#chapter 1x05

Sara went on the offensive first. The moment that the stout man declared the start of the match, she struck. She wasn’t as skilled at moving her Sol energy around as Mike, by a wide margin, but she did know how to force some of her energy into her legs to increase her speed for the duration of the battle. She felt the air within the Megadojo compress ahead of her as she surged toward Jason, her arms held close to her sides, ready to lash out. It was less than a second before she had crossed the multiple yards between herself and her opponent. She wound up, and launched her fist in the direction of Jason’s chest. Even she couldn’t actually register every stage of her arm’s movement through the air ahead of her, and yet, just before her fist would have struck its mark, there was a flash of pale yellow light, and Jason was gone. Sara’s fist struck only more air.

Sara looked around. She hadn’t been able to follow Jason’s movement any more than to gauge initial direction. She was floored that this opponent somehow seemed nearly as fast as Mike. Aside from James at the start, who could have undoubtedly hit many times harder than Mike had been able to, it seemed as if Team Beatdown wasn’t all about beating their opponents down after all. They were about balancing speed and power. That meant that she should expect some technique from Jason to deal increased damage as well.

This all crossed Sara’s mind in the half-second that it took her to locate her opponent. He dropped to all fours, grabbing at the ground to cancel the momentum of his avoidance maneuver. Then, even before he had come to a complete stop, there was another surge of pale yellow, almost golden light, and he was suddenly wrapped in a translucent shell. A shell which took on a distinct shape.

Is that a gorilla!? Sara had time to wonder, before the light-clad Jason was upon her. Her eyes were not deceiving her, Jason was, in fact, wrapped in a solid light avatar in the form of an oversized gorilla. He struck out with his massive arm and double-ham-sized fist. Sara, acting solely on instinct, as her mind had not managed to catch up yet, managed to dance to the inside of Jason’s strike. Without missing a beat, though, Jason flexed his avatar’s arm, and smacked Sara in the head with his forearm. She lost her balance, and tumbled to her right. Luckily she had the presence of mind to fall into a roll, and spring back up and shuffle away, as it was only a moment later that Jason’s huge golden knuckles came down at the ground where she had almost fallen. The impact left a dent in the arena floor.

Sara’s eyes were wide with disbelief, and her breathing was heavy, not from fatigue, not yet, but from surprise. She’d never actually seen someone with this ability. At least, she reminded herself, I have the speed advantage. I can avoid him until I can get my bearings.

It was then that she remembered, too late, that her opponent had been able to move with incredible speed in response to her first strike of the fight. As Sara rushed to increase the distance between herself and her opponent, Jason’s avatar changed. It remained larger than his body, but became leaner, and more streamlined, with some kind of narrow tail. It was still in the form of a primate, but this one was a monkey, not an ape, and it had strong, springy, muscular legs that launched it clear over Sara's head. As Jason sailed past her, he grabbed Sara’s head in his avatar’s hand, and pushed downward. She slammed into the arena floor and bounced. Jason skidded to a stop, and his avatar changed again, to the gorilla. He locked his hammy fists together, and smacked Sara out of the air, smashing her into the ground again.

She bounced high, and then fell face-first, heavier than a sack of potatoes. Jason’s avatar shrunk until it was nothing more than a soft golden glow surrounding his body, and he waited as the stout man began the count. Everyone in the room, including Sara herself, was a little surprised when, at the count of seven, she stood back up again. Her nose was bloody, one of her eyes was bruised, and there were other, less visible injuries across the rest of her body, but the look that she gave her opponent was as fierce and as confident as ever.

“Good,” Jason said with a smile. “For a second there, I thought that I wasn’t going to get any fun out of this at all.”

Sara didn’t reply. She was thinking about something. She’s noticed something about the way that Jason had moved during their last skirmish. The way that it had been his avatars which provided him with his speed and strength, not his actual body. It was just a hunch, but she had an idea of how she might be able to bring this guy down. She just had to test this.

So she did the most unexpected thing that a competent fighter might do: she repeated her move from the beginning of the match. She lunged forward as quickly as she could, directly toward Jason. She even struck with the same hand, aiming for the same point on her foe’s torso. When Jason reacted, despite the pain in her face, Sara smiled. Her hunch had been right.

Despite making an identical attack, telegraphing it just as plainly as she had last time, and even cutting back her speed a bit for good measure, despite the fact that her opponent should have had no issue countering her attack, with his strength and his speed, and probably even taking her out of the fight completely, he simply assumed his high-speed avatar again and banked to the side, as he had done before. He skidded to a stop, as he had done before. He changed rapidly to his gorilla avatar, as he had done before.

His avatars gave him huge boosts in strength, speed, and probably even defense, but they must have been hard to steer, so Jason tended to stick to only a few sequences of movements when using them on the fly. In that moment, as she retracted her outstretched arm, and her opponent moved toward her to launch his counterattack, Sara knew exactly what to do. As Jason swung his meaty gorilla fist, she ducked directly under it. So Jason brought his enormous gorilla elbow downward in a sharp thrust, but Sara had anticipated this. She turned, dancing from the heel of her right foot, to the toes of her left, and twisted out of the path of the elbow, twirled inside her opponent’s guard, and threw a punch right at the center of his chest, which was partially concealed behind the center of his avatar’s chest. She put everything that she had behind that strike. It made contact. Unfortunately, while the avatar shuttered, as if injured, the man within it showed so sign of harm. Jason smiled from behind the gorilla avatar’s glowing face, and out of the corners of her eyes, Sara could see two end-table-sized palms coming at her from either side.

She jumped back, and flipped backward, doing a handspring out of the path of the giant clapping hands. They smacked into each other so hard that the resulting sound shook the arena floor. As Sara found her footing again, air displaced by the impact slapped her in the face, causing her curls to bounce around above her shoulders. She’d only just gotten her bearings again when Jason pressed his attack. She barely had time to duck under another of his strikes. This time she surged backward, out of his reach, rather than try to get in close again.

Sara began moving around the open space within the arena, changing direction at random. Jason was on her in an instant, using his speed form to keep up with her, despite that he didn’t seem able to anticipate which direction she would go each time. This wasn’t working. Jason’s monkey avatar might have been frail enough for her to harm him through it, but she just wasn’t quick enough to get inside his guard in that form. The gorilla form, on the other hand, was slow enough for her to hit, but she wasn’t a fighter who replied on power. The gorilla avatar was too strong to penetrate with conventional means.

That left only one option. Like her sister, Sara had been working on something special for this match. Something besides her new style of dance-like movements. Something that she had hoped that she wouldn’t need. She’d never actually tried it in battle, under real pressure, but now she had no choice. As she darted around the arena, dodging Jason, who got closer and closer to her with each pass, she bore down on the energy of her Sol, and forced it to spread out into the air around her. With that energy, she gripped, and held onto, the liquid in the air. Tears, sweat, blood, and just plain old water vapor, it all, in that moment, answered to her will. She wasn’t practiced enough to hold onto much of it, but it would, hopefully, be enough.

With one final push, she put a bit of distance between herself and Jason, and then held her ground. Seeing an opportunity, and being completely unaware of Sara’s plan, Jason lunged at her, and shifted to his gorilla form avatar. He brought his enormous fist down toward Sara in an arch, but Sara was ready. She brought her right hand around, revealing it to be surrounded by a floating orb of water. She ducked, and jumped in a crouch, beneath Jason’s oncoming fist, and slung that water at the ground beneath her feet. It spread out and coated the arena floor, and Sara slid on it, right between Jason’s legs, ending up behind him. Then, as his fist struck the ground, before Jason had a chance to react, Sara motioned toward herself his her hand, and the water surged toward her, sweeping Jason’s feet out from underneath him. He fell hard on his face.

Sara, her legs still charged with Sol from the start of the fight, jumped high into the air. Jason rolled his gorilla avatar over onto its back, just in time to see Sara hanging in the air above him. Water trailed behind her right hand. She fell toward Jason, her right fist outstretched. That water pulled in close around it, wrapping her four fingers, condensing suddenly into brass knuckles made of super dense ice. Using the momentum of her fall, and the element of surprise, Sara drove those knuckles into the jaw of Jason’s avatar. The avatar shattered. Jason rose up, and his avatar began to form around him again, but before it could finish, Sara turned on the spot, and smacked Jason in his jaw directly. It was his turn to spin in place, and then he collapsed on the spot. He didn’t get back up, and had to be helped off of the arena, just like his allies before him.

The crowd roared, and for just a moment, Sara basked in the glory of her impressive come from behind win. Then she realized that the crowd wasn’t cheering for her, at least not entirely. After all, as Jason was carted away, his team’s leader stepped up to replace him.

“Interesting,” said Christopher Johnson, as he stepped into the arena behind his opponent. Sara turned to face him. He was completely calm, as if the match so far had only been a mild curiosity to him. His eyes studied her, with an intensity that was almost palpable. Even though Sara knew that Christopher was only assessing her combat skills, the sharp glare made her uncomfortable.

Sara scoffed at Christopher. She assessed him, as he was assessing her, and said, “I’m interesting, am I? If you think so already, you’re going to be floored when I beat you. In more ways than one.”

She shot Christopher a little smirk, but Christopher didn’t respond to her witty banter, and her smirk turned into a scowl.

“Alright,” she said, more to herself than to her opponent, “we’ll skip the question and answer portion.”

More carefully than she had against Jason, Sara surged toward her new opponent, attempting to gauge his strength. She’d planned to feign a strike, and then jumped back out of Christopher’s reach when he moved to counterattack. However, as she approached him she was surprised that he didn’t react at all. He didn’t even raise his guard. So, after a moment’s hesitation, she made the split decision to press her attack. She did feign her first strike, but then she darted to the side, and danced around behind Christopher, pushing her body as hard as she could, moving as fast as she ever had, and launched an uppercut to the back of Christopher’s head.

Unsurprisingly, Christopher leaned forward, dodging Sara’s strike. So she turned on her heels, and hopped up, launching a backfist at the side of Christopher’s head. Without even turning to face her, Christopher anticipated this exact follow-up strike as well, and bent his knees, and ducked beneath Sara’s attack. Then, the very moment that her fist had passed over his head, Christopher straightened back up, and twisted at the waste, swinging his elbow back behind him, driving it into Sara’s ribs. She was knocked sideways, and fell hard, pinning her left arm between her torso and the arena floor.

Finally, Christopher turned toward Sara. His face was just as intense and expressionless as it had been since he had walked into the arena. She looked forward to seeing that expression change. Still lying on the ground, she smiled, and gestured with her right hand. As she had fallen, she had turned her ice knuckles back into water and slung it onto the ground around Christopher’s feet. Now, with that single, simple gesture, that water sprung up and toward her, as it had done to ensnare the feet of Jason’s avatar only a few minutes ago. Yet, somehow, Christopher anticipated this as well. He jumped up, over the crest of Sara’s tiny, home-made wave, and then shuffled forward and brought his heel down toward his half-downed opponent.

Sara rolled backward, and then sprung to her feet, dodging Christopher’s foot by an inch or less. She rushed him, water still trailing through the air behind her right fist, as she struck over and over at any potential opening that she saw in Christopher’s guard. He deflected each blow, one after another, until finally, with a final twist and flourish, Sara managed to throw one final punch at Christopher’s torso while his hands were spread too wide to deflect it. She condensed her water ball around her fist again, forming something more akin to an icy club this time, and struck with all of her strength. The attack hit, but in the final moment before it did, a soft blue aura flared up around Christopher’s body. Waves of cold rolled off of him, almost giving Sara pause. Hitting his chest through that aura felt like punching a mountain. Christopher didn’t even stagger.

Sara stepped back, condensing her water even further around her fist, forming her devastating ice knuckles again, drew back her fist, and struck again with all of the force that she could muster. He didn’t even bother to guard, and her attack hit again, but to Sara’s surprise, it once again didn’t affect Christopher in the slightest, and her ice knuckles shattered upon impact.

Sara stepped back, “What the hell?”

Christopher put his hands in his pockets casually, his cold blue aura still churning around him, stirring up his hair and his clothes. “This is why I found you interesting,” he explained. “Our powers are actually similar. You have a Sol that controls water and ice, but you use your ice to attack. Whereas I use my ice Sol for defense. As long as my aura is up, it’s as if my skin is made of icy layers several inches thick. I can’t move as well, but I’m practically immune to harm. I was curious whether your ice offense would be able to break through. Maybe if you had an aura of your own, you might stand a chance.”

He paused for a second or so, waiting for Sara to reveal that she did, in fact, have an aura, but she didn’t, and Christopher sighed.

“I didn’t think so,” he told his opponent. “I thought that, maybe, you would present a decent challenge, but I was wrong.”

Sara barely heard him. She was too stunned to respond. She run through all of her options in her head, but no matter what, she couldn’t think of a single way that she could win. It was staggering, but true. Christopher really was just that far out of her reach. However, she refused to allow this to hurt her pride. She hated it, but she told herself that, sometimes, losing really is the only option. She looked over her shoulder, at her sister, and then back at Christopher, and she announced, “I surrender.”

The crowd chattered, surprised at Sara’s decision. Christopher, however, didn’t seem surprised in the slightest. He’d anticipated this move, just like he’d anticipated all of the rest, but Sara wasn’t done yet. She smiled, “I might not be able to beat you today, but one day, I will. You can be sure of that, just like you can be sure that you’re still going to lose this fight. Because your next opponent is my sister, and she’s the strongest fighter I’ve ever met. Present company included.”

Sara turned, and she walked casually toward the sidelines, where her team waited for her. Jo shot her an appreciative smile, and then hopped the short distance from the sidelines to the arena. She walked over to face Christopher, her hands in her pockets, her stance as casual as her opponent’s. She reached deep, forcing, with huge amounts of effort, her life energy and the energy of her Sol to mix, and energy surged from within her. She bore down on that power, as miniature bolts of lightning lanced out from her body, and, suddenly, her entire body was surrounded by a churning purple-black aura that stirred the air throughout the entire room.

There was cheering from the stands. Of all of the auras that the crowd had seen today, Jo’s had the most raw power, and was, therefore, the most visually impressive. Even her allies, watching from the sidelines, were impressed. “She’s been practicing,” said Tucker, beaming with pride.

“Yeah, she has,” said Sara. “That movement trick isn’t the only technique that she’s been working on for the tournament.”

Sara was impressed with her sister, sure, but there was a pang of jealousy in her tone as well. She had thought that she’d be able to make an aura before Jo, of all people. With the kind of Sol that Jo had…

That wasn’t important right now, however. What was important, was knocking Christopher Johnson off of his pedestal, and if anyone had a shot of doing that, it was Jo, especially with her new aura. That’s what Sara chose to focus on: her sister’s success.

“Impressive,” Christopher Johnson said, and his cold expression changed. His gaze didn’t grow any less intense, but his lips, ever so slightly, curled into a slight smile of anticipation, “I guess this competition might prove challenging yet.”

Jo smiled back at him, her heart pounding with excitement, “You have no idea.”

The stout man, still recovering from the brief shock of seeing Jo summon such a powerful aura, collected himself and declared, “This is it! The final round of our exhibition match. The underdogs, Team Dueling Hearts, have managed to fight Team Beatdown to their final man. It’s come down to a one-on-one final bout between the two team leaders. Who will come out of this victorious!?”

The crowd around them cheered, filling the room with sounds of excited adulation. Jo and Christopher stood opposite each other, their casual stances almost mirroring one another. The stout man announced, “Christopher Johnson vs. Joanna Sieger, let the Heart to Heart begin!” Suddenly, without any warning, the fighters disappeared, as far as the watching crowd could tell, as they charged each other at full speed, and the entire arena was filled with an explosion of clashing powers.