Triple Point

Chapter 5: Game Changer

Soon after, the fighting seemed to be put on hold. A tense silence resounded from the field, and the spectators waited in restless anticipation. Minutes felt like hours with nothing to watch but the slowly churning mist. Even Camilla wasn't saying anything to her teammates, but her focused expression hinted that she too was waiting for England to make their move.

Since Elsie was watching Camilla, she had a few seconds of warning when she saw the woman suddenly communicate with her team again. Right on cue, an enormous gray cloud began to materialize above the field, releasing a downpour soon after. Weighed down by the rain from England's liquids and air meta, the fog slowly disappeared, revealing a sudden change to the battlefield.

The middle of the mountain seemed to have significantly chipped away from the fighting, and the England team had backed off to a quarter of the distance from their own base. Their offensive team looked a bit worn down, but both were steadily recovering thanks to their healer leader.

On the opposite side, the US had returned to the halfway point, looking a little roughed up but not significantly. They too had been taking the time to power up again; Pala was healing their surface wounds while Perez transferred energy to them. Around Perez, the sparse amounts of greenery had shriveled and browned.

When visibility had mostly returned, and all that left was the pouring rain, both teams readied themselves for battle again. On England's side, it seemed like their liquids and air meta was about to step into the fray, but as soon as her rain began to subside, Juneau countered with another wave of fog, pulling from a stash he had formed at some point at the base of the mountain. With one member preoccupied with maintaining visibility on the field, their super strength meta left her defensive post to switch to offense.

But it was a risky move, leaving their Class 2 as the sole defender. He could only manipulate non-living solids and liquids, and that was only if he was touching at least one of them, so there was little he could do against the US offense's increased strength if they got past England's offense.

In fact, if Perez or Lee ended up getting too close and were given enough time, they could inflict some serious damage on the Brit such as skin decay or even cellular deformations. When the former actually did happen in the last Games, it made Elsie want to throw up, and several other spectators actually did.

Thankfully, after a few minutes of fighting, it didn't seem like anyone from England was going to lose any appendages because they actually began to push the US back. It was both surprising and expected at the same time; while the US's offense was stacked in terms of endurance and each of the three guardians possessed super strength to some degree, it didn't matter if none of their attacks could land. And with England's offense relying primarily on the super speed of two of their guardians, the US struggled to land a hit on their opponents.

Even though the third member of England's offense specialized in strength instead of speed, their flawless teamwork ended up working in their favor, and the three of them combined began to chip away at the US's fighting power. At one point, England's super strength Class 4 even managed to grab onto Perez for long enough to leave a dark patch of skin on his forearm in the shape of her hand.

"Wyatt!" Perez yelled angrily at Camilla as he yanked his arm away, then threw a punch with the other that missed its mark by a mile.

At the US base, Camilla ignored the exchange happening in the middle of the field and continued to hold her arms extended in front of her. Her lack of concern was eerily familiar for Elsie to how she acted when she didn't have to put on a show for the public. To everyone else though, it was a strange reaction for someone who was usually eager to jump into the fray.