Armand dashed forward, quickly shortening the distance between them, his fist was already formed and clenched, coming in like a meteor aiming for her torso. The right hand she had put forth shielded her from the blow, redirecting it in the opposite direction.
She tested back with a kick aimed to his shin, which he avoided and used the momentum of her foot to deliver a left hook punch.
Leaning back just enough to avoid it, she sent a poke of her own to the man’s elbow.
What would usually break the form of most untrained fighters was dealt with no problem as his entire forearm tensed and took it upfront; paying the bait back with a kick.
Sidestepping to the right where he was open, she brought her knees up for an attack that ended up getting blocked, but that was merely a front as she clawed a well-timed slap on those rugged cheeks.
Armand avoided that attack as well and caught her hands in a tight, python-like grip; not realizing that Tira had leaned her head back and brought her skull to meet her opponent’s.
The force was hard enough to rattle her jaw, but she persisted and gritted her teeth tightly. Locked and unmoving as she bashed their heads together head-on.
He did not let go, but that wouldn't matter, as she was going to make him choose between distance or his family jewels next. She even sped up the force of her kick to make him take his pick fast, or else.
The outcome of that threat was obvious. Now they had a two meters distance between them. And a vein had popped up on Armand's head.
“Fuck, you’re feisty!” Armand groaned as he touched his forehead, with his fist still readied in front. He hasn't dropped his guard whatsoever, how nice of him to take this seriously.
“You’re welcome.”
This time, she was the one who attacked first, though not with a fist but with an attempted stomp aimed at his foot. It forced him to move back one step, he retaliated once he had reared back enough for a proper punch to the gut.
Blunt force to the stomach was generally not good in general, even if you expected it.
Gritting through the pain and keeping the position to not get pushed back, she used the moment that hit was about to connect to target at that untucked neck with a backhand, enough to give a shock to his system so he’d move back another step.
Perhaps realizing the game she was trying to play, Armand moved to his right and tried to tackle her from a low form. Noticing this, she had brought her leg high up to deliver a kick and–
“Stop!”
Tira stopped a limb that was about to be whipped down right before it touched the back of his head, too used to hearing her order than anyone else’s and forgetting that it was Rina and not the PE teacher who had shouted.
She forgot. But Armand did not.
“Arl!”
Tackling into her small form, he pushed forward so she may be either lifted into the air for him to throw or fall to be dragged.
She did neither.
Using the leg already on his back as a pivot point, she spun her weight up and, hooking her other leg on his neck, pulled him back first onto the field. Even after her back had hit the floor, Tira kept any grunts from escaping her mouth with her hand pressed on her calves to pull on his neck like a noose, using all the force she can exert normally to put him in a chokehold.
“Can I stop now?”
A second passes. Two. Three.. She ignored the pain biting in her left ankle. Four…
Rough, calloused hands tapped on her leg.
A deep, guttural coughing fit came as she released the tension off from the boy and scooted away from the floor, the moment allowing her to gather her breath.
Armand alternated between laughing and coughing out as he wheezed into his hands, that maddened glint in his eyes not disappearing as he glanced over with a smile. “Fuck, I thought I had it!”
“I thought so as well.” She admitted, standing from the ground carefully, loosening her jaw carefully to flex it momentarily before she clenched it again.
He could have popped her knees or clawed through her thighs and she had anticipated him playing dirtier in general, which had made the result a lot more mentally draining than expected.
Gears of instinct slowly rousing and starting to grind again after long disuse through loss of practice. Her mind might have tried to forget, but the body still remembered. The body remembered too well, in fact, that it should be concerning her later. "Round two?”
“Hell yeah!”
They returned to the proper position at the center of the court, with Sir Saputra seemingly having no intention of saying anything to the two aside from acting on his referee conduct.
“Round two, with powers and weapons allowed. You have to stop if I say stop. Understand?”
They both nodded again. Rina had her hands on her mouth, regret painted on her face from shouting earlier.
Armand had his fingers curling and uncurling, his hunched pose open from the front, but it would not be for long. She knew their weapons were similar in build and style and so, they had to either fight differently or pull smarter tactics to overwhelm their opponent.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“Ready?"
They nodded again.
The thing with having a similar type of weapon was that she gets to make an educated guess on how Armand's worked, in the same way, if not identical. It took time for her to manifest her chains, no matter how much she trained so far, she still cannot beat one second yet, and she was confident that neither could he.
When she trained her weapon manifestation, it started to appear from one of two points. The stake first, or the chain end first. So it wasn't so far off to think that Armand’s weapon would also have done the same.
So she observed.
When she saw him pulling the whip out, it started with the handle first.
During the time he had tied Peter, he whipped it out of the air, the handle manifesting first.
As he demonstrated his power on the public the thing that made its way to sight first was still; the handle.
Handle first. Handle first, followed by the rest of the trailing thorned whip.
"Fight!”
She dropped down on the floor, hips raised to the air, her eyes kept on the prize as the energy inside her felt like it was exploding.
Running forward on all fours, Tira used her momentum to slide on the floor, aiming for the foot.
She missed, but knew now that the whip wouldn’t be coming until she had made her way on his back.
That one-second lag was the only moment she needed before she whipped the borrowed hairpin from inside her left socks and pressed it against his neck.
Silence descended into the room. The whip end of her opponent's weapon did not move aside from the brass thorn clattering onto the floor because of gravity. Armand’s breathing did not change its tempo either, stilled and measured.
She kept the pointy end of the hairpin dug into his neck, deep enough that blood started to drip. Tira had intentionally chosen this hairpin out of the many available others because its ends were sharper than they needed to be for a hairpin, thus making it faster to pull out than her chained stakes but still making it a lethal weapon.
The other pair of the hairpin rested on her right sock. And if that had also failed to land on the mark, the hair clip that she hid under her tongue would be a good distraction aimed at the forehead for a bluff.
A formulated upon set up manifested through seven days of planning, observing and stalking instead of the originally planned one day.
The longer they delay, the deadlier she becomes.
“I think we’ve got ourselves a clear winner.”
Dias clapped as he announced to the captive audience, walking over with a proud, wide smile.
She took off the hairpin from the senior’s neck, taking her distance from his shaking, shivering form, meeting him halfway through the court as she wiped the smear with her gym shorts. “Sorry I took these, they’re the perfect size and sharpness.”
“It’s fine, it’s fine. I said before that you’re free to borrow anything.” He took the hairpin off her hand, then the other one she pulled from her other leg.
A bit of blood was smeared on it, definitely because she had stabbed herself earlier pulling that over-the-shoulder maneuver, but she wiped it away on the black socks she was wearing before handing it back as well.
When she reached under her tongue to fish the last pin, her eyes landed on that right, gloved palm and his surprised face as he looked at her. She wiped the silver pin on her shirt and pocketed it, wincing a bit at how bad it had smelled after a while in her mouth and drenched in her saliva. “..Maybe let me wash this one first.”
“R-Right.” Dias glanced away with a light blush. Surprise was etched in his eyes, but there was no disgust? At least she couldn't see or feel any before he got ahold of himself faster than she could blink. "Let me heal you for now."
He slid the lengthy hair needles into the inner pocket of his suit, then placed his hand over her head. The pain in her ankle stopped throbbing along with other injuries she hadn’t noticed. The healing energy then rushed over to fix all that was misaligned.
Her forehead being the last to be healed, not to mention it taking more time made her wonder if the extent of the damage she had done to that thick skull was more than she thought it should be, considering that she felt sleepy instead of energized like usual, the answer pointed towards yes. “Thanks.”
“Take care of yourself better.” He smiled sadly, but without all the persuasion he used to push at her, like when he had offered to take care of her hair. He also didn't wait for her answer, as Dias stepped aside to heal the senior boy next.
“Armand, I hope you learned something from this exchange?”
“Oh, I did learn, alright.” He chuckled, hand cupping the place where she had pointed her blade, the blood turning into mist blending with the air as the wound dried and closed.
The blond then glanced over at Kevin by the sidelines, grinning, “No wonder you were pissing yourself when I said we were fighting, even I got shivers!”
Kevin had his mouth open and immediately closed it when he noticed her looking. Those shaking eyes glanced away from her faster than he usually did.
“Y-Yeah, I’m glad you understand now, boss.”
“Thank you for the pointers, senior.” She bowed to Armand, it was only polite to do so after a spar. “If there’s nothing else, may I be excused?”
“Yeah yeah, let’s fight again another time, ya? I’ll beat you ne–”
He did not get to say more as Rina marched and slapped his biceps harshly, talking a mile a minute in a furious countenance. Donny also joined in rebuking the guy harshly, while Henry now also joined the club of avoiding Tira’s eyes when they accidentally met.
And Lydia? Lydia still smiled back when Tira bid her goodbye. She was really hard to read.
“Excuse me.”
“You can stop saying that by now, you know?” Dias holds the door of the room open for her, closing it only after he gets in as well. “Just make yourself at home.”
"I'll keep that in mind." Tira muttered as she went to wash the hairpin in the sink, eager to jump into the shower as soon as she was done cleaning the poor misused thing.
She even let a sigh echo in the tiled room when she stepped in, unaware of it due to her heart still thundering with the help of adrenaline still coursing through her system.
Breathe. She needed to fill the air with anything other than white noise.
“What did you think of the match?” She asked from the shower since she could feel from the unexplained supernatural senses, that he had just walked into the changing room.
“What did I think of it?” Dias parroted back the question from the closet, likely putting away the pair of hairpins. “I thought you were brilliant.”
“Not me, senior Armand, I mean,” Pumping the citrus-mint shampoo, she started to lather her greasy hair in a fit of fury. Curse her oily hair and its complex need to always get oily at the slightest bit of heated activity. “I don’t think a whip suits him, I just can’t figure out why you gave him one.”
“But I didn’t?”
Confused, Tira just echoed the question back among the loud splashing of water onto the floor. “You didn’t?”
“No, the weapons.. They were indeed pulled out of my armory, but–” Dias’ voice sounded fainter as she stepped back under that shower and had to strain her ears to hear him through all the noise of her creation.
“In this case, the weapon he pulled will be one which suited him the most. Not based on my judgment, but by his psyche.”
Continuing on to a second lather, this time to puff out the bubbles and to make sure the oil was thoroughly rinsed so that she could survive another week of not shampooing, Tira turned to face the door as she contemplated on what his words meant. “So he chose to wield a whip subconsciously?”
“Kind of.”
He got closer to the frosted glass door and had his back leaning against it. “I don't have concrete proof but based on how it’s been going so far, the Majoras had brought to them the weapon that held an affinity with them.
"It was why your senior, Rina, despite being a General, had pulled a divine artifact to assist her operation instead of a weapon. Those gloves are proof of who she is first and foremost, a healer. Not an attacker.”
That sounds reasonable. “In that case, I suppose the only thing left is to just have everyone practice so they get used to their weapon of choice then?”
“Yes.”
Tira let the water flow stop and watched it drain; cleansing her body next with the most minimal amount of soap possible while she thought of the implications.
Rina had manifested a pair of gloves, and the other Majoras manifested weapons, but aside from Cahya, those who were blessed by the generals manifested powers over physical weapons.
The ring on her left hand had started showing up even if she was not using the chains or dressed in her battle gear, a sign of her using her power the barest amount. It would not slip from her finger even when she used soap or cooking oil, so she forgot it existed until now, until she had to punch someone's face and the metal nearly spooked her from just being there.
But it wasn't like the ring was glued onto her either, as she could twirl it at that moment. She just couldn't take it off. “Is there a way to make sure the ring won’t show when I’m using my power?”
“Why?”
“It’s a dead giveaway. If all that anyone had to do was to look at my hands to see if I’m powering up or not, I can’t take them by surprise.”
Turning the shower once again, rinsing all the soap that barely bubbled, Tira let out a sigh of satisfaction under the cold water. She waited until it was all flushed out from her skin, checking all the corners, before she shuts off the water knob.
No answer came. For a while, the room was drenched in the absence of noise.
“The ring is there in order to help you control your power. So that you won’t explode from the inside out every time you change into your battle form.” Dias said around the time she was drying off, his silhouette moving away from the door to leave the changing room for her to use.
“Until you gain mastery over it- until your control of the power that lays dormant becomes as easy as breathing, it’ll be there to help you along the way.”
“Huh, I see.”
She opened the door in time to see the retreating back of a suit, about to close the door behind him. “Do you have spare gloves my size? I might start getting used to wearing one until then.”
The only reply she got was an amused chuckle and a wave of his own gloved hand before he, once again, walked out of view. Tira was left with the example that she had just witnessed and had to process it. Then, growing curious, she took a pair of gloves too big for her to try for herself, and found it producing the same result.
The gloves could not hide the ring. It would always manifest magically atop of every cover, just like Dias' own ring, which had appeared on his gloved ring finger.
There was no shortcut, unfortunately, and Tira sighed from having to eat her own advice too soon.