Chương 94: Chapter 115: Suthie Vanderbolt

When I'm on the camogie pitch, the only thing I use my powers for are to channel steel for strength and durability, and to replace broken hurleys without running to the sidelines. The rules are pretty restrictive about what I am and am not allowed to do on the field.

No flying, no transformations, no using my powers directly on my opponents or the field or the sliotar or my opponents' equipment or the goals, and although it's not explicitly stated I'm assuming by implication that the air on the field is also off-limits. It's probably considered part of the field. I'm not bringing it up though. I'm saving that trick. If I bring it up ahead of time, people have a chance to lodge complaints.

My plan is to wait for a championship game and then use that trick and try to pull the old "there's no rule that says a dog can't play basketball" defense. My favorite kind of loophole is "specific situation that nobody thought would actually come up". I abuse that angle over and over. So my on-field performance is mostly about unstopping endurance, indestructible resilience, and explosive strength. Because I'm boosting strength without adding weight, bulk or inertia, I've got damn good speed as well.

And I'm getting a reputation for tackling, shoulder-charging, clashing and crossing. Most players know that to stand in my way is to be run over. But not always. I size up our opponents. They're sizing me up as well. But I'm better at it because I've got a status prompt. [The Rest of Stutin Institute Camogie Team: Strength 8, Damage 3] [Team Captain Suthie Vanderbolt: Strength 12, Damage 10] It's pretty apparent. Fourteen of the other hurlers look like tough, athletic, well-trained young women.

The team captain looks like The Rock with a rack. Literally head and shoulders taller than the rest of her team. Our team's enforcers look like Ronda Rousey, we are not the same. So far, Stutin has been devastating competition in the league week after week because their team captain is a monster. And she's not even on their varsity squad! Why isn't she on varsity? I play junior, dammit, I'm not supposed to be running up against monsters that are actually going to challenge me!

This is supposed to be an event that I dominate easily without even trying!

"Thoughts?" the coach said, staring them all down. She walked heavily, no question that she'd startle me.

"None that I like," I said.

"Two strategies. The first, direct matchup. I spend two periods just brawling with her. I won't win but I won't get hurt. Then our team against their team and.. that would lean against us but not by too much. A graceful loss. Or, we put me in the goal and throw the rest of the team up to scoring. She won't do enough damage to empty our reserve seats, and I can keep them from taking any goals. It's brutal, but we'd score three points to every one of theirs."

The coach looked at the sidelines, the healers ready to deal with injuries as they happened. She looked back at me.

"Sorry Killer. You're in for a grudge match. Point defense, keep her off our players."

"Thanks coach," I said, and heaved a sigh. Even if there's healers, pain is real. I don't want my teammates hurting, especially if it's because we made a decision to let them get hurt. I was lined up in the forward position, near the Stutin goal, so I was well out of the earshot for the usual meeting of team captains at the centerline. Suthie, their team captain, and our captain were going through the usual pre-game conduct briefing with the referee. I was not listening, we all knew the rules.

I was psyching myself up. I needed to spend an hour bashing head-to-head against someone just plain stronger, tougher, and better than me. And I'm not allowed to use any tricks. This does fly right in the face of my advice from my sorcery teacher who said that I should always make sure I've got more tricks than anyone is prepared for. But we'll be disqualified if I used my magic on anyone or anything except myself, and I'm not allowed to transform, so all I've got is channeling.

All that does is let me use my sorcery Strength in hand-to-hand, so I can use my whole 9 Strength against Suthie's 12... better than my natural 4. I'd get bulldozed if I wasn't bolstering with magic. Suthie is not a mana warrior or a mage, she's just very strong, very tough, and very well-trained. She stood at the midline and stared me down. She was nodding to the referee's words, and she was ready for the drop, but it was apparent she had eyes for nobody but me. The Monster versus the Killer.

She and I both knew our role here. Her bright purple hair was sideshaved and pulled back into braids that were clipped down to keep them out of her way. The trapezius muscles in her neck were bigger than my thigh, the deltoid cap of her shoulder larger than my head. She had pretty yellow eyes and a well-shaped face that was marred by a deep, hateful sneer.

Knuckles stood out white and rigid, wrapped around her custom-built hurley, which was thirty-eight inches at least, with a metal reinforcing spine that had the bare minimum amount of protective taping. The whistle blew, the referee threw the sliotar out. Suthie went after it with the toe of her hurley, lobbing it sideways to a teammate before turning to meet my charge. I had launched so hard that two divots of turf were kicked into the air, floating away behind me as I sprinted all-out.

I used curved air to push me faster, boosting my speed, and I had my steel-strength pushed all the way up. She turned to take me head-on, her feet square to me. She leaned in, dug her shoes in to solidify her stance. Her right hand was baton-twirling the hurley, spinning it until it looked like a blurred beige disk. I lowered a shoulder to crash into her- and instead I floated serenely through the air, pivoting slowly on my axis.

I could see the sky, the ground, the sky, the ground, and then my helmet's face-shield plowed through four feet of turf. I crashed face-first into the ground and skidded like that, kicking dirt and grass up to either side as I dug a trench the hard way. When I ran out of momentum the rest of my body hit the ground with a thud.

The healer and the stretcher team were on their way to retrieve me and see if these injuries were salvageable, but I was already kipping back up to my feet, ash wood in hand and a fierce grin on my face. Suthie had turned her back to me, certain that she had taken me out of play. Her senses did not wrap around in all directions like mine did, so she was still unaware when I caught up to her. She was trotting with her teammates towards our goal, following the passing pattern towards scoring position.

"MOVE!" I bellowed and nailed her from behind. I got a shoulder low and hoisted her from the hip, tossing her up into the air and somersaulting. We were fifteen seconds into this game and we had both knocked each other airborne. It's about equality. I sprinted past, laughing, and I was bearing down on the bearer, who was batting the sliotar along the ground looking for a pass. And then something slid down the back of my neck, and I was yanked off my feet.

The collar of my jersey tunic yanked hard against my throat and I was up, floating again, and thudded to the ground an instant before Suthie did. She had slid her grip down to the bas (pronounced "boss"), and used the hooked top of the handle to latch my jersey collar and yank me back. She was bigger than me, stronger and faster, and she had better hurley-handling skills. She was an expert in a weapon that I just treated as a club for hitting sliotars and anything between me and a sliotar.

We both rolled to our feet, but brawling it out right here would be a yellow-card, we needed at least a facade of playing the game. We were neck and neck racing down the field, I could hear her growling and gasping. I focused on my breathing, and waited for her to make her move. She dropped a shoulder to check me away, and I took a matching step to stay out of her reach. She stumbled as her charge hit empty air, and when she missed a step I gained a step, throwing myself against the gameplay.

I dropped low and skidded, a slide-tackle but my shoe caught the sliotar and flicked it over to the Academy goalie, who made a neat hand-catch, then a small toss and batted the sliotar over to the midline. I started to roll up to my feet but a shoe came down on my forearm, pinning me.

"What are you doing," Suthie growled, glaring down at me.

"I'm just glad to be playing a game with someone who's not scared of me yet," I said, smiling up at her. I still had grass stuck in my faceshield. Flat on my back like this I'm sure I looked hilariously harmless, and I gave her my biggest, beamingest, brightest smile. She untrod my arm and I stood up, and we ran back into the action side by side. Again and again she roughed me, but the steel did not just boost my Strength, it also defended against harm.

I could not beat her, every time she and I skirmished I came out the loser. But she was barely able to scuff me. I was taking hits that would floor a horse and bouncing back with a smile. My resilience was annoying her. One of my favorite tropes is "Why won't you die?!", and I was living that scene right now. Obviously it had been a long time since someone she threw airborne got up again- if I was not who I am, that first collision with her would probably have broken my neck instead of tearing up turf.

Again and again she threw me down, swept me up, battered me, elbowed me, speared me with her helmet, or rammed me with her knees. And I refused to even bruise. Refused to slow down. And refused to stop fighting. I can't say I gave as good as I got. I really did not. But I did give some. We bore in on a knot of Academy players and Suthie went high to bring her elbows, her weight, and that massive overbuilt hurley of hers down to crush my teammates.

I juked in from the side and my helmet caught her in the ribs under her raised arm, tipping her off balance. I followed through, shoulder, elbow, handle and heave, flinging her to the side to somersault once and crash to the ground. She panthered back to all fours and launched herself, bunched muscles powering her through the air, hurley dragging air behind her. I dodged hard to the side, sending up tufts of grass as I came low, sliding on my knees and back up to a low-ready, but she had feinted me, outfoxed me.

I expected her to be ten feet further and off-balance, but she was coming in fast with her baton-twirl spinning. I tried to read the move, but this twirl could become any of a dozen different grips in an instant, and I could only try to guess where the attack would come from. Blocking was nothing to me, I was trying to find my opening, and I lunged in with a swing instead of trying to cross her attack.

She firmed her grip, and caught my blow with the metal-spined back of her bas, then a double-hand shove to surge me back off my balance. She whipped in four swings in rapid succession, and I weathered them with steel and tried to figure out- Ah. I took my biggest, stupidest, clumsiest swing, straight overhead. A slow, amateurish power move, hard as hell to dodge but easy as fuck to block. She took a wide two-hand grip and crossed my swing, and I followed all the way through. Her hurley and mine both shattered.

Splinters rained down, and a rivet bounced off my kneecap from where the reinforcing plate sprang loose from the wooden grips. She stared at the two ruined lumps of seasoned ash in her hands, just as the referee blew his whistle to yellow-card us both. Neither of us had made any illusions about trying for the play, the interception, or the goal- after I chucked her over we were just fighting. And that's a card for both of us. No free puck, play resumes with possession.

But that was a referee timeout, and the Stutin manager came trotting out with a fresh new hurley for Suthie. The manager gathered up the bits of the ruined hurley and ran back to her side of the off-sides. I curved oak to melt my paddle back together, mending the damage. We faced off, and my grin was fierce. [Team Captain Suthie Vanderbolt: Strength 10, Damage 8] Without her stupidly-huge, lead-weighted, steel-spined custom-made hurley, she dropped two points of challenge and damage.

She took a few swings with the new hurley, it was lighter and balanced differently, it fit her hand differently and had a different angle to the toe and heel. And, four inches shorter, a major adjustment to her reflexes. She dropped to barely more Strength as me, with my channeling powers, and could do no damage to me. And now that the aura of invincibility was off, I could get a better look at her. She was punished. She had scratches down her arms and legs, bruises that were rising red and sunsetting purple.

A swollen knee, favoring one arm. Knuckles split open and dribbling blood. My steel armored me from her muscle, but her muscle was no defense against the repeated blows from my body, my hurley, and the sod-laden field. For the first time I realized that she was getting beat to shit out here, and was just gutting it out.

My quick calculations indicated I'd probably walloped her for four or five points of damage already, not far from the beating that Egnul had given me that had both Vancy and Licard yelling at me to take care of myself. That was the kind of beating that Suthie was taking off of me. I felt a lot less proud of my "why won't you die" antics. I was winning, but as usual it wasn't equal and it wasn't fair. I was not defeating her and her team because I'm better, it's just that as usual I'm cheating.

My skin is the equivalent of plate armor, I'm strong enough to carry a Frigidaire up two flights of stairs without help, I'm boosting my sprinting speed with controlled flight, and now I've destroyed her custom-built hurley so she has to make do with a standard model. And if I stopped cheating and just went after her with my own muscle and skill, she would straight up wreck my shit. Contact sports are no place for a crisis of conscience.

I raised a hand towards the referee, who was about to blow his whistle, and other players mimicked the move to get his attention, and he jogged over.

"Problem?" he said, annoyed. He already had a card on both of us, and this time-out was running long. He glanced at the stands. We did not have many spectators, because we never do, but the few we had did not look particularly restive. Nobody yelling for his head, in any case. He had a well-lined face and an underbite, but he was taking this game as seriously as any of us were and that made him one of the best referees we've had all season.

And when he asked me if there was a problem, it felt like he was invested in there not being a problem. Unfortunately there was a problem.

"Blood," I said, indicating Suthie's knuckles. He glanced.

"So it is. You. Get yourself healed and washed, and back right here." Camogie's a rough game. But "no blood on the pitch" is a hard rule that everyone respects. Even if all you do is wrap it in a gauze, we will not see blood on the players. The referee stood by while she moved to her offsides, favoring one leg and one arm.

"Rough game today," he commented blandly.

"We're still five from halftime," I said. I glanced at the scoreboard; Academy is down by seven points. I winced. That's not a very close game, my team is losing the match while I'm concentrating on Suthie. Even without their captain, their team is better than ours. Still, if I wasn't keeping her occupied, that score would be slanted a lot harder.

"I should probably just red-card both you hooligans and sit you out," he said idly." Maybe after that, we could have a camogie match here on this battlefield." This dude was getting way too shady for this shit. Suthie and I were both throwing hard hits- the blows we were trading would kill most hardened soldiers. But that's the thing: we're both throwing big swings. But I'm the one more capable of weathering that. So now he's treating me like I'm the bad guy just because I'm not as badly hurt.

And if I'm going to be on the right side of his personal bully/victim scenario, I would have to tone down the magic that was keeping me from getting hurt- only by suffering could I prove I'm not the bad guy. Well, tough. I promised people I wouldn't let myself get hurt just to prove a point any more.

"You know that first hit she laid on me would've killed anyone else," I said, just making conversation with the referee still.

"I know," he said.

"That's why nobody but you was charging straight at her, right?" Well, okay, he's got me there. Suthie ran back, this time fully restored. Not just the blood, the healer had gotten the bruises, abrasions, wrenched joints and maybe a couple of small breaks. She was fresh and ready to go, five minutes before the half-time break. She had recovered her breath. But so had I. She had time to think about her strategy. And so did I. With the sliotar in place, he whistled the game back on, and we all leaped into action.

Some of us more than others. Now, from my perspective they all stood still and let me run between them, scoop the sliotar with my bas and carry it on the flat of the paddle all the way to scoring position. I bounced the sliotar up into the air, stepped in behind it, and struck it hard with my cupped hand, sending it flying to the corner of the goal net. That's my perspective. From their perspective WHOOOSH and I was standing near the net, looking proud of myself.

The net twitched, and the sliotar tumbled to the ground inside the Stutin goal. I was panting for breath, but everyone else looked even more stunned. The referee blew his whistle before it fell out of his open-hanging mouth. Huffing for air, I jogged back to my position while the Stutin goalie noticed that a sliotar had flown right past her. The referee signaled a goal, but he looked very confused how that happened. The scoreboard operator, hesitantly, flipped the tablet so that my team was only four points behind.

My coach threw her clipboard to the ground, yelling something about 'nobody tells me anything around here'. The rest of the players jogged in to take positions as the goalie tossed back in, and several of them were giving me the strangest looks. You demonstrate incredible super-speed just once and everyone has to get all weird about it. I tried to explain to them.

"There's a reason I don't use that very often," I said, still panting. The fact that I can't breathe the treacle-thick air while I am moving lightning fast is a real limitation. But, camogie was definitely a good place to use it- carrying a sliotar on the flat side of the hurley is legal. The handling rules are very specific, but this move, called "soloing", is an important skill, and difficult. But the treacle-thick air that was so hard to breathe at superspeed?

It gives great traction and resistance for holding a sliotar onto the edge of a hurley. The faster I was moving, the easier the balance gets! Now if only I could breathe. I curved air to thin it in front of me, carved myself a vacuum tunnel to run inside of so that it doesn't feel like I'm wading through oatmeal. But the air is either too thick or too thin, and either way I can't breathe while I'm channeling lightning.

"It really is exhausting," i repeated, while the goalie hand-passed the sliotar to her teammate. WHOOOOSH I stood right next to the goalie with my hands planted on my knees, panting for breath.

"Oh- damn- I- don't- think- I've- got- another- of- those- in- me!" It didn't matter. We were up two points at halftime.