Temperance took a single step onto the gridded arena, the white tile beneath his foot faintly bobbing under his weight as he fully stepped onto the tile. While Lola exuded a contentiously smug aura at watching the guy's antics, Temperance lightly hopped on the spot, the mechanism below the tile clicking with a satisfying leaf-crunching sound itching the very back of his brain. A flicker behind him caught his eye, and Temperance turned around to stare at the pale energy grid whilst Kannachi waved to him. As his hand instinctively moved on its own and waved back, Temperance raised his gaze, following the energy grid as it sprouted from the arena frame and rose a fair bit off the ground before shooting off to create an energy cage.
"Pretty nifty, right?" Lola remarked, her voice full of pride as she rolled onto her back and stretched her dainty limbs until her joints popped. Her arms and legs went limp, slapping against her tails, as relief flooded through her with a smile on her face at relieving herself from the stiffness in her body.
"What even is this?" Temperance asked, cautiously raising a hand to the energy grid and lightly pounding his knuckles against it. A toothy grin formed on Lola's face, her pride tantalizingly indulgent as it fuelled her ego and filled her with energy.
"Nana made these Recoil Rumble Arenas...," Lola replied. As she tensed her wrists and ankles, Lola remarked, "... I don't really get how they work on a functional level, but the floor dissipates impacts and the energy cage nullifies anything deemed a threat.". Temperance slumped his head and faintly murmured under his breath, pushing off the energy cage wall before walking away from it. Kicking her legs playfully against her tails, Lola whistled a faint tune, the resulting notes bouncing through the air and instilling mild drowsiness in Temperance.
"Are you trying to put me to sleep with that?" Temperance remarked, his voice a mild slur as he felt the drowsiness building in him. His remark stirred a playful snicker from Lola, making her halt her whistling which relieved Temperance of its sleep-inducing clutches.
"You're not telling me, you'd be done in by such a minor technique?" Lola taunted teasingly, playfully winking at Temperance as she stretched her arms to the ground. With effortless grace, Lola placed her hands against the floor before cartwheeling herself to her feet, her tails following her smooth motion as they unfurled from their doughnut formation. She clasped her hips, swaying her tails around her petite frame to shield her from the rising sun.
"...hmm, what other two should I choose? I wonder," Lola mumbled aloud, rocking her head from side to side as she mulled over her options, leaving Temperance to stand nearby at a loss for words.
"Two what?" Temperance mumbled. Putting a brief pause on her decision, Lola pitched a thoughtful glance to Temperance, a smug smirk on her face as she rolled her eyes; seeing the puzzled look in his eyes, she amusedly placed her fist against her cheek while tilting her head.
"The academy has a special kind of duel students and the like do when using Recoid Rumble Arenas, although I don't get why everyone else refers to them as Battle Grids.". Lola began to explain her prior remark but partway through she derailed from it, poutfully mentioning how no one calls it by the name Nana-Ka gave them. With a loud huff that almost knocked the unprepared Temperance over from the resulting shockwave, Lola stomped her foot against the tile, making it bob as her kitsune tails and ears frizzing up in proportion to her frustration.
"It's all Yozu's fault for misreading the speech note I left for him when unveiling Nana-Ka's creation...," Lola grumbled in spite, completely losing track of Temperance's question for her, in favour of continuing to complain about how bad her handwriting has gotten in the past hundred years. Temperance couldn't help but slowly blink, turning his head to a non-existent camera before sighing aggressively enough to snap Lola back to reality, resulting in her facial hue shifting to a faint shade of pink.
"Oops, seems I got a little side-tracked," Lola remarked with a jitter, nervously rubbing the rim of her kitsune ears. With a sheepish giggle, Lola averted her eyes, darting them around the arena to ensure no eye contact with Temperance was had as she soothed her nerves with rapid ear scratches. Clearing her throat, Lola released her ear from further scratching before lowering her hand and clasping her hands together with a musical clap.
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"Basically, a duel takes place on a stage like this one. Both participants are only allowed to use three different types of magical abilities; whether it's an Azure Ability, Elemental Magic, or other types, like those magic marks of yours for example. Oh, and if you use more than three you instantly lose," Lola explained, her explanation to the point it didn't allow for her to get derailed again.
Temperance nodded with mild amusement, taking in the rules of the academy's unique duels and finding them interesting to a small extent. As his brain stalled on the rule part, Temperance violently flinched, a tremor of dread flowing through him at Lola's use of the word marks. With the briefest narrowing of his pupil, Temperance swiftly leapt away from Lola, startling the petite woman mildly before that morphed into glee, the misbelief Temperance was ready to spar fueling her excitement.
However, in contrast to Lola's belief, Temperance was mentally in a stun lock, the chill gnawing at his senses as he couldn't wrap his head around how Lola knew he had multiple types of magic marks. Whilst Temperance was completely wrapped up in his mental confusion, Lola retracted all but two of her kitsune tails and her kitsune ears into her body, the anticipation growing within her as she raised her arms to the side and contently exhaled through her nose.
"As a sign of good faith, I'll let you have the first move," Lola said, her face beaming and shimmering as she basked in her benevolence; However, Temperance's constant muttering, blatant disregard for her word and completely ignoring her, the last being the most aggravating transgression, slowly filled Lola with an indescribable destructive sensation, one she felt could cause a headache for her if she let spill out. Feeling her annoyance reaching its first serious level, Lola slowly raised her tails from the ground, spiking up from Lola's building vexation. She narrowed her eyes into piercing daggers of rage with dark green dense particle-looking energy spitting out from her tear ducts as she pressed her tails against the floor, priming them to launch her at her target.
"... ... ... wait...," Lola muttered, her annoyance stifled as she mulled over something, picking up on Temperance's muttering before Lola slapped her tails on top of her forehead with an audible clap of shame. The tail-sheltered kitsune murmured in frustration, her fury fizzling out as it dawned on her while Temperance was so panicked. In an elegant flash, Lola appeared right before Temperance, moving with such grace to not disturb the air, and raised a hand to Temperance's face without him noticing her.
"Oi, Mumbler, is it not rude to ignore people where you're from?" Lola barked before flicking Temperance on the forehead, forcing his gaze upwards and snapping him back to his senses. Temperance winced slightly, clasping his chin in pain and lowered his head as Lola continued. "Don't go overthinking things, dumb-dumb. Even if they have vastly different abilities, if the magic marks are subsections of an overarching power then it would be classed as one; you know, like how a Swiss Army knife is one tool."
"A what?" Temperance asked, his voice affixed with mild pain as he pinched the red spot on his chin. With a nonchalant attitude, Lola dismissively raised her shoulders in a shrug, slapping her present tails against the ground to straighten out their frenzied appearance.
"Some multitool an otherworlder made or brought from their world eons ago, but that's not important now is it," Lola remarked, casting a toothy grin to Temperance before slamming her tails against the ground and flinging herself back to her original position on the arena's stage. Although relieved it was merely a misunderstanding, Temperance couldn't muster the mental strength to keep his kitsune ears raised as they slumped to the sides of his head, the mental whiplash of thinking Lola knew about his other mark being too much to bear for even a second longer.
At seeing her fellow kitsune's sinking demeanour, Lola couldn't help feeling a little bad at inadvertently causing him grief. She felt compelled to ask him about it, hoping to find a way to help with the thing troubling him but knew any further attempt to prob him would be ill-advised, given how sporadic an indirect prob made him. She begrudgingly slumped her head to the side with defeat apparent on her face, muttering how her mother would've gotten answers by now. With a half-hearted sigh, Lola tried to steel her nerves, not wanting to disrespect Temperance by being off her game during their spar before a vaguely relevant memory resurfaced, forcing her to recall something her father had told her from a long time ago.
"Using people for reference is a good starting... point but... don't let... um... these inspirational quotes are so hard to remember," the voice of her father played in her mind. His failure to recount a simple quote filled Lola with sickeningly sweet nostalgia and melted all her nerves away as a faint mist of dense particle-shaped pink and golden energy oozed from her tails.
"Geez, how'd I end up using my keither on mys- shoot! That means I don't have any available ability slots left!" Lola exclaimed, clasping her head in frustration at how careless and lax her body had gotten after her prolonged nap. Lola's out-of-the-blue remark left Temperance at a loss for words again and mildly troubled, leading him to close his eyes and hope he'd never sleep long enough as to experience it himself.