Celestia walked into the arena to see Alex nailing Jill to the ceiling with successive missile blasts until she ran out of missiles. Jill angrily threw her gun down at Alex as she began falling. Alex held up her cannon-arm to block the impact. The arena's systems decided that the hit was strong enough to knock Alex back on her armored butt despite the successful block. Jill landed flat face-down on the ground, letting out an exasperated scream. Alex laughed and stood up.
Jill protested as she began raising herself off the ground. "That was not fair!"
Mick disagreed. "That was completely fair, Jill."
Alex was entirely happy with the outcome and was also willing to dispense some advice. "You fight enough and you learn tricks like that."
Jill stood up and noticed Celestia. "Hey, Tia. Did you come to watch?"
Celestia thought another matter took priority over small talk. "You do know that the fight is not over?"
Jill did not think that was the case. "What do you mean, it's not over? I got clobbered and I lost my gun."
Celestia disagreed. "It looked to me like you threw it."
"Yeah, I ... I gave up." Jill admitted that she lost control of herself. She walked over to retrieve her weapon.
Mick called out. "Alex, stand down. The match is over."
Jill looked up to see Alex aiming at her. "Were you going to shoot me?"
"Yes," Alex confirmed. "After you armed yourself."
Mick joked. "You see? Alex can be a nice person."
Celestia continued the joke and added a challenge. "Oh yes, quite chivalrous. Would such a chivalrous person dare deny a challenger?" She drew her sword dramatically.
Alex smiled inside her helmet. "Let's go."
Mick gave Celestia a joking warning. "Tia, don't blow up the arena this time."
Celestia smiled gently. "I will try not to."
Mick announced the start of the match. "Okay you two, have it out whenever you're ready."
Alex loaded her missiles as Celestia silently rose into the air. Jill stood out of the way to watch.
Blue sparks appeared in several places on the ground around Alex. She stepped carefully to be sure that she was not standing near any of them. Bolts of lightning soon erupted from the ground at these locations.
Alex fired missiles at the floating Celestia who dodged left, right, down, and up. Celestia held out her free hand and cast a spell around the next missile that encased it in ice. The missile stopped moving forward and fell to the ground, exploding when it hit. With one missile left, Alex loaded a second missile and then began running, knowing that she would not have the time to reload all of them. Lighting burst forth from where she had been.
While on the run, Alex removed the semicircular orange module from the underside of her gun and opened her left hip chamber. She fired a missile at Celestia as a distraction to provide enough time to place the orange module in her hip chamber and pull out the blue module. She moved to dodge a ball of lightning that Celestia had thrown her way, then stepped from side to side to dodge icicles falling diagonally from small clouds of mist that had not been there a moment earlier.
Alex attached the blue module to her arm cannon and turned to attack, rapidly firing blue beams of energy that seemed to spawn from one of nine positions in an invisible grid in front of her arm cannon. Celestia stopped hovering and fell to the ground where she could move more quickly, taking a hit along the way. She gestured in Alex's direction and a small lightning bolt struck Alex directly.
Alex recovered from the lightning strike and leaped into the air, throwing bombs in Celestia's direction while reloading two more missiles into her arm cannon. Celestia hovered again to avoid being hit by the bombs, and held a palm out toward Alex. Small puffs of mist appeared around the bounty hunter as she landed. Not stopping to attack, Alex leaped forward past the icicles that fell behind her. She aimed forward, only to see another puff of mist. An icicle hit her face on, knocking her on her back.
From the ground, Alex did not hesitate to retaliate, firing her rapid-fire cannon. Celestia took several hits and tried to block some with her sword. Alex added a missile. Celestia cast her ice-mist spell, forming an icicle just in time to block the missile, and retaliated with lightning.
Seeing the blue sparks forming around her, Alex rolled to the side and got to her feet. Celestia took advantage of this brief distraction to press the attack, casting ice and lightning spells one after another. Alex ran, dived, and somersaulted past them before they could hit, then turned to fire upon Celestia who was running directly towards her.
Celestia took hits from five blue beams without flinching and thrust her sword at Alex. The strike knocked Alex backwards, but Alex regained her aim and fired a missile at Celestia before she hit the ground. The missile struck Celestia's sword and exploded, knocking the sword out of her hand and spinning her sideways. Celestia completed the spin and ran toward Alex to fight her barehanded. Alex stood up and fired at Celestia who jumped over the blue beams with a magically boosted leap and formed a cloud of mist between her two hands. Alex launched her last missile as Celestia opened her hands forward and launched a larger icicle down at Alex. The missile struck the icicle and exploded, sending small shards of ice to the sides and knocking both fighters back a small distance.
Celestia landed, leaped forward, and rushed toward Alex at full speed. She knocked Alex's arm cannon to the side with her left hand and landed a series of strikes on Alex's armor with her bare hands. As Mick had said, this was something that could only be done within the modified physics of the arena. Alex opened her left hip chamber, withdrew some bombs, and planted them on Celestia's rear end. The explosion knocked Celestia into Alex, sending them both tumbling.
Alex raised herself to one knee, showing some fatigue for the first time that Jill had seen, and began reloading her missiles. Mist formed around her. She quickly stood up, but not quickly enough. There was a flash of white, then more and more mist.
Celestia, looking quite tired herself, stood up, removed her helmet, and wiped her brow. Jill looked at her, and then looked at Alex Smith encased in a block of ice from the waist down. Alex was not happy about losing in this manner. "I still say this is cheating."
Mick thought differently. "I say this is a win for Tia unless you want to keep fighting."
Celestia replaced her helmet and had good words for Alex. "That was well fought, as always." She walked away to retrieve her sword.
"Thanks," Alex grudgingly said. The ice block began to disappear as the effect of the magic wore off.
Jill walked up to Alex to ask about her fighting technique. "I have a question, um, Alex. Why did you only use missiles at the beginning of the fight?"
Alex kicked her way out of the fading ice block and stepped down. Once her feet were on the ground, she explained. "She absorbs my shots. It makes her magic more powerful."
Jill had not expected Alex to give her the courtesy of an answer, and she appreciated it. "Thank you. That might be good to know."
Alex gave Jill a bit of wisdom. "It is good to know your enemies before you fight them. It also helps if they do not know you."
Jill thought she recognized that quote. "Ah. Is that Sun Tsu?"
"Sun what?" Alex asked, not really caring about the answer.
Jill explained. "Oh, he was a famous Chinese general. You might not know what Chinese means."
"Nope."
Mick called out to everyone. "It looks like you're done fighting for now. Let's say we call that a morning and break for lunch?"
Scene: Mick's base, first floor
Alex walked ahead and stepped up the stairs to use the showers. Mick headed into the kitchen. He call back to Jill and Celestia. "Do you want something to eat or do you want to clean up first?"
Jill spoke. "I think I'll clean up first."
Mick nodded. "Oh, and you also had breakfast a few hours after the rest of us, so you're probably not that hungry."
Jill stopped and turned to Celestia. Now that Alex was out of earshot, she gushed about Celestia's victory. "I still can't believe you beat her!"
"I have had practice," Celestia said matter-of-factly.
"Do you usually win against her?" Jill asked.
Celestia remembered her own difficulties. "Alex would get the best of me at first, but after some time I began to learn her style of fighting. I usually win our matches now, but not always."
Scene: Mick's base, second floor
One of the two showers across the hall was running as Alex occupied it.
Jill took off her softsuit and decided that she would use the other shower. Her clothes underneath were soaked with sweat. She gathered some of her new clothes from the dresser and took them into the open restroom. She was looking forward to having showers again.
Jill smiled as she rolled back the curtain and smiled when she saw the showerhead. A few days ago, she did not think she would ever be able to take a warm shower again. She turned it on, placed a hand under the falling water, and began to cry with joy.
Scene: Mick's base, first floor, lounge
Freshly clean from a long shower, Jill took the stairs down to the first floor and entered the lounge. Mick was doing something in the kitchen. Celestia sat on one of the collapsing spheres reading something on a holographic display.
Sitting in the middle of the couch holding a cup of beer was a tall woman with a muscular build and shortly cut blonde hair, wearing white shorts and a sports bra. Jill looked at the unfamiliar person and addressed her. "Umm, are you... Alex Smith?"
"What gave it away?" Alex asked sarcastically.
Jill smiled defensively. "The limited number of options?"
"Smart girl." Alex lifted her cup to her lips, keeping her eyes on Jill.
Celestia lowered her reader to talk to Jill. "We have already eaten. Mick is preparing your meal."
"Umm... I don't get to decide what to eat?"
Amused by the situation, Celestia said "Apparently not."
Overhearing the conversation, Mick called out to Jill from the kitchen. "Heeey, Jill! How would you like spaghetti and meatballs? 'Cause that's what you'll be having."
Jill smiled enthusiastically. "I would love spaghetti and meatballs!"
Mick walked out of the kitchen with a large plate of spaghetti and meatballs covered in a clumpy green sauce whose appearance offended Jill's appetite. Jill couldn't help but question it. "Is the sauce supposed to be green like that?"
"The green sauce is good. You'll like it." Mick placed the plate on the end of the table. "You'll probably want to eat this at the table so you don't spill it." He turned to Alex. "That means you have to move to make room for her unless you want her to sit on your lap."
Jill offered to sit on the floor. "I can sit on my knees."
Mick glanced at Jill. "No." He turned to Alex. "You. Move." Alex shifted over to the side of the couch. "Thanks." He turned back to Jill. "You should thank her. Oh, let me get out of your way." Mick stepped aside to let Jill sit on the couch.
Jill and Alex eyed each other as Jill began to cautiously sat down next to her opponent. Jill turned to Alex to break the tension. "Um, thank you."
"Not a problem." Alex leaned back and took another sip of her beer.
Jill continued to try to befriend Alex. "You are very good at what you do, by the way."
Alex shrugged. "People who aren't good at it aren't around to talk about it."
Feeling intimidated, Jill broke off the conversation. "I'll try not to bother you." She turned her attention to the spaghetti and the green mess on top of it. Jill curled a few strands of spaghetti around her plastic fork and lifted it to her mouth, hoping this wasn't a prank. It tasted better than she expected. "This is good! It doesn't taste like tomato, though."
Mick explained. "It's based on the flavor of some different plant whose name I don't remember. You can get something like the old tomato sauce out of the 'truder but a lot of people find it too acidy. The meatballs are hydrated. They're nice and juicy."
Jill cut into a meatball with her fork and tasted it. "Mmm! They are good." She tried to identify the origin of the meat. "Is that lamb or...?"
Mick shrugged. "It's vat grown so it's whatever it is. I don't think that protein mix was ever an animal to begin with." Noticing how bad that explanation sounded, he changed the subject. "Hey, would you like something to drink?"
Jill asked for what she was familiar with. "Could I have another cup of tea?"
Mick stood up and walked to the kitchen. "I could do that."
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