5-1

“…and in Arena Three, Sana and Smith have bested their thirteenth wolf!”

“Damn, I wish we could actually see these matches,” Clover said over the cries of the announcer. Carmina watched her loitering in the center of Arena Four; she stretched and rotated her ankles while Clover watched the gateway they’d come in through.

“It’s okay,” Carmina said. “You can get a recap.”

“In text.”

“...Yeah.” Carmina cleared her throat. “So...this going the way you hoped it’d go?”

“Yes,” Clover insisted, with such force that both of them almost missed the entrance of their first battle-able beasts.

Slimes: the classic artificial enemy. Too strange to be sentient, yet too vicious to be left alone. One of the first things Carmina learned upon entering school was that these bioluminescent sacks of nose green originated as a lab experiment gone wrong. However, like temporarily adhesive paper notes, the monsters were repurposed and sold en masse to researchers across the world. Why did Carmina know this, and not just home ec and battle techniques? She could not tell you.

They burst through the opened gates, tumbling over each other, roiling forth, leaving steam on the sand they slithered upon. Slimes were corrosive, and Carmina was glad she knew that. But trusty heat and kinetic energy could still burn through them.

“Hang back,” Clover said, “I can hit them from a dista—”

“And Carmina is already charging in!” the announcer bellowed.

Clover smirked and cocked her head. “Have it your way,” she said, “just don’t cry if I hit you.” She loaded her crossbow—which meant placing her unequipped hand on the tank to recharge.

Meanwhile, Carmina paid her no mind. She trusted wholly in her own efficient style, claws out as she ran. Her gloves amplified her twin blasts of aura, which rippled behind her and whipped through her hair. She was getting the hang of limiting herself, of pacing her power so she wouldn’t be exhausted later—so maybe this wouldn’t be quite as explosive as the show she inadvertently put on at the bank. But she wasn’t Clover; she didn’t much care how cool she looked.

With heat sheathing her, she didn’t need to touch the slimes to claw straight through them. Her blazing aura even acted as a barrier—as green ooze splattered onto her, it sizzled away.

She pulverized two without mercy. But to her surprise, she didn’t even get to approach the other half-dozen. Carmina looked up just as arrow-bolts of white magic zipped into four slimes, then detonated from within like bombs.

Carmina ducked and covered—her aura, an inconstant flame, was in place just in time to keep the slime remains from pelting her. When she stood up again, she had no bitter stare for Clover, did nothing but move away from the gate and stretch her arms in preparation. No harm, no foul.

There were more beasts to come.

They did, in fact, throw wolves at the contestants. Clover wondered aloud, in shouts over the din, why the school was hurling woodland creatures at them, but Carmina suspected they had been turned loose from a lab after some other kind of failure. They snapped wildly, sometimes at thin air, and were nearly rabid.

After the last wolf was skewered through the chest by a peal of lightning, a couple of janitors swept through, clearing away the bodies and gelatin. Clover kicked around at the dirt and laughed at it all, though Carmina sensed desperation in the laugh, like she only did it so someone would laugh along. Carmina made herself chuckle. It got Clover to stop chattering for a moment.

“…could be front-runners,” the announcer said, his voice mixing half-and-half with cheers. “If they can beat the clock, they might be among the fastest, fiercest competitors in our Coliseum’s history!”

This had been shorter than Carmina thought it’d be. In fact, she already missed it. Life was short, as it turned out, and doubly so the lives of those you beat to death. The memory of flesh against her knuckles warmed her skin; she considered feeling guilty, but everyone around her was telling her not to, so she wouldn’t.

For almost two minutes, the announcer hyped up the final beast they’d be fighting today, one Carmina and Clover had already heard bashing against the walls of the other arena quadrants. If ever there were a monster that scientists themselves believed should not be, it was the manticore, a brutal fusion of ape, scorpion, and the largest land predators on record. As it shambled out of the gates, shaking the shaggy mane away from its uncanny primate face, Carmina gasped—it stood taller than any beast of the forest. This could compete with elephants.

She was never one to give up just because she was afraid. Instead, she overcompensated, swinging in the other direction. Thinking of a woman who’d saved her life, imagining her younger self crying out behind her ankles, she held her arms out wide and gritted her teeth. Though she seemed a million times smaller than the beast, already the magic unfurling along her arms was giving her more of a presence. Her snarl was unwavering.

“Carmina!” Clover called out, tweaking her crossbow. “If you distract it, I’ll aim for the vitals and—oh, whatever. We improvise here.”

The manticore finally looked up. After a prod in the thigh from a guard’s hot poker, the gates were closed, and the final beast roared.

“Ah, the circle of life,” the announcer cooed as the manticore bodied the girl—which, according to the laws of physics, should have splattered her. At first, the audience shrieked in horror, but moments later, they were deliriously amazed. “Hold on, was that a suplex?!”

Carmina had flipped the manticore onto its side. It snarled just like a lion, rocking for a moment, stunned. The element of surprise no longer on her side, Carmina pushed through the pain running up her spine and arm, turning her fingers into aura-scythes.

“I can shoot from here!” Clover cried, but Carmina simply ripped through, and streaks of blood peppered the air.

Just when the crowd thought this would go on forever—the manticore lying belly-up and taking it, too shocked this was possible to even react—it fought back. Paws whipped, smacking with a force and speed that echoed across the arena. Carmina was knocked on her back, with nothing to protect her bones from the impact.

Clover caught her. It was a clumsy catch and it rocked Clover off-balance, but at least some of that force had gone to her legs. Carmina expected her—wanted her to just launch her back into the fray, but she actually tossed her aside.

An electric boom filled the Coliseum, and a blast far bigger than any she’d seen from Clover stabbed into the manticore. She didn’t let up, holding firm as she launched more and more. Like a nail gun, the blasts hit with percussive force.

At the first blow, the manticore growled. With the second and third, it grunted. Now it was rising despite all her fire, ignoring the singeing blasts to its face and fur. It took Clover a few more shots than it should have to get the message, but get it she did.

“Okay, vitals,” she breathed, backing away. “Give me a clear shot at the vitals. Carmina!”

The other girl stepped forward. They were splitting the manticore’s attention, could see it weighing the merits of killing one or the other first in its mind. At last Carmina was comfortable taking a moment to slow down. She said, “You want the heart, right?”

“Heart and throat, if you can do that?”

“Yeah.”

Clover managed a smile. “Alright, hop to it!”