Chapter 49: The Brutal Ballet

Kate walked through the dark corridors with her nunchaku turning across the back of her hand. Catching the sticks, and releasing in idle perfect circles.

Her chrome bracelets shone with even slightest of the light in the room.

Under the tight combat pants, she was still wet. A slick, unfinished head pressed back into her with every step, and she somehow seemed to love the feeling.

*Hiss--!*

Hydraulic seals split ahead, and the light from arena hit the corridor.

Followed by the noise, voices pouring down from the audiences.

The gate opened onto reinforced white cement, which was oddly bright under the arena lamps that were on the top, amassing the view of whole arena.

Kate stepped through the gates without changing her pace, and the gate behind her closed shut as she stepped into the arena.

In the centre of the floor, Maeve Eira was already waiting.

Kate’s eyes moved over once. She looked at her up and down, and furrowed her brows.

She found no combat pants or any fitted cut to show the curves of Maeve that Kate had been looking forward to.

Instead, Maeve wore a slightly loose black nylon jacket. Under a long black skirt, dark leggings held the line of her legs without offering any particular view to Kate.

It wasn’t a combat outfit...it looked like a simple dress. Which is not the kind of beautiful Kate had been imagining.

"Tch..." Kate clicked her mouth once in disappointment and looked down.

"?" Maeve was left confused at that gesture. She expected mockery considering the information she had on Kate.

"You know," Kate finally spoke up, and dead silence settled into the arena, as every sound coming from the audience stopped. As if they were completely invested in what Kate was about to say.

"I am seventeen ranks higher than you in combat," Kate spoke softly and looked at Maeve.

Maeve did not say anything to that. She just stood with her hands loosely joined before her, weight shifted slightly onto one hip. She looked casual, her posture was soft, and balanced rather than ready for combat.

"Despite the fact, I won’t mind if you take the win. By all means, I can forfeit, or deliberately loose to you, but I have just a small condition..." Kate smiled and stopped playing with her nunchakus.

Maeve tilted her head, looking at Kate.

"My condition is really simple~" Kate said, her voice stayed soft.

"Let me have a taste of you."

"..."

For a moment, not just Maeve, but everyone who heard her words clear, failed to process them.

Maeve’s expression did not change much, but a brow of hers lifted.

Kate smiled wider, unbothered by anything.

"Skin is enough, a kiss if you’re feeling generous," she tipped her chin once. "You give me that, here or in the corridor before we start, and I forfeit. Officially. On Magnar’s name, rank, record, witness in front of all the masses present here, I’ll hand you the win and my title without making you sweat for it."

For seconds, the arena remained silent. Then shouts came from every part of the arena in one sudden wave, as the whole arena erupted in noise it had never witnessed.

In the pillar’s room, Brody stopped half-way while eating a piece of apple. Kaji who was beside him had already shut his tablet, and was far more interested in the arena now.

Brody looked at Marcellus and leaned in.

"Looks like you’ve got a competition," he said.

"Competition?" Marcellus’s mouth curved.

"No, I’d be more delighted in watching both of them...like a voyeur," he said.

""...""

Everyone in the room was left a little baffled at that answer.

"You’re not even a little bothered?" Brody asked, quietly.

"Then again, why would he be?" Brody whispered, answering his question with another.

"...Right," he somewhat understood what Marcellus meant.

Back on the floor Maeve refused to respond. She wasn’t interested in the bargain, she did not even consider the possibility of it, for her, it was mockery.

Kate’s smile thinned with interest.

*KZZZT-Flik!*

The lights of the arena flickered once.

A single hard blink across every lamp in the vault, the upper rings, the barrier strips, the white wash over the cement, as if the whole lightning grid had been touched at the same time.

Kate’s eyes moved a fraction, noticing the change.

"{Dios}" Maeve called out.

Behind her...Pure darkness unfolded.

*FLA-WHOOSH!*

Wings.

They were vast, they simply opened out of the air at her back. Two enormous planes of black unfurling wings with a sound like heavy silk dragged through the cold water.

Feather by feather, the shape resolved with layered plumes of pure shadow.

They wings kept spreading past that they covered a part of the arena, they were wider than Maeve’s whole body several times over.

They curved forward, down, and closed around her.

In that very moment, Maeve had vanished inside a living perimeter of black wings. The audience only saw a cocoon of dark feathers sealing her.

Then the canopy settled, and only a head emerged above the folded wing-wall. An eagle’s head.

It was shockingly short against the mass of those wings, carved from the same black shadow, the beak was a hard hooked wedge.

Dios held Maeve inside the cover of it’s wings. No one could see her, or approach her without going through it.

Kate rolled the nunchaku once across her knuckles and her chrome bracelets responded in a cluster of shivers.

"So that’s the first one," she murmured, pleased.

She had barely moved. She stood in an easy open stance a few paces off the canopy, with her nunchaku hanging from one hand.

The floor in front of her was empty, the arena only had massive winged eagle protecting Maeve.

*Whoop*

Then a punch appeared out of nowhere.

A black fist the size of a human head cut through the space where there was nothing but air, driving straight along her center line. Behind it, all at once, stood a humanoid mass thrice the size of an ordinary man. It had pure black body, heavy muscles, the head of a bull set with thick curled horns, and grey eyes fixed on her with no sound at all.

Kate’s wrist turned slightly, a narrow magnetic shear flexed through the air.

The fist’s path bent enough that the knuckles tore past her cheek instead of through them, close enough to drag heat across her skin. Kate’s nunchaku tapped the inside of the passing arm once, and the shadow disappeared, collapsing into its own shade before her nunchaks could even damage it.

"My, this is one of a kind of surprise," she muttered under her breath.

{King}

It existed again at her front with a horn-line rush that tried to throw her off balance entirely.

Kate planted her feet on the ground, her powers drew towards her legs, compressing the space around her soul and the cement floor, and her force expanded in layers on the ground.

It looked like dry blue hue moving as if it was a frequency with visible waves.

It trimmed the left half of King’s charge, its rush dragged and it stumbled in its own power, and had to dissolve into shadow before it could even approach her.

Kate rolled her neck, and looked at the black canopy of wings, Maeve still offered no visibility, she hadn’t spoken a word and that was making Kate more desperate. She needed a response, a plead, or even just a statement from the woman in front of her.

"Well, talk to me! Say something! I feel like this battle...is just one sided like our love!" She spoke at the top of her lungs, making sure Maeve heard her inside the canopy.