Catherine stared out at the old priest in front of her door, and the young lost girl in front of him, taking in the sight. Carl The Mad was known as one of the most sadistic men in the entirety of Dasgad, and was known as only the third most sadistic in the orphanage. Knowing his competition, Catherine didn't feel any safer as she looked into the wide, maddened stare of the man in front of her.

“I heard you were looking for a tournament partner!” He shouted with pure, unbidden glee. Catherine, looking from the mad priest to the small, purple skinned girl standing before him, winced. “I am, actually,” she winced, matching the girl before her.

____________________________________

Samantha scrubbed the soot and coal off of herself in the communal 'bath' of the lost. She hesitated to call it an actual bath, given it was more of a stream that the priests had somehow created inside of the orphanage, but it still served the same function.

Looking at herself in the mirror to make sure she didn't miss any soot, Samantha noticed she had gained a few scars in her efforts to take over the lower hall. Looking back on the fights she had had to finally beat the daylights out of Thoth, she wasn't overly surprised. She had made Vanriel as busy as Micheal ever had and more.

The scar above her navel had been a particularly nasty one. Jarem had managed to stab her with a blade right in the intestines, which had leaked out from the wound. It made Samantha shiver a little bit to remember it. The feeling of startling emptiness mixed with exquisite pain had come back to her on the silent nights as she tried to sleep. She wondered how long it would be before she found something else to replace it with. Hopefully something with a lot less intestines.

It had been worth it in the end, though. She had taken the lower hall in a little less than a week. Everyone had assumed she was protected by Micheal, and in a way that was true. Micheal had stopped people from attacking her, but it was mostly a courtesy. Samantha could handle herself well enough.

Following her impromptu check up, Samantha left to go back to her dorm and finish her daily training. Endurance was important, and running was a good way to build it, but that was only one thing she would need to win.

The first round of the tournament was a free-for-all battle royal for the lost, where they would be thrown in a ring and expected to take care of each other. 'Taking care' could mean anything in the tournament. Killing an opponent was just as effective a means of taking them out as knocking them out of the ring, especially if you had a shelpiece that could make the workload a bit easier to handle. Even a big enough hammer could take out a few in one swing if you had the strength.

That was why Samantha headed to her dorm. Inside, she fetched her weapon of choice, A large and crooked iron pole. It was twisted and dented, though still rigid enough thanks to it's sturdy construction. She had Mithril and Co Steel factory to thank for that.

A few practice swings was all it took for the pole to gain a custom familiarity in Sam's hands, and she intended to make use of it. She had heard Jarem was making trouble with his boys again, and as the lower hall representative, it may as well have been her issue to solve. If she gained a little more practice from it? all the better. right? Sam cracked her neck and headed to Jarem and his crew's hangout.

________________________________

Gobsmacked was an incredible word, to Micheal. It was a word that so succinctly captured the feeling he was experiencing at that moment, that he promised himself that, should he ever have the chance, he would personally thank its inventor. The tall black-haired girl had left him completely without anything to say, which was an experience that was somehow familiar and foreign all at once.

Micheal was rarely quiet when given the chance, at least when around friends; the sole exception being when he decided to do something incredibly stupid and likely quite dangerous, which he admitted, fit the circumstance. Instead, he felt Gobsmacked for a different reason altogether. He had absolutely no idea what reaction he should have had to the raven-haired girl that had just extorted him for his partnership.

Part of him felt angry. Anger, Micheal knew well. He and anger were a pair as old as time. Anger was what fed into the abyss that Micheal kept with him at all times, and when he needed it, it kept him moving forward. Anger was a familiar and insidious poison to Micheal, and that was why he avoided it whenever possible. It felt good to give in to anger and hatred, and Micheal was practically an addict.

He also felt curious. The girl had been hostile, but in a different way than anyone else he had encountered in the first hall. She had not attacked him for who he was, despite the fact that she could have killed him with the barest of efforts. Perhaps it was because she felt she could dispatch him with such little effort that she had decided to behave the way she did. Micheal simply wasn't worth even worrying about.

That brought the question; Why bother with Micheal at all? She was dammed powerful, and could have had any partner she damn well pleased and they couldn't have done a thing about it. Maybe only three others could have stood to her on equal grounds within the first hall, and of those, only Aryth could have beaten her with any reasonable certainty.

It left Micheal with a something of a burning curiosity. He hated that feeling with a passion.

…

At fourth bell, Micheal went to the agreed training hall in the market square. He rubbed the nub that was once the index finger on his right hand nervously, something he had begun doing as of late. The scar tissue was smoother than it looked, and it felt strange on his hand, but more than anything it had developed as something of a nervous tick to him. He continued doing it while he waited for the girl to arrive.

The training field, a large stone square at the center of the market place, was more disappointing than he had imagined. There were posts at regular intervals that provided at least a modicum of light and presence, but it was altogether a bland and oppressive thing. The days of dojo's and stadiums were far from over, but in a 'modern' city like Dasgad, the stadiums of old had never been built. Instead there was only the large stone square that stood before him.

Built across from the central market district; it was the perfect entertainment for all of the well-to-do men and women who had decided to visit the 'less fortunate' side of town. Up on hedge side there would be a proper stadium, though small, that would provide a more private training ground. At least, aside from those that paid to see into it.

The bustle of people around the square made for an uncomfortable sight to Micheal, as he imagined them being hit by a stray attack, or even impaled or crushed by stone thrown from the arena in a hard impact. In general, it felt unsafe just to look at the briny thing, let alone stand near enough to watch the people on it fight.

“Why hello, young man,” a girl said from behind him, causing him to jolt in surprise. Micheal spun to look at her, but before he could manage it a single slap to the back of the head sent him spinning onto the dirt in a fall that could only be described as elegance's unloved younger brother.

“who in the briny blue do you think you are!” he shouted back to the girl, who's identity he had managed to guess thanks to his incredible brilliance. “I'm offended. You know full well that I'm the one who's going to kill you if you say something like that to me again,” she said as she flashed Micheal a predators grin.

“Well you might as well get it over with now because you'll have to kill me before I let you get away with doing that to me every time I have to see you,” he said sarcastically. The girl, on the other hand, seemed to be considering it. “if you're not going to do it, you might as well tell me why I'm here,” he quickly sputtered out. It would be for the best if he didn't give the girl enough time to decide whether she should really kill him or not.

She clearly stopped herself from giggling at that, and Micheal felt a wave of anger pass over him as he noticed it. She thought about killing me as a joke? What is wrong with her? he thought.

“Well, I suppose that is a fair enough request after coming all this way,” she said smugly. Micheal found himself doing his best not to attempt to attack the girl as she did, which somehow made her smile more. Sadistic bitch.

“I need a partner, and you, my dear lost, happened to be perfect,” she said to him, lecturing like a school teacher. “Well that was helpful,” he said harshly, glaring at the girl. “I try my best,” she smiled at him, “but it would have been a lot more informative if you listened to the rest of the explanation,” she said with just a hint of anger sneaking into her tone. This was a girl that was not fond of being interrupted, it would seem. Even if she had threatened to kill both him and his best friend only a few hours ago. At least he knew hot to get on her nerves. He tucked that bit of information away for a later date.

“Fine,” the girl said, letting go of her short-lived anger. “If we're going to be partners for the tournament, you should at least know why,” she moved away from Micheal and toward the stone arena. “What are you doing,” Micheal asked slowly, though he suspected he knew the answer to that well enough.

“Well, I said that you were perfect, didn't I,” she said in a leading tone. Micheal hummed what he thought was an agreeable tone, to which she continued. “Well, I figured I might as well show you why,” she said with a smile that made Micheal's nerve crack just a little bit.

The girl walked into the opposite side of the stone arena to Micheal, and wordlessly, Micheal worked his way over to the side closest to him. “Do I at least get the name of the girl that's about to crack my skull open,” he shouted across to her.

“We'll see,” she said teasingly. Micheal winced in response. This was probably going to hurt a lot.

“On three,” she shouted lazily. “one... Two... Three!”

Before Micheal could react the girl moved across the twenty span that was the arena in less time than it took for Micheal to blink. One moment she was there, and the next she was directly in front of him, smiling a wide, toothy grin that went against her otherwise regal and elegant appearance.

Micheal tried dodging out of the way but it was hopeless. A fist out the corner of his eye took him by surprise. While he could see it coming, it was with hopeless inevitability that it approached him. Micheal's mind, sharp in a fight as it was, was faster than his body in reacting to the threat that was the raven-haired girl's attack. Micheal tried moving his arm to block the strike, but with all the force of a steam train he was summarily disabused of this notion.

Micheal's skull cracked despite his hardened bones, and a flash of white overtook his vision in a spontaneous explosion of agony. Sound became meaningless; Movement nothing more than a suggestion. He felt his knees buckle as he was launched out of the arena in an undignified mess of what he would only assume to be blood and bruises, landing hard on the stone of the central market's floor.

In only a single strike the girl had managed to beat him so thoroughly that Micheal doubted he would have been able to beat her is she had stood stock still and let him wail on her for the better part of an hour. despite that - despite even the dent he could feel that had carved itself into the hardened bone that was his skull, he moved onward toward the girl. he wasn't sure at which point he'd managed to get his feet under him, but it mattered little to the shambling presence that moved along the market square.

Spots of darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, and unable to pay attention he simply moved forward in spite of them. The idea of a second attack by the girl was a thought too complex for the fading consciousness that was plaguing him as his mind filled solely with the desire to reach the girl. A logical fighter would likely have feigned death; practical, though distasteful. Even Micheal, ever a student of pragmatism, would normally choose to do so. Fighting to the death is all well and good, but the dead didn't care for honour. An honourable death was meaningless to the dead as a book was to a nert. useless to the point of insult.

Despite this logic, Micheal still stood on unsteady feet as he trudged toward the girl that was his foe. He had no way of knowing she would be there when he arrived, blood having closed his eyes and pain stolen his reason. What carried Micheal was the same stubbornness that told him there was always a chance. It was the voice that whispered in each moment of his life as a lost, that there was hope to be found in the drudgery of his existence. It was that silent voice that told him, lying, weeping on the floor next to his best friend, that between the two of them, there was something worth fighting for. It was that same voice that told him a lost could challenge the Gods. It was hope, and it carried him.

“Excellent,” a voice mired in self-satisfaction spoke from behind him. Micheal, too deep in the grips of concussion and pain to contemplate anything but the simple drive to move forward, ignored the voice of the very assailant he thought he was approaching.

“Simply excellent,” she said again.

____________________________

Pip looked at the mousey girl before her and couldn't help but feel disappointed. Small and shrewish, without confidence or even he will to talk to her, the girl stared face-down at her lap, refusing to look Pip in the eye. Admittedly, with the priest's quick and flamboyant (having leapt out of a window) exit, there was an air of awkwardness to the room that even Pip couldn't deny. But even so, they had been made tournament partners, and this was hardly the type of person Pip would rely on for something as important as the tournament. The tournament was incredibly important, after all.

“What exactly is the tournament?” Pip broke the silence of the room as she asked the girl, who finally, if sheepishly, turned her head to face Pip. She moved slowly, carefully, even, as her head looked up from her position from across the room to meet the lesser God's eyes.

“You mean you actually intend to fight in the tournament with me?” The girl spoke softly, a tinge of hope creeping into her voice that was not lost on the lesser God. Pip felt something akin to pity at the sight. She wasn't sure where it had come from, as even the sight of the starving and the desperate on the streets had no such reaction from her, but she simply couldn't find any other explanation for the feeling that accosted her when she looked at the girl's state.

“I do indeed,” Pip spoke formally. whether she respected the girl or not, propriety was utmost when dealing with others. At least, when said others were not a half mad priest with a penchant for blowing the head off of small animals at a hundred paces.

This seemed to subtly change something in the girl that stood across from her. Catherine leaned upward, nearly arching her back as she did so. sitting taller, looking directly into pips eyes without any of the pitiable expression that had once been there. The girl had shed her nerves and anxiety as if it were a veil no longer needed. Thrown away at a moments notice, what stared back at the failed God was pure confidence.

Before Pip could even fathom the stark difference, Catherine stood up from her seat and walked over to face Pip directly. Stretching out a hand in a sudden and powerful motion, Pip took it as the girl introduced herself individually for the first time. “I'm Catherine Mauser,” she smiled.

“Pip,” she replied, shocked and in awe all at once.

behind her back, Catherine's other hand shook.