Only forty seconds into fight three, and the tall girl had me on the back foot. Her deviation — force projection, extended her striking range by about fifteen centimetres. This meant every approach I tried gave her a bonus window to punish the entry. The air shimmered at the edge of each swing, and I was learning to respect her deviation the hard way.
Her combination drove me back three steps. I caught the first strike on my guard, but the force projection carried through it, vibrating up through my forearm into the shoulder joint. Her second swing caught empty air as I was forced to give ground. She was a fighter from Barracks 18, a set of people I was wholly unfamiliar with.
"East side, grappler advancing," Jin called from somewhere behind me. She'd been handling the stocky one — a close-quarters fighter built to clinch and drag people to the ground. Jin's acceleration kept her out of his range, but containing him meant she couldn't help me with the tall girl.
I reset my guard and tried to read the next sequence. Rotation Four, aggressive variant. Shoulders committing before hips, the weight transferring to the lead foot a half-beat before the combination launched.
The tell came. Shoulders forward, weight shifting. I had the counter mapped —
Slip left, enter inside the force projection radius and tag her while her arm is locked in the rotation's follow-through.
Before I was about to enact my plan, I caught a glimpse of David watching from the stands, Michael chuckling while whispering words I couldn't hear.
Prove them wrong. Show the bastards that threw me aside that I'm still worth something.
My counter was late by a fraction of a second. I slipped left, but the entry was slow, the tall girl's force projection caught my forearm at the edge of the radius — not a clean hit, but enough to disrupt my angle. I tagged her once instead of twice, and she reset before I could follow up.
She came again immediately, reading my slow recovery. I blocked the first extension and redirected the second, but my positioning was wrong for the third. Her fist connected with my ribs through the projection, and the impact was sharper than a physical strike should be — the force projection adding a concussive element that resonated through the wrap Jin had put on my ribs twenty minutes ago.
Survive, just stay in the fight, stay upright, and last long enough to find an opening.
The tall girl feinted high. Her shoulder movement was textbook, the kind of tell I'd been reading for months. But my body and mind were on two different wavelengths. I was thinking about staying alive, and staying alive meant caution, and caution meant I bit on the feint instead of reading through it.
Her real strike found the same ribs. I folded sideways, caught myself on one knee, gravel digging into my palm. The arena spun for a half-second before I steadied.
"You're slow today," Jin called. She was still managing the grappler, her breathing audible across the arena.
I grumbled in response, heaving myself up to my feet and resetting. The tall girl was already closing in.
The next combination came. Rotation Four cycling back to its opening sequence. I stepped into it with genuine commitment, angling inside the force projection radius with my weight properly transferred and my guard positioned to absorb the follow-through.
My timing was off by a fraction again. The force projection caught my forearm as I entered the radius. The sting ran up to my elbow, and I lost the angle. She reset before I could recover.
Across the arena, the grappler had closed the distance on Jin. He'd caught her between acceleration bursts and had one hand on her collar, trying to drag her into clinch range. Jin twisted out of it — her burst deviation firing in a tight quarter-turn that broke his grip — but the exchange cost her positioning. She was being pushed toward the arena's edge, where the low barriers would restrict her lateral movement. But I saw something in her movement, something familiar.
"Marcus — down!"
I dropped as soon as Jin's voice carried, automatic. I heard a whistle from the crowd and caught a glimpse of Jin rushing towards us. She traversed the space in the time it took me to hit the dirt; she came in shin first, throwing a devastating kick into the side of the tall girl's cranium. For a moment, her eyes went glassy before returning to their regular state.
Jin twisted and fell to the side. It was a gambit and one that I was prepared to take advantage of. I quickly stepped forward and threw a jab to her nose, blocking the sight lines for my next strike. She recovered quickly, raising her guard and blocking the punch. I carried my momentum forward and sank a left hook into her undefended abdomen. She folded, and a hand went up.
The grappler was already advancing, trying to capitalise on Jin's committed attack. He was already four metres away and closing.
"Jin — tall girl's done. Grappler's on me, reset!"
The grappler came in low with his arms wide, looking for the clinch. I sprawled back and found a knee-height barrier to cut off his advancement. He adjusted and came from a wider angle, trying to cut off my lateral movement.
I called it before I'd consciously processed it. "He's going wide right."
The grappler committed to his wide approach despite my callout, and I met him at the angle with my guard tight and my hips low, giving him nothing to grab. He threw a combination to create an opening for the clinch — heavy, looping strikes designed to make me shell up so he could close the distance. I forced myself to stay open and mobile, reading the loops for what they were, a setup. I moved between his strikes and tagged him with straight counters that interrupted his rhythm.
He got an underhook on the third exchange. Drove me toward the barrier with his weight low and his grip locked on my hip. I dropped my hips to match, fought the underhook, and held position.
The grappler cranked the pressure. My ribs burned through the wrap. My legs shook from maintaining the sprawl against someone significantly stronger.
"Left side!" Jin shouted.
The grappler turned his head a fraction toward the voice. I broke the underhook in that fraction, created space, and tagged him twice in the ribs. Jin arrived from the opposite angle she'd been just a moment ago and hit him with a combination that used his own momentum against him — three strikes in under a second, each one landing where his shifted weight left him exposed.
He went down.
"Elimination — Pair 34 takes the match."
[XP GAINED: 93]
We'd won, but it had been the ugliest victory of the exhibition, and we both knew it. I was breathing hard, my ribs were on fire, and my forearm was swelling from the blows.
I sat on the staging bench, and Jin sat beside me. She looked at my ribs and didn't comment because she'd already wrapped them, and we both knew they hurt.
"The question messed you up," she said.
"First half, yeah."
"Sorry for asking."
"No, it wasn— It helped me figure a few things out... I think."
"Oh? And, what did you find out?"
I opened my mouth and what came out wasn't what I'd planned. "I don't know. You said get down and I just... got down. And then you needed time to reset, so I held the grappler, and it was just—" I stopped. Tried again. "It wasn't complicated when I stopped trying to make it complicated."
"That's not an answer, Marcus."
"I know."
"Try again."
I rubbed my face with both hands. My forearm stung when I pressed it against my cheek. "Okay. During the fight. When I was thinking about the Tiernan stuff, my reads went to shit. When I was thinking about just surviving, they got worse. When I was trying to fight for some big, important reason, they—"
"Also shit?"
"Yeah. Also shit. But when you called and I just moved — when it was just about covering you or giving you space — that worked. I don't know why."
"You do know why. You just don't want to say it because it sounds stupid."
She was right. It did sound stupid.
"The table," I said. "I fight for the table. The people at it. That's all I've got."
"That's all you've got?"
"Yeah. Not the name. Not some big war hero thing. Just... you lot. Ribs getting wrapped and being told I fight like garbage, and someone yelling 'get down' before I get my head taken off."
Jin was quiet for a few seconds. She picked at the scrape on her knuckles.
"That is stupid," she said.
"I know."
"I don't have a better one, though."
"Yeah?"
"Don't make it weird, Tiernan."
She stood up, grabbed the ice pack, and pressed it to her side. "Don't tell Tomás about the wrap, he'll put it in the notebook."
"He'll find out."
"He finds out everything." She glanced back. "Mess hall, let's move."
"Can I stay here? I don't think I'll make it. Plus, would missing out on the paste really be a loss?"
"Shut it."