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Chapter 18: To make friends, first you need to duel each other to the death, sprinkling tidbits about yourself the entire time; hopefully, that’ll add +5 to your likeability meter

Do you ever have that incredible sense of déjà vu when someone frames you and you end up getting chased all the way across Paris for the rest of the week?… No? Just him? A-alright.

With the sword pointed at Craft's neck, he’d raised his hands in surrender, keeping his palms close to his face. If the woman moved to kill, he’d only have a sliver of a chance to fend her off and live. Although he wouldn’t ‘die,’ he didn’t want to find out how respawning felt like.

For now, there seemed to be a fundamental misunderstanding here.

“Name’s Craft” — he tried to introduce himself, but the woman pushed her sword an inch closer to his face — “whoa-kay, I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Lies. I saw you take it. You must have hidden it somewhere.”

Her sword glowed slightly. Weapons that started to glow were, nine times out of ten, weapons that were about to be used, and they tended not to leave a trace of the target. Well, sometimes the shoes were left standing on the ground.

Craft flinched. “H-hey, I swear! I was with Nightshade or Dane the whole time!”

The woman narrowed her eyes at the mention of Nightshade. She pulled her sword back a little. She might have trusted his alibi, but she wouldn’t completely back down.

“Even if you say so, I can’t leave you be. The scent of death surrounds you.” Not just her sword, but her entire self glowed. All the colors of the rainbow seeped out of her, and her hair floated up on its own, changing colors to red, green, and blue. “If it were just me, I can keep one eye open as long as I need — but I can’t let you poison Nightshade with your bloodstained ways.”

With the way her hair was colored, and with the way she defended Nightshade, he realized who she was — and just how screwed he was. The problem wasn’t losing; if all he had to do was die as an apology, then he’d take the plunge and bank on the respawn system. In front of him, however, was the very same person he had wanted to form a connection with. Even if he won this fight, their future interactions would remain sour.

This wasn’t just a fight. It was a negotiation to dispel her presumptions. Aiming for a positive outcome would be too greedy for him to aim for, so for now, as long as she walked away from here with an open mind, he’d count that as a win, and to that end, he steadied himself.

“Your face changed,” the woman said. “That’s your real one, isn’t it?”

“You’re just half-right, miss,” Craft said. Without turning his back, he took two frying pans hanging from the wall behind him. She showed her teeth. He showed his readiness, wielding the frying pans like table tennis rackets. “I can’t tell you which one’s the real one, not yet. I’ll get back to you when I’ve finalized myself.”

The woman narrowed her eyes. His statement had thrown off her initial evaluation of him. “Then let’s put this to a bet. My win, and you stay away from Nightshade. Your win, and I won’t harass you.”

He shook his head. He hadn’t missed how she had narrowed her eyes. She was still evaluating him, which meant she was still operating under uncertainty. I can use that. “That’s a bad deal. Your win, and I’ll spill one bean a day.”

The woman furrowed her brows. “That’s a strange deal.”

“But it’s realistic.”

She paused. With this deal, she’d win in the long game. “Fair.”

“My win, and you’ll have to believe I don’t have any ill-will towards anyone.”

The woman sheathed her sword. “Ill-will isn’t the problem” — and unsheathed a longer one — “it’s poisoning Nightshade’s views with your own.”

She’s speaking like she knows it as fact. Craft recalled Nightshade saying the two of them were similar in some way. True, the woman’s air was less of a warrior’s right now and more that of an assassin’s. If someone like him ended up in Amatoria, it wasn’t far-fetched to think there were others like him, too — others who had lived regretfully.

Perhaps the woman had witnessed the corruption of sunshine before. He had as well.

“I don’t want that either,” Craft said.

“So you understand.”

He gritted his teeth and sighed. “When I met her, I thought she was too kind for me.” Saying this was a gamble, but if the two of them were truly similar, then this could be a power move that would establish more rapport than anything else he could say.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

The woman winced. “So you understand.” She shifted her stance. “My win, you’ll declassify something every day, and you are not to see Nightshade without my supervision. Your win, and only Nightshade can tell me to cut you down.”

He shouldn’t squeeze more out of this. “I’m fine with that.”

To his surprise, copies of the same system panel appeared in front of their faces.

[Sanctioned Duel Initializing: State your full names and true causes.]

“Lei-rei, in defense of my dearest friend.”

“Craft Bowen.” He paused. Why “true causes”? Could he lie? No, it didn’t matter. The System was an extension of Enthusia, and he wouldn’t lie to her. “To make one.”

Lei-rei’s eyes widened.

[Logging duel. Please wait for the countdown.]

[3…]

[2…]

[1…]

[This is your captain speaking. Have a safe fight! -E]

Craft took the initiative. He stepped forward swinging a frying pan and swatting Lei-rei’s sword away with a ping! It surprised him she hadn’t taken the first move; she was obviously faster and stronger than him.

Initiative was only decisive against the indecisive. Lei-rei counter-attacked, but with her first sword swatted aside, she unsheathed her shorter sword and cut upwards in a single motion.

Craft distanced himself. His left hand felt lighter, and when he glanced down, he only found the pan’s handle, and none of the pan itself.

He eyed Lei-rei. She sheathed her longer sword, leaving her only with the shorter one. She’s switching weapons? What’s with that style? Around her, the walls and ceiling had a single continuous gash. Her attack had extended further than the physical length of the blade implied. That’s one hell of a sharp sword.

Lei-rei’s earlier hesitation must have been a fluke, he thought. They were both assassins, and every moment of both pause and action had intent.

She cut forwards in a blink. Craft jumped and twisted his body, and for a split second, he was standing on the ceiling. He had a bird’s-eye view of Lei-rei’s attack, and he figured her out: she’d attack with her shorter sword as a feint, then draw out her longer sword behind it, making him underestimate her reach.

More importantly, whether or not her swords were sheathed didn’t affect her attack speed. Everything on her was, effectively, already a drawn weapon — the embodiment of “switching to your sidearm is faster than reloading” being exploited so that all her attacks come from switching swords. Scary.

He barreled downwards for an attack with his last frying pan. She parried that out of the way, and now, they kept their distance from each other.

“So you weren’t human,” Lei-rei said.

He put more distance between them. Her words were more surprising than all her attacks so far. “I am, though!”

She dashed forward and cut up air where Craft was standing, turning the space into a blender with Lei-rei as its engine. The man himself slipped between her blender-like dance, running on the walls and losing his last frying pan in the process.

Lei-rei stopped and faced him anew. “With that athleticism?”

The two found themselves circling each other around the dinner table. The way Lei-rei’s eyes had widened at the start of the duel still stuck to him. Had her impression of him changed the moment he worded his stake in this fight the way he did?

It might be worth bridging her understanding of him even now, even if by a little bit.

“I survived. The others didn’t,” he said.

“That so?” she said frankly.

“That’s just how it is.”

“For us, isn’t it?”

They both kicked the dinner table at the same time. Each one had intended to launch it into the enemy’s face, but with their powers combined, they just launched it into the ceiling.

Dust fell between them. The table had gotten stuck in the ceiling.

The two stared at each other for a moment. They both knew they weren’t eating on a table tonight — and that Craft was at a severe disadvantage. All he had for weapons now were two pan handles, while Lei-rei was poised to cut him to bits any moment now.

There wasn’t any need for last words. Lei-rei took the opening and rushed in, cutting with the shorter sword and holding the other in reserve — but that was a feint. She drew the shorter sword back and unsheathed the longer sword in the same moment — but that was a feint, too!

She had long known that Craft had seen through her favorite feint earlier, and it was a trivial exercise to simply stack even more feints on top of that.

Her shorter sword hadn’t actually been sheathed. Before her longer sword’s attack even cleared, she was already following it with her shorter sword in a reverse-gripped slash. It would be a bad move in ordinary combat, but there was one thing a reverse grip was good for: a surprise, bullshit move at close range from an unexpected angle.

— Craft’s expertise.

Earlier, right before they both kicked the table into the ceiling, he had spotted a handle-less pan on the floor. The dust that had fallen between them had captured Lei-rei’s attention for a split second, long enough for him to hide it behind his leg.

He kicked it up with the side of his foot, aiming for her head, forcing her to veer her long sword to intercept the cast iron frisbee coming from below.

To her surprise, he stepped into the attack. He had long given up on actually winning the fight, but that didn’t mean he wanted to come across a pushover.

He threw the first pan handle at her, forcing her to veer away her short sword to intercept it. It wasn’t enough to leave her completely open, but it gave him the split second necessary to get into stabbing range.

With the second handle in both hands, he pushed off and thrust forwards, straight into the path of Lei-rei’s blade —

“You sharpened a pan handle with my own attacks,” she chuckled. “Well played.”

— and delivering the pan handle into her heart.

Lei-rei’s blade had cleaved a path from his shoulder to his chest. There was no blood nor pain in this world. Digital blue pixels like fairy lights spilled out of their wounds, and their visions were clouded by the System’s warnings.

[AvatarWarning: Low health!]

[AvatarWarning: Very low health!]

[AvatarWarning: X_X !]

In Craft’s eyes, it was just like being unplugged. The world turned grayscale in one frame, then low-res the next. His vision shattered in halves, flashed white, then went black.

[Respawning in 3… 2… 1…]

[Applied Day One bonus: No Anima deducted!]

He heard a high-pitched whine, and a tunnel of color pixels exploded outwards from the center of his vision. The rest of his senses — hearing, touch, smell, taste — gently faded in.

There was an incredible sense of déjà vu as Nightshade stood some distance away from the summoning platform, frozen still. Her gaze flittered between him and someone beside him. She puffed up her cheeks and pointed at them. “What did you guys dooooo!”

Craft looked at the person beside him. “Let’s call it a draw.”

Lei-rei had closed her eyes. “And I never got my groceries done.” Breathing deeply, she nodded solemnly.