“So, was there a case like that?” Rave wondered, her conversation with Lydia having continued for a little while, even after John returned. Roles were now reversed, her boyfriend having first sat down next to her, then nudged ever closer until they ended up in their current position, with the Lightbearer sitting between his straddled legs, John’s arms around her waist.

“There have been several cases like that,” Lydia responded. “People have been attempting to force the melding ritual on elementals since the practice was originally discovered. The disgruntled and unaccepting are a constant throughout any history.”

“That’s so mean though,” Rave complained. “What do ya do when ya find them?”

“We punish as appropriate, often with the death penalty,” Lydia responded. “Germany needs a good standing with the elemental planes in order to continue our court culture. If we were to let the conduction of forceful meldings go by unpunished, it may be that we would soon find ourselves at a sort of elemental boycott. That and it’s wrong from a moral perspective.”

“Must be nice to have something that’s both personally and publicly condemnable,” the Lightbearer commented, realizing that it wasn’t a luxury that leaders had all the time. There were things that were awful that had to be done.

“Even nicer would be if these things ceased to happen…” Lydia sighed and continued. “Between you and me, the melding ritual is incredibly simplistic and the circle needed for it can be etched into basically any surface. The forceful ritual only differs that you need to draw that same circle from the elementals essence.” Hardened disdain snuck into her voice, doubtlessly fuelled by her own, partial elemental nature, “Drawing the necessary amount out is like bleeding a human to the edge of death. In an ironic twist of fate, the forced party retains most of their personality traits upon the successful fusion of both characters, however.”

“So they kinda screw themselves over by making it so the person that comes out at the end is way more the elemental than themselves?” Rave asked.

“Yes, which is why the death penalty is mostly invoked if we catch someone before the ritual. If it is only revealed to us afterwards, we usually convene with the corresponding elemental leader… unless it’s an air elemental.”

“Lemme guess, she a chatty one?”

“Mother Wind is a headache invoked,” Lydia confirmed. “Imagine Sylph, but as ancient as magic, more powerful than most other gods and with a very dark side.”

“How dark?”

“One of her titles is Terror of the Dreamless.”

“I ain’t even sure what that means but it sounds bad.”

“Once upon a time, she is said to have torn down an entire dreamscape. The dreamers left alive only ever saw the darkness when they slept.”

“I also don’t know what that means, but it sounds worse. Also more like something up the shadow elemental alley. Ya know, Siena is literally a nightmare elemental… even if she doesn’t use her dream invading abilities all that much.”

“Air elementals are the most intertwined with other elements and the Mother of Air is the foremost example of that,” Lydia retorted, the piano in the background playing one last little tune before a high note ended the song. “I need to return to work now, at least if I want to have time to take a shower before my next assignment.”

“Ya go do that,” Rave said her goodbyes and then they finally hung up.

_______________________________________________________________________

The tournament continued uneventfully. The first day ended without a single worthwhile challenge. When the second one rolled around, however, that changed rather drastically. The number of fighters still in the race had immensely shrunk by now and the schedule had the dropouts fighting for the exact placements later today rather than giving any breathing room.

Coupling this with enemies that, while far from truly dangerous, could actually put up a bit of a fight, Rave felt the drain on her stamina over the course of the day. The longest break she got between fights had been an hour, at the very start of the day. The less fighters there were, the stronger they became, the shorter the breaks between rounds she was participating in.

Between the quarter and her semi-final fight were only five minutes. “You doing fine?” John asked, going through the same treatment but looking unbothered.

“Dunno,” Rave answered, keeping her breath steady and controlled, while sipping on as much water as she could justify without running danger to overload. “Everything feels a bit fuzzy right now. In a good sense.” She gave him a light-headed smile. “I like this.”

While she was exhausted, she wasn’t terribly so. It had been a slow grinding down over several hours of fight-pause-fight. Her muscle fibres were tingling, blood rushing through her body, lungs working at full capacity. Thoughts operated at a minimum, instincts primed to react to the next sudden danger.

It was a state of narrow-minded concentration, the intensity of which she hadn’t experienced before. Sure, she knew a battle trance, being in the zone, with only adrenaline and reflexes on the surface. This was bigger than that. Born slowly from hours of on-off combat.

John looked at her somewhat worried. “You got this though?”

“Oh, I got this,” Rave smirked when she heard her name being called.

“Yeah, so,” the unmotivated black-haired maid yawned into the microphone. “First semi-final fight, Rave of Collide versus Corith of Amacat, you come down here and get that done.”

Fluidly, Rave rose from her seat. The edge of her field of vision was a bit blurry, but the centre all the sharper, as she walked up to the edge of the seating area, stepping onto the barrier and simply dropped down. She landed gracefully, legs bending, one hand assisting in feathering the rest of the impact.

‘Alright,’ Copernicus reached out to her mentally. ‘It would be best if you put on your headphones.’

‘Right,’ Rave agreed; her elemental had been keeping an eye on her ever since the strain had begun to manifest itself in this light-headed way. She grabbed the headphones, currently resting around her neck, and pulled them over her ears. Sounds were muffled for a moment, until she effortlessly slipped over into the catgirl state. Contrasts of light and dark intensified as her pupils changed into a slit shape. Strands of pink hair bundled together into cat ears, completing that little transformation. The bridge of the headphones curved around them perfectly, being designed for catgirls in general and for Rave specifically.

With that new pair of ears, the over-ear pieces on her head didn’t impair her hearing whatsoever. On the contrary, like sight and smell, the sense was amplified. Rave calmly breathed in through her nose and out for her mouth as she strolled towards the centre of the arena.

She fiddled with a couple of buttons on the left ear piece. Since it had proven a bit disadvantageous in the past to have a cable flying around, and because her bodysuit had no pockets, she had eventually gotten a pair of headphones with her music integrated. It was actually something that Scarlett had screwed together for her.

Knowing all the music on there by heart, she only needed three seconds tops to recognize any of the openings. Click by click, she went through the library until she arrived at a song she felt like fighting to and put it on pause.

Her opponent dropped into the arena in a similar fashion. Although without headphones, Corith’s aesthetic reminded Rave quite a bit of herself. The Amacat’s participant was a woman in her mid-twenties, appearance wise at least, judging age of higher level Abyssals was a different beast, of blonde hair and clearly northern European descent. The bodysuit she wore was a plain black, as tight on her curves as on Rave’s own.

Figure wise, she wasn’t all that impressive. She had an okay butt and breasts of an average size. That wasn’t to say she was mediocre looking, she was about a seven out of ten, just not as drop-dead gorgeous as the harem Rave usually hung out with. Nevertheless, she had quite the carefree smile.

“Wanna have some long talk about why the Amacat even sends someone to this tournament?” Corith asked, her voice reflecting that she was exhausted in a similar fashion as Rave was.

“Nah,” the Lightbearer answered, shaking her arms a little bit to relax them. “Already know from my boyfriend. Let’s just have a friendly bit of bashing each other’s faces in.”

Corinth grinned and took a fighting pose. Rave, however, kept a hand on her headphones, waiting for the announcer to leave the arena. The moment she was out, Rave 

A guitar echoed, playing a few cords. Corinth didn’t move, letting the techno lover take her own stance. Electronic notes soon joined the intro, building up. Both of them moved ever so slightly, instincts sharpened by fighting experience looking for that one small opening to exploit.

When the song echoed two words into her ear, “Press Start,” Rave forced the issue along with the explosion of bass. Charging straight ahead, she almost caught Corinth off guard, but the blonde adjusted her footing to meet the assault in time.

Rave moved to the song. Every beat was a punch or a block, every melody a swiping movement of arms or legs. Back and forth, they exchanged attacks and defences, gauging each other’s strength. The Lightbearer knew of Corinth only what she had seen so far in the tournament. She wasn’t aware whether her opponent had done any research into her person, but Rave was already used to people knowing at least some of her abilities.

It became apparent pretty quickly that Rave was the better in every aspect when it came to raw physical power. Although the beat made her timing somewhat predictable, the speed at which she acted and the flowing of punches and kicks from varying angles eliminated any advantage that may have created.

Rave pushed the aggression further, prying open Corinth’s defences with a one-two combo and then following that up with a high kick. A blue Aura ignited around the blonde like a flame, her speed increasing drastically and allowing her to pull back just in time to save herself from the heel to the chin.

With the golden light that decorated Rave’s ankle, that one successful kick may have been all that was needed. Copernicus’ blessing gave every of her connecting kicks and punches an aftershock in the form of a wave of what was, essentially, glowing kinetic energy. Between the initial impact and that second damage, a forceful blow to the head was guaranteed to do a lot of damage. Well, even more than for the average person.

Corinth used her Aura-fuelled speed not to start an immediate counterattack, but instead raised her foot in a quick stomp. The dry, condensed ground decompressed at explosive speed, causing a sudden cloud of dust to envelop Rave as she turned back on her feet. ‘That’s a martial art I didn’t know before,’ she thought as she skipped back, able to see fairly little and not wanting to fill her already taxed lungs with dry, fine sand.

She had to jump several times, only emerging in the fire segment of the arena. Something that caused a bit of a disgraceful scene, as she landed on one of the pressure plates in the area, causing a nearby flamethrower to activate and sending its scorching energy out towards Rave. The fire wasn’t all that dangerous, at least not for the short time Rave was subjected to it, the Baelementium in her body suit kept it from doing any damage.

It did, however, distract her for a mere moment. A moment she could have used to react to the sudden transformation of the sand cloud, as it converged into a small area. Friction heat and magic caused the sand to melt into a spear shaped mass of red-hot glass, which Corinth threw without actually touching it.

Now it was on Rave to fire up her Aura at the last possible moment. Blue light engulfed her, boosting her physical capabilities further. This wasn’t, however, why she used it. From her spine, to her lungs, to her bloodstream, focusing into her ankles, she took a step without moving her legs. Shift relayed her position from the path of the spear to just behind, as it passed where her chest had just been and then shattered against the wall.

‘Sand mage?’ Rave wondered about her opponent’s ability, Innate or Acquired didn’t really matter. ‘Maybe glass?’ She kept on the move, not wanting to remain in the area where a wrong step could sear her hair off or close to the glass shards laying about. While running, Rave extended an arm towards her enemy, pointing with a single finger.

Mana flowed to her hand, straight from its origin in her spine. The key difference between martial arts and magic was that one was utilizing mana inside and the other outside one’s own body. As such, the mana she now used gathered in front of her fingertip and then beamed out as a multi-coloured laser.

While it had the appearance of light, it didn’t travel at the speed of it. Of all the magic schools, it was, however, still one of the fastest. Corinth successfully dodged the first one, but Rave kept firing to the unsteady melody of the song. Eventually one connected, then a second, the blonde backing away as Rave continued to run along the circular rim of the inner arena field.

The Lightbearer extinguished her Aura and took a deep breath while she was running. If there was one disadvantage to martial arts, it was that regenerating mana while the Aura was active was immensely difficult. Drawing mana from her steady breathing and the sunlight itself, Rave was able to keep firing the lasers without risk of running low anytime soon.

Corinth must have realized the same thing. For a moment, it looked like she would surrender, hesitating in her movements, her arm half raising. Then she grinned. Rave knew that expression. Although the Amacat’s representative had realized her victory was immensely unlikely, she would at least try to push herself to the utmost limit and see what that would get her to.

To Rave’s surprise, this led Corinth not into meeting her in another melee engagement, but instead to running towards the water segment of the arena and throwing herself into the pond. Fist flying towards the surface of the water, she used some sort of technique that caused the body of liquid to suddenly explode in a similar fashion as the ground had earlier. Drops of water flew into the air in a fine mist.

Then suddenly stopped.

‘Particle mage!’ Copernicus meowed into her head. ‘She controls whatever elements within a certain size category.’

The mist became an obfuscation of Rave’s sight again. She could only blindly fire into the white, wobbling mass. Lasers weren’t particularly effective at that, the heat losing itself within the many small drops while the minimal force failed to punch any holes into the veil.

With no other option, Rave charged inside. Aura flaring up again, she sent her fists flying in seemingly random motions, always following the beat of the song that was now entering its last build-up before all of the parts of the song came together.

Each punch blew holes into the mist, Clearing Hits designed specifically to scatter gas-based attacks. With every punch she felt her muscles and lungs burn more. Physical exhaustion now surfaced in full force. A steady breath was sacrificed to the desperate pumping of much needed air. As her body grew heavier, her vision narrowed more and more, her mind became more awake. She felt as if she was about to grasp something bigger. She just needed a bit more of a challenge, a bit more of a hurdle to overcome, then she would realize something.

What that something was, she had no clue, she just knew that this stretching of her capabilities was an awesome amount of fun.

What wasn’t was the fact that, no matter how much mist she blew away, she just couldn’t find her opponent. The cloud was growing thinner with every Clearing Hit she threw. Eventually she would have dispersed all of it, but until then Corith seemed determined to pull all water particles she still had back together and just frustrate Rave into submission.

Then it wasn’t just mist anymore. A storm of sand suddenly engulfed her. Together with the remaining water, it mixed into a vortex of mud. While it stuck on uselessly over her bodysuit, Rave had to shield her eyes. She quickly realized that the idea here wasn’t to hurt her, but to immobilize her until enough mud landed on her to be used as some sort of coffin.

The song kicked into its final segment and so did Rave prepare for the climax of the battle, firing up her Aura to the maximum and raising her foot. What she was about to do was risky, for sure, but also the exact thing her instincts told her to do. She wasn’t one to think much about whether this was actually the best course of action.

Massive amounts of ki gathered in her hip as she raised her foot all the way. Then she suddenly brought it down, the energy ripping down her leg with it, travelling through veins and bones. A single mistake could cause her muscles to tear and that was the luckiest outcome.

However, she managed successfully to execute the Grandmaster technique. Her sole connected to the floor, flat and all at once, the energy blasting out and into the ground. Seismic step caused the earth under her to crack suddenly. She was the centre, the very cause, for a localized earthquake, the tremors of which could still be felt up in the watcher’s area.

The force caused even the particles in the air around her to stop for a moment. Then Copernicus’ blessing mimicked the force of the explosion as a wave of golden light that travelled above the floor. As if a stone had been thrown into a pond, the wave moved outwards, creating an undercurrent so strong that the cloud of mud, while not dispersed, became completely harmless for a few moments.

Moments enough for Rave to move along the climax of the song. She stormed outwards, knowing exactly where her opponent had to be. Exiting the cloud, she immediately spotted Corith in the earth area. The enemy combatant raised her hands, trying to raise more of the sand in that area, to throw at Rave.

The Lightbearer felt her hairs tingle, she was so close to releasing this… thing. Just a bit more resistance, a bit more difficulty.

Fading out like a candle at the end of its lifecycle, the aura around Corith vanished, just like the mud cloud and rising sand fell to the floor without any further impact. The Amacat’s representative breathed heavily, as did Rave as she hastily stopped her charge. “Well… guess I am tapped out… of everything…” Corith said, breath- and manaless, then fell over with a giggle.

_________________________________________________________________________

“You sure you’re fine?” John asked again, to which Rave only weakly nodded. Sitting felt really good right about now. That fight had only been about four minutes, but it sure had been taxing. Now her break would only be as long as however long John needed to beat his opponent.

“Ya go an have your own fight,” she stated, still trying to grasp at that something Corith had failed to tickle out of her. John had to leave, by the rules he had set himself, fights were to start as quickly as possible after one another. “No, wait, one more thing, tiger,” she exclaimed, grabbing him by the sleeve. “Gimme-“

She didn’t even have to finish that sentence. John was already bowing down to her. His kiss was firm, decisive, his lips surprisingly soft against her own. Although aggressive in its motions, he was also gentle, their tongues touching only for a moment, as he didn’t want her to waste any more of the breath she needed.

A short kiss, but a wonderful one, although her pumping adrenaline may have made these things a bit more overbearing than they needed to be. “Ya getting ever better at these,” Rave giggled like a young girl in love, which she factually was, when he pulled back.

“I get a lot of practice with a beautiful girl,” he answered, lovingly running his hand through her hair for a moment. “I’ll be back in a bit.”

“See ya in the finale,” she teased back.