Current Energy: 6
Current Training: Crystallized Wisdom (5/10), This omake bonus in thanks to: Hugs that where missed
A Land of Myth & Legend I - Activated! (Information on this upgrade can be found in Informational, Under Omake Shop)
Monday, February 21st, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
Your Master awakens in her usual fashion, and your morning proceeds roughly apace with your usual morning ablutions. The previous day was relaxing, but it certainly wasn't the norm. Victoria and Amy obviously had school today the same as your Master, and so once Amy had awoken from her brief period of unconsciousness, they had spent the majority of the evening hanging out with your Master - after she had seen to all her responsibilities for the day.
For reasons you can't quite place, Amy spent a significant period of time darting uncomfortable looks between Vicky and your Master. Looks that become increasingly sharp whenever the pair get physical with one another, something that is fairly common for the two brutes. Vicky and Taylor are, for all intents and purposes, peas in a pod when it comes to being relieved that they don't have to hold back their strength with each other. A side effect is that the pair can get quite physical, wrestling with and otherwise just pushing each other around.
A phenomenon that never failed to draw Amy's attention.
Regardless, it's a school day, and you are once more watching your Master sit cross-legged in the Garage with her sword in her lap.
At first anyway.
"Wow, she's really into the kungfu mysticism shit huh?" A voice calls out behind you teasingly. You recognize it almost immediately as Mouse Protector but are briefly confused by how she got into the garage without being led here by someone.
Then you remember she is a teleporter.
Unfortunately, she is a teleporter that made the mistake of appearing in your garage instead of somewhere with-
"Mother fucker!" A cranky voice yells as a massive ball of iron flies by overhead, landing perfectly behind you.
-well somewhere with slightly less Trainwreck. You quickly whip your head around to make sure Trainwreck hasn't just splattered your new guest across the floor, and are relieved to see Mouse standing several feet away, with a duffle bag slung over one shoulder, a pair of jeans and boots on, an aviator jacket across her shoulders, and a generic white mask across her face.
"Oh my god, you have an attack mech?!" Mouse cries out in surprise, leaning forward exaggeratedly to examine Trainwreck with one finger tapping against her chin.
"Hey wake the fucking Boss up dipshit!" Trainwreck barks to you, swatting you harshly over the head in a way that would probably have caved your skull in if you weren't, well, you.
"Oh. It's a dude. Lame. I thought for sure this was like that one level in Castlevania with-" Mouse sighs loudly, throwing her bag to the side and then ducking under Trainwrecks lunging grab for her just in time to avoid serious bodily harm.
"How the fuck did you even get in here?" Trainwreck grumbles, twisting his head around to crack his neck. Which is interesting, because you aren't sure he actually has bones in his neck.
"You know how it is big guy. Get eaten by a huge monster, receive an invitation to stay in the magical castle during my convalescence. Hey, is that thing to scale? Momma could really use some downtime and-" Mouse drawls lazily pointing at Trainwrecks armour, then briefly popping out of sight and appearing next to the bag she just threw as Trainwreck flies through the space she was just in.
"Trainwreck, please." You ask in a strained tone, pinching the bridge of your nose as you lift a hand to stop the man from trying to pulp the older heroine.
"But-" He complains immediately.
"I understand that she arrived in an... unorthodox... manner. But surely Master told you that Mouse Protector would be staying here for a time?" You point out. Trainwreck shoots a glare at the Mouse at this, but acquiesces, even as the woman rolls her eyes.
"Real smooth welcome. So is this gonna be like the PRT? Am I gonna need a special password and all that jazz just to walk around?" Mouse asks, stuffing her hands into her pockets as though she wasn't literally just attacked by your team's Tinker, and sauntering over stand next to you, all the while shooting you an appraising look.
But not an amorous one. It is much more calculating than that, which reminds you that, despite her antics, Mouse Protectors is one of the oldest surviving heroes in North America.
She does know what she is doing.
Mostly.
"Nah. Just don't touch my shit and you're fine. Piss the castle off and you'll end up spending an hour trying to find the bathroom." Trainwreck grumbles.
"Learn that from experience did ya?" Mouse asks sarcastically.
"Nah. No dick. Can't piss. Just seen it before." He says blandly, causing Mouse to react for perhaps the first time in this encounter with genuine surprise.
"Seriously? Damn. Not even like, a prosthetic?" She asks curiously. Trainwreck stares blankly at her, and you turn to mirror the look.
"What?" She asks defensively.
"...A prosthetic dick?" You ask incredulously.
"For her pleasure! Come on! How has literally no tinker ever come up with one? You'd think-" Mouse protests, getting progressively more heated at you as you and Trainwreck stare on in mild confusion and - in Trainwreck's case - annoyance. Blessedly, she is cut off as your Master awakens from her meditative state.
"Do you have to make jokes like that?" Taylor whines as she stands, stretching out in a way that draws Trainwreck's attention for the nth of a second it takes his brain to register who he's looking at.
Then he quickly looks away.
"Only when I'm in private. I'm a child-friendly cheddar and all that. You got a room for me already princess?" She asks. Taylor looks about to answer then pauses, mouth half open, and frowns.
"..Princess?" She asks in annoyance.
"Magic Castle, knights protecting you, no idea how the real world works - you're a princess." Mouse states in amusement before adding; "Which makes me - what? Your Fairy Gouda Mother?"
Everyone in the room groans.
Thirty minutes later - it's about seven in the morning at this point - you and your Master abscond to her Workshop to begin the next leg of her training.
Originally, anyway. As Mem's Workshop is technically adjoined to your masters by a doorway without a door in it, it quite inevitably becomes the case that you are working your way through her room instead.
Because it is a mess.
The shelves hastily added along the walls, and the large center island with a majority of Mem's current research materials - Re: a large number of scrawled rune combinations she wishes to test - are positively covered in, for lack of a better word, garbage. Hunks of loose metal, bits of plastic, torn up pieces of fabric, and other loose debris cover all of the shelves and much of the floor, some of it in states indicating they have been partially modified with someone using a knife, some of them half-melted, many of them doing things that they rightfully should not be doing - like hovering three feet in the air or continuously burning.
In the center of all of this is Mem, with her face resting against the island atop a notepad, with a strand of drool trailing down her cheek.
"It's been like two days. How is this place such a mess?" Taylor whispers quietly to you as you tiptoe past a piece of plastic that is doing something that, frankly, hurts your eyes to look at, to pick the slumbering girl up. She grumbles lightly at your touch but doesn't awaken, instead merely wrapping her arms around your neck and snuggling into you for comfort.
"I would assume-" You begin to state, but pause to lower your voice when Mem shifts uncomfortably in your arms. "-that she has been very busy. She lacks other hobbies after all." You point out.
"...Do you think if I ask the PRT really nicely they'd give her an identity and let her go to school?" Taylor asks eventually, peering around the room until her eyes alight on a sleeping bird half sprawled out on another shelf, covered with a piece of loose newspaper. Gingerly, she stretches a handout, creating a flowing blue projection of magic that scoops the creature up and holds it stationary overhead.
You pause to consider that. Mem is physically about twelve. By rights, she really should be in an educational facility of some kind during the day. More so than that - Mem clearly needs friends. Left to her own devices she is almost certain to continue to work herself to death with every waking moment she has available to her, as evidenced by the room around you.
"...It can't hurt to ask." You agree eventually, carefully stepping through the Gap your Master opens to Mem's room - which looks almost completely unused, much to your Master's annoyance - you place the small girl on the bed, gently remove her shoes, and pull the covers over her. At some point your Master deposits Bird Dinah on the mattress beside her, to which you nod, stepping back through the Gap.
"...Master?" You ask aloud after a second of consideration as you follow her back to her Workshop - which is arranged much the same as Mem's, save for a lack of a center island.
"Hm?" She asks, looking up from her cellphone which she had pulled out only shortly after asking about Mem's education.
"Should we find a name for the... Bird Dinah?" You ask blankly, having only just now realized you had been referring to her by the apt if a rather long appellation 'Evil Bird Dinah', at least mentally.
"Probably. I've just been calling her Evil Dinah in my head. I'll uh... I'll ask her about it when she wakes up." Taylor says awkwardly.
You nod, then carefully pull your glasses off, folding them up and holding them out towards your Master, who stares dumbly at them.
"It's training." You supply, which prompts an instant reaction as the glasses all but disappear from your hand.
"Do I just put them on?" Taylor asks curiously, pulling her own glasses - that you doubt she actually needs anymore - off and lifting the Crystallized Wisdom of an ancient dragon to her face.
You quickly stop that by placing a hand between her face and the lenses.
"Just a moment Master. First, you need to prepare yourself. Your first task is to use the Wisdom to determine how many fingers I am holding behind my back. If it gets to be too much, just take them off - okay?" You council her.
"They're magic glasses, Emmy. I think I can figure it out." She answers you with a put upon tone endemic to teenagers everywhere.
You just smile at her pleasantly as you remove your hand and place your fist behind your back, extending two fingers.
Taylor puts the glasses on, turns to look at you, and two things happen at once.
One, her pupils immediately dilate to the maximum, making her eyes look like they are entirely black.
And two, her nose starts bleeding.
She spends another five seconds staring at you in this stunned state, before slamming her eyes shut and desperately pawing at her face to pull the glasses off.
"W-what the hell!?" She screeches, practically throwing them at you to get away from them.
"Ah... yes. The Crystallized Wisdom could be considered my second Noble Phantasm, after Gram. It is the congealed knowledge of existence possessed by the Dragon I slew - Fafnir. You can think about it like..." You pause for a second, bending over to pick up the glasses and flicking them onto your face with casual ease.
"Ah. You can think about it like putting the entire internet into your brain at once. It can be quite discomforting the first time." You explain gently. Taylor shoots you a scathing look, wiping the blood from her nose.
"Why didn't you open with that?" She complains.
"I did warn you." You point out.
She squints at you in annoyance, then holds her hand out to have the glasses returned to her.
You simply continue to smile.
Monday, February 21st, 2011
Winslow High, Brockton Bay
School that day is...
Well.
Your Master basically makes it three steps into the school from her Gap before the students around her start to behave oddly. It is not uncommon for people to pause to stare at her as she passes, but this is... different.
In particular, the sudden deluge of potential suitors that bombard her with brazen, somewhat suicidal, compliments to her appearance and requests for her time is well beyond the norm.
By the time lunchtime as come your Master is well and truly annoyed with the continued scramble to earn her attentions.
'I'm gonna wear a bag on my head. I swear, I'll do it.' She complains to you at one point.
'You could always just tell them to stop.' You point out.
'...Do you think that would work?' She asks you incredulously.
'You don't think it would?' You respond in honest surprise.
'Emmy... they're teenagers. They have the self-preservation instincts of your average lemming. I've seen the trio literally convince a guy to punch himself.' She notes grumpily. She also completely ignores the fact that she is describing an age group that she herself falls into.
'... there's always threats?' You try again.
You immediately realize you have made a mistake when your Master perks up, then, without a second thought, leaps up to stand on a platform of air above the majority of the cafeteria.
"Okay! New rules. I'm not dating anyone who can't beat me in a fight. You must be this tall to ride. Stop bothering me!" She yells, causing silence to fall across the room. Even the few Teachers who ostensibly monitor the lunchroom just stare blankly as she makes her declaration in annoyance.
Then she very daintily skips down an invisible set of stairs to her table, and returns to chewing on her... third... sandwich. Glancing around the room you... don't really get the impression that what your Master has stated is working the way she thinks it has. Indeed, you can see a number of people nearby hastily pulling out their phones to look something up.
'Was that entirely wise?' You ask curiously.
'It's not like any of these guys can beat me in a fight. And anyone who could probably earned at least a date right?' She answers you in amusement.
On the one hand. In your own estimation, your Master is all but uncontestable in a direct battle. There is simply nothing in a properly configured cycle that could dare hope to stand up to her.
On the other hand. There is no such thing as a one hundred percent chance. There will always exist a small possibility that someone, somewhere, might possess the exact qualities necessary to defeat her. A chance that you're fairly certain will go up as nearby shards trigger with data from encountering her in mind.
Just not by much.
Resigned, but willing to allow your Master to do things her own way, you settle back in to watch the crowd.
Monday, February 21st, 2011
The Heap, Brockton Bay
It's time.
Your Master - frustrated by her lack of a good fight recently, has finally dragged Aspirant out into the courtyard in the center of the Castle so that they can have that duel she promised him.
As much as you are her power, and could theoretically be included in the event, you have opted not to.
Or in other words, your Master asked you pretty please to let her just have this.
So, you are standing on the sidelines, ready to ensure that nothing too dangerous escapes the confines of this fairly sizable space.
You are not alone, however. A vast majority of the locals have appeared to watch. You don't remember there being windows showing the courtyard, but evidently, they exist now, because a fair number of the Dockworkers who live in the building are leaning out of said windows to observe.
To your right, Danny and Jess are helping Mem carefully setup the last rod in a ring of rods she claims to be testing that should limit any influence from your Masters spiritual pressure on the onlookers. Mouse Protector is 'helping' by well... she's mostly just watching Danny bend over now and then and drinking on a beach chair she apparently had on hand.
On your left are Trainwreck, Parian, and Oliver, who you expected, in addition to Triumph and Gallant - who you did not.
"...How exactly did all of you find out about this?" You ask curiously. Causing those nearby to pause and stare at you.
"Eh. Chuckles told me it was gonna happen a while ago so I threw it on the board." Trainwreck answers with a shrug.
"...The... board?" You ask neutrally.
"He ah," Danny chimes in, standing and wiping sweat from his brow before shooting a glance at his daughter and looking back to you, "We, I guess, have a board up. In the area the Dockworkers use as a common. We bet on stuff." He admits sheepishly.
"Like what crazy bullshit the boss is gonna pull outta her ass next." Trainwreck adds.
"Or whether you will be a man or a woman next," Parian adds.
"Or when she's finally going to get a boyfriend," Oliver adds, peering at his phone with an irked expression and then back up to squint at Aspirant.
"That's just you, shit head." Trainwreck corrects Oliver instantly as Danny turns an appraising eye on the pretty boy.
"Hey, let me at some of that action. I got fifteen on my girl!" Mouse calls out at this point.
"We ain't betting on who's gonna win. We're betting on how long grandmaster chuckle fuck is gonna last. I got twenty-eight to thirty seconds." Trainwreck explains.
"Is... is it always like this? This feels kind of illegal. Um... gambling laws I think?" Gallant cuts in at this point, causing everyone to turn towards him.
"You a fucking narc kid?" Trainwreck says menacingly, turning one eye on the boy in a suit of armour almost perfectly the opposite of his own. Gallant's entire Cape persona is patterned around being a knight in shining armour. It makes Trainwreck's knight in rusty armour look seem almost a mockery of his own.
"I work for the PRT so I'm pretty sure I'm literally a narc, yeah." Gallant points out, though there's no real heat in his voice, and he appears to be watching to proceedings with roughly the same amount of curiosity as everyone else.
"I- I'm sure it's all just in good fun Gallant. People do stuff like this all the time. Me and Mike used to-" Jess says placatingly, then stops with a sudden intake of breath. Danny immediately shifts his focus, stepping to the side and slinging an arm around the suddenly saddened looking blond for a quick hug before returning to hammering the metal spike he is attending to into the ground.
You don't miss the look of mild triumph that flashes over the woman's face as he goes. Nor do you miss Mouse Protector's eyebrow raising pointedly at the action.
Triumph appears to have noticed it too, because he immediately sidles up to Danny.
"So... you and Fleur?" He asks nonchalantly, causing Danny to nearly choke, and Taylor - a good distance away from the group - to twitch slightly, tilting her head in this direction.
"N-no! She's just a friend! Someone has to be on her side is all. You know those pricks in New Wave-" Danny opens up immediately.
"Danny! It's okay. I get where they were coming from." Jess yelps, rushing over to pull his arm down from the rude gesture he's making with it, pausing briefly to squeeze, blinking, and then releasing and taking a step back.
"Yeah, Danny boy here is a perfect gentleman. Even let me sleep in his bed when I first got to town." Mouse Protector calls, having snuck up on you all while you were speaking to wrap one arm around Danny's neck to pull his head down and give him a noogie. She takes the opportunity while he isn't looking to waggle her eyebrows at Triumph.
"Daaaamn." Triumph murmurs.
"He wasn't in it at the time." Jess quickly corrects in annoyance.
"Says the chick who spent a month on his couch." Mouse says with a smirk, releasing Danny as he pushes her away.
"That-!" Jess opens her mouth to protest.
"Please step back from the edge of the field. When I activate it, you will either stop it from working, or get cut in half. I'm not sure which." Mem interrupts at that precise moment.
This has the obvious effect of causing nearly everyone present to stop what they were doing, and leap bodily away from the ring of iron rods surrounding the courtyard, into the narrow band of space between the walls of the castle and the outside of the circle their arrangement creates.
Once everyone is clear, Mem grasps at the air - pulling a cane almost perfectly identical to Long Memory from thin air - and then carefully taps it against the ground.
The results are almost immediate, as a shimmering field of something quickly passes over the space in front of you, before settling into near invisibility.
"So... you can just make force fields like that?" Triumph asks pointedly, likely more in his designated role as the person who is supposed to be sending reports on your team back to the PRT than anything else.
"It is not a force field. That's just childish. It's a bounded field. Very different." Mem corrects him pointedly, her always neutral expression turning downward slightly at the corners of her mouth. You doubt anyone unfamiliar with her would even notice the irritation.
"...Sure..." Triumph says skeptically before turning to watch the two fighters at the center of the courtyard.
"Ready?" Taylor calls out good-naturedly, pulling a paper tag out of one of her many pouches and ripping it casually in half. Aspirant - in his bulkier combat form - glances at the two halves of the paper as they fall to the ground, and then back to your Master.
"You do not have your sword." He says in a somewhat dissatisfied tone.
"Hey, who do you think taught you Kung Fu?" She says challengingly, taking up a stand with one fist forward and the other at her side. Of course, there is a secondary reason she isn't using her blade.
She doesn't really need Nemesis to win. In fact, her released form's ability to reduce the parameters of her enemies would all but trivialize the fight.
And your Master wants anything but a boring fight.
Not that she can say any of that to Aspirant. It might hurt his pride. More than it already is, at least.
"Why does it sound like I'm right in front of them?" Gallant asks curiously.
"It is a field designed to enhance viewing pleasure and protect the audience. You do not have an arena that serves such a purpose on this world yet." Mem notes without turning away from your Master.
Triumph does a double-take at 'on this world' and then turns back to the center of the courtyard, mumbling about 'widescreen tv forcefields'.
There is no countdown. No announcer. No flag is waved. One minute your Master and Aspirant are staring at each other from a distance of perhaps five meters apart. The next, they are both moving forward. Enhanced by Aura as they are, the two fighters blur forward, not so much slamming into each other as coming to a sudden and directed stop with exactly enough distance between the two to exchange a blinding fast flurry of blows that you are reasonably certain would not be amiss in a choreographed movie.
While at first they may appear evenly matched, to your trained eye it is very obvious that Aspirant is feeling pressured. Despite Taylor largely matching his speed and ferocity, the effort he is putting into pressing his attack is obviously much higher than she is putting into deflecting his attacks. For every strike he attempts to land, your Master easily deflects it, for every attempted hold, she easily slips past.
Limiting himself as he is to mostly humanoid physiology, Aspirant has nearly no hope of breaking through your Master's defence. Something easily evidenced by the fact that after planting her feet she has yet to physically move them to evade an attack.
"Hey, come on! I thought we were working out your aggression! This is just boring!" Taylor yells joyously, her speed suddenly increasingly drastically, such that she has the time to swat the front of Aspirants armoured helmet between deflected attacks.
You feel your facial expression twitch slightly at the feral grin and unholy light of sheer bloody-minded joy reflected in your Master's expression at that moment. It mirrors your first emulations so well it is almost eerie. Granted, your Master is clearly aware that there is a time and place - but sometimes, you get the feeling that she is almost a completely different person when she is 'enjoying' a fight.
At this point, the fight has lasted for - roughly - twenty seconds. It is also eminently clear to anyone watching that Aspirant has no chance.
Which, you suppose, is the point.
As though a switch has been flipped, the pearlescent armoured cape unspools in his center, his entire body coming apart with a guttural roar of rage as he sacrifices a more 'PR friendly' form for the gnashing ball of teeth and claws that you saw the night of your raid on the Teeth.
This, finally, is enough to push your Master back, as the sheer suddenness of it is enough to allow Aspirant to latch one tendril of sawing teeth around her neck to pull towards himself.
"Now we're talking!" Taylor yells, suddenly shifting her stance and slamming one foot into the ground behind her, propelling herself forward into the center of Aspirants roiling mass while handily fending off a dozen simultaneous attacks by twisting her body during the motion and lashing out at anything she can't dodge with her outstretched fists. As she reaches his core, she plants a foot on the ground, lifts both hands, and thrusts forward with them, slamming into Aspirant hard enough that his grip on her loosens, and he is sent flying in a flailing pile of misshapen limbs to bounce bodily off the edge of the invisible field around the courtyard.
If this were a normal cape fight, he would land, recover, and rejoin the fight.
This is not a normal cape fight.
Your Master - who's reactions times are most certainly not anything even vaguely resembling 'human standard' - has already leveraged her ability to stand on nothing to make two rapid charges, first straight up, where she stops herself just slightly above her airborne opponent, and then downward, where she axe kicks him clear into the ground with enough force that his Aura briefly flashes, it's electric blue coloration standing out sharply against the mostly white backdrop of his bodies surface.
Unlike a normal person who had performed such a maneuver, your Master does not land on the ground, instead opting to stop her descent with another invisible platform.
"You good down there?" She calls out cheerily, bouncing on her heels like an excited school girl.
Which. Well. She is.
Aspirant answers her question by going from largely still - almost as if defeated - to snapping upward, his various tendrils shifting about him in a way that makes it suddenly much harder to determine where his 'center' is.
Taylor - clearly not too surprised by this sneak attack laughs as she all but dances across the air, deflecting blows with attacks strong enough they cause small shock waves in the air around her.
She is surprised however when all of the tendrils she is fighting suddenly recede towards her rear, where a once more humanoid Aspirant - albeit one who appears to have placed nearly all his mass in his upper body - quickly reaches out to grasp her in a chokehold.
Taylor appears simultaneously stupefied and somehow pleased by this development.
Not that it stops her from doing the obvious thing - and angling her feet up, then pushing off of nothing so strongly that she - and by extension, Aspirant - are slammed into the ground below, causing a gout of dirt to fire upwards, obscuring sight of them.
"Ugh. Yeah, I can still choke. Damn." Taylor grumbles, as she casually walks out of the obscuring cloud rubbing her throat and waving a hand in front of her face to disperse the lingering cloud. Behind her, Aspirant is shakily clambering to his feet in the hole his fall just created. You're reasonably certain that had he lacked aura at that moment - he could have died.
Speaking of which.
"Not very chatty huh." Taylor chirps - actually, genuinely chirps, as though she is doing her best Vicky impression.
"Talking... is not... a free action..." Aspirant wheezes, shaking his head.
"You still good?" Taylor asks a slightly worried tone sneaking into her voice.
"...I can still fight." Aspirant states eventually, his Aura flickering briefly as it resettles over him.
"Huh. Hey, I'm gonna try something I don't get to do a lot, okay?" Taylor finally says after shooting her opponent an appraising look.
"Fucking bullshit she's playing with him." Trainwreck grumbles in annoyance next to you.
"I believe I had money on 'more than two minutes'?" Parian adds smugly.
"Friggin stupid crazy..." Trainwreck continues to grumble as Taylor takes another stance.
Aspirant seems prepared to face her, at least, until her Spiritual Pressure begins to spill forth, flooding the area and abutting against the edges of the arena like a literal tide. Looking closely at her, you can see that her eyes have turned back into slits indicating she is making heavy use of her Dragon Core.
You blanch slightly, although nobody else seems to notice your expression changing.
"Ready?" Taylor calls, earning a grunt of annoyance from Aspirant in response to her waiting for him to defend himself. Once she confirms that he has spoken, she vanishes from casual observation-
-and Aspirant bounces bodily off the side of the arena in a flash of aura that is just in time to mark his position before he is struck again, and bounces of the other wall of the arena.
This happens twice more, after which there is a sharp crackling noise as Aspirants Aura finally breaks, and he is left lying in a confused heap on the floor. When Taylor reappears she is breathing heavily, and steam is literally pouring off of her body.
You have genuinely no idea what particular combination of things Taylor did just now, but you suspect it wasn't exactly easy, as evidenced by the way her Spiritual Pressure shuts off the second she stops moving.
"That about it?" She asks after taking a deep breath.
"...Yes," Aspirant says weakly from the ground, not bothering the get up.
"Cool. Thanks - I kinda needed that." Taylor says, stretching and then walking over to stick a hand out to Aspirant. Seeing the fight is clearly over, Mem taps her cane on the ground again, causing the bounded field to fall.
"I as well." Aspirant confirms begrudgingly, grabbing her hand and allowing himself to be pulled to his feet.
"Hah! You haven't won yet!" Oliver crows, pointing rudely at Aspirant and drawing the attention of most of those standing near you - who had, until that point, been staring in clear shock at the sheer brutality your Master could muster when sufficiently motivated.
"...What?" Aspirant finally asks in confusion.
"Yeah I dunno if 'yet' is the correct finisher to that sentence." Triumph idly states, still staring at the blasted battlezone.
"I'm not dating anyone who can't beat me in a fight. You must be this tall to ride!" A tinny recording of your Master speaks into the ensuing confused silence, courtesy of Oliver who is holding his phone up challengingly.
The stares all turn from him to Taylor.
"I said what I said." She states flatly.