#dh christopher

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.

The two fighters danced around the entirety of the arena that was their stage. Energy crackled between them. Each time that they touched each other, miniature bolts of lightning lanced outward from the point of impact, jumping to the edges of the arena, and travelling up, clashing with the energy field that the competing energies of the two fighters fed. It was the first time so far that the Megadojo’s unique technology had come into use, and the crowd was thankful for it. Many of them flinched, and drew away from the action, until they were reminded that there was no need to be afraid. That they could enjoy the action taking place before them without worrying about being affected by it.

Not that there was much to see at the moment. Jo and her opponent were pushing their speed to the maximum. They were moving about so quickly that an outside observer barely had time to pin down where they were before they had already moved two or three more times. It was exciting at first, but as the fight drug on, it didn’t offer much of interest to look at.

Then, suddenly, something changed. They two fighters flickered into view. They skid to a stop in the center of the arena. Both of their auras were still burning brightly, but Jo’s fluttered irregularly, while Christopher’s remained completely unchanged. Likewise, Christopher showed no outward signs of exertion, save for a slightly elevated rate of breathing. He showed no injuries, and his stance was as casual as before. In contrast, Jo looked significantly more battered and bruised than she had before, and was breathing heavily. As the two drew to a stop, Jo drew back her right fist, and struck with all of the strength that she could muster, aiming right for Christopher’s jaw. He raised both arms and crossed them in front of his face. The impact of Jo’s attack was enough to push Christopher back nearly to the edge of the arena, but he was, overall, left completely unharmed.

Yet, he wasn’t out of danger. Just as soon as he had managed to find his footing again, Jo pressed him and launched a follow up attack. She was suddenly directly in front of him, driving her right knee upward, underneath Christopher’s guarding arms, and striking him in the chest. He was thrown upward, and back, his feet sailing several inches off of the floor. Taken aback, he wasn’t able to defend as Jo shuffled to the side, and drove a right hook right into the side of his face. He was knocked sideways, his feet flailing from beneath him, but he never made it to the ground. Instead, he was struck in the gut by Jo’s left knee with so much force that he was sent flying, only to land sprawled out on the arena floor, sliding the rest of the way to the arena boundary, stopping short of falling out of bounds.

Her opponent downed, Jo stepped back and waited for the stout man to begin the count. As he had earlier when met with an unexpected turn of events, he took almost a full second to start. Jo didn’t mind. She knew that, regardless of when the count began, it wouldn’t matter. Her opponent wasn’t going to stay down for long. She placed her hands back into her pockets as the count reached two, and, as Jo had expected, Christopher Johnson pushed himself back up to his feet.

“You’re resilient,” Jo told him. “I’m not sure how many times I hit you back there, and your defenses barely faltered the entire time. It doesn’t even look like I’ve hurt you at all. That ice Sol of yours really is impressive.”

“It is,” Christopher told her, “but it comes with its down sides. It hampers my movements so much that keeping up with someone like you is almost impossible. I’m not sure how many times back there I had to choose between trying to score a hit, and keeping ahead of your next attack.”

Jo had noticed that as well, and despite the fact that Christopher’s aura looked just as strong as it had been since the fight began, she had also seen it falter more than once during their brief clash, and even again just now, just before she’d scored her hit on Christopher’s jaw. Looking, she could see a bruise forming there, just below the jawline. If she hadn’t been looking for it, she might have missed it.

Jo smiled, and sighed with relief.

“What are you suddenly so happy about?” Christopher asked, only half invested in the answer to his own question.

“I was worried for a second,” Jo answered, stepping back from Christopher as she spoke, until she stood once again in the arena center, “but I just figured out how to beat you.”

She rushed forward again. If Christopher was surprised by her statement, or believed that she might be right, he didn’t show it. He moved to meet Jo’s attack, taking her first strike in the right breast. Jo recoiled, and struck again. This time, Christopher defended, but he did so casually, as if it didn’t matter. As he did, though, his aura flickered. Jo watched it, and after just a second, she saw what she’d been looking for.

Her smile widened. She shuffled to the side, so that Christopher was between her and the nearest of the four lights situated at the four corners of the arena. As she passed into the shadow cast by Christopher’s body, it was like she became a shadow, if only for a moment. A shocked Christopher reacted, purely on instinct, raising his arms up just in time to guard against the next thrust of Jo’s fist. He hadn’t even seen her move, and yet she was right on top of him, in a completely different stance than she’d been in less than an instant ago.

And then, with no warning, she was just gone. Christopher hadn’t even had time to register her disappearance before he found himself flying forward, a sharp pain erupting from the small of his back. He was sent tumbling forward, and landed sprawled out a few yards away. This time it took him until the count of seven to rise again, and even longer to straighten up completely. Jo was positively beaming with pride.

“See,” she explained, “when someone hits you, in any part of your body, when your aura’s up, your aura springs to cushion as much of that blow as it can. That’s why it flickers. Your aura, it tightens up. It pulls itself toward the point of contact, leaving itself thinner everywhere else, and then springs back. But I noticed, completely by accident, when I hit your jaw, that if someone is quick enough, they can get ahead of it before it snaps back into place, and they can hurt you. That’s what I just did.”

“I’m impressed,” Christopher replied, smiling right back at her, “but at this point I’m less interested in how you hurt me than I am in how you moved like that. You didn’t telegraph your moves at all. It’s like you were in one place, and then you were somewhere else. I’ve never seen anyone move like that.”

Jo hesitated. If she told Christopher how her technique worked, he might be able to find some way around it. However, with his aura hindering him, he couldn’t hope to keep up with her technique, and she had figured out how to get around his aura, so maybe it was only fair to even up the score a little bit. Besides, Jo was proud of her technique, and she didn’t want to keep it a secret forever.

“I call it Shadow Step,” she explained. “It’s a technique that I created that allows me to multiply my speed in quick bursts without giving any indication of when and how I plan to move. Like a shifting shadow.”

“That’s not the only reason you call it that,” Christopher interjected, before Jo had a chance to say anything else. He met her eyes, “You can only use it when you’re standing in a direct shadow.”

Jo was taken aback. She wanted her technique known, but she didn’t want the whole world to know how it worked, and yet Christopher had figured out its weakness after one use.

“How?” she almost stammered.

“I noticed,” Christopher replied, “that you repositioned yourself so that, when we clashed again, I would be directly between you and the light. Then you disappeared as soon as you stepped into my shadow. Hearing the name that you gave it just proved me right. You have a shadow Sol. An unnatural Sol. And you figured out how to use it to make yourself faster in the shadows.”

Jo took a step back. She felt like someone had dropped a rock in her stomach. It was no big secret that she had an unnatural Sol, a Sol that manifested itself with powers that don’t exist in nature. A Sol born of self-doubt and denial. It was no big secret, but she didn’t go around announcing it, either. It was hard to tell what people would think when they found out. Most people with unnatural Sols were just like everyone else. Their unnatural Sol was born of no more than a childish insecurity that they had outgrown over time. A few, however, were different. Their unnatural Sols were born of some evil impulse that the common person didn’t share. Jo almost didn’t blame those who immediately assumed the worst of anyone with an unnatural Sol and shunned them. Almost.

“No judgment,” Christopher added, when he saw Jo’s reaction. “Truth is, I’m impressed. I heard that unnatural Sol doesn’t mix well with life energy. That, when they mix, it goes out of control. That makes your aura even more impressive. You were able to mix them together and control it.”

He sounded genuinely impressed. Jo could tell that he was serious. He didn’t care if she had an unnatural Sol or not, but he wasn’t the only person in the room. Jo was well aware of the crowd watching them. They had heard everything that Christopher had said. Most of them only seemed concerned with when the fight was going to continue, but Jo could see some of them murmuring to one another. She felt her face grow hot. She had to force herself to ignore them, and focus once again on her opponent, and their unfinished business.

“I’ll admit,” Christopher told Jo, “even if I divide my attention between fighting you off and maneuvering you out of any direct shadows, you’ve still got my ice Sol beat, hands down. I just don’t have the speed or the offensive power to bridge the gap that your Shadow Step creates.”

Jo frowned, I sense a “but” coming…

“But,” Christopher explained, “like you, I have a Sol that isn’t entirely normal.”

Suddenly the energy surrounding Christopher changed. Jo felt it first. Up until that moment, Christopher’s presence had felt cold, distance, and guarded. In an instant, that changed. He began to radiate warmth that put Jo on guard, that made the hairs on her arms stand on end. Just him being there in front of her made her feel like she was growing too close to something that would burn her. It reminded her of when she would fight against Tucker.

Jo hadn’t even begun to internalize the sensation, when this sudden difference in Christopher’s energy turned outward. His calm, stable, icy blue aura flared out, and turned hot red and wild. A wave of heat rolled off of his body and singed Jo’s cheeks like the beams of a direct summer sun on a cloudless day. Jo was astonished. The rest of the room was equally surprised, the revelation about the nature of Jo’s Sol all but forgotten. Even the other members of Christopher’s team seemed surprised at this turn of events.

“I don’t just have an ice Sol,” Christopher explained, “I have a dual Sol! Fire and ice!”

Another wave of heat exploded from Christopher’s location, and he launched toward Jo like a rocket. She was able to avoid the oncoming strike, just barely, but shuffling swiftly to the left. She’d acted on impulse. She hadn’t even had a chance to internalize what she’d just seen. A dual Sol. It wasn’t unheard of, but it was so rare that she’d never expected to meet someone with one.

“This is my fire Sol,” Christopher announced, as he bore down on Jo, unleashing a flurry of attacks that she was only barely able to either deflect or avoid. “As much as my ice Sol limits my speed and boosts my defense, my fire Sol enhances my speed, and boosts my offense.”

He drew back his right fist, wrapping it up in his red energy, and struck right at the center of Jo’s torso. She couldn’t avoid it, so she raised her arms to guard. The force of Christopher’s attack knocked her arms right out of the way. She took a clear hit to the chest, and was knocked backward. The air burst from her lungs. Before she could recover, Christopher pressed his attack, driving an uppercut into Jo’s gut, spinning in place, and launching a kick right at her jaw. She managed to throw up her arms in time to cushion against the attack, but the force of the impact still sent her tumbling over sideways, sprawled across the arena floor. Her aura flickered, and then disappeared.

The stout man started counting the moment that Jo fell. Christopher’s attack had been relentless. Jo was left lying there, gulping down air to replace what he’d taken from her. She wasn’t in any position to even consider getting back up. Christopher had all but won, and yet he didn’t let down his guard. He’d seen how stubborn the Dueling Hearts could be. He stood back from Jo, his red aura still burning around him.

Then, just as the count reached seven, Jo pushed herself up. Her lungs still burning, her chest aching, her arms throbbing, she sprung to her feet, and then lunged. Prepared or not, Christopher had not expected that. He threw up his arms, and his red aura shuttered, and changed back into his blue one. Jo’s attack hit Christopher’s guard with earth-shattering force, but Christopher barely budged. There was a burst of heat, his aura turned red again, and he countered, aiming for Jo’s gut, but she sidestepped, and spun in place, launching a backfist at the side of his head. His aura flashed blue again, as he raised his left arm to deflect the strike, and then turned red again as he shuffled forward and threw a right hook at Jo’s jaw.

Christopher was faster than her old sparring partner Keith, by a wide margin, and yet, in that moment, Jo didn’t see a difference between them. As Christopher’s fist drew close, she leaned out of the way, and the strike sailed over her shoulder. She reached up, and gripped Christopher’s wrist in her left hand, as she thrust upward with her right, catching Christopher in his elbow. There was a loud pop, and Christopher staggered back, cradling his injured joint. It was a reflex, one that took him less than a second to overcome, but in that second, Jo forced the energy of her Sol to mix again with her life energy, and multiply in power. She bore down on that power with her entire will, even as she launched herself forward, and her aura flared to life all around her once again.

Christopher was taken aback. He’d never fought someone so persistent. Despite his surprise, though, as Jo approached, he didn’t fall into what was undoubtedly her trap, and use his newly-injured arm to defend. Instead, he took a risk. Without shifting back to his ice aura, he deflected Jo’s next attack, with significant effort, and launched a kick, backed by the full power of his fire Sol, at Jo’s sternum. Jo took the attack, allowing herself to be knocked back, using that momentum to flip backward and launch a kick of her own at Christopher’s face. He blocked, but the force of the blow still sent him stumbling back. Jo pressed, and Christopher sidestepped, and deflected another kick to the side.

As Jo stepped past Christopher, though, Christopher was confused to see a triumphant smile pulling at his opponent’s lips. She may have found her second wind, and gotten a few hits in, but Christopher was still in considerably better shape. Why did she look like she’d won? It wasn’t until Jo suddenly disappeared that he realized that he’d allowed himself to be maneuvered into the very center of the arena. Between the overhead ceiling lights, and the four bright lights at each of the arena’s four corners, he was casting deep shadows in multiple directions. Before he knew it, he could feel the movement of the air around him as Jo jumped from one shadow to the next, surrounding him, boxing him in, and picking up momentum with each pass.

Christopher turned, trying to pin down Jo’s exact location. If he could just find her, he might be able to push himself hard enough to catch her and disrupt her attack before she could find an opening and hit him with all of that built-up momentum. His aura turned icy blue, and he mixed the energy of his Sol with his life energy again and seized hold of it, causing his aura to burn brighter, making his defenses even stronger. His eyes darted around, tracing the path of the shadow circling him. Then, just before he could pin down the pattern of her movements, Jo flickered into view directly in front of him. She hung in the air, her fist drawn back, her aura flaring, ready to strike, but she hesitated for just an instant too long, and she’d left her torso wide open.

It isn’t even possible to describe how relieved Christopher felt in that moment. His aura changed, turning red again, and he reached out to strike Jo’s exposed torso with all of the strength that he had left. This meant dropping his defenses, but it didn’t matter. There was no chance of his attack not connecting. He’d won.

That’s when his fist sailed right through Jo, and all of that relief turned sour.

She used her speed, he realized, to create a lingering image of herself!

The realization crossed his mind too slowly for him to do anything about it. The lingering image faded, and the real Jo flickered into view in his peripheral vision, her fist already an inch from his face. He didn’t have time to change his aura. He’d been overconfident, and left himself wide open, and his opponent had anticipated the whole thing. The force of Jo’s final attack was substantial enough to send Christopher tumbling out of the arena entirely, and it was just as painful as that suggests, and yet, as Christopher fell, more than anything, he felt satisfied.

Meanwhile, Jo skidded to a stop in the arena center. She took a second to catch her breath, and drop her aura, and then her face lit up as it sunk in what she’d just managed to accomplish. Christopher was a professional, a champion who hadn’t suffered a single loss since beginning his career as a professional fighter, and she’d defeated him in front of an entire room full of people. She looked around, as the same realization came upon the crowd, and Jo’s friends, and they began to cheer.

Nothing seemed real. Jo couldn’t remember a happier experience. She was sure that she’d been happier than this, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. She stood there in the center of the arena while the stout man announced her victory, and basked in that glory until, finally, she was asked by the stout man to step down, and the crowd began to disperse.

Is was then that fate, or karma, or whatever force in her life kept making things more difficult for her, decided that Jo had had enough happiness for one day. As soon as she’d stepped down beside the arena, the stout man approached her, and he didn’t look particularly happy.

“Excuse me,” he said, in the way that someone tends to just before saying something monumentally offensive, “but I’m going to have to ask you and your team to leave, immediately.”

“What,” Jo asked, genuinely perplexed, “why?”

“You didn’t make this company aware when you applied to win a place in this match that you had an unnatural Sol.”

Confusion turned to guarded dispiritedness, as Jo asked, “So?”

“So,” the stout man replied, indignantly, “you had to know that this match would be used to promote this location. Quite frankly, our parent company, ProCorp, isn’t the type to be associated with such people.”

By now, Jo was fuming. She felt a coldness seize her fast-beating heart, and she clenched her fists. It was everything that she could do to keep herself from hitting the stout man then and there. To keep her aura from flaring up around her again, and knocking the stout man away. The stout man hadn’t bothered to keep his voice down. The remaining crowd, and the rest of Jo’s team, had all heard what he’d said. They watched the two as if watching a trainwreck, as if they didn’t see any way to intervene, and yet couldn’t tear themselves away.

“It’s nothing against you, personally,” the stout man said pompously, “I don’t know what lie you told yourself to turn your Sol bad, but generally I think that it’s best not to take the chance that someone might misunderstand things. So, to avoid damaging this facility’s reputation, you’re being asked to leave and not return.”

Jo might have attacked him. She might have lost control. She’d never been so mistreated, so humiliated, in her entire life. She was so angry that she was beginning to literally see red. She, and the stout man, were only saved by, of all people, Christopher Johnson. Beaten and bruised, he still carried himself with calm poise as he stepped up beside Jo and the stout man and said, simply, “Well that’s just stupid. My agent told me that ProCorp approached him and asked if I might be willing to consider promoting this place. If this facility has such backwards policies, then I guess I don’t have to think too hard about the answer.”

He turned to Jo. He was hiding it well, but he was almost as angry as she was. Despite the nature of the conversation, and all of the people still watching, he offered Jo his hand. Surprised, she took it.

“I’m sorry I brought up your Sol,” Christopher told her. “If I hadn’t, this probably wouldn’t have happened, but I want to be clear that that was the best match that I’ve ever had, and I’m proud to call you my rival. You’d better get stronger, because next time our teams fight, I won’t make things so easy for you.”