9:45 pm.

Two hours and fifteen minutes into curfew, lifted only for approved club activities and extenuating circumstances. Half a moon illuminated the deathly silent campus with all the glamour of a graveyard, seeming all the more dead without its usually bustling foot traffic. The lone light source was a street light in front of the main gym where Felicia waited with her witness.

“You’re early,” Felicia bitterly greeted, arms crossed, face scowled.

She wore her uniform blazer over an outfit slightly more agreeable to physical activity than a skirt and button up. Zane half expected her to show up in full fencing gear, but her current outfit looked more appropriate for gym. Leggings and a tank top over what must have been the hardest working sports bra on earth. MMA gloves resting on her sword case, mouthguard prepared, she was ready for a fight.

Juxtaposed to Zane, who strolled up in jeans and a sleeveless shirt, and Nelson trailing behind like a scared puppy in his baggy pants and a hoodie. Their flagrant aloofness left a bitter taste in Felicia’s mouth.

“I half-expected you not to show,” Felicia remarked.

“I wouldn’t miss this if it proved my innocence,” Zane replied.

Felicia scoffed, then referred to the boy standing beside her. “This is Marcus, the manager of the fencing team. He will be my witness.”

“Pleasure to make your acquaintance,” Marcus politely greeted.

“Nice to meet you, Marcus,” Zane amicably replied. “I hate to do your princess dirty in front of her manager, but better you than the whole team.” He smugly enjoyed Felicia’s frustration. “This is Nelson. My roommate.”

“We’ve met,” she glowered. “Not that it matters, but I assume you know the code of conduct for this kind of challenge?”

“Yeah, I read the book,” he flippantly replied as he rolled the kinks out of his neck. “I like how short that part is.”

“Oh, we will explore just how far we can stretch those rules tonight,” she readily assured. “Don’t expect to come out of this easily or in one piece. You’ll live through it, but not by much.”

“Before we do this, I want to get some things straight between us,” Zane said abruptly. He continued when Felicia afforded him the time. “First off: I didn’t do a damn thing to deserve getting kidnapped. I think you’d agree, even if you won’t admit it; but that’s not what has me hot. The second thing: your people came to me. They challenged me to a fight before I knew challenges were a thing, didn’t let me say no, then told everyone I jumped them when they lost, which breaks three or four rules in your precious book.”

Felicia’s eyes narrowed. What little rationale still had precedence at the back of her mind could not dismiss anything outright, but she would be damned if she faltered now, sullying her faith in her esteemed fencers by listening to him. “I don’t have any reason to believe anything you have to say.”

Zane kicked a rock out of the path. “I didn’t ask you to. Just clearing the air.”

She turned up her nose. “For all the good that will do. By agreeing to this duel, you comply to my terms. When you lose, you will be expelled. You will give a formal apology to the fencers you disgraced. You will compensate Rebecca for the equipment you damaged. Is this understood?”

“Sure.”

“What are your terms?”

Zane smirked. “When I win, you will call off your fencers, drop all charges against me, wipe everything that happened today from the record, pay me back for a new pair of uniform pants, and admit to the entire school that you harassed me for no reason and that you are a massive bitch–”

“Absolutely not!” she contended, aghast at the idea.

“I didn’t try talking down your terms!” Zane indignantly replied.

“I will not entertain the notion of sullying my pride as a head of Andronicus!”

“In front of the entire fencing team, then,” Zane stubbornly suggested. “They’re the ones who have to put up with you.”

Felicia reigned herself in. Letting him get under her skin would be a spiritual defeat. “I am willing to put forth that my initial actions were unwarranted, but I will not entertain further humiliation! Even as a joke.”

“If I win, you’ll ‘humiliate’ as much as I feel like after the shit you put me through!” he asserted. “I’m not backing down on this one.”

Felicia grimaced. “Very well.”

“In front of the fencing team and the disciplinary committee. They’ve been riding my ass almost as hard as you.”

“They have nothing to do with our arrangement!”

Zane raised his arms provokingly. “I can walk away right now.”

Felicia’s grimace hardened, she nearly growled. “Fine. It isn’t as if meeting your terms is a possibility.”

“And a meal pass. I never want to pay for food again.”

“Don’t push your luck.”

“Worth a shot,” he shrugged. “Let’s do this.”

Felicia tied her hair back and put her mouthguard in. She selected her favorite rapier from her case and faced her opponent. Zane did the same, but his pregame ritual consisted of cracking his neck and hopping in place a few times to get his blood pumping.

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The lack of any blemish on his body further justified Felicia’s disgust since she could conceive no possible way anyone could emerge unmarked from a fair fight against someone as skilled as Adrien or Millicent. However, as she watched her opponent’s movements, she realized her initial observation was not entirely accurate. He subtly preferred his right leg, and a red stain grew on the back of his left, indicating a strike from behind. Felicia’s expression tightened with confliction since there was no justifying a mark from that angle if he snuck up on them.

Pushing that out of her mind, she focused on the task at hand. The wound would affect his speed and ability to react on his left side. If it bothered him, he didn’t show it, but it was still a possible exploitation. She had the advantage of reach, speed, maneuverability, and by her estimation, a wide margin of skill and experience.

She possessed a clear advantage from the offset, but she wasn’t oblivious to the disparity in their temperaments. Fencing was a chess game with a finite number of pre-defined moves. Ninety percent of the battle takes place before the first strike, planning dozens of moves ahead to outmaneuver the opponent. Felicia could tell no such computations went on behind Zane’s eyes. He was unpredictable because even he didn’t know what he was going to do next. The level of planning and strategy that made Felicia a master fencer might actually inhibit his body’s ability to react on its own, to operate on instinct bordering on precognition.

In a way, that made him more dangerous than a fencer who’s mastered every step, flourish, and combination thereof. The chaotic element of unpredictability can throw a wrench in most well-oiled of machines. But it also made him vulnerable. If he wasn’t conscious of his actions, he wouldn’t be aware of his tells. Felicia had seen it dozens of times before in street thugs and undisciplined brawls.

She then predicted he would do one of two things: lunge first and close the distance at the risk of taking a few hits or bait out a mid-range strike and close the distance during the recovery.

As it happened, the latter played out. Zane positioned himself at the edge of her range and backed off her first few strikes. Then he dodged around a jab with the intent to rush her, but her recovery was lightning fast, faster than he could have conceived. In a fraction of a second she pin cushioned his gut and left thigh, though her reaction might have been too fast because he hadn’t picked up any speed, so her strikes lacked his added momentum.

She anticipated the shock would force him to retreat or at least falter, affording her time to set up a deeper gouge, but instead he advanced with his arms up protecting his eyes and neck. A crude charge, but a glancing blow off his jeans gave him the opening he needed. Backpedaling reduced the effectiveness of her stance as she peppered him with light jabs, and she soon found herself ducking a haymaker, then a hook, and an uppercut in quick succession that would impress a boxer.

Felicia took a step back to take advantage of the opening of his uppercut, but Zane stepped on her foot before she achieved a proper stance, setting her off balance just enough that leaning back ever so slightly brought him out of the path of her riposte. Then, he brought his head down on hers, sending a mighty crack through both their skulls.

She raked the tip of her rapier across his torso and jumped back several steps to regain her senses. She was still reeling, not from the headbutt, not because he wasn’t about to give her a moment to breathe. That maneuver was a tinge of expertise, not the mastery they cultivated in the practice ring, this was something more innate. She saw the look in his eyes. It wasn’t the animalistic rage she’d seen in delinquents. It wasn’t the weight of experience carried by her peers. It wasn’t the fervor of battle she saw in both. It was razor focused and at the same time relaxed. Wary. Content. Smug.

She put all of her strength into a lunge, adding her own momentum to Zane’s and impaled him through the arm. It was a clean hit, but the force she put behind it made her slow to draw back, and Zane grabbed the blade with that same arm and prevented a recovery. He tried wailing on her with his other hand, but she kept her guard up with hers and even got a solid punch in which he shrugged off like snowball.

He took advantage of his size and her footing by knocking her legs out from under her and tried pinning her under his weight, but the sword was up to the hilt in his arm and he could only bear her wrenching it free for so long. He felt like she was going to uproot his triceps by the cartilage, and her withdrawal left a nasty gash in his hand.

He quickly pulled off his shirt and wrapped it around his hand so when Felicia jabbed for his other arm, he deftly caught it and slid down the length of the blade to grab her wrist. She swung at him with her other arm, but he caught that too and twisted both behind her back and pulled her close, their faces not inches from each other.

“Give up!” he suggested.

“Never!” Her furious cry of defiance turned into wail of pain under the crushing weight of his arms, accompanied by a series of concerning pops and cracks, then he loosened enough for her to take a gasp.

“Ready to call it quits?”

“I won’t give you the satisfaction!” she panted.

“If you say so.”

He squeezed again, and this time he didn’t stop. Felicia’s almighty sports bra worked against her here. What was merely constricting before now aided in her suffocation. Every attempt to breathe only made it worse. Her last hope failed when she delivered a knee between his legs only to realize with morbid shock he had the foresight to acquire a baseball cup.

She didn’t have the breath to spit the insults burning her tongue as her sword clattered to the ground and the grey ring ate at the edge of her vision. Their faces were so close, in her last fleeting moments of consciousness she slammed her head into his in a last ditch effort, but he took it in stride like everything else she threw at him and she went limp in his arms.

She woke up later on the pavement, Marcus’ blazer draped over her loosened clothes. The moon barely moved from where it hung when the fight began, but it was long enough for Zane to stop the blood pouring from the punctures riddling his body like a sieve. She first realized his presence when he swore over Nelson’s sloppy bandaging skills and popped him on the back of the head.

All heads turned when Felicia sat up.

“Careful,” Marcus warned, easing her into a sitting position. “You might have cracked ribs.”

Zane and Nelson watched her from a distance, Zane being closer and completely relaxed, though standing just beyond her effective range.

“This doesn’t prove anything,” Felicia muttered.

“Doesn’t have to,” Zane replied. “I’m off the hook– as long as you keep your word.”

Felicia sneered and turned away. In her place, Marcus said, “She’s good for it.”

Zane exhaled, doubtful in his amusement, then he shrugged. “See you around, I guess.”

They turned to leave, but Felicia called him out. “How did you beat Adrien and Millicent?”

Zane stopped and considered whether or not she deserved an explanation, but decided it wasn’t any secret. “The guy put three swords on a table and told me to choose my weapon. I chose the table.”

She didn’t acknowledge his answer. Whether she was frustrated, ambivalent, are furious to the point of mania, she didn’t show it on her face. With some help from Marcus, she stood up, collected her things and left without so much as looking at her one time opponent. “Don’t cause any trouble.”

“Keep your word and I won’t have to…” Zane muttered under his breath as they watched her leave.

Nelson’s cheeks flushed slightly as his eyes drifted. He was merely a man, and exercise shorts left less to the imagination than a skirt. Even Zane let his gaze fall on her tight butt, and he was bolder about it. Unashamed because he earned it.

“I still can’t believe you beat her,” Nelson muttered, following the sway of her hips. “One of the heads of Andronicus! How do you follow up something like that?”

“With something to eat,” Zane replied, now bored of just looking. “I have a lot of blood to replace.”

“You should probably see a doctor.”

“I’ll be fine. Slap some alcohol on it and my body will fix itself. Taking a shower is going to be a bitch.”

The alarm on Nelson’s phone went off and he tore his gaze away from the stretched out, paper thin fabric shrinking in the distance. “My club meeting!”