James wasn’t fast enough to move out the way of the blow.
He managed to raise the arm closest to Teddy to shield his body.
The dimension blade sparked and skittered off James’ vambrace leaving no damage. Both the boys looked at it in surprise before rapidly rolling away from each other and coming to their feet.
“Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!” James shouted at Teddy, shaking a fist at him in mock anger. He saw a new notification in his interface.
You have designated [Theodore Mitchell] as an enemy.
Shared interface has been removed until designation has changed.
All instances of [Family Bounty] have been lost for [Theodore Mitchell].
Due to no one in your party all instances of [Family Bounty] have been lost.
James grimaced a little at having lost his protection from his power, he should have deployed Koda and he would have kept the buffs but it was a lesson for future.
They both smiled and Teddy twirled his sword around himself. James reached inside his top and touched his tattoo on his chest. He had acknowledged that he was going to miss the silly bear tattoo but was looking forward to what he might get at bronze rank. The underwater fight had drained him drastically of his mana with the transformations and he had just spent the last of his mana on a summoning circle.
Teddy saw James topping up his mana and took the moment to dismiss his sword and roll the edge of his cuff up to touch the end of his sleeve tattoo to replenish his mana after using his big magical attacks and constant shards of darkness. The moments distraction caused him to not see the plague of rats coming out of the tree line until they were almost on top of him. He jumped into the air away from them, then jumped again midair in a backflip. Both lanterns appeared around him and shards and bolts of darkness rained down on the swarm of plague rats. When they died they puffed out a little cloud of grey dust, contaminating the ground with a persistent sludge of disease.
James tried to take advantage of Teddy clearing out the rats by conjuring and flinging a snake at him while he was in mid air. Teddy saw the attack and responded by falling through a rift, the snake hitting the edge and being half disintegrated down the middle before puffing into rainbow smoke.
Teddy’s destination rift was behind James and before the big man could react Teddy sliced through the big man’s extended left arm from where he had thrown the snake. He had cut high, through the upper bicep and the arm flopped to the ground.
Teddy wasn’t ready for the feedback he felt from the attack, cutting through the iron rank armour and the magical flesh of his brother had been surprisingly taxing. It had drained almost all of his mana and his sword fizzled out. The heavy arm fell to the floor with a wet thud. He also wasn’t ready for how it would make him feel; he hadn’t even thought about it, they sparred constantly and he had taken on other students in his intake in the mirage chamber, seeing what he had done to his own brother mildly horrified him.
Teddy’s pause gave James the opportunity to donkey kick him away, the boot made solid contact and all of James’ buffs were in effect. He heard the crumpling of Teddy’s chest plate and that piece of armour was probably all that saved his life as his foot threatened to cave in his torso. Even with that protection Teddy skidded across the side of the pool like a rag doll.
James had been injured before in the mirage chamber but never like this, he had died in the mirage chamber his fair share, dying at the hands of essence users or monsters was never pleasant but the traumatic amputation of his arm was hard to deal with. He held both arms out in front of him to look at his hands and only the right came up, but he felt like he could still feel his left hand, curl the fingers, they just weren’t there, he looked down at the arm on the floor in confusion.
Teddy looked up from where he was on the floor at his brother. He felt the knife of guilt twist deeper in his gut at having hurt the man who now stood there looking confused at his remaining arm. He then realised that feeling wasn’t the knife of guilt, that was his chest plate trying to rearrange his internal organs into concave shapes. With a wrench he released the plate so when he stood up it fell to the ground, he held a large rock in his hand and hurled it at his brother. It flew from his hand like it had a jet engine attached, struck the man on his head which tumbled him to the floor.
James felt like he had been hit in the head with a sledgehammer, he tried to get up and struggled, having to recalibrate getting up with one arm, he saw his Teddy on his feet and instincts caught up. He had an idea and transformed his left stump into a long purply blob, the mana drain was far more than he expected, from the stump grew an evil looking tentacle with suckers on the bottom and long hairs on top that each had spikes coming off them. He lunged at Teddy, trying not to give the faster man any advantage in setting up clever attacks.
Even though none of the Mitchells needed to breathe anymore with their outworlder bodies Teddy felt winded from the kick. He fended off James’ attacks, the vambrace on his right arm made him as dangerous with his punches as if he was holding a fistful of knives thanks to his bear claw engraving. The purple octopus looking arm was trouble even for the speed that Teddy moved, it articulated in strange ways and was as fast or faster than James was normally. When he managed to narrowly dodge the tentacle the long hair-like appendages would also move to attack him from where they were attached to the tentacle and he was covered in minor lacerations from them, sacrificing minor injuries to not get hit by James’ big punch.
Their fight looked like it had been professionally choreographed, the attacks were supernaturally fantastic and the misses were so marginal it looked staged, the scene would not have been out of place in the Matrix with elements of Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon as Teddy leapt about to keep out of reach of the extending and retracting tentacle. Teddy fought for space as he was almost completely out of mana and was finally successful in getting James to back off by releasing one of his shadow lanterns that managed to land a successful hit in temporarily blinding James. Instead of pressing his advantage he flipped to the far side of the pond and landed silently, even though he was blind James had an uncanny knack to fight, something to do with his animal instincts, but blinded he couldn’t aim so Teddy was safe from flinging snakes. He took the moment to sip the rest of his accumulated mana in his sleeve tattoo.
James knew Teddy had backed off and he released Koda, thinking of his options he decided to conserve mana and released his Animage skill that let him transform his body. His vision came back slowly, un-blurring, he saw Teddy on the far side unsurprisingly recovering from his tattoo to give him more options. James was content that he had enough mana to continue the fight. He had a habit of checking himself over during a fight for hidden injuries and mechanically went through his body check, his legs were muddy but uninjured, his clothes were slightly ripped from near misses of Teddy’s dimension blade that he had sparingly used during their fight due to low mana, his right arm was fine with his vambrace unblemished from deflecting the blade multiple times and his left arm was fully operational.
He had to pause and give his head a wobble. His vision was now almost fully restored with only a light haze but his left arm was definitely there, he clapped his hands in front of himself to make sure it wasn’t an illusion but it was real.
“Well damn, thats handy.”
“That’s a really bad joke dude.”
“HA! I didn’t even mean that, but you’re wrong, thats an excellent joke!”
He flexed the fingers and they felt as good as they ever had, his clothes hadn’t magically reappeared and it lacked the armour but he had two arms again. He blocked the bolts from the lantern familiar with his vambrace, the heavily magic item he was confident would stop the blindness effect from affecting him if it hit the armour.
It was now alien to them not being able to plan together on the interface, being able to communicate at the speed of thought was not far off being able to think as if it was a collective mind.
They didn’t waste any time, not giving the other the advantage to think and come up with a plan, the three of them sprinted together on the same edge of the pool, not trusting even the shallow edges of the water after their plummet down.
As they were closing together James swept an arm out, an ethereal wing materialising, glittering and multi-hued swooping towards Teddy who had to alter his course to duck, Koda leapt into the air towards Teddy, claws leading and Teddy went into a slide to duck the big monster. James blinked out of existence, suddenly plummeting through the air at the speed of a diving falcon and smashed Teddy into the ground as he was busy dodging Koda.
James quickly had to back off as Teddy twisted underneath him and came up swinging and slashing. He was bleeding and holding himself half crouched in pain. Koda managed to turn on a pin where he had missed Teddy and came at him. The slight build of Teddy belied his strength, he now had his power attribute at bronze rank, he ducked a massive hairy arm and grabbed it at the wrist, turning the bear’s momentum and threw him across the pond in a perfect judo throw.It’s turns out that Teddy’s Fly Like an Arrow power recognised Koda as a projectile at this point, he flashed across the pond, not even touching the surface of the water as he smashed into the short cliff on the far side of the pool where the little waterfall was. The stone cracked all the way up the face of the cliff and stones fell to bury Koda.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
James snarled at Teddy and spun, whipping out with his rat tail that appeared from his back, Teddy mostly managed to dodge in his weakened state and got clipped, tumbling away. James turned to where Koda was and absorbed the familiar from across the pond where he lay unmoving under the rock. He turned back to face Teddy.
Teddy got up, he’d made too many mistakes in this fight, his heart wasn’t in it, he understood if he didn’t get his act together he would die, and he would never hear the end of that. He rose and faced James who had just turned to him, the man was huge, and quick with it. Teddy took a breath he didn’t need and straightened up, palms together in a standing prayer stance, he moved one arm backwards and drew one foot back and slightly crouched, one arm backwards, the other forwards, palm down facing James. He made a fist and a double ended red blade appeared from each side of his fist. He lunged forward, spinning the blade over his head with both hands.
Teddy had really ramped up his attacks now, he had got over whatever mental block he had been struggling with and was coming at James all out and he felt the pressure. It was a strange sword fight, only one person in the fight had a sword and it had two ends, James alternated punching and blocking with his vambrace. He was constantly pressed back, the attacks fast and hard and he took step after step. He swung a massive right hook at the back of Teddy’s neck after he had lunged with the sword and overextended, Teddy simply swung the blade over the top of his head, parallel with his spine to block the hit, he then used the block to drag the fist over his head and kicked James in the knee. The big man grunted and his knee hit the floor. Teddy whirled away, spinning the blade all the time, he spun back in and James prepared to block. From amongst the whirling red blade Teddy threw out a shard of darkness towards James’ face and he instinctively moved to block it with his left hand behind his right moving to protect his face. Teddy whirled it, with both hands around the middle of the blade he punched James’ arms even higher above his head, stepping in he spun and with his back facing James he plunged his blade behind him into James chest.
Teddy felt the huge drain in mana on his sword. He dismissed it and stepped forward away from his brother. Turning he saw the man on one knee still looking down at the hole in his chest in shock. Teddy knew it was over.
“THIS. IS. SPARTA!!” He shouted. And kicked James just next to the wound in his chest.
James fell backwards into the pool and the last thing he saw as he sunk down backwards into the depths was the light closing above him.
………
“NOOOOOO!!!!!” Shouted Lucy as she saw the red blade go into the chest of James, followed by the kick into the water. “Aaaand scene.” She hit the stop button on the console. She made her way over to where James was lying and put a hand on his head and a hand on his chest as he woke up, stroking his hair gently to calm him through the rough transition.
When he woke he jumped and his hands went to his chest. He looked wildly around until he saw Lucy smiling at him. He rested his head back on the table he was lying on.
“Bloody hell that was horrible.”
“Never is nice dying in there.”
“Yeh but that was intense, makes me feel a little sympathetic for everything he’s stabbed with that sword.”
He swung his legs off the table and wobbled his head a little to clear it, he walked over to Teddy’s table and clasped forearms with him helping him up as he was waking as well.
“Fair play dude, that was a horrible fight.”
Teddy cracked his neck each way.
“Yup. You got some damn good hits in there. I don’t know what hit harder, you or the fact that I’m not so fast I’m untouchable.”
They made their way over to the girls, the only other people in the room with the tables and the console.
“We finished just ahead of time for our slot. You were a little quicker dealing with the Nightmare Siren than I thought you’d be, didn’t exactly expect it to drag you down when I planned this scenario, I thought it would fight you on the surface and you’d have to deal with everything else at the same time.” Lucy said.
“Yeh thanks for that, real nice surprise having never ending hoards of monsters.” Teddy retorted.
“Well you gave quite a good viewing, no real screw ups, the fight at the end was a little amateur in places.”
Teddy winced slightly.
“Yeh I wasn’t fighting my best.”
“I wasn’t complaining.” James said. “You’re just too damn fast. I couldn’t do anything clever because I was just trying not to die.”
The door to the room opened and a familiar face walked in.
“That’s the problem with fighting someone who essentially could be an assassin class. You don’t go one vs one with them.” Rashid said, smiling walking forward and shaking hands with them all. “Fantastic fight really interesting scenario with a lot to unpack there in the debrief.” They all started walking towards the door he had just come through.
“You watched the fight?” James asked.
“We all were watching.”
“All?”
They walked through the door to the sound of applause, the viewing area seats were packed with around fifty students and staff, all watching the Mitchells come out the door. Rashid waved down the applause and gestured to the front row that had four empty seats and the team sat down, moving on autopilot as if they were still students at the annex. Rashid took his place behind a lectern at the front. He proceeded to rip apart the fight, using a series of still images and short clips from the recordings of the fight. The boys sunk down in their seats at the amount of criticism they hadn’t expected. When they were students it was part and parcel of the course to be critiqued by the staff, but now they were full adventurers they felt as if they should be better than this. Rashid got to the end of the fight and pulled the recording from the crystal projector.
“So in summary, this fight was an outstanding example of the standard we expect from graduates of this program after leaving. I have no doubt that no cadet in this audience would have been able to survive the Nightmare Siren. They have taken what they learnt from here, adapted and moulded it to their own team dynamics in order to achieve best effect. The fight at the end was an impressive example of a highly versatile adventurer almost fending off an almost assassin class essence user. Should this happen you should know what to do for real…” he looked around the faces in the seating and pointed his small presenting stick at a small man in plate armour. “Joshua.”
The man stood up and held his hands behind his back.
“Run sir, run as fast as I can towards allies and advantage.”
“Good, we train adventurers to kill monsters and protect people, some of that involves protecting those people from dangerous essence users and we cover that, a trained and dedicated assassin class will beat a generalist any day. Now, does anyone have any questions for Theodore and James?”
The Mitchells were surprised that they were getting such a grilling, they thought they were just coming to rent the chamber for their own use, they turned in their chairs to see almost every hand was raised in the audience.
“Theodore, James, please join me at the front here.”
The boys looked at each other and got up and stood next to Rashid.
“Joshua as I called on you before you may go first.”
“Thankyou sir. My question is for Mr James Mitchell. Sir, in your role as a team defender…”
“Hold on, firstly it’s just James, secondly, I’m not strictly a defender.”
“Oh, sorry sir.”
“Just James.”
“James, what class would you describe yourself as then?”
Teddy piped up, “Maybe a monk class?”
“Err, Sir, Mr Theodore Mitchell, what’s a monk?”
“Nevermind.”
James tried to get them back on track by raising his hand up to stop any further discussion.
“The team dynamic we have recognises the versatility we have, I would say that both me and my sister-in-law exhibit trends towards defender class without committing to the role. Does that satisfy your question?”
“It does sir, thankyou.”
Rashid scanned the room of raised hands for the next one.
“Ms Hernaz.”
A sever looking young woman stood up wearing shades of black and sharp spiked armour. She had jagged knives strapped to her belt and covered in strips of cloth to mask movement.
[No guesses who her question is for.] Lucy said, turning back to the front after seeing who was asking the question.
“My question is to Mr Theodore Mitchell. Sir, as an assassin class what made you decide to join a team of generalists rather than a team to support your specific skill set?”
“My answer is going to be similar to my brothers, I don’t see myself as an assassin class adventurer, my path is to kill monsters not people, unless people become monsters, by a very clear definition. Anyway, the team is built this way for the people not the power set, we recognise that is not the most efficient way to go about building a team but it works, each individual has to be independently competent but as a team we reinforce each other more.”
They fielded a few more questions, when it was pertinent the girls also joined the boys at the front to help them answer specifics of team dynamics, especially how they would have tackled that scenario differently as a team. The questions came to an end when Rashid called on one of the female students.
“Mrs Kyra Mitchell, Ma’am, where did you get that necklace? It’s beautiful.”
“And I think thats quite enough questions for today, we have kept the Mitchells for quite long enough. Dismissed.”
Rashid kept the Mitchell’s behind, letting the bank of students filter out. They watched all the students chatting to each other on the way out, putting notebooks away and trying to find their friends for food. Each member of the family felt the nostalgia, even as adults the pleasure of being in school and feeling that camaraderie with peers and not having to worry about the outside world. Once all the students had gone Rashid led them out.
“There are a few people who would like to have a word with you in the main facility in a private room. If you’d like to follow me.”
Rashid was less casual in his setting as the chief of instructors, he led them to the main facility the shortest way, cutting behind the lunch hall and the rear doors for staff, it was currently cluttered with dozens of crates of pottery, the head chef and a man they recognised.
“Sir with all due respect I just don’t know what to do with all this pottery!”
“Look, I explained it all in the pamphlet.”
“Pamphlet?”
“The card I sent, like paper but thicker, folded in three. It explained the amphora and how it’s the up-and-coming trend on the pottery scene, you’ll thank me that we’re getting ahead of the market rush now.”
“Sir, I don’t really know what you’re on about but we have no need for any more pottery. I don’t have a use for all these amphora.”
“You will, you’ll find a use and you will thank me for it, there’s plenty more where this came from.”
He settled the argument and left the head chef flustered with a little leak of his gold rank aura. Gabriel Remore, the Principal of the Vitesse academy turned to Rashid and the Mitchells.
“Rashid, you’ve got them, excellent. I believe the director and her deputy are waiting in my office for us.”
The Mitchells all looked at each other in worry. Gold rank principal, silver rank director of the adventure society, Vincent and the chief instructor wanted a private word with them, they all wondered what they were in for now.