri’s brow raised. “Why did she announce her fire type?” she mumbled to herself. “Wouldn’t she only do that if she had another magic she could swap with?”

  Indena’s stance was impressive before, but something about this combat style she took on, it had such an intensity to it. Her eyes were glowing with ferocious intent… Her body was sternly positioned, as if perfectly posed from years of discipline… And her fire was the most lively I’d ever seen it.

  She was being pushed, and now she was pulling out the best she had.

  “Woah…” I uttered. “Threat level increasing…”

  “This is over,” she said. “Give up.”

  Despite considering her offer out of fear, I couldn’t back out now. We were deep into this fight and I needed to see it through to the end… Even if this was my end!

  “Negative,” I denied her order. “We settle this, here and now.”

  “Fine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Faster than a blink, I had her fist clenched hard into my stomach. Mere after images of her trailed along, attempting to catch up with her incredible speed and swiftness.

  All the breath in my lungs was forced out, followed by me heaving a dry cough.

  She didn’t do anything else. I just fell to the ground on my knees, painfully holding my stomach.

  “Pathetic,” she said, looking down on me. “I got pissed off over this weakling!?”

  Fire rocketed her foot into my face, launching me into the air. I landed hard on the ground and twisted to my side, laying and shaking to deal with the pain.

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t get back up!” She kicked me again, rolling me further across the arena. “Get back up!”

  Each kick was more painful then the last, propelled by magical fire. Once I struck the barrier again, she proceeded to repeatedly bounce me off of it with her attacks.

  “You’re not getting any mercy from me,” she said. “This is a real fight now! If you don’t get up, you’ll die. And you know what happens if you die? This world is done!”

  “Indena!” Yamin shouted and stood, but was quickly pulled back down by her mother.

  “Stay quiet!” Miss Lauri ordered her.

  “She’ll kill her if she keeps this up!” Yamin valiantly argued. “I can’t let her do that!”

  “Indena knows what she’s doing,” Miss Lauri claimed.

  “Why do you keep talking like you know so much about her?” Yamin’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You just met her the other day.”

  Miss Lauri pointed to the arena as a response. “Just keep watching.”

  Without thinking, I gathered up fire energy in my core, plenty to cause a burst that momentarily pushed Indena back.

  “Yahh!” I shouted, feeling a lot of my stamina leave me after an explosive repulse wave.

  “I’m not done yet!” Indena shouted as she dove back in and assaulted me once more.

  All her attacks were being augmented by fire magic, adding both speed and strength that more than doubled her capabilities. One hand was predominantly for punching, which was the one at her side, and the other was for blocking.

  Both her hands had a tight aura around them, allowing easy manipulation of her magical arts from those points. It looked like her feet had the same thing. This Bronze Dragon Style must have mainly focused on pushing her abilities with elemental fire.

  No matter how hard it was, I kept my eyes on her, watching every little move and every little twitch her body made as it continued to attack me with various different strikes.

  Blocking didn’t ease the punches at all, it was like everything was just going right through me, dragging my insides along with it. The bone shattering kick she’d layed down on my forearms at the start of the fight was nothing compared to these. If she’d started with this style, I’d have probably given up right away.

  As she progressively got faster and stronger out of pure rage, her fires grew brighter. I couldn’t keep up with her growth, not with how quickly she was gaining more and more traction against me. She’d gone through a power up of her own, and it was nothing short of incredible.

  Finally she sent out a punch from her side, loaded with all the force of a dragon crashing into a castle wall and toppling it.

  Weakened, but not out, I rose back up. This time, I surprised her as I took on a stance nearly identical to her Bronze Dragon Style.

  “What the hell is this?” her head tilted and she chuckled in disbelief. “You’re copying me?”

  “All that time you wasted… knocking me around like this was a game of wall ball… I was analyzing your stance. I was learning how to use it…” I found a second wind and stiffened up my body so I could strongly hold the style.

  An elemental fire burst around me now as my right arm bent in and my hand straightened out.

  “Flame Aura!” A loud and visceral voice erupted from my throat. “I’m ready. I’m ready to take you on, with your own fighting style! I’ll show you just how powerful it really can be!”

  Her teeth grit tightly and a growl bellowed out from behind them. “How dare you? How dare you steal my style from me? You didn’t spend your whole life mastering it! Now die!”

  She blasted in and immediately stunned me with her speed, but a few quick punches to the head jogged my fighting senses.

  I was faster now, augmented by fire jetting my movements around and giving me leverage to both evade and deal damage.

  As with everything up to this point, Indena’s experience tipped her past me, but my powers would be all the crutch I needed.

  Allocating brain power to my combat mode kept me matching her. We both were neck and neck, constantly shifting the balance in each of our favour for no more than seconds at a time.

  “You idiot!” Indena struck me with a flaming punch… But this fire wasn’t like anything I’d seen her make before. It was black with a white outer glow.

  “Ahh!” I screamed as pain seared through my head. I was tearing up, rubbing my face and rolling around like a baby because of how unbearable it was to deal with.

  -Armour integrity = (99.8%)-

  “What?!” I shouted in utter disbelief of seeing that message appear in my FOV. My face was filled with utter horror as I gazed up at Indena, who trembled just as much, if not more.

  Miss Lauri stood up in the stands, looking on with disgust.

  Adalyn leaned forward with a shocked hand over her mouth.

  The rest were simply confused and appalled.

  “Are you actually trying to kill me?” I shouted at her. “You realize that actually hurt, right? Like, lethally!”

  “I…” she was still stunned and shaken, not sure what to say as she looked at her hand, which dimmed its black flames. “Oh crap…” her head fell back and she gazed up to the open sky above the arena. “I didn’t… I didn’t mean to use that…”

  There was only one thing I’d encountered up to this point that actually managed to get past my armour skin and deal lethal damage. It was something she herself warned me to avoid contact with at all costs…

  “She just used cursed flames…” Miss Lauri declared.

  -Getting Fired Up-

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