image [https://imgur.com/IFXCIr0.jpg]

The sun was setting off in the western part of the sky. Clouds gathered around it and turned hot orange with the last of the daylight.

Much like the clouds to the sun, a crowd had naturally gathered around a field featuring a particularly heated battle between a fire mage and a witch. Flashes of orange and purple magic painted our faces, causing great suspense as to who’d win this fantastic match.

My name is Yalda Asamo. I’m a seven year old Exceed who's on a journey to meet back up with my dad and kick the Devil’s butt.

Today’s been a crazy day, what with battling sleep paralysis demons and shapeshifting cultists… Now it was getting capped off with a pretty crazy battle between my friend Indena, a fire mage, and a witch named Melpomene. Speaking of shapeshifting, Mella happened to look like a cat right now.

*BOOM!*

Indena jetted herself up into the sky with fire. With a quick twirl, she launched down a volley of fire bolts that scorched the earth.

The witch Melpomene managed to evade the blaze with her feline body, scampering to a position where she breathed an opaque bubble into the air. The bubble left her cat lips and floated upwards, quickly scattering into thousands of little weightless spheres.

Quickly the spheres climbed up toward the fire mage as she fell back down, her flames easing the drop. The bubbles popped close to her and sent out a paint-like substance to cover over her skin.

Indena tried to ignite her flames, but couldn’t. Her tattoos were unable to activate with this strange paint all over. Without them, she was in a freefall back to the ground.

*CRASH!*

She landed hard, kicking up a lot of dust.

“Indena!” I shouted, worried that she’d be finished. “She dropped like a rock!”

But Indena wasn’t any normal human. Her mage powers granted her body a higher step on the evolutionary chain. She was more durable than most.

She rose up from the dirt, rubbing the gunk off her tattoos.

“For the record, I hate rocks!” Indena shouted back at me. “That the best you got?” she smirked at her opponent, her eyes lighting up bright orange.

“A witch always has a new trick up her sleeve,” Mella said, raising her tiny hat up her cat head and revealing her own glowing pair of bright purple eyes.

Indena scoffed, launching a fireball at Mella, who jumped out of the way. Our fire mage friend hoped for that reaction. She stomped her foot onto the ground and a rift opened up under where Mella was about to land.

Volcanic ash erupted from the rift, blasting the cat witch high into the air!

“Oooh!” went the crowd.

A purple bubble appeared around Mella to moderately protect her from the intense hot smog.

“Damn!” Indena shouted. “Still can’t make lava shoot up yet.”

“Fortunately, you’ve tapped into my element,” Mella taunted.

Mella spawned little wings and morphed into a bat-like form. As the smog lifted up into the air she gathered it around herself and enhanced her aura with the super-heated ash. She scattered it around the field, keeping it just out of the range of the audience.

Indena couldn’t see through the thick black smoke.

“How the hell can you move smoke?! That’s got nothing to do with poison magic!”

“Elements are versatile, bending to the imagination.” Her voice appeared to come from all around Indena, making it impossible to locate her. “Where do we draw the line of man-made ash becoming air pollution, which is well in my domain?”

Harsh fangs bit into Indena’s arm, causing it to go limp from poisoning.

“Gah!” Indena grunted.

Mella quickly let go of her and flew back into the fog. She then flew in for a swipe of sharp claws, leaving another poison wound on the fire mage.

Toxins were spreading quickly. Indena had to act or go limp.

I was getting antsy, thinking I should jump in and help.

“She won’t last long.” I started moving in, on my own, but a random woman next to me raised up her hand, preventing me from leaping onto the field. Shockingly, she had a virtual nametag above her head. It read out ‘Nice Lady.’

“That shouldn’t be necessary.” the lady said in a kind voice. “Let’s see what happens. Trust your friend.”

Did I know her? Having her Vr-tag filled out wasn’t normal unless I’d seen them before. But as far as I could remember, her face didn’t look recognizable.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

When she noticed me take an interest in her, she kneeled down to my level and got close.

“Oh dear, is something the matter?” she asked.

“Is your name Nice Lady?”

She snickered, then put a finger to her chin with a cute smile.

“If it were, who would like to know?”

“My name is Yalda. Have we ever met before?”

Her smile flared up even more brightly for a brief moment as she reached into her purse, feeling around it until grabbing a little photo. “Is this you?”

A baby in a cradle?

Wahh… Whaahh… Wait a minute! That baby was me! I recognized my own crystal heart.

“Why do you have a baby photo of me?” I didn’t know if that creeped me out or made me just plain confused. How on earth could a human get something like that? Until the valley, I’d never even visited the surface world.

She snickered, then put the photo very precisely back between two little slips of paper in her purse.

“My name is Lauri Samual. You’re father and I worked closely together for a few years.”

“You worked with daddy?!” my eyes went wide. “Where?”

She explained that she was part of a team called Research Group 9. A coalition of scientists and geographers. Yamin mentioned a while back that her mom was part of that group too.

I looked over at a cinnamon haired girl with her hands desperately clinging to the railing before the field. Her nervous eyes glued to the fight. That was Yamin, and her life was the prize in that battle. If Indena won, she’d be spared. But if Mella won… Let’s just say she didn’t have the best intentions for her.

Miss Lauri scooched up a little until we were side by side. “I see you’re looking over at my daughter, eh?”

-...-

Holy cow! This is Yamin’s mom!

While my brain was trying to process that revelation, especially since they didn’t look anything alike, the fight in the field developed into an odd direction.

Indena closed her eyes and grit her teeth.

She dodged out of the way of one of Mella’s hidden strikes as if she’d predicted it.

With haste, the witch turned back around and tried to attack again, but Indena was tracking her, almost perfectly.

“What?” I uttered in shock. “How can she do that without seeing?”

I could easily see through this fog using my Identify Friend or Foe tags, but Indena was a normal human mage. Without her eyes, seeing shouldn’t be possible. Unless…

“One thing about fire mages,” Miss Lauri spoke up, “they’re able to see with infrared light.”

“Oooh…”

Indena’s actually told me about that before. It’s a really useful skill, especially when it’s too dark to see.

“Can you see what’s going on in the fog?” I asked, since she seemed pretty able to determine what they were doing.

“Nope. Can’t see anything at all!” she shrugged with a silly smile. “I’ve just been around enough of them to know how they work.”

An intimidating man in a gray suit and fedora came over and patted me on the head. “Have some faith in her.” Uncle said. “Indena’s tougher than she looks.”

If anyone knew Indena’s toughness, it was me. That girl could cook anything but a good meal. We were stranded in a valley for a few days and had to rough it out in nature. I never really thought her appearance deceived her strength, especially considering her body was covered in oriental tattoos.

“But Uncle, she’s getting hurt really badly. Why aren’t you worried?” I asked.

“Haven’t you noticed? Neither of them are trying to kill the other.”

It did seem like they were holding back. I didn't know if Mella had to kill Indena or just knock her out to get to Yamin, so this was uncharted territory in a way.

Speaking of which, their battle was kicking up the heat. Indena scattered fire across the ground. Heated air billowed up, forcing all the haze Mella manipulated to rise with it.

“Clever.” Mella’s glare became deathly. “But I’ll end this now!”

Mella was back in her cat form. The fur on her stuck upwards, like quills on a porcupine. They launched from her body like projectiles.

Indena rose up a flame aura around her hand and deflected the incoming quills. Then she raised the temperature of the ground again in certain spots and caused a sudden gust of super-heated air to redirect the tiny missiles.

Needles scattered everywhere, even toward the audience. Mella quickly rose up a wall of sludge to protect all of us from taking any damage.

While distracted, Indena moved in and punted the cat witch into the air, then blasted her with a fire bolt.

Finally she summoned a powerful wall of nearly solid flame to catch the witch as she rocketed away, slamming her into the hard blaze.

“Gah!” She grunted as she hit the wall.

The flame wall moved around Mella, trapping her inside its clutches.

“Oi, why don’t we call it, witch?” Indena intensified the fires surrounding Mella. “I’ve been wondering something. Why aren’t you using that mana magic of yours?”

“The dim witted mage finally notices?”

“I’m brighter than you right now!” The fire around Mella grew hotter and more violent, momentarily suffocating her. “Before, you summoned all kinds of animals and stuff. Now you’re struggling to keep away. You get nerfed or something?”

Not more than a day ago, she was actually using her mana magic to summon spirit animals. But she made it clear that she wasn’t able to use her poison magic at that time.

Now the situation seemed reversed. Mana magic was out, and poison magic was in.

Was it possible that in her cat form, she could only use poison magic? And in her human form, mana?

No, that couldn’t be it. When we first met her she used both at the same time, so this was just weird. For as pigheaded as Indena was, she’d absolutely notice that too.

“Very perceptive, but do you really think I’d tell you why I’m not using it and give you an advantage?” The cat witch had a taunting smile.

“Stupid pussy-cat witch.” Indena replied, sophisticated as always.

It might have been just me, but they both seemed to enjoy taunting one another. At the very least, it looked like this battle was over. For now, anyways…

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