There were plenty of duels left - once the Pairs had finished fighting against each other, the winners would be tested against each other, as only seemed right. Alex had to commend Instructor Leor on such an efficient way of getting a birds-eye view on their various skills and methods of applying them, but to be as honest as he could be, he wished the next duel could last the rest of their class period. After Rosaline and Nicolas were done, it was him and Elza. Anything before and anything after that was bearable.
But that?
God, he did not know what to do with that scenario, and more than most times he invoked the name of the Creator, he could have used an answer. None was forthcoming, as usual. At least Maxwell had returned, and was keeping close to him. Neither had said much more than the customary “Hey”, but they both could tell that the other was a little out of sorts.
“Nicolas is underrated,” Jacob insisted. The rest of the class - at least, those who weren’t either nervously anticipating a future match or were still recovering from the ones that had just happened - had gathered around, understanding the value of a consensus. And this hot take was particularly interesting, and particularly disruptive to the consensus.
“Rose is even more underrated!” Tabbitha protested.
“How can someone be in the top five of our class and be underrated?” Kennedy asked. She was still a little scuffed up from her match, but this was a much more current concern.
Tab huffed. “She’s just that good, okay?”
“… sure.” Quint said, flatly. He’d returned to the discourse faster than his Pair - Aleste was still workshopping with Irving about the technicalities of her duel, and beyond that, was still recovering her faculties. Quint, despite losing, had at least kept his head on his shoulders. It was a minor miracle that Aleste hadn’t lost whatever dignity she’d still had and passed out mid-victory, or worse. It was only by some magical expenditure on Irving’s part that Aleste was on her feet, even now, though it was admirable that she’d commit herself so fully to victory. That was the way Alex hoped to die, someday.
Off on the battlefield, Rosaline steeled herself. This wasn’t just a duel, and hell, it wasn’t just an evaluation of their mutual skills. It was a test. It was a chance. She could prove to her Guardian - thus far completely unimpressed with her to a frankly worrying degree - and to Instructor Leor that she deserved to be something above and beyond the norm. That she was worthy. It wasn’t the healthiest thought - she could recognize that, of course, it wasn’t like she’d been slacking on self-maintenance education - but it drove her, and so, she’d kept it alive, rather than burying it down, along with all the other useless, problematic things she felt. She’d barely known David for a day, and him being nonplussed with her meant that he held her to a higher standard. That implied that the True Church had great plans for her, which was simultaneously worrying and exciting. And Nicolas also seemed nonplussed. Her Pair had, as far as her research had carried her, never outpaced her in exams or evaluations, but that kind of emotive response had to mean something. Presumably, he was just bad at tests, and her performance fell below his adjusted standards.
“Okay,” Percy explained. “He’s not the most outgoing guy. I have to goad him to get him out of his shell at all, but he’s… Strong. Quiet, but strong.” Percy frowned. “I have a hard time describing him, okay? But if I saw Nicolas take you on in a fight, Alex, I’d give him a fair chance.”
Alex took this in, and nodded.
At this point, Instructor Leor had taken to using a flag that he had produced out of- who are we kidding, he’s a high-ranked Angel, he could have conjured that up in the moment - nothing to wave in the next round of combatants, and he dropped the flag. Nicolas, seemingly instantaneously, lunged across the field. The dirt kicked up behind him, ground forming into footholds and then being tested by reinforced leg muscles, and two spellforms spun around his wrists, waiting to be utilized, one or the other, the second he arrived at Rosaline.
That second never came.
Rosaline threw her mind full-force into a decision tree of obvious choices. “What is the optimal way of responding to a fast-approaching object?” Plenty of forces and responses were possible, but of all the forces that could slow something down, gravity was the one exerting the most force at any given moment, and such, was easy to mirror. Now, with that as a given, applying that to a conscious opponent required understanding that mirroring a sense directly onto another thinking being was extremely difficult. Applying that to their clothes or associated objects was less difficult, but as people tended to think of their attendant objects as extensions of themselves, the protections of the mind also extended to them, albeit more weakly than to the body. But physics didn’t care if you considered something to be “you” or not. So, anything would do.
And, logically, the same forces applying a damper against physical manipulation, when reversed, would create a boost to her efforts.
She ripped off her cloak and flung it at Nicolas.
The heavy white wool wrapped itself around his head and shoulder, stopping his advance just by means of making him unable to see. He attempted to remove it, but Rosaline was still manipulating it, and she wasn’t about to just let some chump best her magical prowess with physical exertion. That’d just be uncouth.
The application of gravity required amplification, as much as she could muster, so of course, that led to doing the abstraction in the form of a kata. Gravity was, as far as the situations she’d ever encounter, as far as she was concerned, always a first-level abstraction, merely mirroring a sensation she felt, and pushing it onto something she’d quite recently felt, intuitively, as part of her self, was easy. But she needed to bring her all to bear. So, she made a bit of a custom kata. Kata were… well, physical motion could be constructed into a language, much like sign language. Motions mirrored concepts, and communicated them, albeit in more full-body, intuitive ways. But this could be done without language as well, skipping Irinaen, or even English, straight from feeling to feeling. She’d read, if not practiced, interpretive dance theory of the 20th century, and that was immensely informative for what she was about to do.
Rosa swung her arms around, and fell into a crouch, slamming them into the ground, feeling her palm being shoved into the dirt by the imaginary sense of weight - overwhelming, destructive, unstoppable.
Ten feet away, mid-lunge, covered with Rosaline’s thrown cloak, Nicolas crashed into the asphalt.
There was no reason it shouldn’t have worked. It was, as far as Rosaline concerned, entirely textbook, but she never knew what her classmates would come up with. Tabbitha and Elza were always surprising her, after all. So, she approached him gingerly.
Meanwhile, Nicolas groaned, softly, under her cloak.
She got closer, and he still barely moved.
She came right up to him, and lifted the cloak, as much to check on him as to take his bandanna.
Oh, she thought. She thought about the situation for a moment, leaning down for a better look, and then dropped the cloak. She made her way over to his wrist and grabbed the bandanna before waving over Instructor Leor. It was the right thing to do, she reasoned. Unsurprisingly, David Ananiel II, her Guardian, came over as well. She wouldn’t be surprised if she was disqualified.
Instructor Leor lifted the cloak as well, and Nicolas groaned again. It was immediately clear that his nose, jaw, and left orbital bone had been split into several more pieces than they’d been a few minutes ago.
“Rosaline.” There is was - the stern voice of David. She hadn’t heard him be anything but stern yet, but that seemed appropriate, by her reckoning. A veteran of the front-lines, fighting against the Dharmic Empire, was more than allowed to be humorless. He had paused just a bit too long, and Rosaline, acutely aware of social queues, in part from her friends being so unaware of them, flinched.
“Yes?”
“You need to show Nicolas the proper respect,” he said, frowning. “He is your Pair. And Nicolas?”
Underneath the cloak, obscured, Nicolas sniffled. “Yeah?” His voice was nasally clogged… probably with blood, Rosaline thought, ashamed.
David put his boot on an undefined part of the cloak-obscured mass that was Nicolas, somewhere around his ribcage, most likely. “Don’t let her disrespect you like that. Understand?”
“Yes sir,” he said, sounding more froggy than human with his, uh, “induced congestion”.
Instructor Leor had been crouching down, looking him over, and looked back up at David. “I’m going to heal him now, okay?”
David rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah.”
With the affirmation, Leor’s hands glowed, and within the space of a second, the broken parts of Nicolas knitted themselves back together. While he took Nicolas’s hand, helping him up, he took Rosaline’s as well, raising it to the sky, proclaiming her victory.
“Try to be a bit more gentle next time,” he said.
“I-“ she started, but Leor leaned in, interrupting her.
“I know, it’s not your fault. He should have defended himself better, and you shouldn’t be punished for doing things better than your peers. But,” he said, looking at the Guardians, and the assembled students. “These are your superiors, and your future competition.”
“Coworkers, you mean?” she whispered back.
“Sure, sure. But if you’re going to frustrate people this much, make sure you have enough of a leg up on them that they can’t get you back.”
“It wasn’t intentional-“ she protested.
“Do you think that matters?” Leor asked.
“What are you telling my Ward?” David asked.
“Just to keep the rules in mind. No permanent injuries and all that - I’m sure there was no danger of that, but when it gets too rough, it’s worth telling students, of course,” Leor said. David nodded back at him.
“Got it?” Leor asked her.
Rosaline nodded, and she was sent back to the students as a winner.