Chapter 45: Effort

As soon as the fight started... I didn’t do anything, actually.

We both stood there, eyeing each other. He had his sword raised. I had mine in the same position. He wasn’t doing anything because, of course, he wanted me to come, try to take him out, and then he could use that new reversal move of his. I wasn’t doing anything because I knew that was his plan.

Which left us in this unfortunate situation. He didn’t want to attack, and neither did I.

"Uh... Y-You can begin," Prue said again.

We knew that. This was the fight, so far.

"Hey," Perrin said. "I know I’m good, but you don’t have to be that scared."

"... Right back at ’cha. Come on, I’m right here," I replied.

He didn’t move, and, again, neither did I.

[Well... This is a predicament.]

Slowly, the crowd got bored.

Somebody in the standing section booed, then somebody else did, and then it spread across the far end and up into the shaded side. Four thousand people had paid to see a fight and were currently watching us stand eight meters apart doing nothing.

"FIGHT!"

"GET ON WITH IT!"

Perrin’s ears went red. He looked up at the stands, then at the front row, then back at me.

[He can’t take it. He’s not going to stand here and get booed in front of her. I built this boy, I know exactly how long he lasts.]

"Come on already! You’re not scared of a girl like me, are you?" I asked.

And it took him about six seconds before his pride spoke louder than his brain did.

He came in with three long strides and brought the sword down overhead. I stepped off the line and let it go into the sand.

Then I hit him in the arm. I couldn’t hit him too hard, so I hit him with maybe a fifth of what I had in me. Just a flat little clip with the side of my blade against his bicep.

"That’s one," I said.

"What?"

"I’m counting. Figured you’d want to know how many times I got the better of you."

The crowd "ooh’ed".

I got his shoulder next. Then the back of his thigh. Then the arm again, and every single time I pulled the mana back off it before he could feel how much was actually behind the hit. He swung at me eleven times over the next forty seconds and hit sand for nine of them.

"Stand still!"

"Why? So you can do the family technique?" I tapped his ribs on the way past. "That’s six, by the way."

He stopped smiling for the crowd.

[Oh, he’s actually starting to get mad.]

"Who told you about that?"

"Nobody had to tell me anything. You’ve booked the closed yard every night this week and the whole Knight Course knows it," I lied. I backed off two steps and spoke louder. "Oh, and speaking of things everybody knows. Does she know you cried?"

Perrin’s whole body went still.

"...What?"

"In the forest. After you ran away and left her standing there." I pointed up at the front row, at Lily, so there was no confusion about which "she" I meant. "The supervisors found you nine hundred meters out, sitting on the ground, and you were crying so hard you couldn’t even tell them which direction you’d come from. Two of them told me about it. It isn’t a secret, Perrin."

The front section heard all of it.

So did she.

And then Perrin Alderltoft came at me with everything he had.

Here’s the thing I’d forgotten about Alderltoft:

I wrote him as a joke, sure, but I wrote him as a joke inside a story where he was a knight. Sixteen years of house training. An arms instructor on retainer. A father who made him swing a sword every morning since he was five years old. None of that goes away just because the boy holding all that was kind of a coward.

So when he stopped playing to the crowd and he started actually fighting me, I stopped being able to move where I wanted to.

That was the first problem. I’d been stepping off the line all match and it had been working fine, and now every time I did it he was already standing there, sword coming across at hip height, and I had to Snap sideways and burn mana I hadn’t planned on burning just to avoid getting cut in half.

Then he did it again. And again. And again.

He was reading me, now. Every time I moved he moved into where I was going, and I couldn’t get inside his reach anymore either, because he’d stopped over-swinging and started keeping the point of the sword between us. Textbook stuff. Completely miserable to fight against.

[Okay. This is bad. This is genuinely bad.]

He clipped my shoulder and tore my Coating right off. I put it back on and he clipped me again in almost the exact same spot, and that one got through. The cut felt like it was burning.

I hadn’t landed a hit in ninety seconds. I was doing nothing out there but running away from a boy with four inches of reach on me and better fundamentals in every single category, and the crowd knew it, because they’d started making that noise crowds make when a fight stops being a fight.

"Where’s the counting?" Perrin said. He wasn’t even breathing hard. "Go on. What number are we on?"

[Okay, buddy.]

I ducked a swing that would have taken my ear off, and I got desperate, and desperate is where I do my best work.

[Weasel! TAUNT! Right now!]

The little guy popped out of my collar and screamed.

I don’t know how else to put it. TAUNT isn’t really a sound, it’s more like an insult delivered straight into your nervous system, and it’s meant for monsters, and I had exactly zero evidence it would do anything at all to a human being. What it did to Perrin was drag his eyes onto the weasel and turn his whole body about fifteen degrees to follow it.

Half a second, maybe. That was plenty.

I got in under his arm, put my shoulder into his ribs, and shoved with everything my legs had.

He went back three steps, then four, heels scraping through the sand, and the white line came up behind him and his back foot landed right on top of it. Right on it. The referee’s arm started coming up.

Then Perrin got his weight down and stopped.

[FUCK!]

His toes were over the line and his heel wasn’t. The referee’s arm went back down, and somebody in the standing section screamed in frustration on my behalf.

We stood there breathing at each other.

"That was close," Perrin said.

"Yeah."

"No, I mean it, that was actually close. I nearly went out." He looked down at his own feet, then stepped back into the ring properly and rolled his shoulder out. "I’ll be honest with you, Sakana. I came in here thinking this was going to take about a minute."

"Sorry to disappoint."

"Don’t be, I’m not disappointed." He set his feet wide and brought the sword up in a grip I hadn’t seen him use once all tournament. "But I’m done messing around now. Let me show you what I can really do."

---

{Sabine}

The staff box was mostly empty by the fourth match, which suited me. Vermund from the Mage Course had brought a flask and was sharing it with nobody.

"That’s your girl down there, isn’t it," he said. "The fox?"

"Mm."

"She’s losing."

"She is."

Down on the sand, Kohaku ducked a swing she should have Snapped away from and paid for the decision with her shoulder. I watched her put the Coating back on and lose it again nine seconds later, and I made a small note about drill volume for next week.

"You’ve been giving her private lessons, I hear," Vermund said. "Bit of a waste, isn’t it? Girl came in at Rank F. I saw the roster."

"She came in at Rank F in April."

"And?"

"And she’s a C now." I took the flask off him, since he wasn’t using it. "She’s improving at a rate none of us have seen before, and none of us have asked her about, because she’s a commoner and it’s easier to assume she got lucky."

"Alderltoft’s going to put her through the floor."

"Possibly."

He laughed.

"You don’t sound worried."

I’ve taught a lot of people. There’s a specific look people get when they’re about to quit. I know it like the back of my hand, and yet, I haven’t seen it once all day.

Down in the ring, Perrin Alderltoft set his feet wide and brought his sword up.

Kohaku saw it and didn’t move back.

"He’s got her," Vermund said.

"Hm. I don’t know." I handed him back his flask. "She may surprise you~"