A Bitter Success

Cozy was waiting for her next match to be called. She had won her previous match and was currently waiting for the semifinals. It wasn’t that hard, just a boy who used fire magic. The main concern was the next match.

The waiting room door opened, and Elaina walked through it clutching her head. She must be winded from her last battle. She ran over to her stuff and downed a drink, before walking over to a table and collapsing for a moment.

Cozy leaned over her shoulder.

“Heyyy, hey hey hey,” Cozy said in an annoying tone.

“What.” Elaina responded.

“Did you win?”

“Yeah. I’m going to kick your butt next,” Elaina said, her head still lying down on the table.

“You’re not going to be kicking any butt lying down there like a dead fish,” Cozy shot back, poking at the girl’s cheek.

“Shut up,” Elaina rolled her eyes. “You complained about your injuries all day yesterday anyways.”

“Uh yeah? I got stabbed with a sword. That hurts,” Cozy said. “What about you?”

“I just took a beating this fight, it’s whatever.”

Cozy giggled a little bit. They would obviously give Elaina some time to rest, but it was amusing to see her tired. This was also good for her in particular, because a tired opponent is a weaker opponent. Any advantage was fair in a tournament setting.

Since Cozy was pretty confident in winning, she thought she might as well help the girl a little bit. She took a seat next to her and patted her on the back.

“Seems like you didn’t get a good enough sleep last night, just like Ed,” Cozy told her. “A lack of sleep is always prone to disaster no matter what you do. It’s going to make it easy for me to beat you, for example.”

“Maybe it’s going to make me sleep through your annoying yap,” Elaina sharply struck back.

“Jeez, see. Being cranky isn’t going to help either. Imagine you were talking to the governor. She wouldn’t appreciate these words of yours.”

“You’re not the governor.”

It seemed like Elaina wasn’t appreciating her advice right now. Her loss. Cozy would shrug and return to her own seat, waiting for her next match. She hoped that Elaina would remain tired, so this fight would be easier on her.

***

“Elaina, Cosette. Ah, you’re both here,” a pair of guards walked into the waiting room. Cosette stood up to take the guard’s hand, while Elaina dragged her head up from the table and began walking.

The two of them continued to the arena, Cozy waved Elaina—who did not respond—off as she was led to the other side of the stadium. With a shrug, Cozy decided to enter the stadium to the applauding crowd, taking it all in.

The announcer gave her introduction, which had been the same throughout her entire run. Soon after, she saw Elaina enter the arena too, dagger in her hand.

“Next up, we have the little flash of lightning that has been tearing up the bracket… Elaina!”

Elaina’s face looked serious, which contrasted Cozy’s bright smile. The two opponents stared at each other for a long time and the atmosphere tensed up.

“I’m read-”

The split second Cozy indicated she was ready, a flash of crackling electricity zoomed forwards, and a shockwave reverberated around the arena.

A crystal formed in front of Cozy, and she saw Elaina’s knife lodged directly into the crystal. Cozy blinked, she was not expecting that burst of speed.

“You’re faster than I remember,” Cozy said. Though she didn’t waste time, as the ground around Elaina erupted into crystal spikes. She had hoped to entrap the girl quickly and seamlessly in a prison, all with a collected smile on her face.

The crystals got slashed apart, splitting the heads off the bottoms as Elaina’s cold eyes looked at Cozy.

“I’m not getting slower,” Elaina stated. Soon, Cozy immediately felt as if she was struck ten times at once! Elaina’s movements were hard to track with the eye, as it looked like there were multiple versions of her attacking at the same time.

It felt like Cozy’s dress got slashed apart, and she just barely managed to avoid getting her skin slashed too. Her blouse and skirt were tattered, she was definitely going to have to buy something new after this match.

“Moody, much?” Cozy said. Elaina remained dead silent as electricity crackled through her body.

As a response, Cozy stomped on the ground and her crystals began to form around Elaina. They encased the speedster in a crystal prison once again. As she expected, Elaina quickly sliced apart the crystals right after they formed.

“Pew!”

Cozy shot out an energy blast just as the crystals went flying into the air. This didn’t give Elaina any time to react as it struck her head on. The girl got sent flying backwards, but midway through her flight her momentum shifted, and the flash of lightning dashed forwards.

Elaina struck with another powerful strike that Cozy just barely managed to dodge. The sparks surged around her opponent as multiple knife strikes came towards her. These strikes were wide, far reaching…

And careless.

With a quick dodge, avoiding each individual strike despite how fast Elaina was, Cozy pulled a crystal out of the ground. Like a bat, she used it to bludgeon the girl in the side at the end of one of her strikes, then one more to the head.

“Remind me why I lost to you, again?” Cozy said. She began to raise her crystal weapon again for another strike to try and throw Elaina onto the ground. However, before she could make the hit, her arm was stopped in place.

Elaina had stopped it with her own hand, grabbing Cozy’s arm. A shock of electricity flowed through Cozy’s body all of the sudden.

“You talk too much,” Elaina said. The magic she emitted kept on coursing throughout Cozy’s body, inflicting a painful shock onto her. Her muscles tensed up, and her body contracted at the feeling.

“ACK-!” Cozy pulled her hand away. Though, when she tried to move her arm again, it wasn’t responding. She couldn’t feel anything from it right now, and attempts at movement turned out numb.

Alright, come on. I just need to finish this quickly. Cozy thought, and she knew just the way. With her non-disabled arm, she reached out towards Elaina’s head. She was still close enough to touch her after all.

With just a little bit of Love Magic, Cozy should be able to end this match right here, and easily. Once she made contact with Elaina’s forehead-

CHOMP.

“YEOWCH-!!”

She felt the grinding of teeth on the palm of her hand. On immediate instinct she pulled her hand back as the audience gasped from the development. A pretty bad wound had formed on Cozy’s hand. Sharp tooth marks lingered in her skin.

What the hell?! Did she just bite me? Is she insane?

Cozy immediately backed away as fast as she could. One hand was disabled and the other one was in massive pain. If she continued at this range, she would be completely toast. Elaina stood up and walked after her. Silently staring at her as electrical sparks flew from her body.

“What is wrong with you?” Cozy was caught off-guard by Elaina’s actions. The girl was never this ruthless in their previous sparring match. But, Cozy’s position was about as awful as it could’ve been.

She only had one working arm, and it was throbbing like she had never felt pain before. This was bad, so unbelievably bad.

But Elaina seemed to not care, because the girl once again blitzed towards her. Cozy’s injured self was too damaged to properly dodge, and instead she had to face the slash head-on. Cozy almost fell onto the ground as the incoming strike came across her chest. Sharp… but still blunt. The force sent her off her feet and almost onto the ground.

Just before Cozy hit the ground however, her wings spread wide and pushed her up, allowing her to avoid elimination. With a second flap, she pushed herself away from Elaina and up into the air.

She had to remember that there was a height limit, and she couldn’t go too high. But regardless, this was enough of a vantage point. It also gave her a brief moment to think.

She is way stronger, and way faster than I remember. One of my arms is disabled, and the other one hurts like crazy. How do I pull this back?

Elaina’s electricity crackled again, and Cozy knew exactly what that meant. Another dash forwards. She needed something, fast.

Improved strength… improved speed… What weakness did this girl have now? What could she use?

As Elaina left the ground, Cozy realized one more thing that changed since she had last fought this girl. The straight line dashes, the flurried slashes with little regard for her own safety. This girl was sloppier than she remembered.

A crystal formed between Cozy and Elaina, and suddenly, that crystal burst into dust. Covering the entire area in blinding pink particles. This was a trick that Cozy intuited from Luka, as he took control of her crystals. She wondered how small she could break them down. For this fight, the answer was “small enough”.

In the dust, she threw off Elaina’s straight lunge. This allowed her to evade the dash without taking any damage. Her wings flapped out a clear space for her to see through the dust she made. In the fog, Cozy saw a faint figure disoriented from the particles around her, and decided to chase.

Both of her arms were restricted, so Cozy threw out the next best thing. A headbutt, targeting Elaina’s own head! This sent the electric speedster flying downwards at an incredible speed, and almost out of bounds. However, Elaina’s lightning surged forwards once more, and Cozy saw her momentum reverse entirely… shooting towards her again!

Cozy smiled. One last careless attack for the road. She landed on the ground, just under the trajectory for Elaina’s attack. Her hand was still aching from the bite, and it hurt to even move it. But, as the girl flew over her, Cozy grabbed Elaina by the ankle, and spun her around.

The girl went flying out of control. Electrical sparks flew everywhere as she tried to maintain herself. But it was too much, Elaina was too reckless with her movement. At full speed, she crashed into the walls of the stadium, kicking up dust and sand into the air.

Elaina was quite comfortably out of bounds. Cozy did it. She had won. The audience applauded as Cozy basked in her victory. She panted, as she fell to her knees. Both of her arms were in so much pain right now, but shortly after she fell the medical staff immediately surrounded her to begin quickly patching her up.

She didn’t remain still for long though. As soon as her right arm began to be able to move again, she went to approach Elaina, who was still sitting out of bounds. Everything hurt, but she thought she might as well show some sportsmanship.

“Hey… good job. You uhh, improved a lot since I last saw you,” Cozy said. “You won’t be better than me of course, but you know… potential.”

Elaina looked up from her slump, glaring daggers at Cozy. That glare caused Cozy to step back a little bit, even if she didn’t think she said anything wrong.

“Don’t talk to me,” Elaina said.

“Woah, what happened to you? I don’t remember you being this sour.”

“I said, don’t talk to me,” Elaina said, pulling herself off of the ground and running off. She left the arena as fast as she could, leaving Cozy standing there, confused.

Cozy didn’t understand the cold reaction. Though maybe she just took losses badly. Regardless, she couldn’t linger on about it for too long. The medical staff chased after her to begin healing her bitten hand as she pondered for a moment.

She had done her job, she was in the semifinals. It was way more grueling than she thought, but she had done it. The only thing left to see was if Adelyn and Edward had done the same.