“That was incredible!” Rosa said to Elza, as Tabbitha and Kennedy were patching themselves, their uniforms, and the battlefield back up.
“Yeah,” Elza said, smiling. “You taught her most of that, right?”
Rosa giggled. “Some, yeah, but most? She improvised most of that. She hasn’t practiced any combat ideograms that weren’t in the course-book. I’m proud.”
“Rosa?”
“I’ve been saying for years now that if our education wasn’t so combat-oriented, she’d be one of the top students of our year. She just doesn’t have an enthusiasm for violence, but she’s plenty smart when she finds the motivation.”
“Rosa?”
Rosaline still had her eyes on Tabbitha. “It says something about her that she’s capable of performances like this, and she’s still rated as a D. People just don’t understand her - you get her, right? She’s a genius-in-waiting, a phenom who just doesn’t test well, a-“
“Rosaline!” Elza said, just a notch under a shout.
Rosaline moved like she had to break free of a thick layer of ice to look at Elza. “You’ve been talking?”
“We’re up next.”
Rosaline blinked. “Oh.”
“Yeah,” she said, apologetically. Rosaline doubted that anyone else, hearing her tone of voice, would read Elza as “apologetic”, but she’d had a long time to learn the precise terms, handicaps, and filters you needed to apply to read Elza. With anyone else, Rosa would have said something like “Go easy on me, okay?”, in a jokey sort of tone, there would be a friendly handshake, and they’d head out. But with Elza? She’d take that as an insult. Any restrictions or agreements beforehand would also be seen as insulting, either to Elza, or to Rosa, and knowing Elza, she wouldn’t tolerate an insult to either of them. No matter how many times Elza was reprimanded or punished, either corporeally or through restrictions, Elza wouldn’t hesitate to punch a fellow student in the mouth for insulting her few friends - including her friends. Rosa had once been laid out on her back by Elza kicking her in the chest for some things Rosa said about herself in a depressive fit. “Don’t hold back, okay? I’ll know if you are,” Elza said, and set her jaw, refusing to give Rosaline any interpretable expression.
Rosaline hugged her anyway, and Elza hugged her back. “I won’t,” Rosaline promised. She wanted to be honest and couch that in “I won’t hold back, at least insofar as I have to hold back to adhere to the guidelines of this test, and I don’t want to hurt you, though I do, definitely, want to win”, but she had to trust that Elza would understand. Her relationship with Elza was sometimes more of a moment-to-moment test of faith than her relationship with God.
“Good,” Elza said, and as they backed away from each other, Elza was smiling. Rosaline couldn’t help but smile, too. They were guided to their spaces by their Guardians - both of whom seemed absent-minded. Though, as much as she wanted to know more of her own Guardian, she focused less on David and more on Julian, Elza’s Guardian. There was something about him that just didn’t look like an Angel. She settled on the idea that it was because he was poorly groomed. His hair was too long for a boy, and it wasn’t washed properly. He needed to take better care of his body, too - he was underweight, and while he was apparently quite the powerful Angel, anyone’s first- and second-order abstraction based magic would be made more powerful by an expansion of their physical capabilities. What was mentally safe was all tied into what felt “natural”, and it seemed like such a waste for an Angel of his stature to not be optimizing that. Granted, of the other sixth-rank Guardians, only Tessawyn seemed to have the appropriate physical stature. Tabbitha was strong by nature, if not by training, but her Guardian had clearly put in the work, and it made Rosa proud that Tabbitha was matched with a Guardian like that.
Rosaline’s Guardian grabbed her by the shoulders, straightening her posture. “Stand up straight. Face your opponent, dispatch her cleanly, and don’t disappoint Nicolas.” Rosaline knew better than to say “What?”, but she thought it. David’s swept-back brown hair and steely gaze formed a harsh image that seemed more imposing than instructional. “You have advanced furthest in this tournament, and therefore, you represent the Pair in general, and him in particular. Any failure on your part reflects on him. If you lose, you are not just disappointing yourself. You are disappointing him, and you are disappointing me. Remember that.” His face was just as impassive when he walked away as when he started talking. At the other end of the asphalt strip, Elza had seemingly gotten a similarly confusing pep-talk from her Guardian, judging by the way she kept casting side-glances at him for the tiniest fractions of a second. Short enough that Elza could expect no one to notice, but long enough that Rosa could pick up on it. One of the downsides of Elza’s bravado was consistently evaluating others as weaker than they were, even if Elza denied that she did it, and that was what Rosaline had to bank on. One on one, strength against strength, Elza would beat her. But Rosaline was smart. Elza was more like a hammer. A smart hammer, but a hammer nonetheless. And a hammer couldn’t solve every problem.
Rosaline just had to be the unsolvable problem.
Instructor Leor, with his mop of fluffy hair and his piercing eyes and his scruffy facial hair - how many powerful Angels were actually awful at grooming? Come to think of it, self-care education in Arcadia tended to be focused on mental care, not physical, maybe that was something worth bringing up to a professor - Rosaline shook her head and tried to shake the critique out of her mind - glanced back and forth between the two of them. He looked, Rosa thought, like he sensed the tension, and she shot him a smile, trying to say that yes, this was okay, this was normal, don’t be worried, we do this all the time, but she just had to hold some faith as to whether or not the message got through to him. Angels were smart, right?
Instructor Leor nodded at her, and dropped his hand in a chopping motion. “Go!”
Elza was smiling so wide. On the one hand, this was good. Rosa liked to see Elza happy. On the other hand, oh no.
The air compressed behind Elza into a concussive blast as she kicked off, not from the ground, but from air that she solidified and then exploded to give her more velocity. Rosaline’s first instinct was to dodge out of the way - the least effort for the greatest return, the strategic ideal - but she sensed spikes of radiant heat behind her. Elza had sucked the moisture out of the air behind Rosaline, compressed it into a band of water, and superheated it. These effects should not have been possible this quickly, but Rosaline knew that with Elza, it was better to just accept whatever she was doing and adapt rather than questioning whether or not it was happening. Heat was, of course, energy. If she took it out of the air, rather than putting it in, she could in theory hold on to it for later use. So, she did just that - like a heat pump, she concentrated the heat of the air around her in a small sphere defined by her grasping fingers, and froze the moisture around her into ice crystals. The air sparkled with the effects of her magic, but that would do nothing against what was coming. She needed to watch for-
There it was. Aimed at her left shoulder, the steam that Elza had formed in the air became a lance of high-pressure, superheated air, ready to burn her with its heat and knock her off her feet with its impulse. Send the ice to the site of impact, balance the heat and cold, redirect the air to kick you out of her way - And as the thoughts formed in Rosa’s head, it happened, a shard of ice the size of one of her classmates forming just long enough to explode in a blast of water vapor from the impact of Elza’s steam lance, the air around it swirling in a miniature tornado, fighting against the natural turbulence of fluid dynamics, channeling as much energy as possible into Rosa in a way that wouldn’t break most of her bones and in a way that would avoid Elza - and she did.
It took every ounce of strength she had in both of her arms to keep her chin from hitting the asphalt, but she caught herself as Elza flung herself overhead. She brought up her knee, and rolled, taking her unnatural momentum and twisting it until Rosaline found herself crouching, both fists raised and ready to fight, pointed in the direction of Elza’s landing. She could do the same trick five or six more times, Rosaline thought, though she’d probably have to re-adapt and try something different. But she could deal with that kind of speed, force, and secondary, augmenting attack at least a few more times. In that crouch, one knee up, the other braced against the ground, she watched Elza, who’d torn up ground and asphalt in slowing herself down, as she paced. Rosaline rotated, keeping her center of focus exactly between Elza and herself. The focus of the mind was where any spell originated. You could divide it into parts - that was a core piece of training for any prospective Angel - but in this case, the focus was unitary, and held between them, so that Rosaline could direct as much of her mind as fast as possible into responding to whatever Elza did.
Elza kept walking, and Rosaline kept tracking her. She split the hydrogen from the oxygen in the water vapor in the air, and ignited it, shooting a gout of flame directly at Rosaline. She gritted her teeth and deflected it, despite the heat and blinding light of the flames making her shut her eyes, making her have to just sense where they - and where Elza - was. Elza kicked off again, hopping about- thirty-seven degrees? Odd choice, or just a failure to hit forty - doesn’t matter, facts are facts- to the clockwise, relative to Rosaline, and she whipped around without opening her eyes. If she’d kept them open, the light would have taxed the cells in her eyes and temporarily blinded her.
“You never disappoint, do you, Rosa?” Elza said. Again, her tone was obscure to most, flat and factual, but Rosaline could feel that the words were taunting her.
Off on the sidelines, Tabbitha, Alex, and Francesca were the most invested. Others in their class were discussing among themselves, speculating, putting valueless bets on the outcome, but the three of them were worried.
In order:
Tabbitha knew them both very, very well, and every ounce and inch of the two of them fighting each other was bad news. She knew this was them expressing, in their own weird way, their friendship, but she hated it. She just wished they could lay down, cuddle, and talk about dreams and the future and other nice things. She hated the idea of any of them getting hurt, and there was way too much of a chance of both of them getting laid out. It was almost a guarantee that one of them would be hurt, physically or emotionally, before the match was over, and thus, she was practically vibrating with worry. Rosaline would have noticed this, of course - Tabbitha had a way of pulling Rosaline’s attention out of just about anything. Unfortunately, one of the exceptions to this was Elza. She had the uncanny ability to focus every eye in the room on what she was doing. Something about her just always seemed fundamentally wrong. She wished, wanted, desperately, for Rosa to just look at her. Something in her knew that it would just be better that way.
Alexander was slowly starting to realize just how much horrific power was in the hands of his Pair. On the one hand, this was a massive compliment from the establishment of the True Church, and the Angelic Order of Saint Michael. On the other hand… He had felt very secure, up until about an hour ago, as to his position as the primarch of their class. The best. The most powerful. The destined hero. But after losing to her, he had to watch her. He’d been comforting himself with the notion that her victory over him was a fluke. But with every passing moment, he was growing more and more unsure. Having to fight tooth and nail against Francesca was difficult enough. But a second real, honest to God rival? Part of him felt guilty for having any more effort to pull out in service of the Angelic Order. But he knew he had some. And he’d best do it.
Francesca watched every blow, every block and counter-strike, every grunt, groan, and yell between Elza and Rosaline. She wanted to evaluate this coldly, rationally, to be exactly what she needed to be for the coming rounds. But instead, she felt rage boiling in her chest. How dare they. Francesca would put them both to shame. She would make them both look like total idiots. Her rivals would fall before her, and no one was going to stop that. It was infuriating that Leor, this so-called teacher, had the audacity to match them by Pairs. Francesca should never have been robbed of the chance to fight Lex. She deserved the opportunity to make him beg.
The fifth torrent of flame had concealed a bolt of lightning, but Rosaline sensed it, redirecting the electrical force through her arms and into the ground, bypassing anything vital.
“That could have actually killed me, Elza!” Rosa said. She intended a smile, but it came out more as a sneer, and it felt more representative.
“And?” Elza said, grinning wickedly. “You’re better than that and you know it.”
Rosa couldn’t help but smile back, a bit more toothily than she’d intended. “Yeah? Prove it.”
Damn, she thought, apologizing to Jesus and several saints as she thought it. Elza was corruptive in that way. She made you want to fight, and she was going to regret this, she just knew-
There was, in the space of a few thousands of a second, suddenly no more time to think about how people impacted Rosaline’s thinking. Elza had launched herself at Rosa again, though she was leading with quite a bit of fire. Lightning, of a sort, stripped the molecules of the air apart, generating an explosion that was growing, rapidly, directly towards Rosaline’s face. This was too fast to dodge physically, and Rosaline was worried by the fact that she knew that Elza knew this. Still, she only had a few solid responses - respond to the effect, or respond to the spell. The effect could mutate, and who knew what kind of contingencies that Elza had baked into the spell - Rosa couldn’t picked out on such short notice if Elza had even used a known spell, or something she’d cooked up on her own, or if this was a particularly complex utilization of second-order abstraction. Or even first - she didn’t know what Elza had in her pockets. God, there was so much intel she should have gathered - Not enough time. Focus.
Focus.
An insulating layer. If Elza was creating a chemical effect from the air that was racing towards Rosaline within fractions of a second, her only defense was to prevent that effect from propagating. The simplest way to do so was - With a thunderclap, she produced a few inches of atmospheric vacuum in a sphere around her. Electricity would have a hard time jumping the gap, and heat, Elza’s favorite element, would be stymied, just as the energy trying to escape a vacuum-insulted thermos.
The electricity, and the plasma that followed, and the fire that followed it, sputtered out on the tiny expanse of nothingness that Rosa had created. “Nice move,” Elza said. There was frustration at the edges of her wild grin, and that alone granted Rosa a smattering of confidence. “Wanna try it again?” Rosaline raised her eyebrows and tilted her head as she said it. She’d had the acting direction in a play that they’d been in for their theater class, a character coyly playing innocence. She’d been excited to fill the role, learning multiple layers of deception, and it was fun to put it into practice.
“Yes,” Elza said, her eyes wild.
That was not what Rosaline expected. She expected her to acknowledge Rosa’s victory in this one little contest of wills, and take a different line of attack. That would be effective. That would be efficient. That would be reasonable.
That would not be Elza.
Rosaline realized, too late, that everything she’d planned for after this moment had involved Elza moving on to a different line of attack, avoiding Rosaline’s defenses. Instead, she took Rosaline’s vacuum defense as a challenge. More heat, thrown into a mass of iron - who knew where she’d even found that - that could cross the gap. More electrical potential, arcing across with a sudden spike into the tens of thousands of volts. More magic, piercing Rosa’s sphere of influence in just the right place for her to do something, anything right next to her, sucking the air our of Rosaline’s lungs.
The air left her. The flames engulfed her. The electricity short-circuited her nerves.
And as anyone would expect, Rosaline fell.
It hurt, of course, but it was the only possible way to navigate this maze of possibilities. If Rosaline was hit by everything that Elza threw at her, she could reasonably appear to be incapacitated. And then… And then-
Back at the Guardian bleachers, Geoffrey fidgeted nervously. “Is this okay?” he asked.
“Of course it is,” David, Rosaline’s Guardian, said. One of his wards was a crumpled heap on the ground, barely moving. “She isn’t dead.”
“That-“ Geoffrey began, but a harsh look from David shut him up. A row further down, Tessawyn was staring at Julian, Elza’s Guardian, wondering much the same thing. She wasn’t ready to talk to Julian, to break that particular ice, but if this went much further, she’d have to say something.
Rosaline had kept her breaths shallow and weak for nearly a half minute, as Elza inspected her limp body. Eventually, finally, Elza reached down to untie Rosaline’s bandanna. Rosa seized the opportunity, and Elza’s wrist, yanking it towards her. Elza fell forward, caught off-guard, and her face slammed into the ground. Rosa’s next move would have been to leap on Elza’s back, pin her down without any means of her attacking back, but Elza pushed off, slamming her shoulders back into Rosa, knocking her flat - and knocking any lingering fight out of her. Rosaline just stared up at the sky, defeated. Even as she felt the light tugging at her wrist as Elza took her bandanna, she did nothing to stop her.
Elza grabbed her arm, and pulled Rosaline to her feet. Rosa smiled at her.
“You didn’t hold back,” she said, and noticed that Elza’s cheeks were streaked with tears. Rosa brushed some of them away, as Elza worked some healing magic on Rosa. Elza had a busted lip, and that should have been her priority, but Rosa took it on herself to handle it.
Elza hugged her. “Maybe I should have. Hurting you sucks.”
“It’s fine,” Rosa said. “But if you end up matched against Tab… keep it cleaner than that.”
Elza nodded.
“If you don’t…”
Elza snorted, and wiped some residual blood off of her lower lip. “You’d beat the hell out of me. And I’d deserve it.”
Rosa smiled. Elza might not be the best at understanding people, but she managed it when it counted.