“Am I useless… Siya?”
Isy’s words suddenly echoed through my mind, fading everything around us into background noise. ‘I’ve been waiting for this… But I still don’t know what I’m supposed to say…’ “Of course not…”
“Than… Can you explain how I’m useful? I haven’t done anything in the past four battles…”
‘She’s being a lot less emotional than I thought… But I’m not sure that’s a good thing…’ “It’s true… You’re not good at fighting yet, and you're still recovering, so you are a little clumsy too… It’s not like you can really make up for that in other areas because Mo is better at gathering information, and you aren’t much of a tactician either…”
She slowly leaned over the table we were eating at and crossed her arms. “Right…”
‘Those are all things I’m sure she’s noticed by now… Maybe I shouldn’t have said them out loud…’ I nervously folded my hands and looked to the side, reorganizing my thoughts. “There is no such thing as a useless soldier.”
“What?”
“Let me put it this way… If we are out there, and I send you into a fight, and you get taken out with a single hit, you would still be useful, because the person that hit you, is spending time on you. That’s the time he could have been spending helping out the rest of his team. In fact, because he was focused on you, Bear might get to hit him one more time, creating a difference of two hits. So even if you were completely hopeless, you would still be useful. You’ve trained hard and you are where you are, it’s my job to figure out how best to use you in a fight… And if you trust me… I’ll make sure you play an important role in this tournament… You’ll be much more useful than simply buying us a couple of seconds.”
“I’ll… Do my best…”
In the end, I really don’t know how much I helped put her worries to rest, but it wasn’t long before we had to gather together again and get ready for another fight. We were going into the final stretch, and the arena was once again the open plane.
“Bear, Mo, How are you holding up?”
Bear finished wrapping his arms tightly with a cloth to cover his bruises. Mo on the other hand was untouched, similar to me.
“We’re fine. Orders?”
I sighed. “That depends… Mo, how many matches are left?”
“Three if we keep winning.”
“Ok… And one of those will be against my sister… That will no doubt be the hardest one… But there’s no point in saving all our tricks for it. She probably won’t fall for half of them…” ‘She’s as much of a monster as I am…’ I slowly stretched my neck, already feeling sore from my muscles operating past their limit with magic. “I guess I don’t mind using up our tricks here then. For this next match, Isy should walk out in front of us by herself directly towards them.”
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Everyone froze as Mo timidly nudged her. “You didn’t make her mad did you?”
Her eyes were wide with shock, but she didn’t dare speak against the plan right after saying she would trust me.
Bear on the other hand had said no such thing. “Explain…” He growled.
“Right. So, we know Isy is our weakest member in terms of fighting, but because she hasn’t actually done any fighting, no one else knows that. For all they know… She’s actually our strongest…”
His grin slowly came back as he relaxed. “Alright. So she’s a decoy.”
“Something like that. While she walks forward, the other team will be struggling to figure out what to do. With their attention drawn towards her, Mo and I will circle around the edges of the area. Bear, I want you to stay perfectly still. As soon as the fighting starts rush in and cover her just in case something goes wrong.”
Their lack of enthusiasm showed in their silence… But then again, none of them really were big talkers.
The doors opened and we walked out. “Are you ready Isy? Just remember to keep walking forward, no matter what happens, keep moving forward.”
She slowly swallowed before taking her first step. “Here I go…” She said timidly. Her posture and stride sold the bluff perfectly though. She walked like a champion.
After several paces I turned to Mo and nodded, both of us taking off like the wind. Sure enough, the plan worked perfectly. Our opponents assumed a spearhead formation and waited nervously as she approached. They had an archer, making me nervous at first. I pulled my bow to take him out before he could shoot, but my eyes told me he would miss. It would throw off the timing if I struck early, so I put it away again. ‘Time to see how much you really trust me…’
The arrow was let loose, grazing just past her cheek, but she didn’t even blink, much less stop her march. ‘Maybe… She trusts me a little too much…’
Moments later Mo and I began our attack. With a single blow, we each took out one, and by the time the others finally realized they were being flanked it was too late. ‘This plan probably wasn’t actually that good technically speaking… But it worked…’ “It feels good when we win this easy.”
Mo nodded, glancing at Isy, before shifting her gaze back to me. Her eyes were filled with a hundred questions, but her mouth didn’t ask even one.
Once again, total victory, we headed back and waited for the next round. As it turned out, we still weren’t fighting my sister, so I pulled out another trick from my playbook. See… Mo, being a former assassin, had plenty of her own tricks… One of which was a simple smoke bomb. Now for everyone else, this made them incapable of seeing anything, having to rely on sound, but we were both so light on our feet that we hardly made any. She had practiced moving with the smoke to find her targets in the confusion… And I had the eyes of a dragon… They didn’t stand a chance. Once again… Total victory.
Just like that, we were in the waiting room for the final match… But, as it turned out my sister was in a different bracket… The tournament wasn’t being held with the goal of deciding one single winner, but multiple, in hopes that many strong guilds would be formed with the prize marks.
“So… What do you want to do?” Mo asked, everyone eagerly awaiting my answer.
I scratched my head, feeling a small sense of disappointment, along with relief that I wouldn’t have to fight Lu. “Well… What do we know about the people we are fighting…”
“Two archers, two hammers, from what the mafia tells us they tend to play defensively and wait for their enemies to make the first move while reigning arrows at them to create pressure.”
“Yea… That would probably make it easy for them to get this far… Given the way the other groups have been fighting, and how easy it is to stir a sense of panic in an untrained group of kids… Hey, Bear… How good are your eyes?”
“They work fine.” He grumbled.
“And Mo, you have no trouble dodging I’m sure.” She nodded. “Ok, then our strategy for this one is simple. We do nothing.” They all paused again.
“Explain…” Bear said sternly. Making me chuckle slightly. ‘He might be more similar to me than my father.’ After seeing me hiding a laugh his face relaxed and he simply shook his head, a strangely soft smile crossing his face instead.
“Bear, I’ll give you my sword, you can use it to block any incoming arrows. Isy can just stand behind you. Mo and I can easily dodge any arrows coming toward us, and we are small targets, so they probably won’t be very accurate anyway. Eventually, they will be forced to advance. When that happens I’ll give you more orders depending on how fast they move forward.
“Right.” He groaned, standing up. “Ok, then Little Lizard. Let’s hear how you roar when we win.”
‘They’re all so confident… But it sounds like this group actually has a strategy… Even if it’s only one that they use every fight… I don’t think this will feel anything like the other fights did…’