Chapter Forty-Two - Last Bout Before the Final

It was the last bout before the final, so of course, people were really excited. Crystal smiled and waved at the cheering crowd, and she was both surprised and happy to see that some people were waving blue banners, and some even had her name on them.

Did she have fans?

That wasn’t entirely new. She’d had fans on Earth.

Not as many as her friends, of course. She was the newest and for a long time weakest of the magical girls, and her friends had mostly been around for a while so they’d established something of a presence, some for years before she showed up.

The next-youngest was Screaming Bioplague, who cured cancer across the entire planet one afternoon, which kind of made her very popular in a way that was hard to live up to when Crystal’s own best trick was collapsing the international gem market.

The only girls less popular than Crystal were Fractured Time and Phantom Mist. Fractured because scientists the world over hated her, and Phantom because her entire gimmick was being invisible and going unnoticed.

Crystal wondered if this world had a China-like place that would soon create illegal bootleg merchandise of her the way they did back on Earth.

And if so, would they make stuff about the man she was about to fight?

Moe stood across from her, the man puffing at a long-stemmed pipe while he leaned to the side, his staff the only thing holding him up. “How’re you doing, miss?” he asked, just loud enough that she could pick him up over the crowd.

Crystal smiled back at him. “I’m doing alright,” she said. “How about you?”

He nodded. “Well enough. I did my stretching already, so I’m about as limber as I’ll ever be. Hehe!”

“Stretches are important,” Crystal said with a nod. “You don’t want to get a muscle cramp or pull something in the middle of a fight. Or get a stitch, those suck. Oh, I especially hate it when your calf muscle does that thing where it kind of locks up and like, burns? It hurts!”

Moe chuckled. “I’ve had that happen a time or two. I changed from stationary meditation to moving meditation some years ago. A little more tiring, and it’s harder to keep focused at times, but at least I don’t have a hard time standing up after an afternoon of sitting on the ground.”

Crystal nodded.

“Fewer haemorrhoids too.”

Crystal stopped nodding.

The announcer chose that moment to speak up. “Our two contestants, from wildly different parts of the world, are ready to face off in a climatic battle! On the one side, the beautiful young Miss Crystal Genocide!”

Crystal dipped into a curtsy, pinching the edges of her skirt as she tipped to the side. It seemed like the polite thing to do.

“And on the other, another dark horse in this tournament filled with surprising twists, it’s Moe!”

Moe stuffed his pipe, then slid the whole thing into a little pouch that he flung off to the side. It thumped onto the ground next to the entranceway, and someone dipped into the arena to pick it up for him.

He exhaled a perfect circle, then blew out some smoke through its middle. “Ready?” he asked.

“Yup!” Crystal said.

“Who will come out on top? The elderly Moe, with his many tricks and incredible acrobatics, or the quick witted and pretty Crystal, with her sharp looks and sharper sword.”

She frowned up at the announcer’s box and wondered if he had to go on about her looks so much.

“Let the battle... begin!”

Crystal looked over to Moe, but Moe didn’t seem eager to start things off right away, so she turned ninety degrees and started a slow walk. Moe grinned and did the same in the opposite direction so that they were keeping an even distance from each other.

“I noticed that you fought the last fellow hand-to-hand,” he said conversationally.

“Yup. It seemed fair,” she said. She glanced at his staff. “Mind if I copy yours? I’ve never fought with a staff before, I don't think. Maybe in a spar or two, but not really beyond that. Oh, I did fight with a giant fork once.”

“A giant fork,” he repeated, then he laughed. “Certainly. Though it’s a little late to ask for a fresh weapon, even just a stick.”

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Crystal waved the concern off then flicked her hand upwards with her next step. A crystalline spike stabbed out of the ground, narrow and about as long as she was tall. It was a dull red, made of corundum with a smidgen of chromium, to give it a nice blood-red kind of tint. The interior was mostly interlocking bits of carbon though, since gems were always a little brittle and she wasn’t going to use this one in a kind way.

They continued to circle around until Crystal was where Moe had started and he was where she was. Their little walk hadn’t been any sort of fight, but it had done wonders for calming down the crowd who had grown more and more tense as they moved.

“So,” Crystal said as she wiggled her new staff around. She didn’t want to use it like a really long sword, that would be silly, but she didn’t know how to hold onto the staff otherwise. She settled for holding it the same way Moe held onto his. “Shall we?”

Moe nodded, then he was charging towards Crystal.

She leapt forwards too.

Judging from the last bout, Moe had some sort of anti-magic skill, but she had the impression that there was more to it than that. The old man moved fast. Maybe it wasn’t superhumanly fast, but it was about what she’d expect from someone in peak health, and Moe was in his sixties or seventies.

That didn’t mean that he was too old to spar or fight or anything, but she knew that old age tended to make one a little less spry.

Staff struck staff and instead of the hard clack of wood meeting wood, there was a low ‘bong’ sound, like the tail end of the noise a large bell made when struck. Crystal tightened her grip on her staff, then ducked away as Moe’s foot swung towards her head.

She ended up fighting in retreat as Moe’s swings came in from a few different directions and she had to scramble to block them. They were probing strikes, for the most part, with the occasional jab or harder swing mixed in to throw her off.

Moe was, she realized, a pretty darned good fighter.

She swung back at him, imitating one of the simple moves he’d used. She wasn’t sure if it was even a ‘move,’ especially since he didn’t seem inclined to name his attacks at all, but it was a set motion designed to smack someone’s ankles aside.He blocked it with a quick downwards swing that continued as he rolled her staff around and above then came down to try and hit her arm.

Crystal stepped back and out of range, then when Moe swung for her legs she repeated the move in reverse against Moe, but he twisted his wrist and somehow his staff was suddenly inside her guard and he bapped her face on the chin.

“Ow!” she complained as she stepped back to rub her jaw. “That was something.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” he asked. “Now, are you going to stop toying with me and take this a little more seriously?”

“Hmph,” Crystal said. “Fine then.”

She launched herself at Moe, determined to take things a little more seriously. Her strikes came in harder and faster, and Moe met each one with practised counters. It wasn’t easy, not judging by how much focus he was putting into it, but he wasn’t backing down.

So she started to magic it up a little.

Taking a page out of the playbook of the knight she’d seen fighting Moe earlier, she summoned a crystalline pillar to jab him in the side.

He side-stepped it, then counter attacked a little faster, becoming more reckless as he tried to land a harder blow against her.

Crystal grinned, then stomped a foot down, sending three crystal spears at Moe from different directions.

He grinned back, then narrowed his eyes.

She felt... something brush up against her. It was a slurpy, goopy sensation that wasn’t touching her body at all, but felt more like it was trying to grab her... soul?

Crystal summoned a pillar underfoot and launched herself backwards. She copied the same basic guard stance Moe had adopted recently while she licked her lips and felt at the sensation. That wasn’t anti-magic... “You’re a power thief!” she said as she caught on. “Oh! That’s tricky!”

Moe blinked. “Ah, I have been discovered, it seems. But that begs the question: why can’t I get a grasp on your magic, and why does it feel so strange?”

***