unOrdinary: An Old Friend Returns

Shall We Fight?

"There's one by the corner of the track," replied John. He started off in that direction, so I followed.

"Do you want me to work out a way for you and Sera to have some time alone. I think I can get Evie, Roland, and Terrence to come with me after the training."

"Leave it alone, Eloise. She clearly does not want anything to do with me right now. I'm going to get some water and go home."

"No. Stay!" I say grabbing his hand.

"You need to get out of your head. That's what this physical exercise is perfect for, getting you to release your pent-up frustrations in a controlled way. Plus, it's a beautiful day so I won't let you go to an indoor gym."

He bent over the water fountain and took several big gulps of cold water. Wiping away the excess, he turned and nodded.

"Fine. I'll stay but we need to stop with all this child play and get to the real fight training."

I roll my eyes. Typical!

"Let's go and maybe if you are nice to everyone, Sera let you teach them a thing or two."

"Little chance for that," replied John but he seemed to be more enthusiastic about returning.

When we got back to the group, Evie told us that Sera had decided that they would do some Kumite sparring.

Seems like Sera also wanted to stop treating us with kid gloves. I glanced at my outfit. A skirt and knee-high heels were not the most optimal fighting outfit, but it was stylish.

"Sera, Evie, does either of you have a hair tie?" I could fight in heels, but a lady never fights with her hair in her eyes.

Evie handed me one of her green beaded hair ties from the two that held her hair in pigtails. She redid her hair so that her hair was in one ponytail. I took the offered hair tie and quickly twirled my hair around in my hand and put my hair up in a messy bun. No use going for anything elegant; it would get messed up fast once sparring began.

"Thanks, Evie! So, who's going first?"

Sera cleared her throat and said, "To make things more equal everyone will have to abstain from using their abilities during the fight. Even though we did not practice kicks, they are allowed. Each match will be one minute long. This may seem short, but in a fight things progress very quickly. When I, or Evie when it is my turn to spar, call out stop, that means STOP. The matches will be Evie versus Terrance, Roland versus me, and lastly John versus Eloise."

So, the matches were against our practice partner. That was good, because other than paring John up with Sera, I did not want John fighting any of the others given his current mood. He was too easy to rile up and if he became too violent now, I feared that Sera would never forgive John for hurting her friends. I, on the other hand, knew how to walk the tight rope with John.

"Go ahead, the entire field is yours, Evie, Terrance."

We moved to sit on the tracks' bleachers as Evie and Terrance began to fight.