Francesca had made her way back from her match and the post-operation debriefing, and came up to Alex. Elza, who was already keeping her distance from her Pair, took the effort to place herself several more paces away. “So, Lex,” Francesca said, “this one’s gonna be interesting, isn’t it?”
Alex nodded. “It’s a strange match-up. I think Kennedy has it, though.”
Kennedy, already at her end of the asphalt strip, bounced on the balls of her feet, looking like a boxer who happened to have a long, blond ponytail which didn’t restrict an ounce of their footwork. The tights that covered the small length of calf that was visible in the swishing movement of her long cloak and winter skirt was stretched thin and nearly transparent by the well-trained mass of muscle there.
Wesley, her Pair, had just as much, or even more energy, skipping around his end of the battlefield, but even with the added height of those skips, he barely came up to the height of Kennedy’s chin, and while his muscles could be described as “wiry”, Kennedy’s could be described as “cables”.
“He’s clever, though, and knows his weaknesses,” Maxwell chimed in.
“Hey Max,” Francesca said, pulling him in for a one-armed hug. “You ready for Tabbitha?”
Alex could have used that hug right about now.
Normally, Max would have stammered, but between Alex and Francesca, he felt at ease. “Nope!”
Alex had faith in Maxwell. “You’ll do fine,” he said.
“I’ll give you some tips,” Francesca said, “but are you sure about Wesley? He’s going to get his butt kicked.”
Max looked at her funny. “He’s got a chance, though, right?”
“Just watch,” Francesca said, smiling with the kind of confidence that tended to scare others.
Alex had frequently been surprised by Wesley before, though half the time that was in the form of him and his close friends getting up to trouble. But he thought fast, and that had to count for something.
Luckily, before Francesca could ask Alex what he thought about the matchup, it began, and very nearly ended. Kennedy had deployed enhancing spells to her legs, taking the sensation of moving those muscles as inputs for first-level abstraction magic, mirroring that feeling back to them. The increase in strength from such a maneuver was theoretically infinite, but the more you did so, the more stress it placed on the mind and body, and like any magic with unlimited potential, risked demonification. Realistically, the sensation-to-spell-to-sensation loop could only be performed a few times at the skill level of 14th-year students. But an increase in results could be obtained, essentially, for free by increasing one’s natural strength. After all, it was just a process of multiplication.
Kennedy was very strong. Not just for a girl, but in general. Her peak strength output might not have been the highest in their class, but her comprehensive fitness scores were. And these enhancement spells tended to be very quick to manifest. Therefore, in well under a second, she had landed next to Wesley, ready to grab him. She would have had him, maybe even pinned to the ground, except for the fact that she was buried up to her knees in mud on landing.
Lucas, having now fully recovered from his duel with Yura, leapt into the air. “You got this, Wes!”
Francesca smirked. “Wouldn’t be too sure about that, Lucas.”
Unfortunately for Wesley, Alex agreed. While he wasn’t sure quite how Wesley had changed the ground (it could have been to something akin to mud, or to sand, and Alex didn’t catch the spell), he had kept an eye on Kennedy as potential competition for top spot in the class.
Wesley leaned in grab Kennedy’s bandana off of her arm as she was immobilized, and she punched him in the face with a crack. Wesley stumbled backwards, and fell to his knees, bleeding from his nose onto the ground.
Instructor Leor frowned. “Breaking bones is too far, Kennedy.”
“No, it’s okay-“ Wesley started, throwing up one hand while the other kept him from faceplanting into the dirt.
“Fair,” Kennedy said, still buried almost halfway in the ground. “Thirty second truce, get over here, Wes,” she said, beckoning him.
Instructor Leor seemed bewildered as Wesley stumbled over to her, and leaned in close to her.
“Restore what once was back into harmony,” she whispered, but the whisper carried on the wind, enough for all assembled to hear. Along with it, a note like two bells ringing out two octaves of C reverberated in the air.
“Oooohkay,” Leor said, alarmed. “That’s meant to be used on objects, not people, either your test results are falsified, or something else is going on here.”
Wesley waved him off. “This is normal,” he said, the tone of his voice growing less nasal as his bones and cartilage stitched back into the correct spaces, and his blood flowed back into him. “We’re practiced at this.”
“Yeah,” Kennedy said, smiling, while still focusing on the spell. “I usually use it on me, cause I push myself, but Wesley ain’t the cautious type either.”
Instructor Leor planted his hands on his hips. “Huh. Well then, if it works, it works. However, if it doesn’t sometime, come to me or another Angel, okay?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kennedy said, finishing her spell. “Of course!” Wesley said, scampering back to where he was when the truce was called.
“Ready?” Kennedy called out.
“Ready.” Wesley said.
With that, Kennedy began tearing her way out of the dirt, kicking up massive clods as she forged her path to ground level.
This, however, bought Wesley a few precious seconds, and with them, he began a sequence of kata - Irinaean spell concepts rendered into physical motion. By, in effect, “speaking” the language of spellcasting with one’s body, you could impart much greater power to a spell, though it would be limited both in alacrity of casting and in complexity. For this, there were only two concepts - “breath”, his arms and stance spreading, his chest rising, and “withdraw”, him suddenly pulling his hands, his body, his whole center of balance backwards, landing on his back foot.
“Yeah!” Maxwell said. “Clever,” Francesca added, with a mild note of admiration. You see, if you wanted to keep someone from breathing, the most obvious answer would be to keep them from having any air at all - and the Irinaean concept for “air” was usually close at mind. But this, while conceptually the direct route, was more challenging - nature abhorred a vacuum, and the pressure of miles of air above aided in ending that vacuum. But by focusing on the concept of “breath”, instead of removing the “air” itself, Wesley was just separating out the oxygen, and shoving it well behind him.
Kennedy tried to catch her breath, and came up with nothing. She looked at him, and smiled. Then, she took off at a run towards him. This was improbable, as her lungs already had to be burning from being unable to replace the oxygen she’d expended getting out of the ground, but Wesley knew to anticipate the improbable with her. Using more brutal, direct Irinaen kata, he took the nitrogen and water vapor and miscellania that remained in the air between him and her and compressed it, cooled it, until it nearly became a gel, barely moving out of Kennedy’s way as she thrust through it.
But she did thrust through it. Not a single ounce of effort was expended towards tactics, towards anything clever. All of her mind was poured into sheer strength and the straightforward approach, and again, she was upon him. This time, she hooked the outside of her left ankle into the inside of his right, and swept him off his feet, grabbing the bandanna off his wrist on his way down.
“I told you,” Francesca said.