Fighting and the Girls 3 – Internal Ascendance

Fighting and the Girls 3 – Internal Ascendance

“So, was there a case like that?” Rave wondered, her conversation with Lydia having continued for a little while, even after John returned. Roles were now reversed, her boyfriend having first sat down next to her, then nudged ever closer until they ended up in their current position, with the Lightbearer sitting between his straddled legs, John’s arms around her waist.

“There have been several cases like that,” Lydia responded. “People have been attempting to force the melding ritual on elementals since the practice was originally discovered. The disgruntled and unaccepting are a constant throughout any history.”

“That’s so mean though,” Rave complained. “What do ya do when ya find them?”

“We punish as appropriate, often with the death penalty,” Lydia responded. “Germany needs a good standing with the elemental planes in order to continue our court culture. If we were to let the conduction of forceful meldings go by unpunished, it may be that we would soon find ourselves at a sort of elemental boycott. That and it’s wrong from a moral perspective.”

“Must be nice to have something that’s both personally and publicly condemnable,” the Lightbearer commented, realizing that it wasn’t a luxury that leaders had all the time. There were things that were awful that had to be done.

“Even nicer would be if these things ceased to happen...” Lydia sighed and continued. “Between you and me, the melding ritual is incredibly simplistic and the circle needed for it can be etched into basically any surface. The forceful ritual only differs that you need to draw that same circle from the elementals essence.” Hardened disdain snuck into her voice, doubtlessly fuelled by her own, partial elemental nature, “Drawing the necessary amount out is like bleeding a human to the edge of death. In an ironic twist of fate, the forced party retains most of their personality traits upon the successful fusion of both characters, however.”

“So they kinda screw themselves over by making it so the person that comes out at the end is way more the elemental than themselves?” Rave asked.

“Yes, which is why the death penalty is mostly invoked if we catch someone before the ritual. If it is only revealed to us afterwards, we usually convene with the corresponding elemental leader... unless it’s an air elemental.”

“Lemme guess, she a chatty one?”

“Mother Wind is a headache invoked,” Lydia confirmed. “Imagine Sylph, but as ancient as magic, more powerful than most other gods and with a very dark side.”

“How dark?”

“One of her titles is Terror of the Dreamless.”

“I ain’t even sure what that means but it sounds bad.”

“Once upon a time, she is said to have torn down an entire dreamscape. The dreamers left alive only ever saw the darkness when they slept.”

“I also don’t know what that means, but it sounds worse. Also more like something up the shadow elemental alley. Ya know, Siena is literally a nightmare elemental... even if she doesn’t use her dream invading abilities all that much.”

“Air elementals are the most intertwined with other elements and the Mother of Air is the foremost example of that,” Lydia retorted, the piano in the background playing one last little tune before a high note ended the song. “I need to return to work now, at least if I want to have time to take a shower before my next assignment.”

“Ya go do that,” Rave said her goodbyes and then they finally hung up.

_______________________________________________________________________

The tournament continued uneventfully. The first day ended without a single worthwhile challenge. When the second one rolled around, however, that changed rather drastically. The number of fighters still in the race had immensely shrunk by now and the schedule had the dropouts fighting for the exact placements later today rather than giving any breathing room.

Coupling this with enemies that, while far from truly dangerous, could actually put up a bit of a fight, Rave felt the drain on her stamina over the course of the day. The longest break she got between fights had been an hour, at the very start of the day. The less fighters there were, the stronger they became, the shorter the breaks between rounds she was participating in.

Between the quarter and her semi-final fight were only five minutes. “You doing fine?” John asked, going through the same treatment but looking unbothered.

“Dunno,” Rave answered, keeping her breath steady and controlled, while sipping on as much water as she could justify without running danger to overload. “Everything feels a bit fuzzy right now. In a good sense.” She gave him a light-headed smile. “I like this.”

While she was exhausted, she wasn’t terribly so. It had been a slow grinding down over several hours of fight-pause-fight. Her muscle fibres were tingling, blood rushing through her body, lungs working at full capacity. Thoughts operated at a minimum, instincts primed to react to the next sudden danger.

It was a state of narrow-minded concentration, the intensity of which she hadn’t experienced before. Sure, she knew a battle trance, being in the zone, with only adrenaline and reflexes on the surface. This was bigger than that. Born slowly from hours of on-off combat.

John looked at her somewhat worried. “You got this though?”

The Lightbearer extinguished her Aura and took a deep breath while she was running. If there was one disadvantage to martial arts, it was that regenerating mana while the Aura was active was immensely difficult. Drawing mana from her steady breathing and the sunlight itself, Rave was able to keep firing the lasers without risk of running low anytime soon.

Corinth must have realized the same thing. For a moment, it looked like she would surrender, hesitating in her movements, her arm half raising. Then she grinned. Rave knew that expression. Although the Amacat’s representative had realized her victory was immensely unlikely, she would at least try to push herself to the utmost limit and see what that would get her to.

To Rave’s surprise, this led Corinth not into meeting her in another melee engagement, but instead to running towards the water segment of the arena and throwing herself into the pond. Fist flying towards the surface of the water, she used some sort of technique that caused the body of liquid to suddenly explode in a similar fashion as the ground had earlier. Drops of water flew into the air in a fine mist.

Then suddenly stopped.

‘Particle mage!’ Copernicus meowed into her head. ‘She controls whatever elements within a certain size category.’

The mist became an obfuscation of Rave’s sight again. She could only blindly fire into the white, wobbling mass. Lasers weren’t particularly effective at that, the heat losing itself within the many small drops while the minimal force failed to punch any holes into the veil.

With no other option, Rave charged inside. Aura flaring up again, she sent her fists flying in seemingly random motions, always following the beat of the song that was now entering its last build-up before all of the parts of the song came together.

Each punch blew holes into the mist, Clearing Hits designed specifically to scatter gas-based attacks. With every punch she felt her muscles and lungs burn more. Physical exhaustion now surfaced in full force. A steady breath was sacrificed to the desperate pumping of much needed air. As her body grew heavier, her vision narrowed more and more, her mind became more awake. She felt as if she was about to grasp something bigger. She just needed a bit more of a challenge, a bit more of a hurdle to overcome, then she would realize something.

What that something was, she had no clue, she just knew that this stretching of her capabilities was an awesome amount of fun.

What wasn’t was the fact that, no matter how much mist she blew away, she just couldn’t find her opponent. The cloud was growing thinner with every Clearing Hit she threw. Eventually she would have dispersed all of it, but until then Corith seemed determined to pull all water particles she still had back together and just frustrate Rave into submission.

Then it wasn’t just mist anymore. A storm of sand suddenly engulfed her. Together with the remaining water, it mixed into a vortex of mud. While it stuck on uselessly over her bodysuit, Rave had to shield her eyes. She quickly realized that the idea here wasn’t to hurt her, but to immobilize her until enough mud landed on her to be used as some sort of coffin.

The song kicked into its final segment and so did Rave prepare for the climax of the battle, firing up her Aura to the maximum and raising her foot. What she was about to do was risky, for sure, but also the exact thing her instincts told her to do. She wasn’t one to think much about whether this was actually the best course of action.

Massive amounts of ki gathered in her hip as she raised her foot all the way. Then she suddenly brought it down, the energy ripping down her leg with it, travelling through veins and bones. A single mistake could cause her muscles to tear and that was the luckiest outcome.

However, she managed successfully to execute the Grandmaster technique. Her sole connected to the floor, flat and all at once, the energy blasting out and into the ground. Seismic step caused the earth under her to crack suddenly. She was the centre, the very cause, for a localized earthquake, the tremors of which could still be felt up in the watcher’s area.

The force caused even the particles in the air around her to stop for a moment. Then Copernicus’ blessing mimicked the force of the explosion as a wave of golden light that travelled above the floor. As if a stone had been thrown into a pond, the wave moved outwards, creating an undercurrent so strong that the cloud of mud, while not dispersed, became completely harmless for a few moments.

Moments enough for Rave to move along the climax of the song. She stormed outwards, knowing exactly where her opponent had to be. Exiting the cloud, she immediately spotted Corith in the earth area. The enemy combatant raised her hands, trying to raise more of the sand in that area, to throw at Rave.

The Lightbearer felt her hairs tingle, she was so close to releasing this... thing. Just a bit more resistance, a bit more difficulty.

Fading out like a candle at the end of its lifecycle, the aura around Corith vanished, just like the mud cloud and rising sand fell to the floor without any further impact. The Amacat’s representative breathed heavily, as did Rave as she hastily stopped her charge. “Well... guess I am tapped out... of everything...” Corith said, breath- and manaless, then fell over with a giggle.

_________________________________________________________________________

“You sure you’re fine?” John asked again, to which Rave only weakly nodded. Sitting felt really good right about now. That fight had only been about four minutes, but it sure had been taxing. Now her break would only be as long as however long John needed to beat his opponent.

“Ya go an have your own fight,” she stated, still trying to grasp at that something Corith had failed to tickle out of her. John had to leave, by the rules he had set himself, fights were to start as quickly as possible after one another. “No, wait, one more thing, tiger,” she exclaimed, grabbing him by the sleeve. “Gimme-“

She didn’t even have to finish that sentence. John was already bowing down to her. His kiss was firm, decisive, his lips surprisingly soft against her own. Although aggressive in its motions, he was also gentle, their tongues touching only for a moment, as he didn’t want her to waste any more of the breath she needed.

A short kiss, but a wonderful one, although her pumping adrenaline may have made these things a bit more overbearing than they needed to be. “Ya getting ever better at these,” Rave giggled like a young girl in love, which she factually was, when he pulled back.

“I get a lot of practice with a beautiful girl,” he answered, lovingly running his hand through her hair for a moment. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“See ya in the finale,” she teased back.