The campus awoke the next morning revitalized. A dark ichor had seeped into everything unnoticed ever since the first killing, and the life of the gala seemed to have banished it, if momentarily. It was Friday, too, which helped.
The Tisdale Tournament semi-finals were the next day. Jacob warred with himself over whether or not to tell Camilla he'd given away her abilities to Tanaka, but eventually decided to postpone the confrontation until after their match. He didn't think he was doing it out of cowardice, this time, however. She needed to focus on Victor.
And anyway she wasn't in classes—neither was Victor nor his new fiancee—and wasn't responding to his messages. Distraught, worrying his shenanigans the night before had landed him in deep water even though Camilla and him had ended the night on a good note—him walking her back to her dorm—he'd asked Grace about it. She said she hadn't heard from Camilla that morning either, and that she was probably training.
Somewhat relieved, he decided to go watch one of the public Split team scrimmages that afternoon. Blake's practice squad ran a series of games against the upper year team towards the end of the term to prepare the upper years for the season, which began in September once the time dilation was lifted.
He ended up sitting with Tobi Yengue and Stephen, who were there to kill time after class instead of studying. They kept going on about the gala, and about Jacob's crazy cool suit, which, while annoying, made him feel a little smug. It also made him appreciative of Camilla, and even though it had only been like sixteen hours and twenty minutes since he'd last seen her, he missed her.
Split was a weird game.
At first, it appeared as though it contained a larger element of luck than any other legitimate sport Jacob had watched. Really, a frisbee that split in two mid-flight, and one was fake? Wouldn't picking the right one be chance?
When the frisbee split, the trajectory of both new frisbees obeyed the laws of physics. If one went out to the right, the other veered out to the left. But Tobi explained there was a 'spotter' spell you could cast that would tell you the trajectory the 'fake' magic frisbee would take an instant before it manifested. From there, with a little bit of on-the-move physics knowledge, you could guess what trajectory the real frisbee would take and adjust yourself accordingly. The better your magical perception and handle on the spell, the more likely you were to guess right.
There was a surprising amount of guessing wrong, which led to funny little moments where someone would go to catch the 'fake' frisbee, thinking it was the real one, and their hands would clasp over it, dissipating it.
The sport had apparently started as a way to hone your magical perception and casting endurance, since the longer you could cast the 'spotter' spell, the more useful you were as a player.
The basic strategy, Tobi said, was to have a few players play mostly as 'spotters' who would call out which frisbee was real, and the rest of the team as 'enhancers' who focused on using strength and perception spells to augment their movement and athletic abilities. Of course there were a couple stars on each team who did both. Blake being one of these.
Blake scored two points, one in each half, both times augmenting himself in a flying leap over his defender in the end-zone, but the upper year squad trounced them 12-5. The first-years' had good augmentations, but their teamwork and their spotting was poor in comparison to the militaristic efficiency of the upper year team.
After the game they went with Blake to the market and got a ton of junk food, which was supposedly one of his post-game rituals from volleyball.
Stolen novel; please report.
They'd reached that eerily quite point in the term, after the assignment rush, but before the exam push, like the lulling calmness of the ocean before a tidal wave. Exams were only a little over two weeks away, but no one seemed to want to admit they were that close and start studying, so they walked around the town, egging Stephen about giving up on finding the weather control centre and guessing at where it could be like they had at the beginning of the term. Blake reminded Jacob that the junior theatre production was Monday night, and that they had to go to support Grace.
They ran into Ms Sterling, who was out for a jog in the town, in yoga pants and a tight sports bra. It reminded Jacob that all their profs lived on campus and that they could catch them going about their everyday lives if they weren't careful. Stephen and Tobi didn't seem to mind, though. They hailed Ms Sterling and tried to rope her into a conversation. She said hello, but kept going on her jog without stopping, leaving them both drooling after her.
They ended up crashing back at Harrison Hall with some of the other boys on their floor, playing games and talking late into the night about the gala, girls, and what the hell they were all going to do to stay sane in high-school.
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Diego threw up a reinforced ward. Tanaka's forceward shattered right through it. Diego threw himself to the side in a long, augmented dive. He rolled to his feet and fired a forceward at Tanaka.
Jacob sat forward. Diego was good. Very good.
But was he good enough to beat Tanaka?
The fight had just started moments ago, but already Diego was on the defensive. The crowd was dead silent, glued to their seats in fascinated anticipation at the display going on before them.
Tanaka whirled across the arena, then dropped and put his hand to the ground. A discoloured wave emanated out from him, akin to the same spell Archie had used against Jacob. Diego sunk into the clay soup up to his knees, but leapt out before Tanaka could change it back.
Tanaka didn't change it back. Instead, pillars of clay rose up out of the ground near him, and shot at Diego, pushing tiny tidal waves of soupy clay in front of him. It splashed all over Diego, who leapt around like a rabbit.
He must have decided that the only way to beat Tanaka was to get close, because he started to advance. Beams of white and yellow light lanced out from his hands. Tanaka met each one with a pillar of clay. The beams exploded into the clay, sending chunks spraying up onto the ward-wall surrounding the arena.
They had both augmented themselves far beyond what Jacob had seen from anyone save Victor, and spells whickered out of them like bullets from a machine gun. Tanaka seemed to stick to transformation spells for his Decomp-related combat, and though Jacob knew he was capable of far more, he didn't know if any of it was combat applicable. In fact, of the three types of magic, Decomp seemed the least tailored towards direct combat.
Though that didn't slow Tanaka down. Just when Diego had made an iota of progress, Tanaka disappeared.
The crowd gasped. At first Jacob thought it was a mimicry of the veil Camilla had used, but he hadn't sensed any Production from the transfer student. Only a flash of something dark.
Diego cast several wards, but it was too late.
The ground opened up behind him and Tanaka popped out like an oversized groundhog. He hit Diego in the back of his knees, deflected a desperate forceward, and pinned him to the ground.
"Marquez yields, Tanaka wins!"
The crowd roared their approval at the forced yielding.
"Haven't seen many of those since the Round of 32," Blake said.
"It looks like Tanaka has finally pulled out all the stops," Archie said.
"What even was that?" Grace asked.
"He moved through the ground," Archie said. "I think you could pull it off with a combination of what I used against the Schwarz girl, but you'd have to be very quick. Create a hole in the ground, then push yourself along by filling it up behind you."
Jacob texted Tanaka a congratulations, then put his phone away and sat forward. He was happy Tanaka had won, though not super surprised. In all honesty, he'd expected Diego to go down quicker, but clearly the other boy had been hard at work honing his skills and had been holding ability back before.
"Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's one half of the Grand Finals stamped. The next semi-finals will start in a half hour!"
People left their seats to go get snacks or relieve themselves. Jacob watched the crowd, hoping to see Camilla, but didn't.
None of them had seen her that day. Grace said that she'd come home the night before, late, and had been snappy when Grace asked how she was doing. Jacob just hoped she was alright.