[01] City Sector FIGHT

[DA 2009]

CITY SECTOR FIGHT

(1) Kaden vs. Ashe

[Kaden]

The only sounds that filled the bunker were the scrapings and scratching of forks on plates. All of it, fortunately, was disposable, so none of the noises really grated the nerves, but the otherwise silent space almost felt awkward. Maybe there just wasn’t too much to talk about. At the very least, Kaden knew his mind was otherwise preoccupied with relentless ponderings. The idea that sitting down to eat might ease him of that… well… it hadn’t worked out.

“You’re not very talkative,” Ashe commented after swallowing a bite of delicious waffles.

“Hmmm?” Kaden looked up from his plate, having just stuffed the last of his meal into his mouth. Upon finishing, he dropped his flatware on the now-empty plate and pushed it a couple inches away. “Yeah, sorry about that. I guess I’m just… nervous? That’s a pretty good word for it.” Without realizing it, the courier had cast at least three glances towards the door to the bunker. “I just hate to see them go.”

“Yeah? You didn’t seem to mind watching them leave,” Ashe joked.

“Ha! Yeah, well, I’m only human,” the courier played along, though there was very little humor in his voice. “It’s just… I dunno. Feels weird.”

As Ashe ate, Kaden pushed his chair back from the card table they had been eating on, slouched into a more comfortable position and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. As he adjusted himself, the courier watched his companion eat. Upon reflection, it probably seemed a little creepy, but that was what he did. Not act creepy… just, observe. Ashe seemed like a nice enough girl and Kaden getting all dreary and self pitying wasn’t going to help his situation.

“Back when I was in school,” the courier suddenly began. “I had this friend. His name was Aaron, though we all ended up calling him Sheets. Like a bed sheet. I had enough friends, but I didn’t really get along with most of them the way I got along with this guy. We just kind of… complimented each other. Know what I mean? Anyway, he wasn’t a dumb guy, but he did some of the stupidest shit I’d ever heard of. You know what a bungee cord looks like? Not the big ones you go jumping with, but the ones that are a couple feet long and have metal hooks on the end?” Kaden used his hands to demonstrate both the length and the hooks. “Well, Sheets had figured out how to get onto the roof of our school a while before this happened. One day he thought that it would be funny to get up onto the roof and lower himself down to the windows of one of the classrooms to freak everyone out.”

Ashe winced as Kaden spoke, already seeing where the story was headed. Kaden couldn’t help but laugh to himself. No matter how many times the courier thought about it, he couldn’t understand how that seemed like a good idea. It really was astounding what some people were capable of.

“So he gets maybe a dozen of these bungee cords, hooks them all together, and actually thinks this plan will work. He hooked on end under his belt and the other into some… vent thing. Well, of course it doesn’t work. The metal hooks bend and he ends up falling three stories. People in the classrooms thought someone had jumped. Luckily, there was some grass directly below him. He ended up with a pretty serious concussion and his leg broken in two places. All-in-all he got off pretty easy, if you ask me.”

“And you were friends with this guy?” Ashe asked as she finished he food.

“Yup. And here’s why. The first people to get to him said that, even though he was rolling around in agony, he was laughing. At himself. There aren’t many people out there who can just laugh at anything that’s thrown at them, but when you’re around them, you know it. They make even the worst situations seem easier just by being there.” As he finished, Kaden cast a last glance at the entrance to the bunker and sighed.

“How very profound.”

“Yeah, well, that’s just how I roll.”

With a grin, Kaden hopped up from his chair. Scooping up his and Ashe’s used plates and flatware, the courier disposed them and took a wide, sweeping look around the bunker. There was plenty to look at, too. All kinds of supplies, including bottled water, food, bags, random survival gear – including grappling hooks like Ashe had described – and a stack of booklets describing the tournament and its rules.

“Hey, check it out!” Kaden snatched up one of the little books and held it up towards Ashe.

The bunker itself was basically separated into three sections. The front half held all the survival stuff as well as the table upon which Ashe and Kaden had been eating. The back half of the bunker was further split into two sections. Along one wall was a row of small, very uncomfortable-looking cots, and along the other was a series of bathrooms set into the wall. With the booklet in hand, Kaden dropped himself onto a cot.

“Of course…” Kaden groaned after a minute of reading.

“What’s up?” Ashe asked as she took a seat one cot down from the courier.

“So these collars explode if we don’t ‘reset’ them in a bunker, but we can’t use the same bunker twice in a row. Shoulda figured as much. That wouldn’t be nearly as entertaining.”

“So we just go find another one,” Ashe replied. “There are some maps over there. Shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Yeah, I guess not,” Kaden’s mumbled. He had only been half listening as he continued flipping through the book. “That’s lame. We’re put in a ‘stasis’ field during combat days. I have no idea what a stasis field is, but apparently we won’t be able to get out of it.”

“So much for passive resistance, huh?”

“Looks like it.” Kaden set the book down on his chest and frowned. “Maybe Sage was right. Maybe I need to take this more seriously.”

“It’s not like you’re treating it like a joke or anything,” Ashe reassured him.

“I mean the whole ‘fight or we’ll blow you up’ thing. Can’t say I’m a huge fan of having to fight period. Being forced to do it doesn’t make me any happier. I’d rather not put people’s lives at risk.”

“Well maybe we should just worry about getting to a new bunker instead of freaking out about who you might have to fight. I can’t say I’m a huge fan of being forced to do something, either, but if these collars can blow us up, I think it’s best not to argue with the dude holding his finger on the button.”

Indeed, Kaden had to agree with her logic. The idea that the collars could only explode if they didn’t go into a bunker was naïve, to say the least. Damon Dukes definitely struck Kaden as the kind of guy who liked to have an insurance policy in case things weren’t going his way, and that he was willing to trick people into entering his tournament definitely said something about his character.

“Ok! We should probably get a move on, huh?”

Swinging his legs over the edge of the cot, Kaden hopped off and walked over to the shelves of supplies. Various sizes and shapes of bags hung on a series of hooks. True to his nature, Kaden snatched a courier bag and slung it over his shoulder. It wasn’t the largest bag available, but it was comfortable and the limited space would keep the courier from bringing along more than they needed.

After consulting with Ashe for a moment, they decided on some rations and several bottles of water. Initially, Kaden wanted to only take one canteen per person, but Ashe made the very good point that they didn’t know how often they’d have access to water supplies. That he hadn’t thought of that himself made the courier a little concerned; it seemed Kaden was more distracted than he realized. After throwing in a rules booklet and a map, the two were off.

“So… which way are we going?” Ashe asked.

Instead of responding, Kaden looked at the map in his hands. Confusion spread across his features as he looked up from the map and cast a glance to his left, then his right. They were only a few steps out of the bunker, but Kaden had no real way to orient himself. Instead of admitting this, however, he folded the map, nodded, and began walking in a random direction.

“Do you have any idea where you’re going?” the pink-haired girl asked as she jogged up next to Kaden.

“More or less. As long as we get out of the city, we should be golden.”

It made sense to the courier. The different regions were all different and once they crossed the proverbial threshold, it would be easy to tell which direction they had been traveling. That and Kaden was feeling in a particularly random mood. He didn’t really deal well with aimlessness. Casting a glance to his side, he saw Ashe fiddling around a small device she had pulled from her pocket. The attached ear-buds led the courier to correctly guess it was a music player.

“Oh, you, uh… want to listen, too?” Ashe extended one of the ear buds towards Kaden when she noticed his gaze.

“Heh, that’s alright. I don’t usually listen to… music.”

“Ever?” Ashe shot the courier a double-take.

“Rarely. I’d just rather pay attention to the stuff around me than music.” Looking around, Kaden realized that they were in a creepy empty city with no one else. He quickly amended his statement. “Or I prefer to practice with, uh, my… energy. And that usually takes concentration.”

“Oh yeah? How do you usually practice?”

Having piqued Ashe’s interest, to some degree at least, Kaden considered the question for a moment. It was much easier to just manipulate his ki than explain how he went about doing it. As the two marched down the street, the courier ran a hand through his hair before coming up with an idea.

Trying to do something too complex while walking seemed like a bad idea, instead, Kaden came up with something that should have been relatively simple. Extending an arm, the courier held an open hand in front of him, palm up. Extending his other hand, Kaden slowly traced a wide circle in the air above his open hand. The first time he did this, nothing happened. The second time, the finger with which he was drawing a circle began to glow. The third and final time, Kaden’s finger left a trail of cerulean light. When the third circuit was completed, Kaden was left with a circle of ki floating in his hand.

While that might have been an interesting enough display on its own, Kaden felt it to be rather mundane. More than once he had been told he had a gift for manipulating energy, though he couldn’t really say one way or the other. He just did what he needed to do. It never really crossed his mind that something might be too difficult. It was his energy, after all, why shouldn’t he be able to do whatever he wanted with it.

Taking the circle of energy in his hands, Kaden reached up and let go of it directly over his head. The circle of ki hung in the air over the courier like a bright blue halo, following him around as he tilted his head from one side to the other. When he started shaking his head too fast, the halo would quiver and almost droop towards the ground. Returning his head to a more… sane position made it easier to keep it where it was supposed to be.

Tilting his head up, Kaden caught a glimpse of his… accessory and frowned. It didn’t really look like a real halo – and the fact that Kaden could say that from experience was awkward enough on its own. The glow from it was harsh and cold in comparison to the warmth of a real one. Sighing, Kaden snagged the ring off of his head with a finger and flicked it into the air.

With a thumb-and-forefinger pistol, Kaden took aim at his own faux-halo and blew it into a shower of cerulean sparklies. It was a little flashier a display than he intended, but he wasn’t going to lose sleep over it. He didn’t think of himself as a braggart, but it couldn’t hurt to make oneself look a little better in front of a cute girl. That was Kaden’s motto, at least. One of them, anyway.

“Not bad,” Ashe commented as she watched the twinkling flecks of bright blue energy.

“Thanks. Anyway, doing stuff like that is good practice and keeps me from getting bored. It’s—“

“Oh hey!” Ashe suddenly cut him off. “I recognize this. This is the direction I came from. I started in the… uh… Mountain Sector, I think it was called.”

“Well…” Kaden pulled out their map and took a look. “That certainly makes things simpler. Mountain Sector here we come.”

“Searching…searching…” a computerized, feminine voice spoke.

“Searching? Searching for what?” Ashe thought aloud.

“Signal located. Beginning combat protocol,” the voice answered.

“Combat? There’s…” Kaden began. His red eyes widened as realization suddenly dawned on him. “…nobody here but us,” he finished in horror.

“Stasis field engaging.”

“Yeah…” Kaden looked around at the stasis field he and Ashe had suddenly been thrust into. “Why not?”

There was always that tipping point. That magically second where an emotion comes full circle and just… loses all meaning. For Kaden, it was right then. He felt like he had recounted a million times, the different ways he had been fucked over since he first received Damon Dukes’ invitation. Instead of going through it again, he simply rode the wave of borderline insanity and laughed. That really was all he could do.

“I, uh, I really don’t see how this is funny.”

And indeed Ashe did not. The expression on her face was anything but amused. The courier tried to apologize between fits of laughter, but it did little to help the situation. He felt bad, without a doubt, but it took him a few moments to compose himself. Intellectually, he understood that the shit had just hit proverbial fan. The best part was that there wasn’t much they could do about it.

“At least we have plenty of room to work with,” was the first thing Kaden said as he looked around.

The only really visible part of the stasis field was high above them, stretching across the sky as a shimmering blue dome. The idea that there was really anything positive to be taken from his situation was laughable enough, but Kaden managed to keep himself under control.

“Do you… need a lot of room? I’ve seen people fly around before…” Ashe’s voice sounded nothing short of abysmal.

“Me? Hahaha… not a chance. I, uh, don’t handle heights that well.” Kaden found it embarrassing to admit that he could blow apart entire buildings, but the idea of hopping on an airplane made his stomach flip.

Ashe gave him a curious look, as Belle had when he found out, but it quickly passed. She looked panicked and confused. Kaden could sympathize, though he was more emotionally numb at that moment than anything else. He had absolutely no desire to fight the girl. They had been paired off so they would be safer wandering around the island, not so they could make nice with their executioner.

“I… I don’t even know how to fight. There’s no possible way I can do this. I…”

It was a sad sight watching Ashe slump to the ground, looking as numb and defeated as Kaden felt. What were they supposed to do? Fight or be ‘dusted’? Given the choice, the courier would prefer to be dusted every time. No question about it. What was odd, and Kaden didn’t notice it until giving their situation a second thought, was that Ashe didn’t know how to fight.

Most people, normal everyday people, didn’t give off much a vibe, so to speak. They were all but invisible to Kaden’s Ki Sense unless he focused particularly hard. It was rarely worth doing. Ashe, from what Kaden could feel, was definitely not an average everyday person. There was definitely power inside of her. It would be bizarre if she had never had occasion to use it. Kaden turned this thought over in his mind for several minutes.

“You don’t know how to fight at all?” was the first question Kaden settled on.

“Well, I mean, I know how to throw a punch, but…” Ashe shook her head and just looked at the ground. “Not really.”

“You know about ki, right? I know you’ve seen people manipulate it.”

“Yeah, I know what ki is. I get the general idea but I just don’t know how to do it.”

“Well how about I teach you?” It seemed like a reasonable enough suggestion. “This is the perfect place for it. Plenty of room, no bystanders to hurt, and we’re stuck inside some giant bubble anyway.”

“… but we’re supposed to be fighting. You think they’ll just let start giving lectures?” Ashe looked doubtful.

“Chances are I’d start lecturing anyway,” the courier joked. “Ok, so you can use me as target practice. It’ll look like a fight, you’ll get some practice, and everybody wins. More or less…”

“Wait what? You want me to practice… shooting you with some magical energy?” Ashe shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Fact of the matter is that that’s probably our best option, Ashe.” Kaden tried to sound as compassionate as possible while he took a seat next to the girl. “If we don’t do anything, even money says they’ll dust us for being boring. I really, really, don’t want to fight you either, but we don’t have much choice in the matter.”

Kaden paused to take a deep breath and look over at Ashe. The girl was still more interested in the sidewalk she was sitting on than anything else. Truthfully, Kaden abhorred himself for what he was trying to do. Getting a teenage girl to fight him by throwing around blasts of potentially lethal energy… and that was the best option he could think of. As much as he hated himself for doing it, though, he hated Dukes that much more. The courier slid a few inches closer to Ashe and put a hand on her back. He hoped she found the gesture reassuring.

“Back in the bunker, when we split up with Sage and Sophia, we did it to keep everyone safer. So far it hasn’t worked out exactly like we wanted, but that doesn’t mean anything’s changed. I’m still here to keep you as safe as I can. And, right now, the best thing I can do is keep both of us from being killed and help prepare you for the next time you’re forced into a fight. How about it? Will you let me help you?”

[Ashe]

She didn't really have a choice, she decided while letting out some air. "This is bogus," she complained, setting her bag down on the ground beside her before pulling off her jacket to toss on top of it. Her scarf went with it as she freed her heavier clothing, feeling the cooler breeze passing through her thin clothes. Thankfully, it was at least a sunny day in the City Sector, enough to counteract the breeze, or else Kaden would have a hard time focusing on the task at hand given her light materialed shirt. "But yeah, we don't really have a say in the matter so might as well make the best of it, I guess," she finished, unable to shake her gloom.

Her first reaction was to tie her belongings to something to push people away from thievery, but the big stasis field think made that fairly unnecessary. "How is it that we have a lot of room, anyway? We are surrounded by buildings, street signs, power poles... I think I even see a bus sitting down there." She thought it was a fair question, given that she was pretty sure that any building walls caving in on her would promptly leave her a pile of shattered bones.

He scratched his head, looking around as if it was the first time he really noticed it. "Yeah, well, let's start at the beginning and worry about that later." He popped his neck for a moment before extending his palm out once more, as if holding an apple before him. "First you'll want to know how to even connect with your energy, so... I don't really know how to explain this part," he mentioned sheepishly. "Its almost a feeling that you have to acknowledge."

Her blank stare told him that he was doing a bad job of explaining it.

"Ok, how about this?" His hand began to shimmer a moment before a small but brilliant detonation took place, all contained within the grasp of his palm. Exploding into being, the crystalline orb grew to the size of a baseball as he held it out studying it. "Come here," he motioned.

She reached up and tucked her pink hair back into place behind her ears and stepped forward cautiously, eyeing the orb as if it would disentigrate her in a second. Surprisingly, he met her halfway and reached out suddenly, grabbing her by the wrist. She immediately resisted, pulling away from him before he hurridly apologized. "Hey, calm down, I'm not trying to hurt you," he explained. "I just want to show you something."

"I... I know," she hesitated, thinking back over things. "I just... freaked out a little, sorry. I didn't expect you to grab my arm, not that you are hurting me or anything," she quickly amended.

Even still, he slid his hand up her arm to her hand and pulled it closer to his other hand holding the orb. "Here, I want you to hold your hand over it for a moment." As he placed her hand gently into position, feeling her still slightly resisting, he worried that he was being too forceful. He supposed, on reflection, that he would probably be pretty uncomfortable if he were handling energy for the first time under another's direction as well. If he were anyone else.

His hand left her's as he pulled her other hand up to meet her first. "Hold them together as if you are warming your hands over a fire," he instructed. "Tell me if you notice anything at all."

She seemed to close her eyes for a moment, breathing slowly as her hands crept closer to the ball of luminescense. It took a moment of calm breathing, but her hands felt a strong tingle moving through them. Not enough to bother her, she decided, but definitely a sensation. Her eyes flickered open for a moment and she gasped in surprise as she saw the air itself shimmering around the ball.

Even more, it was like finally spotting the image in one of those 3D Magic Eye pictures. Everything looked the same as it always did, but it almost seemed as if it was in the background, an overlay of sparkling blue moving throughout everything around her. Kaden stepped back a bit in surprise and everything suddenly... vanished. It was weird, because she could still see things clearly, but it was as if a layer of her sight had been removed.

"What's wrong?" she gasped suddenly, looking around before staring back at him.

His hand had let the orb disperse and was resting on his forehead while he stared at her without a word. His brow furrowed in concentration and a small glow appeared over his eyes. His pupils were still visible as they seemed to scan over her from head to toe, but the spectral light emanating from them was haunting. She nervously pulled back into herself for a moment, crossing her arms and putting up her guard, flinching suddenly as he spoke up.

"Sorry about that."

"Were you just undressing me with your eyes?" she asked.

"What?" he jumped, quickly shaking away the question as he mentally heard it just a half second later. "No, sorry, didn't mean to give you that impression. Its just that... Ok, has that ever happened to you before?" he asked vaguely.

"Someone undressing me with their eyes?" she responded dryly.

"No," he answered, shaking his head strongly. "Your eyes. When you opened them while your hands were over my energy, they were all pure blue. Like, no pupils pure blueness," he tried to explain.

"That's..." she began, not really finishing. "When I opened my eyes, I saw everything kinda light up. Like I was looking at things differently, like when you could suddenly see an entirely new color that you've never seen before, and you realized that this color is now embedded into everything, and there are lines of it extending into the air and moving throughout your body like your veins and-"

He held up his hand to interrupt her long running sentence. She was pretty obviously uncomfortable - and a bit freaked out - by his sudden act of putting her on the spot. "Sorry again, I'm not trying to upset you." He pointed up at his eyes and they lit up again. "They did similar to this, but your entire eye just turned blue. Nothing inside, just blue. And light, I guess. But yeah, so while you were looking around, I think what you were seeing was ki energy flowing through things."

"You can see it?" she asked.

"Well, yeah, some people can. I think most people just feel it, or they can see it in short bursts, like when they are charging up an attack of some kind. But I haven't seen too many people that can just focus and see it in the detail that you are saying. Here," he prompted, holding his hand back out and another ball of ki appeared in its palm. "I want you to tell me exactly what you see happening, and not just with this ball, but all around me."

"I..." she began, trying to focus. She narrowed her eyes for a moment, then furrowed her brow, all to the point of giving herself a minor headache. "I don't know," she finally admitted. "I mean, I feel something happening, like some kind of pressure... Its not really strong or overwhelming or anything though. I barely feel it."

"Your eyes are still normal," he pointed out. "Here," he prompted again, stretching his glowing hand out towards her. "Put your hands over this again and this time... Don't focus hard enough to give yourself an anuerism."

Doing as he asked, she placed her palms over his energy and took slow breaths, decide to run through the routine meditative practices that her grandfather had her go through when practicing her martial arts. She tried to shut out everything, closing her eyes once more before opening them to reveal that her world had changed once more.

"There!" he suddenly burst out, nearly shocking her into losing it. "No, no! Hold onto that, just relax!"

It all flickered for a moment, fading in and out like a television with bad reception before the picture sharpened. Tuning in, she began to convey to Kaden what she was seeing. "I don't... really know how to explain it," she started, "but ok. I see the same thing you see when you see steam over a hot bowl of noodles, or when you look out onto the road on a really hot day. A shimmer type effect. Everything around seems to be flowing with it. Its concetrating on entering your body at certain points, I think what the books call chakra points, and I can even somehow see it flowing within you, moving along paths like blood streams."

Cocking her head to the side, she continued as she followed the sights with her eyes. "It then comes out of certain areas on your body, gathering up before spreading like a bluish fog across your skin and muscles. It flows all the way up until it gathers up into your palms. Some of the air itself seems to be getting sucked into the orb as well," she added.

"Excellent!" he expressed. "Try to hold onto that. I think you have the gift of sensing ki like I do. I really can't say for sure, though, since I don't exactly know the theory behind all this. I just kind of do it."

"Alright," she whispered, slightly mesmorized by the beauty of it all.

"So for this next part..." he warned her. He reached out once more with his free hand and turned her palms so that they both faced up instead as if to recieve a gift. Her vision of the ki around her flickered briefly, as if her very ki flow had been interrupted. He quickly moved his free hand over her palms, as if to clean off dust. In doing so, a small layer of ki seemed to trail out over her hands and linger for a moment like a coat of wax. Her vision strengthened once more and he took his other hand and turned it over, suddenly dropping the ball into her hands.

"I want you to hold onto this for me," he said smiling.

Ashe gasped a moment, watching as the ball began to dim in her hands. The part that he found amusing was that the ball seemed to become 'softer', losing its shape a bit and trying to overflow off of her hands and down to the ground. She panicked, trying to mover her palms wildly to either shape it back into an orb like ice cream or to get a hand underneath the other to catch it as it fell.

"You have to remember that this is ki," he coaxed her. "Its not solid, its not even part of this physical world as far as most people will ever interact. You can't try to physically do anything with it," he explained.

The gelatinous ball of amorphous energy finally just flowed all over her hands and dropped to the road, collecting at her feet before dispersing into the air around her again, taking her Sight with her. She slumped to the ground, staring at the place that she had lost it at and frowned. "It didn't leave any sign of it ever being there," she pointed out.

"Well, that's what I meant," he comforted, putting his arm up to squeeze her shoulder in hopes of rubbing the stress out of her. He could understand her getting frustrated. She seemed like she had a lot of potential inside of her, as best as he could See, but she just had no idea how to grasp energy for some reason. "And it might have left some kind of scratch on the ground if either of us had tried to make it harmful, but I deliberately did what I could to make it not."

She looked him in the eye and drew her knees in tightly while wrapping her arms around them. The cool breeze didn't seem to bother her all that much given the sun, and the buildings seemed to be blocking the strongest of it. "How can you even control if its going to hurt someone or not?" she asked. "That seems like it would take a lot of concentration," she pointed out.

"Well..." he mused, leaning back against the stoplight pole behind him and slightly mimicking her position. "I guess the best way to explain it is that it has to do with your intention. Some of this just comes with instinct and if you want to hurt someone, I think that's what your body will naturally do. I'm under the impression that given that our bodies can take this kind of power and use it, then it has to have some kind of subconcious control over it that we might not even know about on our own. I haven't exactly studied up on this stuff much," he admitted, "but I mean, your body does all kinds of things on its own. Your breathing increases when you want to really push yourself, and it sends adrenalyne into your system, helping your muscles push themselves beyond your normal limits. You feel a rush and all kinds of sensations seem to happen."

He looked at her to make sure that she was understanding what he meant. "None of that is something you really control."

Her nod helped him out a bit. "Like when you punch someone. If you are just joking, you don't really think about how hard you are hitting them, yet you still don't tend to hurt them. If you are pissed, you give them a black eye, even if you didn't mean to hit them that hard. But you can still control how hard you want to hit someone too, if you focus on it," she put foward.

"That's true," he acknowledged. "So do you want to try again?"

The mind was willing, but the body just couldn't take it. "I'm actually exhausted, Kaden. I think we'll have to continue at another time," she decided. "I'm just... I don't know why that was so tiring. Maybe I just don't have the strength for it."

"I think you do," he argued. "I think you've got just as much potential inside of you as I do, and that's saying something. I just think that your body hasn't been conditioned to use that pool of energy locked within you. It really does take a toll on you until you have done it for a bit. Using energy is like riding a bike though," he laughed.

"You never forget?"

He shrugged. "Well, that, and you are sore as hell for a while after doing it until you've worked those muscles out a bit. Even if you have the stamina for it."

"Thank you, Kaden," she said suddenly.

"Uh..." he began, surprised a moment as she looked at him seriously. "No problem," he answered.

Climbing to her feet, she found herself suddenly leaning on the pole for support. He rose quickly and got underneath her, helping her sit back down without crashing. "Whoa, you ok?" he asked with concern.

"Yeah... yeah..." she nodded, waving him back away from her until he complied. She leaned against the pole while sitting this time and looked back at him. "I don't think that I can stand long enough to actually fight. So either you'll have to take shots at me sitting here or we'll have to get down with some hardcore action."

His eyes widened. "Ha-hardcore action?"

Smiling, she suddenly extended her hands, one over the other. "Rock, paper, scissors! We'll go one, two, three, then shoot. Ready?"

He grinned.

"Rock, paper, scissors, GO!" they both screamed in unison.

[DA 2009]

“They’re not fighting,” Audric observed.

Damon shot him a look. “Thank you. I didn’t notice.”

“The board is not going to be happy,” the supervisor continued.

“Yes, what would I do without your wealth of insight, Audric? Really!” the host retorted, voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I dunno. It’s kind of…cute…I guess…” Audric said, although the uncertainty rang clear in his tone.

Damon turned around and rubbed his chin with his palm. His eyes glanced at the phone, just waiting for it to ring. Everything had to be perfect; everything had to smoothly. The board would not be satisfied with anything less than a successful tournament. Dukes had done away with the cameras and the ratings and all public involvement to elevate it to something classier than reality television. He wanted to bring it back to its purest form, back to Dante’s original vision. He couldn’t do that if people refused to fight. The board would not be satisfied with anything less than complete success, and something was already going wrong.

“Did you install the secondary protocol like I asked you to?” Dukes asked tentatively.

“Yeah, but I mean, it’s a little early to use that, don’t you think?” Audric replied, brow furrowing. “Just give them a second; they have time. The other fights aren’t finished yet and I’m sure they’ll get the message.” He pointed to the screen. “See, look? They’re about to fire on each other.”

Damon turned back about and stared his subordinate hard in the face. “Initiate the secondary protocol. Now.”

Audric sighed, and cracked his knuckles. His fingers flew furiously over the keyboard as he isolated the stasis field containing Ashe and Kaden, simultaneously entering a very long string of code. “Would you like it on manual, or automatic?”

“Manual,” he answered smoothly. “Do exactly as I say.”

-----

Ashe and Kaden fired at the same time, although neither really put their heart into the blast. It wasn’t a fight they wanted, and it wasn’t even their intention to end up in the circumstances in which they found themselves. Due to the lackluster effort, despite Ashe’s insistence on “hardcore action,” they both easily dodged. Well, Ashe more rather fell over, but that was beside the point. Kaden’s blast disintegrated the pole she’d previously been leaning against, whilst hers fizzled out not too far from leaving her palm.

“That wasn’t bad for your first try. I betcha you could do even better the next time,” Kaden smiled reassuringly as he righted himself. He moved over to help Ashe up. “What do you say, best two out of three?”

Ashe started to laugh, and she felt herself sit up, although she really couldn’t figure out where she got the strength to do so. She faced Kaden just in time to watch him ram his fist right into her cheek. Instantly, she was slammed back onto the ground. Stars danced in her vision, and her head swam.

“What was that for?” she demanded. She groggily turned to stare him down, and saw that his body was frozen in the aftermath of his punch. He looked at her with confused red eyes, and the girl quickly surmised that he was just as surprised as she was.

“I…I don’t know…” he said.

Ashe suddenly bolted to a seated position, knowing this time that it definitely wasn’t of her own free will. Kaden could only watch as his arm reared back of its own accord, and launched straight at the defenseless girl once more. Ashe couldn’t move a muscle as it impacted, hitting her on the opposite cheek.

“STOP!” she cried.

“I can’t!” he shouted.

Mercilessly, he hit her again, and again, and again.

“Move! MOVE!” Kaden begged.

But she couldn’t. She was just as helpless as he.

Finally, when Ashe felt like she couldn’t take it anymore, it stopped. She still couldn’t move, but at least it stopped. Her eyelids fluttered heavily as the pink-haired student tried to remain conscious. Kaden gritted his teeth, and his body began to shake as he attempted to fight whatever held him in place. He watched as a single arm rose from his waist, and his palm snapped up in front of Ashe’s face. His fingers splayed out, and a deadly glow of light slowly formed in his hand. Ashe’s eyes widened.

“No!” Kaden grunted. “I’m not gonna do this…I’m not gonna do this…”

He growled through clenched teeth, using every last fiber of his being to try to pull his arm away…but there was nothing he could do. The energy hummed until it reached its climax. At the same time, Kaden and Ashe squeezed their eyes shut.

And then, just like that, they felt their invisible bonds release. Ashe fell to the ground, and Kaden sank to his knees, the energy in his palm dissipating.

-----

Damon stared venomously into the monitor. “Next time, I will pull the trigger.”