Kwatoko was in a prayerful meditation, and rather annoyed that the concerns of the Middle World chose to interrupt him at that moment. Oh well, the world ran on its own time, not that of the spirits, and thus he found himself stretching, thinking on what Favors he was worthy of asking at the moment, and prepared to fight this strange Fae girl and her command of ice. He had done some research in the intervening month, learning what he could about the Fae's capabilities, and it baffled him.

The Kryos Cantrip was supposedly a rarely studied art within Dreams, as it dealt with ice and was thus associated with winter, and the known capabilities couldn't really pull off what he had seen in the arena. And then those maggots, which were even odder.

While the Village Hidden in Dreams, like all Villages, didn't exactly give out the specific limits and weaknesses of its techniques to the general public, there was enough pieced together in the available archives to know that she was strange.

She had something that was not only outside of what he understood her kind to be able to do, but also disturbed the Nature Manitou. Such beings rarely invested their valuable time into explaining things to a mortal man such as himself, and he didn't expect them to without the proper offerings, but the minute he learned that she was to be his opponent they came to him in a vision, unprompted, and told that she was to be feared.

She was not natural, nor Supernatural in the 'proper' way, though they spent little time elaborating. Oh well, that was how spirits worked; it was his duty as Shaman to interpret their messages, not their duty to spell everything out for him. He wasn't worthy of such considerations.

--

So, Fuu was here. The plan was simple; either show the surrounding audience the most impressive fight they had ever seen, unleashing as much power as possible while hiding her Gatekeeper status to convince the clients that the Fae were in no way 'diminished' as the rumors claimed or, failing that, put on a show of losing control of Crom Cruach until the Fae could step in and save the day.

Let the Seelie King and Unseelie King get her into a position where they would get credit for stopping a rampant Titan Lord; they even had failsafes for ensuring that the Fae could stop her before anyone else with the appropriate power and dealing with the possibility of being blamed for Crom's release in the first place. At least, they told her that they did, even if they hadn't given any details. She, of course, was to be the monster despised by the public and locked away for the rest of her life so it wouldn't happen again, but that wasn't overly abnormal.

That had been her thought process, before the month she just spent with Naruto and Jiraiya, and generally hanging around a bunch of people that didn't hate her. Most of them didn't hate her because they didn't know the truth about her, of course, but now, having tasted freedom, the problem of having given up more of it soured her mood more than before.

For now, her plan was to hope that the first idea worked out and it didn't have to come to that, but if it did…she wasn't certain what she was going to do.

--

Kwatoko was painted for battle, a sight which apparently excited the mortals surrounding him. A part of him was disturbed by the entire spectacle; this whole event was supposedly about proving himself before the Marshall and bringing peace between the Villages by allowing his cohorts in the other Villages to do the same, but the Spirit-Children whose parents arrogantly called themselves 'Gods' hadn't even pretended that this wasn't about money and spectacle for the mortals.

It reminded him of the shows that Indians and mortal gun-owners put on for Settler Folk and Foreigner alike, intentionally exaggerating stories of Indian savagery and strangeness for the mortals. Many looked down on the Indians who partook on such things, including Kwatoko, and now was he doing anything different?

Well, he was doing it for the Marshall, a good and honorable man, and he was doing it for the Village Hidden in Tall-Tales. While tensions between the Indians and the Settler Folk may have consumed the Weird West, the Village had always welcomed both, and this Marshall in particular had been good about easing tensions and bringing co-existence.

Oh, they still existed; becoming Supernatural and being confined to a Village didn't erase any of the pre-existing prejudices, but Kwatoko had found from experience that working with the Settler Folk, even those who risked tricking the Manitou and those who held that only one Spirit was truly 'good' and the ones of Nature that he himself worshipped were merely 'neutral,' when they allowed it, was far better than fighting them.

Glancing upward and bowing in respect to the Marshall, he pressed a hand against his war-paint and intoned "Favor: Spirit Warrior." Then, he drew a tomahawk.

--

Fuu knew nothing about her opponent's inner monologue, and couldn't read minds so she wouldn't have even if she weren't distracted by her own. She was so distracted by her own, in fact, that she didn't even notice the proctor call for them to begin.

For a mortal, the fight would have ended right then and there, as her opponent rammed the edge of his ax into her skull, but beyond her own durability he struck precisely so as to get a yield out of her (he didn't want to kill her, how sweet) and Crom was already working to heal her wound.

"Kryos Cantrip: Wintry Wind," she shouted for the audience's benefit as the lethally cold air burst from her mouth. It was a name she just made up, but she really didn't think anyone from outside of Dreams would have all the Cantrip names memorized enough to be suspicious. Just shouting gibberish like that should be enough to convince them she was an abnormally powerful Fae.

--

Kwatoko was confused, as he had, after a lot of consultation with the Spirits (it was mostly a lot because of how little they responded, but he expected that), gotten permission to add bits of cold iron to his weapons without disrupting their connection to nature in explicit preparation for his fight with a Fae, but it ultimately did nothing to her.

He wasn't just trusting in Settler Folk books here; his Posse Chief had been on the other side of missions against Fae and confirmed that the otherwise unstable metal worked on them. In spite of their religious differences, Kwatoko trusted and respected the man.

He foolishly pulled back from her technique, gripping his teeth together to suppress a scream of pain as he stepped back and endured what she had done to his arm; some early form of frostbite had already appeared, but he remembered his training and did what he could to ensure that the pain did not distract him.

This opponent was clearly very dangerous, too dangerous to simply rely on mundane combat skills with some spiritual enhancement, and if cold iron wasn't working as expected then he was going to have to call on more Favors.

It was frustrating; he had a lot of Favors to call on, as he had spent a long time in meditation, fasting, and self-mutilation in order to please the Spirits so that he could call on many of their powers over the course of this Exam, but he had no intention of calling on all of them in this first fight. He was no Hex-Slinger, that could build Appeasement through quick trickery against the Evil Manitou of Mankind, nor a Blessed, who passively gained Appeasement through daily honoring of the Good Manitou of Mankind or the God they thought said Manitou were and being a generally good person, but a Shaman, one who honored and respected the Manitou of Nature, and required elaborate ritual activity to build it up.

His religious inclinations were such that he understood that he really did have no right to demand any more, but right now that fact was very inconvenient; the more Favors he called here, the less Favors he would have to call on in future matches. However, the less Favors he called on here, the less likely he was to experience any future matches.

"Kryos Cantrip: Snowstorm," his opponent shouted while he was ruminating, which prompted him to come to a decision. He didn't have to win matches, but he did have to show the Marshall what he could do, so…he would show both the Marshall and this Fae what he could do. It might force him to surrender early in the next fight, but he hoped this would be enough.

--

As Crom's power drained out of her and shifted the surrounding weather so that she and her opponent were surrounded by a swirling and, hopefully, blinding stream of snow, she weaved through her creation and tried to find the Cowboy. Thanks to the Titan Lord, she could see perfectly well, while her opponent should be struggling…

"Favor: Guiding Wind," was immediately followed by another ax, this one much smaller than the earlier one, striking right into her torso, the very wind that she had just summoned seeming to lead it to her. Keeling over in pain, she felt the need to shout "What in the Winter, Crom?"

'Don't use Winter as a curse. This man attracts spirits to him, and I can't overwhelm their power while confined within you. They should be a pittance were I to be freed, however…'.

Fuu had resisted every demand to free the Maggot thus far, and was not about to do so for this silly mission. Even if she might be expected to pretend to if this fight didn't start going better, she was still pretty certain that the Middle World should exist with all four seasons intact.

Instead, she channeled the wind using the power that Crom had already lent her and, retrieving the weapon buried in her stomach, sent it flying right back to him.

--

He had scored another hit, but it still didn't do nearly as much as it should. While Fae were, in fact, more durable than mortals, between the strike to her head and the strike to her stomach, especially with the former using cold iron, she should at least be sluggish from her wounds by now, but it looked as if he had simply annoyed her.

Moreover, with the bitter cold that her weather manipulation caused, weather that he was absolutely not dressed for, he himself was starting to get sluggish even with the only injury being the frostbite on his arm…it was only through the enhancement of the Spirit Warrior that he was able to dodge his own tomahawk being driven back by the wind.

If this continued, he might have to shape shift, a difficult and cumbersome Favor that might not even be beneficial in this situation, and he wasn't even certain what form to take (wolf for the resilience to cold, bear for the strength, or…this was not the time for indecision, dammit!).

This stormy weather surrounding him…this stormy weather…it occurred to him that Fuu had given him the weapon he needed. Calling on lightning from above on a clear day would have required lengthy meditation and lost him a lot of Appeasement, even more than shape-shifting, and he was so lucky that that idiot Scion in the preliminaries gave him that time, but asking for lightning when the weather was already stormy…

"Favor: Lightning Strike!"

Something was wrong, as the Manitou pushed and pulled at him, not in the same way he would have had he attempted this in clear weather, but something about the unnatural source of this weather, whatever was wrong about this girl that allowed her to produce such effects, was interfering with their own ability to alter nature's patterns. They weren't rejecting the ritual, as he could feel that they were trying to grant his Favor, that they wanted to strike at this girl and whatever was inside her, but they were having unexpected difficulty.

While, as was normal, they didn't speak to him, they still let Kwatoko know that the Favor would be granted, just not in a timely manner. As Kwatoko dodged a spear of ice, his only response was to respectfully thank them for their consideration.

--

Fuu was able to make a weapon of ice and toss it, but found it sluggish and poor in a way she wasn't expecting.

"Crom, if you're annoyed by the fact that no, I'm not freeing you…"

'You know that I can't stop you from using all of my power, just most of it. I'm trying to stop the Spirits from interfering. With these limits the Gate places…'

Fuu was not freeing him, as annoying as the current situation was turning out to be. Oh well, she would have to work with what she had…would that put on a good enough show? Plan A was not just to do well in the Rank Exams, after all, but to thoroughly impress the mortals so that they would want to hire more Fae. With Crom weakened like this, she couldn't exactly put on a show that would put her leagues above the competition.

--

The Marshall was very focused on this match, rubbing his chin in thought constantly. The Hem-Netjer-Tepi and the Great God-on-Earth paid this little mind, as this was the only match thus far involving one of his own Villagers.

Thus, they were surprised when he spoke up, "did ya know when ya assigned these two to face each other?"

"Know what?" The Great God-on-Earth responded, utterly confused.

The Marshall didn't take his eyes off of the enchanted mirror (Fuu's snowstorm meant that they couldn't actually see what was happening in the arena through mundane means, but luckily that was taken care of for both the leaders and the audience) when answering, "Manitou and Titan Lords tend to act oddly 'round each other. I can see it. They're both strugglin', not 'gainst each other, but 'gainst their own powers. The real fight goin' on here is probably in the barrier between the Over, Middle, and Underworlds, not in the arena. In fact, there's a good chance this fight is 'bout to get really borin'."

--

The Unseelie King was usually happy whenever the Seelie King wasn't. Today was not one of those days.

"The snowstorm was pretty impressive, I'm sure the mortal rulers are really excited by it…" he tried to appease his co-ruler, but the Seelie King was having none of it.

"She should have finished this a long time ago. Quickly, brutally, and, most importantly, spectacularly! Right now she just looks above average. It'll get us some customers, sure, but it's not what we went through all this for! What in the Winter is she thinking?!"

The Unseelie King, glancing at the man from Tall-Tales, thought back on what he knew about Cowboys and shrugged.

"Maybe those Manitou-spirit things are interfering with Crom Cruach's power?"

"That is completely absurd! Crom Cruach was a threat even the real Tuatha da Danaan couldn't defeat, how could some minor spirits from the Weird West…"

"Crom Cruach is weak in the Gate," the Unseelie King reminded his old rival. "The power we're displaying is the power that Fuu has been able to wrestle or negotiate from him. That, apparently, is not enough."

The Seelie King, fuming, looked back on the match. "Is it time to move onto Plan B, then?"

Neither of them really liked the concept behind Plan B, but they needed something grand to save the Village and it was what they had.

"Let's wait until the end of the match before we do anything hasty."

--

As the air current surrounding her crackled with some sort of electricity that Crom apparently felt the need to warn her about, Fuu desperately wracked her brain for something, anything, that would be useful for resolving this fight…it was the crackling of that very electricity that made her remember the one Scion girl from the preliminaries, that had done that 'Sky Purview' technique. Hopefully, it would work out better for Fuu. She even knew which Cantrip to fake.

"Skycraft Cantrip: Howling Gale," she shouted as she directed Crom Cruach's wintry wind behind her, blowing her forward at incredible speeds. Fuu readied her fist, strength enhanced by the Titan Lord's power, and drew a dagger with her free hand, striking into the Cowboy before he could react.

While the metal was still inside her opponent, she asked Crom to stop fighting the electricity that the enemy's spirits were apparently trying to summon, which resulted in a massive burst of lightning striking into them both.

--

Kwatoko had been desperately waiting for the Spirits to strike the Fae girl with that lightning bolt that he had requested, so he could hardly fault them for finally doing so; he was also of the religious inclination not to get angry that they hadn't waited until he himself was out of range before doing so, but really, how could he not be a little annoyed as both of them were fried by his Favor?

It was especially infuriating when it seemed to hurt him far more than it hurt her. He was twitching, burnt, and barely conscious while she had a swarm of maggots surrounding her, healing all of her wounds. Maggots? Was this one of those Chimerical things that Fae dealt with?

Regardless, it was only through the power of the same Spirits that just electrocuted him that he was still standing, and if he wanted to stand a chance at winning, or at least showing enough guts that he might get promoted anyways, he needed to end this now.

Doing his best to ignore the knife wound, sweltering bruise from her punch (he was relatively certain that a bone had been fractured), frostbite from her earlier attack, and, well, everything that the lightning had just done, he swung his tomahawk into her.

--

Fuu was doing everything in her power to make it look like she was okay. To be fair, she was doing better than the other guy, who was putting everything he had into still standing up while she was just far more winded than the Titan Lord inside would normally allow her to be.

Still, as she was constantly reminding herself, she couldn't just win, she had to win spectacularly in an overwhelming knockout without any of the mortal watchers figuring out it was only because of Crom Cruach's power if she didn't want to be a prisoner for the rest of her life.

Praying to whoever was listening in the Overworld that the maggots putting her back together didn't count as exposing Crom Cruach's power, she had to hope that this was enough. The snowstorm was impressive, her raw strength was impressive, and, best of all, she had taken a lightning bolt directly and survived while her opponent very well might not have. Ignoring the ax buried into her side as much as possible, she punched him again with Titan-enhanced strength. This was enough to knock him down.

"Kwatoko is unable to battle. Fuu is the winner!"

--

The Marshall sighed.

"Well, mah Village's only man here kicked it in the first round. He showed toughness and grit, the very stuff we like to foster in our Cowboys, and he went against a Gatekeeper who can call on her Titan Lord's powers, which isn't exactly somethin' that a greenhorn should be facin'."

He leaned back.

"Given the circumstances, ah think ah'll give 'im a probationary promotion. Hold him to higher standards than the newly promoted should have, make 'im understand that it can be taken away easier than others could, but promote him either way."

He glanced toward the Fae.

"It don't feel right doin' otherwise, knowin' that that gal won't be gettin' anythin' no matter how she performs."

"It is a pity," The Great God-on-Earth agreed, filing away Kwatoko's promotion as something for Intelligence to learn later, "using her opponent's own lightning against him was inspired, and I really don't know what Dachu and his little rival in the Unseelie Court are planning for her. I wish things could be better. Will you continue to sit up here, now that it will just remind the spectators that Tall-Tales will have no one in the fight?"

"It'd be more embarassin' to leave. 'Sides, I really don't want to deal with the rulers of the Weird West's political bull-honkey now that an Indian got to the finals when no Settler Folk did, and then lost in the first round. The Chiefs and Governors are goin' to be gloatin' and yellin' and blamin' and hollerin', I'd rather stay up here, if you don't mind."

The Hem-Netjer-Tepi was silent throughout their exchange, keeping his eyes on the Fae Monarchs.

--

"Wow, that girl took a lightning strike and then just kept on like it was nothing," some king from a minor country shouted excitedly.

Dachu, the Seelie King, was more than happy to capitalize.

"Yes, that is the strength of the Fae, gained through our orderly understanding of human wonder. To think, there are people that would look down on the Village Hidden in Dreams, deprive it of its rights to sit among the seats of the so-called 'Major Villages.' The Village Hidden in Tall-Tales holds such a lofty position, and, well, I think that you just got to see them compared side-to-side."

The mortal king in question's expression might very well have been music, for that's what it seemed to Dachu's ears.

The Unseelie King lent his support.

"Yes, the freedom that we promote allows our Supernatural Men, and, of course, Women, to grow both strong and cunning. It's the type of virtue that allows us to resolve whatever missions you might need done."

Scratching his chin, the king asked, "you know, I've had an issue with a giant claiming territory on one our country's new mines…".

Dachu was annoyed by the Unseelie King's insistence on 'freedom' over 'orderly,' but he let it slide in hopes that this conversation represented the first in a pattern.

--

Techniques:

Favor: Spirit Warrior-enhances the user's overall combat ability and durability so long as they are only wielding 'natural' weapons

Favor: Guiding Wind-uses the wind to enhance the accuracy of a thrown or ranged weapon

Skycraft Cantrip: Howling Gale-summons a string wind behind the user, enhancing their speed and forward momentum