Her name is Feint, and for being the first person I hold a real conversation with in the capital, she’s not so bad. And dinner is, well, loud. But fun. She takes me to some electroclub diner on the nebulous border between the Electric Town and University districts that’s apparently the prime dive for the big names of the combat colleges.

“And the drinks aren’t bad either,” she says, leading the way down the metro station’s steps with her hands in her pockets. “Everyone who’s anyone goes here at least once a week.”

I take a last look down the straight-shot kilometer of rowdy neon paradise separating us from the distant arena spearing out of the district’s heart, then follow. “Do you?”

“Once a month, if I’m feeling it.” Feint glances back with a crooked smile, gives my sweat-stained gym clothes an up-down glance. “Don’t worry. You’ll fit right in.”

Nestled between highrises, the electroclub, the S-Tier, is the most retro joint on the block. Square and angular, two short stories, three tiers of patios all broadcasting the night’s offering of major league fights. Opposing cheers sweep through the uni crowd on the roof as Feint and I find one of the street-level entrances. There’s a small line loitering and finishing drinks outside, streams and projector screens cascading from their JOYs, a few more tapping into their classes as they head out into the city. Feint walks right up to the Mecha bouncer, tugs me close enough to imply we’re a package deal, and we’re in. A quick arc of street-side neon chases my reflection inside, illuminating tan skin and white hair before it’s gone.

Inside, the main room is filled by so many people we can’t even close the door at first. I blink quickly, adjusting to the muted shades of blue and pink lights running along the ceiling. The doors squeak shut behind us, sealing in the chaos. Rip-roaring electric jams blast from a live band way in the back of the main floor. Shouts and whistles for the streams drown out the tempo. Dozens of screens flash highlight reels and live pro fights from the walls, each with its own commentary and sound. Bowls and silverware rattle loudly. Mugs thump and clatter against tumblers. Drink runners laugh and duck down the rickety staircase beside the largest screen in the room on their way to fetch new rounds for their teams upstairs.

I take it all in with wide eyes, almost forgetting myself as I follow Feint’s wending path towards the bar. The mix of accents and fightslang flies right over my head. A loud, unfamiliar barrage. Most people around me are wearing some kind of three-colored windbreaker, and those who don’t are stripped down from workouts like I am. It’s a young crowd. My age or a couple years older; the girls’ bodies more curved, guys’ broader. All at the apex of physical fitness, and all standing with that cocky confidence I recognized in each of the fighters I embarrassed earlier tonight. They’re students of the combat colleges, enrolled in the capital’s most famous universities. The cream of the fighting crop. The next generation of pros. And those jackets, I think the colors are for the different schools. I’ve got one just like them in my bag. I fish it out and shrug it on when I get stuck under a fan for too long, muttering apologies for the people I bump with my elbows. The jacket is three sizes too big and two decades too old for me. Midnight blue, blood red, faded white, patched and feathery at the seams, zipper long missing. The half-teardrop sigil of the Martial Artist affinity covers the back. I wear it like I was born in it.

Feint’s timing is perfect. We reach the bar right after a trio of Duelists vacate their seats and slide right in beneath a couple stream screens showing a current fights happening live up in the M; some minor league bout between a winged markswoman and rabbit-eared Innovator. She shoots me a curious look as she reaches over to grab a menu from the other side of the counter. “Remind me, where’d you say you came from?”

“The villages.” The truth alone is too short, so I make up the best lie I can. “Akena, up near the mountains.”

“Ah. Beach girl. Explains the tan.” She keeps blindly pawing around, eyes squinting further. “They have burgers out there?”

“We’re not savages,” I chuckle, glancing down the bar. “But no, not really.”

“Then I guess I’ll… have to… broaden your horizons.”

I say nothing at first, just enjoying watching her fish around. She’s as short as I am tall. It’s entertaining. Increasingly so, until she finally braces with her palms and hops up to look over the counter, then sees there’s no menus at all. She settles for kicking back on her stool and stealing a pair of drinks from the table behind us, right as their owners pop off over the livestream playing on the big screen.

She slides the bigger glass to me with a wink. “Cheers.” And drains hers as soon as the straw hits her lips.

I almost choke on the first sip. I take mine slower, not used to the sweetness. Or the burn. But it doesn’t take long for the drink to start prying at my quiet. The cup’s contents are gone in a couple minutes, another soon in its place. I don’t even realize when I start leaning forward and actually getting into talking with her. Probably when our food comes. I should know better than to risk chatting with strangers, but I don’t mind so much tonight. This girl is sassy. She’s a talker. And she’s the only person in the whole city who hasn’t given a weird look at my right arm yet.

“…so there I am, right?” Feint’s face is flushed as she loosens her tie, plunging through another story about her internship all the while. She lets out a dumbfounded laugh at the memory. “Ten at night on a Friday, I’ve got a six pack in one hand and a mop in the other, and this minor league schmuck is like… well, can you do my taxes? And I’m like, dude, I can’t do my taxes! And then…”

To think I was planning on finding a hotel and passing out. Seeing her reaction when I look away just long enough to take my first bite of what she ordered for us, then the way her eyes widen as I start demolishing it, makes tonight’s whole diversion worth.

“Geez Tay, slow down! You’re gonna pop like a balloon if you eat the whole thing.”

“Yesh I will,” I agree through a mouthful of food.

She’s snorting over another drink, this one glowing like cyan lighter fluid. Scoots her chair a touch closer, leaned sideways, one elbow on the bar. Eyes briefly running appreciatively up my body before ending at my eyes. “Where are you even putting all that?”

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Hell if I know. I’ve been eating rice for a month straight.” I glance over the burger at her, then nod at the rowdiness around us. “Nice pick. You bring a lot of girls here?”

Feint’s cheeks shoot straight to red. “Hah, good one. Me? Some penthouse playboy?” She fingers her earrings and finds a distraction to look at instead. “You looked lost, and I figured you could use a friendly face. Someone else at your school would’ve done it if I hadn’t. Plus, you put on a hell of a show. I haven’t seen a good martial artist since Mars was still Champion. You guys are a dying breed.”

Out the club’s glass walls, the Metro Blockhouse shimmers through the night. The throne of the capital, home of the reigning champion, the strongest warrior and ruler of the entire Section. So big you can see it from any alley in the Electric Town. I’ve been eyeing it since I hopped off the metro. At Feint’s joke, I blink away from the view and back to my meal. “That’s an apt way of putting it.”

Her finger brushes my sleeve. “Those colors are like twenty years out of season, but you’re enrolled at Concordia? First semester?”

The jacket, she means. I reach up, absentmindedly thumbing at the faded collar, wistful twitch of my lips. “It’s my dad’s. Not mine.”

“Damn. You’re really far from home if you weren’t accepted to a uni.” Feint takes a quiet sip. “You fought better than some of the seniors I’ve seen, and you only use one class. Kinda insane, by the way.”

“Thanks.”

“So what brings you to the capital? Piss off an examiner, hoping for a rerun on the entrance tests?”

“Mah, kinda.” I reach up, fixing the crown of petal-shaped bangs above my forehead. “I’m looking for someone.”

She watches me with playful, dancing eyes. “Oh, that’s so funny. Me too.”

“What about you?” I ask, trying to pivot the conversation back to her. “You’re eighteen, right? Enrolling?”

“Look who’s the playboy now, Tay. All curious about where my dorm’s gonna be.” Smirking at my startled reaction, Feint shrugs and drains the rest of her drink in two quick swallows. “I mean, I am going to be at one, don’t get me wrong. Just passed my exams, actually. Full ride at Concordia. Orientation’s in a couple days.”

“You don’t use a JOY,” I note.

“Admin track.” She wiggles her hand, showing off an expensive watch and an intricately etched damascene bangle ringing her left wrist. “Fighting isn’t really my thing. Never been good at it.”

“How so?”

She chuckles. “Probably hard for someone like you to understand, but some of us plebs aren’t so great at the whole, square up and beat the shit out of each other thing.” Holding my drink up for me to finish it off, she waits ‘till I’ve emptied the whole thing before hopping off and giving me a quick shoulder nudge, cheeky grin. “You good for one more round? I’m gonna go grab some refills.”

“Good choice,” a familiar sneer answers.

The kind of sneer that’s just looking for an excuse to fuck around and find out, belonging to the bare-knuckle brawler who interposes himself between me and Feint.

The guy from the gym. The one who wanted the runback. And he doesn’t look happy about how that runback went.

He’s my height and twice my weight in muscle. Mane of orange-red hair bound down his back by a leather band. Powerful arms. Taped-up knuckles, heavy like a sledgehammer. Gold-silver-blue university jacket that’s got a lot of pals in the crowd around us. The modern iteration of the old colors I wear. Same school, different era. My stomach sinks as I see the number of matching jackets loitering nearby. If something starts here, it’s going to go from schoolyard brawl to a hospital trip in two seconds flat.

A telltale shimmer of fire ripples around the brawler, clearing space in the crowd. He’s an Elemental- fire type, obvious to see. There’s a fresh burn snaking up my left forearm that attests to how dangerous the class can be. Which means trouble. Not just because we’re in the middle of a bar, but because I only use one class, and it’s the most mundane in the roster.

I already beat this guy once, but that’s no guarantee I can do it twice. As a Martial Artist, the worst I can do is break some bones. Elementals? They might be simple, but the posters hanging from the walls here don’t lie. The infamous ones made their names by deleting cities off of maps. One of them sits atop that tower that looms over the Electric Town right now.

All that to say, I keep a real careful eye on the mirror-polished chrome behind the bar, waiting for a single telltale spark of flames igniting while I reply.

“Got a problem?”

He grabs the back of my chair and jerks it a heel-scraping inch away from the counter. The nearest conversations screech to a halt like a highway crash. Eyes turning, space forming, as the hounds of the capital instinctively start smelling the blood in the water. He doesn’t even slow. “You owe me a runback,” he says.

“You already got it,” I say, taking a casual bite of my burger. Still watching the mirror. “Plenty of your buddies saw. You won. Fair and square.”

His brow darkens. Face tightens. A single spark of fire almost ignites as his anger spikes and he growls, “Get out of that chair.”

“I’m good. But thanks.”

Feint slips between us right as three more uni fighters in matching Concordia jackets emerge out of the nearest crowd to form an awkward semicircle. She rests an elbow on my shoulder and cocks her head casually to the side. “Hey, buddy. She said she said she wasn’t interested.”

“No one’s talking to you, shortstop.” She’s about to fire back when the brawler snaps his fingers, igniting a fingertip of flame. The pulsating ember glows red-hot. “Move.”

She moves.

He waits for me to stand. And when I still don’t, he slings that compressed elemental power a centimeter away from my face, blowing the rest of my food into paste and splattering it across the liquor on display.

Dead silence as the band squeals to a halt.

A faint scorchmark cools along my cheek. The acrid smell of fried ozone in the air, a sizzling path burned by the flame, still evaporating as the brawler stomps through it and comes right up behind me.

“You don’t get to wear those colors and fuck off from a fight,” he snarls. “They stand for something better than a bitch who fakes an injury to skip out-”

“-Aurix. Aurix, stop.”

Another Concordia fighter, shorter with a sleeping juvenile fox curled over his shoulders, pushes through the others. Shoulder-length, straw colored hair cascades down to brush against the hilt of a small scabbard and shield on his back. One hand, fingerless gloves, curls over the brawler’s shoulder. But it’s his eyes that catch me. Jade green, pure as the crystal stone itself. The green narrows briefly as he takes in the situation at a glance.

“They also stand for something better than picking petty fights,” he cautions the taller brawler. “We have a reputation to uphold.” He motions at the standstill club. “This isn’t Cayman’s. Let it go.”

The brawler keeps glaring death at me, taped fingers curling and uncurling. A long moment passes. Then another. For a second, I think he’s going to start something anyways. He moves forward, martial artist smooth, and drives a finger into my breastbone. Hard.

“If I see you around campus again, one of us isn’t walking away,” he growls.

Then he finally relents to the prying hand, shrugging it off and turning to leave. The shorter boy flashes me a cautious look before following his classmates back to the depths of the club.

Slowly, the pulse of the music returns. Beside me, Feint breathes out a huge sigh and watches the uni fighters go. It takes her a second to finally shift back to me.

“So Tay, about that last round…”

But by the time she does, I’m already long gone.