Blessed Combat

27 - Grimm Tales

A week after having a vacation at Euphino’s uncle’s beach, things had turned back to normal, with the exception of location change of the training. Ever since Zessica and Phoenix came out of the monochrome world, battered and beaten as if coming out from a world war where they unintentionally got themselves into, both of them had accidently lost the device that made them travel back and forth to the other dimension.

The loss of Stab’s prize from winning a random was a huge blow to the lanky guy and even though he tried his best not to look upset, Arma and Euphino could tell that he failed the moment he even tried. He was out of his senses for a while, knocking into things that weren’t there according to him, tripping over nothing and eating something entirely inedible by accident, much like how Zessica would do when she is half awake. Though after a day, he was pretty much over his loss and was back to his down to earth personality, completely forgetting that he had lost something valuable in the first place.

“Hey? Why are you slowing down?” Stabs asked, huffing and panting for air, his face very lightly flushed and hardly breaking a sweat as he jogged around the school track with Phoenix way ahead of both guys. Euphino had parted ways from them and Zatch was at the corner of the track, sitting under the comfortable shade of an umbrella and typing away like a mad Einstein on his portable laptop. Both boys knew that if he continued to slack off, Phoenix’s temper would snap at one point and she would forcibly drag him to the track with them, bringing justice to all. However, Arma knew that even though Zatch was a lazy boy at heart, he had his reasons with research and gaining information.

“Nothing...Just go ahead...” Arma responded, slowing his jog to a mere two step walk. Stabs looked behind him and widened his eyes in realisation. He then glanced back at Arma and gave him a nod with a cheeky grin. Arma scoffed at him lightly and waved him off briskly as Stabs laughed uproariously and jogged ahead even further, joining Phoenix who almost blew Stab’s head off with her fraying patience.

‘It’s about time now...in three...two...one...” Arma stopped in his tracks and extended his left arm in low sideways. On cue, he felt something soft thudding against his arm and Arma smile amusedly when he heard someone gasping in confusion.

“Don’t sleep Zessica.” Arma advised kindly, lowering his arm where Zessica had run into without being aware. She gave him a very tired irritated face which was more like a pout to Arma’s eyes. They had only jogged around three times around the track and Zessica was already deep red that would make any tomato jealous. She was panting heavily and her feet wobbled in a way that it sort of scared Arma. The stone that’s fused at the back of her neck was already sparking out electricity, forcing her heart to beat and provide more oxygen to her blood supply. To summarize it, she looked spent and was going to pass out any second now.

“I am...not...sleeping...” Arma almost winced when she replied back exhaustedly. Her voice was raspy and it was the kind of feeling where someone scratched nails across a blackboard. Zatch had decided to give Zessica a different kind of training approach since the type of practice they were doing didn’t exactly help her. She knew all the skills so it was no use trying to teach her to fight. So the boy in glasses and Phoenix had come up with something simple, going with the basics of running laps.

“Come on Zessica, you can do it. Just two more and you would have jogged two kilometres.” Zessica nodded weakly in a way that Arma even wondered whether she heard him or not. She was probably hearing her heart throbbing furiously on her ears, chest and head at the same time. Well, that was how Arma would have usually felt if he ran ten laps around the track. It still surprised him that the principal had gave them permission to train in the school campus, unless Zatch had brought up the blackmailing card against the principal, which he often did to get out of detention.