"The next fight shall be between Nal-Kae and Laesa against Daeron and Cladius." Love continued.
I looked at Nal-Kae's opponents and didn't know whether to hope Nal-Kae failed or passed. They were up against a fisherman and a scout. The fisherman wasn't one of those Hyrum types. He seemed sharp and didn't seem to need to rely on huge biceps. The scout was tall, but that was the only remarkable thing about him. Apart from that he seemed completely normal.
When the fight started I realized that I had no idea what Nal-Kae's fighting style was, or even what position he took. When the signal started, both Daeron and Cladius moved to go around Nal-Kae and attack Laesa. Nal-Kae fell back right next to Laesa and got out a needle. This didn't stop Daeron and Cladius, and they sped up to try and mow down both of them. Nal-Kae charged at them but the scout was faster and he got beneath Nal-Kae and punched Nal-Kae in the stomach before kicking him in the face. The fisherman was about to go forward but stopped for some reason. I suddenly saw he was bleeding, and so was the scout. I looked at my lighthouse, and saw that Laesa was throwing darts. This wouldn't stop them but it gave Nal-Kae enough time to recover and fall back.
Shit. This didn't look good. Nal-Kae might even die. I'd kill both of them afterwards if they did that. I never thought of how angry I had just gotten and how irrational it was, I just knew that I would kill them if anything happened to Nal-Kae.
Laesa was shouting something at Nal-Kae, and he was looking back, almost like Laesa was telling him to do something he didn't want to. Then the scout suddenly rushed up to him and kicked his kneecap making him fall to the ground. For some reason, Laesa had gotten up onto her lighthouse and was hovering 3 metres above the ground.
That cowardly bitch! I would definitely make her suffer for abandoning Nal-Kae like that. I was clutching at the railing and might've jumped over into the stadium if Nal-Kae hadn't scrambled away and flew off.
Yeah, you heard me. He fucking flew.
How? He had huge, goddamn wings growing out of his back that's how.
No wonder he'd been vague about telling us how he'd gotten in and out of the pit. He couldn't just say "Yeah, I used the retractable wings that grow out of my shoulder blades and flew in and out of the pit."
Damn, that was impressive. They were 2 metres across, and grey. He didn't look like any sort of angel, but he sure as hell looked like some bird that could fly through shinsoo and kill stuff. The black needle, blond hair, white skin, grey wings really made him look like some shinheuh people'd pay chunks of suspendium to get.
Now both he and Laesa were airborn and they started evening the odds. The scout was fast, and deadly when it came to hand-to-hand, but was definitely screwed when his opponent could fly. The fisherman was more of a problem, especially since he wielded a reel inventory. Catching pesky shinheuh like this was exactly what the reel inventory was made for. Good thing this shinheuh had a lightbearer on his side with what seemed like unlimited darts. If only Hyrum were here, I'd get to see him get royally pissed off and raging. Even the sharp fisherman was annoyed by those constant interruptions. Nal-Kae was lunging at the scout, and dodging the scout's counters easily. It was hard to get any force behind a punch going directly upwards. But it seemed like they were still at a stalemate. Nal-Kae couldn't keep on swooping like that forever, and Laesa couldn't keep on throwing darts to keep off the fisherman like she had been.
Suddenly she yelled at Nal-Kae and he suddenly switched targets. He dodged the reel inventory sent out by the fisherman and started stabbing at him. Suddenly there was a huge pressure field that even I felt, and the fisherman froze. Nal-Kae dived down and thrust his needle through the fisherman's shoulders, chest and legs with quick thrusts I could hardly follow. The fisherman fell and started bleeding quickly. Nal-Kae stabbed him in the calfs again for good measure.
That soft idiot. He could've ended it in a second by stabbing the fisherman in the head, but he had to disable him without killing. I wasn't complaining though. The scout ran up to Nal-Kae, but was stopped by the pressure field as well and Nal-Kae stabbed him through the knees, thighs and feet.
"Winners," Love announced as Nal-Kae almost slipped and landed face first in the pool of blood, "Nal-Kae and Laesa."
Nal-Kae had put his shirt back on, and it was like his wings had never existed. He looked really disgusted, probably because that shirt had been taken out of the pool of blood he'd created. He must've felt pretty self-conscious about those wings if he would put on a shirt covered in blood. And it was pretty pointless anyways, the blood soaked through to his skin and everyone could see the wings wrap around his torso into a sort of feathery jacket.
As Nal-Kae came up I'd decided to stick with him no matter what happened. Right now, I didn't care if I lost him the next day, or if he got killed in the next year. I wanted to be right next to him and fly all the way to the top of the tower. I didn't know what I was doing or what I was feeling. Maybe I was still drunk from last night, but when he came up, I ran and hugged him. I was nervous. Maybe this'd all be a mistake and I'd end up dying because of him. But I knew that if I left him, I'd regret it almost as much as the loss of my brother.
I'd snuck a look at Laesa's darts a couple of weeks later and I found out how she'd exerted such a strong pressure field. Those darts were actually extensions of her lighthouse. The more of them were in the field, the stronger and larger her pressure field would become. The darts bounced the field off each other and made it much stronger than usual. They were aiming for the fisherman all along. As for why Nal-Kae could not only move but could fly in that strong a field, well, I only found that out after spending a decade or so with him.