Max and Leah soon found themselves back at the Academy Training Room in Dojo Mode. The three combat mannequins lined the walls with an assortment of weapons and martial scripts adorning the walls. One large circle painted the ground for sparring. Tatemono Reí had been very agreeable welcoming them and setting up the room.

“After seeing your stats, I really think you can do this Leah,” Max said.

“I don’t know Max; Charlie has massive experience with sparring. I’m certain he would have won the Novice Kombat if Tyler hadn’t poisoned him. No offense to your achievement, of course.” Leah said cautiously.

“No, I agree with you completely. But you have a real edge in mental skills that neither Charlie nor I have. You need to lean into what you’ve been improving and are good at. That’s where you’ll win. That Intrusion skill is your most powerful attack. It locked me up solid and should work on Charlie too. Be careful though, he’ll build a resistance quickly and its effect will decrease with every use.” Max advised.

“Ok, but I feel that might not be enough. Both you and Charlie have a knack for coming up with good tactics.” Leah said. Max could see she was quite afraid.

“Now that you said that, I think this is even more important than ever. Grudge match or not, you need to realize how much you’ve grown. When we graduate from the Novice stage and go to the Labyrinth, we need to trust each other and not be afraid. We will only have each other to depend on down there.” Max pressed.

“Hey. I’ve got a surprise for you. Look at these. I snagged some extra supplies from the diner for you to use against Charlie.” Max said as he pulled a bunch of silverware from his hoodie.

“Tuck these into your Gi, front, and back. Engaging Charlie at a distance is probably your best tactic. I haven’t built up my Ballistics skill like you have, but I bet it’s awesome. Ricochet sounds even better. I’ll be facilitating the spar, and I’ll be sure not to state any proscriptions against weapons. A long-distance strike is still a point.” Max said with a shifty look.

“Ok, remember mental skills for the win. Keep him at bay with distance attacks. If he does manage to get into melee range, pretend that he’s the Adept Obstacle course blade challenge. Use your skills to evade his attacks until you can counter them. You can do this!” Max said. Leah was still absorbing his advice when Charlie walked through the entryway.

“Are you ready for this?” Charlie asked, not wanting to push her like Max was.

Leah was still nervous about the match but nodded with resolve and took her position in the ring. Charlie joined her in the ring, facing off with his usual relaxed demeanor. They both bowed and waited on Max to start the match.

“Ok. This match will be first to 3 strikes for the win. A takedown or being forced to leave the ring will also count as a point. Good?” Max said. Both combatants nodded. Holding back a smile, Max got them set.

“Start positions, ready, and fight!” Max yelled.

Leah immediately opened with her Intrusion hack which locked Charlie up, freezing his augmentations and preventing any movement. Without hesitation, she followed up by leaping forward into a flying front kick which impacted him in his solar plexus and pushed him, falling over, out of the ring. Max called the point for Leah.

Charlie, finally unlocked from the hack attack, smiled far too pleasantly at Leah as he made his way back to the ring. Despite the point being so quick and seemingly indefensible, Charlie seemed to be enjoying himself. Leah quickly set herself back into the ready position, worried about what Charlie might have planned.

Upon Max’s next command to fight, Leah unleashed her Intrusion skill again locking Charlie up tight once more. Unfortunately for Leah, he had simultaneously activated his sonic Stun skill attack. Charlie was frozen, but Leah was blasted senseless for about three seconds. As they both recovered, they hesitated and looked at Max.

“No points! The attacks canceled each other out.” Max called.

“Keep going! Attack.” Max said laughing.

Before Leah could recover, Charlie unleashed a Strobe skill attack which blinded her. Without her sight, he easily closed the distance and swept her legs, sending her into the mat hard. Max called the point for Charlie. Now with one point each, they faced off again. Leah’s expression went from nervous to very hard and determined. Her premier attack was not the juggernaut she expected it to be. She needed to mix it up to create more points.

“Did you forget that your other senses aren’t tied to your eyes?” Charlie reminded her as he bowed. With a frown, Leah activated her thermal sight and bowed back to him, ready for the command to fight. She wasn’t too proud to take the advice and use it.

Again, they both cut loose with their special attacks and blasted each other senseless and paralyzed. Again, they recovered at almost the same time. This time when Charlie predictably Strobed her, Leah was blinded but was able to see his attack coming with her thermal sight. She dodged the sweeping leg. Leah had stacked her Gymnast, Fast Cog, and Reflex skills to flip over the sweep and delivered a whipping kick to Charlie’s head with surgical precision. Charlie’s FastCog skill matched hers, but his body still moved slower as he lacked the Reflex skill. Leah was awarded the point for a 2 to 1 score.

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With the command to fight, they started yet again with their opening salvos. Each was concerned now that failing to issue the instant salvo would put them in a bad position. Leah looked away as the expected strobe flashed and reached out with her access skill. One of the mannequins swiftly charged in toward Charlie from behind. Charlie sensed it coming with his echolocation skill already active. He smoothly sidestepped the charge and grabbed the mannequin. He twisted and converted the energy from the mannequin’s charge into a full-body throw.

The mannequin flew toward the shocked Leah, Max noticed the dummy was glowing with his EM sense. Its trajectory knocked both it and Leah out of the ring. As the mannequin hit her, the electric charge Charlie had dumped into it grounded itself, passing through Leah to the floor. Leah yelped in pain as she crashed to the ground. With her hair frizzed out, Leah crawled up and back to the starting position shaking her head to clear it. They were now tied with 2 each.

“Next point wins! Are you ready? Ok, fight!” Max called.

Both Charlie and Leah were running low on energy and neglected their opening salvos to try different tactics. Two mannequins charged for Charlie at Leah's command, but with smooth and stunning speed Charlie ripped off his “belt” which morphed into its sword form. Max and Leah were so used to seeing the weapon in its storage form that neither thought about it as a factor when Charlie faced off in the ring. Now he took advantage of the vague spar rules, as he was very much expecting a weapon being used when Max didn't declare the fight to be hand-to-hand.

With expert and efficient cuts, Charlie carved the mannequins to pieces while avoiding their strikes. Leah used his distraction and pulled out her stash of cutlery and threw a dull diner knife at his back. Charlie, sensing the projectile, turned and deflected it with a sword strike. Leah threw again and again but Charlie deflected every knife with lightning-fast precise strikes, as he slowly advanced toward her.

With her last pair of knives, she threw them both at once. One was on target for Charlie's head with the other one ending up going wide and off target. Smiling, Charlie deflected the dangerous one and then inverted his blade's arc for a final strike when the errant diner knife hit him in the back of the head. Leah had telekinetically levitated an android torso up at the last second. It had created a surface that she used to ricochet the blade back upon Charlie.

“Leah wins with an outstanding tactical play at the last second!” Max declared. Tatemono must have been watching, for the room erupted in recorded applause as if they were in a stadium.

Both Leah and Charlie collapsed, completely spent from the fight’s physical toll and exhaustion from the high energy usage. As they laughed from the ground, Leah gasped as her notifications rolled in.

“Wow!” Leah exclaimed from the ground.

“Two levels for one fight. Charlie’s attacks boosted my resistance skills even more. Almost every skill that I used has advanced. I guess desperately needing the skill to win helps advance it more. With the extra points, my energy is going to provide a lot more fuel to burn in a fight…and as a bonus, I get to go shopping for another open daemon slot.” She spoke.

“Damnation! I’m the only one missing out on the daemon train. How’d you whippersnappers get the system to give you the skill?” Charlie complained.

“I was really focused on finding the Easter Egg Miyamoto Musashi in the VR game Samurai Shogun. Apparently, I spent enough time looking that the system made it a quest and the daemon skill was the reward.” Max replied.

“I got mine as a therapy tool before I started the augmentation training. When my status opened the first time, I already had that skill as well as the AI Assist skill.” Leah answered.

“Alright, you bunch of lazy bones! There’s more training to do!” Max yelled at the pair on the ground. Leah and Charlie both simultaneously blasted Max with their salvo attacks. Leah’s intrusion locked him up as Charlie’s stun shattered his nerves. When that wore off, Charlie strobed him and Leah hacked his Gi and made Max punch himself. Max quickly ended up on the floor beside them.

[Body Skill: Resist Sonic +1, Resist Sonic reaches 5]

[Mental Skill: Bastion +1, Bastion reaches 2]

[Body Skill: Resist Strobe +1, Resist Strobe reaches 5]

“Like I was saying, 10-minute break,” Max whined and elected to be quiet for a bit as the others continued to investigate their system status changes.

After a breather with his eyes closed, Max heard the others slowly begin the process of moving and getting up. He licked his snout, which still stung a bit from hitting himself.

“Hey. That trick with hacking my Gi was pretty good. I need to try that one.” Max said.

“Yeah, why didn’t you use that trick in our match?” Charlie asked.

“I literally just thought of it. That would have been a lot cheaper energy-wise than the Intrusion skill.” Leah admitted with a slightly embarrassed look.

“Shit! I just thought of something. How are we going to avoid that type of attack in the tournament?” Charlie voiced his newest fear.

“Um, I think most devices can only have one person access it at a time. We should make it a practice to access our weapons and clothes, anything we need to fight, and keep it going during the match to protect it.” Leah suggested.

“For every level of Access skill, you can maintain continuous access to one device. That's how I advanced my skill so quickly. ABA - Always Be Accessing.” Leah advised.

“Oh, and maybe we should investigate purchasing some secure smart clothes with protection from accessing it? Some devices push back hard when I try to hack them, most likely accessible items can come with access security features.” Leah said as she finally stood up and walked to stand over Max.

Leah offered a hand to help Max up. As he took her hand and stood up, she looked puzzled for a second and she asked.

“Is that a new watch? It’s blinking. Were you timing the match?” She asked.

Max looked down in surprise, with a double take, and his jaw dropped. The scanner had detected the Tesseract at some point, and he hadn’t noticed! He was so distracted and discombobulated during his fight with Tyler and his watery retreat that he never even thought to check it.

“Crap! I need to get back to the Oaks. The Tesseract and Casita!” Max gasped, running for the door.

“We’re coming too!” Leah yelled, as she and Charlie quickly followed him out the door.