Chapter 58: Before the Flash
The arena woke with a hard light. Rows of seats filled in a slow current - second years clustering near the rail, first years craning their necks, instructors speaking low beside clipboards. The floor had been polished by nervous boots. Luminite veins ran the walls like patient rivers, waiting to be told what to do.
Kori stood with her arms folded at the sideline. Across from her, a tall man in a black instructor’s jacket rested a hand on a tower shield propped beside his bench. His hair was white like a refusal to age. His eyes were the color of cool iron.
"Sixth Phalanx" someone whispered behind Raizen. "Osamu."
Osamu did not waste a breath on the crowd. He looked at the four students in the opposite tunnel - Keita with the twin luminite fans tucked closed like quiet birds, Oren steady behind a shield as big as his body, Ryuu rolling his mechanical wrists with soft servo clicks, Iris checking the sightlines of green light that hummed between her fingers. Then he looked at Kori.
"Kori" he said, voice perfectly even. "You seriously are going to let those beginners fight my students? With double the experience?"
Kori’s jaw worked once. "Let the best win, Osamu. They’re full of surprises."
"Surprises" he said, and for a fraction there was a father somewhere inside the iron. Then it went away. "We’ll see."
A horn cut the murmur. The scoreboard lines went from gray to white. A light went green over each tunnel. Arashi leaned in behind Raizen and spoke without taking his eyes off the floor. "Remember Kori’s sermon. Clean, boring excellence."
"Boring wins" Ichiro said.
Keahi rolled her shoulders. "Then I’m about to be the most boring flame in history."
They stepped into the light: Raizen, Hikari, Keahi, Ichiro. The far tunnel answered with Keita, Oren, Ryuu, Iris. The noise hit like a warm wall and then collapsed into a disciplined hush as the officiating panel rose from their box. A clipped voice spoke from the overhead.
"Duel parameters: Four on four. First team to incapacitate or force withdrawal of the opposing team. No lethal intent. Instructors may intervene for safety. Begin on tone."
A tone fell through the room like a silver coin.
The enemy team did not form a line. They did not bow. They moved.
Keita snapped his fans open with a hiss and the air around him turned into language. A slant of wind took the chalk from the far corner and smeared it in a clean diagonal. Oren pushed forward with the big shield tight to his chest, a black door that ate light. Ryuu flickered - not fast in any supernatural way, but efficient like a tool cleaned of ornament - and angles replaced space beneath his feet. Iris brought both hands up and green built between her palms until it was a soft star.
Oren met Keahi insistently. She cut her first arc and sent flame low to test his edge. The big shield did not push the flame away. It drank it. The color folded against the surface and vanished as if falling through water.
Keahi’s eyebrows went up. "Well that’s new..."
Before she could try another angle, Ryuu ghosted past Oren’s shoulder. His mechanical ankles canted and caught the floor like talons. He didn’t wind up. He simply arrived behind Keahi and put a short punch into her ribs. The sound was a dark apple breaking. Keahi folded around it and flew.
Keahi gave the wall a French kiss. The impact took dust loose in a soft ring and set a crack walking. She slid down, breath gone for a few seconds. The crowd exhaled as one.
"Out" Kori barked, already moving. Osamu’s eyes flicked once. Iris didn’t stop to heal Keahi. She let the star in her hands grow brighter.
Raizen tried to close distance. Keita smiled with all his teeth and lifted one fan abruptly. Wind met Raizen’s dash sideways and turned it into loss. Raizen slid far right, corrected, slashed back, and Keita stepped into a curl that was almost a dance. Every time Raizen thought he had a straight, the fan made it a curve.
Ichiro read the dirty before anyone told him to. He set his hands, took the floor in both palms, and brought it up. Pillars shouldered their way up - not the polite ribs they used in practice, but twenty-meter arcs that reached like ribs of a giant whale. A terrace rose under his heels and carried him to a spine. He ran that spine and threw a slab. It came from the wall itself and dropped like law.
Ryuu took it in the chest, smashed into the floor, and the floor became a hand and hammered him back up. He did not scream. He reset in the air, hit a pillar ankle-first, and pinwheeled around it to land. Ichiro bent the platform under him into a chute and sent him sliding. When he fought sideways to scramble up, the stone went slick. When he tried to dig in metal fingers, the stone was suddenly harder than metal.
"Good" Ichiro said, and the simple word came out like proof.
Keita pivoted and swung both fans. Wind left his wrists like ropes being flung. The luminite stone shone. The currents he threw hit Ichiro’s balance and slammed him to the near edge. The whole slab tilted. Ichiro rode it down with one knee braced. He caught himself with a quick platform - then everything turned bright.
Iris had chosen her moment. The green orb at the tip of her staff became a blunt sun as large as a barrel and she fired it like a history. It hit the platform with an explosion that ate stone and sent Ichiro off his knees and into the rail.
Kori’s hand moved. A red flag flicked out and down. "Ichiro is out."
Osamu wasted no time. He slid to Keahi with his shield and set his hand on her sternum. Light went from blue to green to white to clear. Keahi’s eyes opened in a shock and then narrowed. She looked toward the floor like the fight could be reached by stare alone. Osamu said something short, and she stayed seated because the rule was the rule.
"Two down" Arashi said softly. His hands were empty. His eyes were not.
Hikari did not wait for any more counting. She broke the line and went for Iris. Circles stack in twos and threes and then blur in the heat. She skipped the clean and drew rough, fast, sweep - and it worked. The spear point cut a path through wind and green and put a line right across Iris’s wrist. The healer’s hand separated from her in a clean slice that made someone in the third row say "Ow" in her place.
Iris didn’t look at her hand. She grunted, and then pressed her stump against her shoulder and told the blood to be a bridge. Green ran like thread across flesh and knitted. Her fingers twitched where they lay on the floor and then dragged back up her forearm like a magnet finding home. She formed a closed fist, nodded once as if grading an assignment, and threw a net.
The net was Eon woven into hexagons. It opened like a calm blooming. Hikari slashed one edge and got free of three lines. A fourth tangled her ankle. She cut. A fifth fell like a patient curtain. Hikari rolled, sliced, dodged, sliced, and it would have been enough if Oren had not been a wall with legs.
He was. He came in a step, set, and hit her with the full face of the shield. The air left Hikari with a sound like a heart saying no. She bounced once off the floor and then the rail did what rails do. Ryuu met her there an eye blink later and added a second note with a punch to the shoulder that cracked something important.
"Well, she’s gone... Man, Osamu! Your minions really don’t hold back, huh?" Kori exhaled, already moving, voice tight and perfectly clear. She and Osamu arrived at the same heartbeat. Osamu took Hikari’s broken arm before anyone else touched it. Kori’s eyes cut to Raizen and then away.
Keita’s laugh ran across the floor. It was not big. It was like a psychopath’s laugh. He twirled one fan as if bored by the toy. Keita walked a few steps as if there were no one left to stop him. His pupils were big. His attention darted and then landed back on Raizen like a hand returning to a pocket. "This is the difference between a story about beginners and real school. This is a lesson to all of you!!!"
Oren set his shield with a thud that wanted to be an ending. Ryuu shook out his shoulders, mechanical tendons making a soft iron sound.
"You provoked us to a duel" Keita screamed, the bright of his uncanny grin showing between words, "and you didn’t even stand a chance!!"