The tram had barely been stopped for a second before Corey flew from his seat and leapt out of the car. He almost didn't stick the landing.
He was followed, in a far more controlled manner, by Sebastian, Jace, and Glenn. While he was always the most excitable of the quartet, Corey knew that his excitement wasn't exclusive. He suspected that even Glenn was curious and anxious, beneath the vocalist's trademark plastered layer of indifference.
They were here in Aegis to see Calder. She and Corey had been texting nonstop for the last week, ever since she'd graced the coliseum and cameras with her presence for the first time. It was in those texts that she'd guaranteed a good fight the following Saturday, and extended an invitation to watch the fight live. Corey had jumped on the offer, volun-telling his bandmates that they'd all be there too, for moral support. Jace had been stoked. Sebastian had loved the idea of getting out for an afternoon. Glenn had said "okay, sure."
Which wasn't much resistance out of him. Usually he'd wall off those five hours for 'practice time' because he totally, totally needed it. He could play anything by ear. Corey was the one who needed the practice time.
(Corey was also the one least likely to set aside time for practicing. He hated playing melody without any accompaniment.)
So here they were, standing on the concrete pad of the station–which actually looked like a decent station now–and staring up the road at the vibrant, lively town before them. Corey's gaze moved from the shops to the hills and forest beyond, lingered, and then shifted to his right. Out that way was a flat horizon, broken by the shape of the coliseum and its imposing sandstone walls. A smile worked its way across his face. Calder had been over the moon.
"Alright boys, Calder told us to have seats by 11:50, unless we don't want seats," Seb began to reiterate. The lenses of his glasses had darkened completely upon being exposed to the sunlight. "So we have an hour to screw around."
He stopped there, as if expecting the others to fill in the blanks. He shrugged at them after a good few measures of awkward silence. "Any ideas?"
"Coffee," all three of them chorused like they'd rehearsed it or something.
Seb's shoulders drooped. "All three of you suck," he muttered.
Glenn was the first one to start chuckling. Under three weirded-out stares, he grabbed Seb's shoulder and started guiding his drummer towards the town. "Come on," he said, an out-of-place lilt of amusement tickling his tone. "You can get an iced tea or something."
Behind their backs, Corey and Jace celebrated and fist-bumped before taking off after their escaping vocalist and drummer.
***
"See, that wasn't so bad!" Corey laughed as they exited the shop. Seb grumbled into his to-go cup.
"You're all very inconsiderate of my caffeine avoidance."
"We shouldn't have gotten Corey any," Glenn agreed. "He was already a pot and a half deep at 10:15."
"I didn't drink any coffee this morning!" Corey squawked indignantly. "I just went to bed early last night."
"That explains it," Jace laughed. "Whenever you go to bed earlier than midnight you're up and bouncing off the walls by seven."
"Lucky us," Seb droned.
"I gotta have my energy up!" Corey insisted, waving around the hand that didn't carry a latte. "You're all gonna embarrass me later if you don't get a little more hyped."
"I'm saving it," Seb mumbled into his cup again.
"If you had coffee, you wouldn't need to."
"Don't you remember what happened last time I had coffee? I don't have any resistance to it."
"You were eight!"
"I was bouncing off the walls after five minutes and broke my ankle. I'm not risking it again. I don't care."
"Post-traumatic coffee syndrome," Glenn giggled. There was a fleeting moment where it was quiet, but the silence did not last. Jace hacked and coughed on his drink, and Corey cackled, doubling over but carefully holding his cup level. Sebastian tried and failed to tool his expression into an annoyed one.
"Canceled," he said, grinning. "I'm offended. Don't joke about my pain."
His friends laughed harder.
***
Corey dropped his empty cup in the last trash can before the road turned to dirt and tapered off into the grass. Jace stopped right there to chug the remainder of his drink and toss the cup. Glenn had half a coffee to go. Seb had finished his about twenty minutes back. Corey leapt into the air and did a poorly-executed cartwheel. He stumbled and landed on his butt.
"It's 11:18," Seb said, lowering his left wrist from level. Corey could see him squinting at the near horizon from behind the tinted lenses of his glasses. The others sidled up behind them and stared off towards the distance.
"I think you can actually see them walking," Jace said as Glenn took another sip of his coffee. "Just barely, but I can see the group."
Corey, still sitting on the ground, used his hand as a visor to squint into the distance. True enough, a hazy blob clung to the horizon, moving ever so slightly across the grass towards the sandstone coliseum that rose from the ground. There weren't any huge airborne shapes flying figure-eights above the crowd, so Corey assumed Calder had decided to walk.
"Not just the duelists," Seb pointed out. The others followed his line of sight and outstretched pointer finger to find a less-dense stream of Aegean townspeople moving in the direction of the ring. Both crowds were on the move, aiming to be in the coliseum by noon, just like Corey and his friends needed to be.
As if they shared a brain cell, Jace jerked to the realization that they needed to be moving. He muttered an "Oh, shit" and stepped around Corey before speedwalking off into the grass, veering off towards the line of townspeople. Seb was next to move, then Glenn, and then Corey finally made it to his feet, brushing the dust off his pants and jogging to keep up with his friends, hollering orders to wait that went ignored.
***
Fifteen minutes and an even hundred white rice later, the four of them found their entrance fares paid and their path stretching between the concession stands. Glenn dropped his empty coffee cup in the nearest trash can. He'd had to explain to the gate guard that it was empty and no, he wasn't trying to smuggle coffee into the coliseum. Corey had gotten a good laugh at the disgruntled look on his friend's face. Eventually, with Jace and Seb's giggly prodding, they'd gotten Glenn to chuckle and roll his eyes.
By now, there were multiple staircases to the upper levels. Corey grabbed the nearest one and sprinted up the steps. He paid mind to the following footsteps of his friends until he reached the threshold of the stands, and then he just... stopped.
Even though it was partly cloudy, he squinted and used his hand as a visor while his eyes adjusted. The seats were just over half full but the cacophony was still incredible. Soon enough, the only seats remaining would be the nosebleed ones in the very back, and then the noise would be torrential.
Glenn's voice made him jump.
"I've been to big sports arenas before, but holy shit," he said. "I dunno, but that's different somehow."
"Let's find seats," Seb broke in, grabbing Corey's arm and pulling him off while the zoned-out guitarist continued watching the scoreboard cycle through the Dojo's animated logo.
As they climbed the stairs, Corey's gaze fell to the dust in the ring and the walls that held the fights below the stands. Cut into the wall were a couple doors–just single ones that he suspected led backstage, painted to blend into the color of the stone. He got a little higher, and he was granted the ability to see over the lip of the rail, spotting the dugouts. They weren't much higher than five feet from the ground, weren't much larger than the whiteboard at the front of a high school classroom, but the colorful specks were still crowding the railing like there was room for all of them.
Corey squinted and kept squinting as Seb pulled him into a row of seats, about two thirds of the way to the nosebleeds. He shimmied sideways until there was an empty chair behind him, but he didn't sit down.
"Whatcha waiting for?" Jace asked. Seb was seated, but looking up, probably squinting at Corey's face with scrutiny from behind his sunglasses.
"I can see some of them hanging out in the dugouts," Corey said, pointing.
After a moment of squinting, Jace hummed and said, "Oh, yeah. I wonder if she's down there."
"Probably is by now," Seb muttered. Corey stole a look at Glenn. He was seated, but craning his neck to try following their sightlines. After a beat, his eyebrows quirked upward just a bit and he said,
"That's her sitting on the railing."
Everyone squinted harder, leaning in and shading their eyes from the sun.
"...How did you see that?" Jace asked after a few futile seconds.
"I didn't. I was just screwing with you guys."
Jace groaned and fell back into his seat. Glenn smirked, leaning back and nudging the bassist with an elbow.
"Wait, no," Seb broke in. "That is her."
That grabbed everyone's attention right away. Within three seconds all four of them were on their feet, faces squished together in an attempt to follow Seb's sightline as close as possible. He pointed to the visible dugout, where the dark hole was filled past the brim with colorful clothes and bodies. Perched on the rail, facing away from the ring so that her hair blew freely in the wind was Road To Nowhere's favorite draconic.
Corey retrieved his phone from his pocket and opened up the camera app. Carefully, he trained the lens on the dugout and zoomed in until the subject filled about half the frame. He snapped the picture and sat down, just as another group of adults his age squeezed past his group to grab the seats just beyond.
Corey hazarded another scan of the stands. They were now almost completely full. He turned back to the dugout.
After a moment, the fuzzy figure raised her head, turned towards the stands, and waved. Corey was the first to wave back, followed by the hesitant waves of Jace, Seb, and Glenn as Corey's motion recaptured their attention.
"What did you do?" Seb asked, dropping his arm and whirling on Corey.
"I sent her the picture."
"Of course you did," Seb sighed. Glenn and Jace laughed along.
mf, stop messing with them, Calder texted.
Nah, Corey texted back.
The airhorn blared, and as the crowd's unorganized cacophony harmonized into a single swell of cheering, Calder slipped off the rail and into the dark maw of the dugout.
***
"Did she tell you who she was fighting?" Jace yelled over Seb's head a few matches later. On the other side of the drummer, Corey shrugged.
"Just that she had it decided already. Could be anyone."
"This next one should be the first pre-set duel," Jace said, before recoiling at the fist Glenn pumped into the airspace beside him. Corey snorted.
"Might be her," he said.
"I bet she'll lose," Seb butted in. Jace and Corey stared at him.
"How much?" Corey asked, pulling out his wallet.
Seb shrugged. He reached past Jace and slapped Glenn's nearest arm. "Does Calder or her opponent win?" he asked.
Glenn visibly thought on it. He looked between his three bandmates, and then his gaze lingered on Corey's cash.
"Five wit for her opponent," he said, producing a bill of his own.
"Calder," Corey and Jace said at the same time, holding up their money. Jace had five singles.
"Opponent," Seb smirked, looking out at the scoreboard. It had changed, moved past the recap of the previous battle and moved forward to announcing the next fight. It was a pre-set duel. "Especially since she's fighting an early-era duelist."
Calder's image was presented alongside that of a man who held a glowing, holographic-like white rose.
"Shadowrose!" Hyun said over the intercom.
Uh-oh. With a single glance, Corey could tell that Jace was thinking the same thing.
Calder was about to take on a veteran.
"How does she manage this?" Jace muttered, staring at the two figures down on the ground. They stopped twenty feet apart, and Calder tossed her hair around; bounced on the balls of her feet. "Can I change my bet?"
"No," Corey and Seb said at the same time. "She's got this," the guitarist added after the drummer fell silent.
Jace did not look like he believed that.
Down in the ring, Shadowrose threw the first punch. He and his opponent had taken off running at each other, only for Calder to drop to her knees and Matrix-dodge while sliding, pulling out of the position to slash at SR's legs with her own. Only during the execution, she found that momentum had carried both of them too far, and her legs swiped at nothing. Time was of the essence, and no sooner than she'd returned to her feet, Shadowrose had turned around and swung again. She dodged by pure luck and her ever-evident lack-of-height-advantage. A back-handspring returned her to a safer distance, but even then, her opponent was quick to close the distance and swing again.
They played this game for a few measures, swinging, missing, dodging, recouping. One fluid motion strung together after the other, forming a phrase out of the music playing in the background. Calder wasn't always on defense, either. She got a good few swings in, but they weren't placed quite well enough to land.
They rested. And then Calder jumped on a pick-up action--pumping her fist forward with a congruent lunge that resulted in a very small portal forming and a timer forming below her name. As it began the countdown from forty-five seconds, a tiny missile of precious metal zoomed through the threshold and clung to Shadowrose's long brown braid.
As the dragon clawed its way up onto the duelist's head, Corey stole a glance to the side and was rewarded with the sight of Glenn cringing, a hand running through his own short hair.
And then the crowd roared with delight. Corey snapped his attention back to the score below and was greeted by the sight of Calder recouping from a drop-kick, Shadowrose rolling hard on his back, and a tiny little golden stunt plane flying circles around them both.
"I missed it!" Corey whined over the noise.
"Sucks to suck!" Seb jeered.
Corey almost missed SR hurling out a glowing white lasso and snagging the rampant golden missile out of the air. Almost. He didn't miss how Gold got slammed into the dirt, how Calder yelled and careened into Shadowrose, knocking him off balance, or how SR recouped and lashed out at Calder's leg with the whip, grabbing and yanking one leg out from under her. She toppled. The whip retreated.
It struck again when Calder was halfway to her feet. She toppled again. Even from this distance, Corey could see when she'd made the executive decision to abandon all forms of normal movement. So, like any normal train of thought, she resorted immediately to breakdancing. Shadowrose's lasso-whip cracked three more times, but never landed. After the last crack, Calder pulled into a final handstand and--while facing her opponent--allowed herself to tip backwards and disappear into the swirling cotton blue maw that had opened up right behind her.
From behind the guys, the air roared. Before Glenn could turn around, a big golden claw clamped down on his head and departed with a passer-by's hair ruffle. Glenn all but shrieked and clamped his hands down on his head, missing how Calder turned around to wave a peace sign at her friends with her tongue sticking out and mischief overflowing from her olympic blue eyes. Predictably, the spectators adjacent to the incident went a little wild.
Corey pumped a fist into the air and cheered louder than everyone around as Calder resumed her assault, this time from the air. Like one fluid machine, Calder and her steed coated the ground in patches of orange-hot fire as SR darted around, dodging the attacks. At some point, the man on the ground had darted directly below the dragon and removed himself from its line of sight. The lasso came out, snared one of Gold's hind legs, and boy could that dragon scream.
He shot straight up, with both Shadowrose and Calder clinging for dear life as the rampant dragon tried to remove the ethereal rope from where it was wrapped fast around his ankle.
With great difficulty, Calder managed to crawl up her dragon's neck to his head, where she reached past his vertical frill and yanked sideways on his horns. Like steering a motorcycle with half a mind of its own, Calder returned Gold's trajectory to one circling the inside of the ring at a distance where Shadowrose could let go and not die or break anything when he hit the ground.
Shadowrose did just that, with Calder following just after. They both rolled to break their falls, and Shadowrose allowed Calder enough pause to yell a size-down order at today's delinquent reptile before the two duelists wrapped themselves up in a fistlock.
From three seats over on Corey's left, Glenn shrieked and shoved the sized-down dragon from where it had perched on his head. Seb and Jace burst out laughing, while Corey stooped down to invite the lil guy into his arms until Calder was done downstairs. He popped back up in time to watch Calder launch herself back at her opponent.
Her momentum was wasted, though. Shadowrose threw his right hand forward, palm open, and something invisible from Corey's perspective sent Calder flying back, with the only evidence of her trail being a light plume of dust disturbed by the one foot she'd kept skidding across the ground. She landed with her back flattened against the wall of the coliseum, waited two beats to shake off the daze, and then launched back into action. Or, well... as quickly as she could. Her first few steps were uneven and the leap she took at SR should have been closer to flying than it was, but she pressed on, seemingly ignoring her condition. She swung three punches and missed all of them, right before landing a heavy roundhouse kick to Shadowrose's side.
And then the thing blasted her back again, and SR held his position long enough for the audience to see the culprit: a gleaming white rose made out of pure magic, just like the one on his banner. Calder didn't keep her footing this time, and she didn't fly far enough to hit another wall. She just lost her balance, fell to her back, and kept sliding for another half dozen feet after her final foot left the ground.
She propped herself up on her elbows just as her opponent arrived and offered her a little help to get up. When she was back on her feet, he left her with the flower.
She grabbed his wrist and thrust it into the air, just like how she said her opponent had done for her last week. The crowd went wild. Gold whimpered or something in Corey's arms. Glenn paused his applause long enough to give that little dragon the bird.
"Looks like we're owed some petty cash," Seb yelled over the noise.
Corey and Jace shared a guilty look, and then sent their gaze anywhere but to their friends.
***
"Thank you kindly," Calder said as Corey returned ownership of Gold to the dragon's official foster mom.
"No problem," Corey said.
"One problem," Glenn corrected, standing on the far reaches of the group. "What's with him and my hair?"
Snickers and snorts broke out across the group. Calder rolled her eyes and tossed her dragon through a portal. "I dunno, maybe your shampoo just smells really good. Whatever it is, it's neither my fault or my problem. I just can't believe you guys bet on the outcome of the fight."
"You can't?" Jace asked, pulling a face. Since he owed both Glenn and Seb five white rice apiece, his pocket was ten wit lighter, just like Corey's.
Calder rolled her eyes again and shoved her hands in her trousers pockets. "I guess I was just holding out hope that you guys weren't a buncha low-life assholes who'd stoop to betting against their friend. Disappointing."
"Experience wins out," Glenn contradicted. "That's why I'm so much better at improvisation than Corey." Corey sputtered in offense. Everyone else chuckled.
"So tell me, Calder. What was it like having a reservation to fight against one of the greatest duelists of the early era?" Jace asked.
"It was great!" she said. "He asked for the challenge last week, right after I got back to the dugout from kicking Oblisk's ass--"
"Oblisk?"
"Yeah, cool dude. Early 20's, got some weird magicy shit and a custom-built Savanese weapon. We went out for drinks Saturday night and taught each other some sparring stuff Sunday. Cool dude. Anyway, Shadowrose kinda proposed last week and how could I have passed up such a great challenge?"
"You lost," Seb pointed out.
"Aren't you just a little ray of sunshine," she retorted. "It doesn't matter if I won or lost. I don't have access to the ranking board until I've fought at least four people."
"Two down, two to go," Corey hummed.
"Aren't you a little worried, though? About getting recognized on camera?" Seb broke in again.
"You mean by Galena?" She watched Seb nod, and bit the inside of her lip before responding. "No, I don't think so. The Dojo doesn't broadcast to upper Almarice, far as I know. And the round table hasn't come crashing down on me yet. I think they're still scared after the whole plane crash incident."
"Scared of Nemesis, you mean," Glenn contributed.
"Yeah."
"They could totally be scared of you, too. You pack a wallop."
She smirked and slammed one fist into the other open palm. "I guess so," she said, sounding not-humble-at-all.
"Seriously, though," Corey insisted. "You were dangerously close to pulling off a synchronized duel there. Some practice with a fun playlist and a good set of speakers and you'd be thinking about your moves in four-four time instead of the openings your opponent gives you."
Her hands settled back on her hips and she quirked an eyebrow at him. "I guess." She sounded a lot less sure of herself that time. "That's kinda dangerous though. Sync dueling is so specialized and it can screw you over if you can't turn your training off. Shuriken once lost a duel because he got his music turned off and he couldn't pull it together to fight."
Nobody had a good comeback to that. Jace settled with "Damn."
"Learn to turn your training off, then. You can teach yourself that. You taught yourself everything else," Corey pointed out after a beat.
Calder rolled her eyes and waved him off. "Whatever keeps me from losing to Foxtail," she grumbled. "So far, nothing's broke."
"Don't bother fixing it," Seb agreed.
"How long are you guys staying in town?" she asked next.
"Not much longer," Glenn told her. "I'm hungry, and I don't want to pay for lunch."
"Then you better get moving. Tram departs halfway through the hour here and it's 2:15. You'll make it if you just walk normally."
"Bold of you to assume we can manage that," Seb snarked with half-lidded eyes as Corey took off sprinting. He yelled something like a goodbye as he went, and Calder laughed as she waved. The other guys picked up the pace a little bit to keep up with their escaping guitarist.
They still almost missed the tram.