Chương 31: R&R Ch. 31 — Sparring Practice

Nicholas slid to the side before throwing a punch at his opponent's midsection. It wouldn't be enough, but it was only step one of his plan. He slipped around to the other side as his opponent whirled on him. Before Nicholas could react, something hooked around his ankle and pulled. And he was on the ground again, his opponent standing above him, foot on his chest. At least she hadn't grappled him this time. It just made him uncomfortable. Not the losing, just the grappling. His space was his, and yeah.

"You're doing better," Jasmine said as she helped him to his feet.

"Just not enough." Nicholas said, accepting her help.

"You've never done this kind of thing before and I'm literally in a different weight class to you, no need to worry," Jasmine reminded him. Today was technically one of their days off while Rend was off doing who knows what to prepare for the wave. But neither of them had been content just doing nothing all day, so here they were doing hand to hand combat training. Which meant Nicholas had been getting his ass kicked for the last hour.

"You really don't have any words that would help you?" Jasmine asked, deciding to take a break for both of their benefits, even if they were being productive on their day off, they could still take it easy in some ways.

"Win the fight, yeah, learn? Not really." Nicholas admitted.

"Maximize would let me do way better, maybe even beat you, but it wouldn't let me learn any faster, I don't think. Same thing if I went with something like grace, strength, or anything along those lines."

"A word to learn with would probably be good to get," Jasmine mused.

"Yeah, probably."" Recover" At least getting punched over and over again was giving him a ton of practice on his healing word. And it was recovering the stamina of both of them so they could keep practicing. It wasn't without a price though. Recover didn't undo the injuries, just accelerated the body's natural recovery to near instant. So it actually let him keep the muscle growth he would gain from this exercise. But it meant if someone couldn't naturally recover from the injury, he wouldn't be able to heal them.

It weighed on him, but a price had to be paid, and something he could use on himself to recover his energy and focus was worth it. Jasmine's healer armor could do the impossible, so as long as they worked together it would be alright.

"Do you want to switch to power practice? We can do playroom versus any of my armors?" Jasmine asked, bouncing on the balls of her feet. That was probably true. Playroom was currently the only card Nicholas had to play that let him fight on an even playing field for an extended period. Though he couldn't just rely on it.

"Yeah, let's switch." Nicholas said, moving over to help Jasmine with her armor. To his surprise, she ended up choosing the emerald armor and hammer she had made first that let her manipulate gravity and force.

"I thought you were going to use the sword build," Nicholas said honestly.

"I love the swords; it's the coolest thing ever to be using a tornado of flying swords and fighting bad guys. But it's not my favorite to use and I need practice with all of them," Jasmine said as she began the process of putting on her armor with Nicholas's help. For the umpteenth time, he wondered why his mentor had chosen them. He could wield the power of language and manipulate reality, even if only temporarily for the most part. He had found that words that changed things and left them changed.

It had been an idle experiment to turn lead into gold, but the gold remained even days later. Which explained why it had taken so much power. Jasmine could have the power for any situation if she had the time to prepare it and the foresight to make sure she was wielding the appropriate load-out. And she said that the weakness of switching gear sets would be reduced as she got stronger. Nicholas was pretty sure she was referring to the minor domain people got in the later ranks.

If she could control the weapons and armor, getting them on would be much easier. And with a more robust spirit, she could wield more at once.

"Alright, let's do this," Jasmine said, spinning her hammer like it was as light as a feather as she led the way to the proper sparring room. When they fought like humans, they could do it basically wherever there was space, even if they preferred the mats for it. But now they would be throwing around actual power and it wouldn't do it to fight in the regular spaces. Nicholas realized just how terrifying his friend must be when coming to defeat villains.

Practically an amazon clad in emerald armor with a hammer the size of her that trailed emerald sparks when she moved it. She was terrifying. And he had to beat her. Or at least push her; he had no idea how he would do that.

"Ready," Nicholas called, raising his hands as he tried to come up with an option that felt suitably correct for the occasion.

"On go," Jasmine said, bouncing on her feet. Nicholas thought it was ridiculous that the armor could be that bulky and she could jump around like it's no problem.

"Three." Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. Nicholas began pouring his will into the working.

"Two." He set his targets.

"One." Nicholas began to count, preparing his timing.

"Go!" Jasmine blasted forward in a halo of emerald energy, going to finish him in the first moment with a single strike. Nicholas was glad she wasn't going easy on him. He would do the same." Barrage" A storm of shards made of force poured out of his hands, slamming into Jasmine in five locations. The head of her hammer knocking it back. One of her hands to try and break her titanic grip on the weapon. The back of each of her knees in the hopes of causing her legs to buckle and fall.

And her helmet in the hopes that she would close her eyes under the assault. All it did was slow her down, not enough to break through her defenses, which was when Jasmine realized something was wrong. That attack should have done more if it had been a normal Barrage. A single palm landed against her breastplate, doing even less than the barrage of force needles had done earlier." Impact" Her armor screamed as force bent and launched her toward the wall.

Jasmine tried to use her own command over the element to adjust her flight and empower herself, but she crashed into the wall before she could get her bearings fully.

"You okay?" Nicholas called running to her.

"I'm good. What was that?" Jasmine asked, pulling herself out of the wall and patting it. The wall would recover eventually, but she still felt a little bad.

"A trick to get you to lose?" Nicholas joked.

"I didn't lose, I just, got… no, I lost. But really, I've never seen that word. How did you do it?" Jasmine asked excited.

"It was inspired by you and your hammer," Nicholas admitted, scratching the back of his neck.

"I say it at or near the moment of impact and bam, an explosion of force flies through," Nicholas explained. Jasmine nodded.

"Just like how swinging my hammer works."

"I was thinking about what was the best word to make my finisher or ace, and that led me to thinking about breaking through walls, which yeah. I thought of you." Nicholas explained turning around and walking back to his own starting position. It was awkward to tell his friend that she was the inspiration for a word, but he wouldn't lie. And when he had thought about a hero he wanted to copy from, Jasmine had been his first choice.

"So you used barrage to buy time, and then comboed me with that," Jasmine said, calling her hammer back to her. The barrage hadn't broken her grip, but she hadn't been able to hold it while flying away.

"Yeah, I figured comboing would be better practice most of the time while I'm definitely going to make more generalist words like Playroom, it won't always be the best." Nicholas nodded.

"You should make a star-themed one," Jasmine decided. Nicholas turned back to face her now in his starting spot.

"Why?"

"Think about it, you could glow, fly, and shoot laser beams with one word. That's a pretty good setup, and you are likely to not run into any domain matchups with that one," Jasmine explained. It wasn't all of her reasoning, but Nicholas didn't need to know the more personal ones.

"After the wave, I'm already pushing it with new words. I don't want to make another half-formed one and ruin the rest." Nicholas agreed.

"Good point," Jasmine said before throwing her head back to do a theatrical laugh.

"Now that I know your tricks, you aren't going to be able to defeat me, so prepare yourself for a loss, hero!" Jasmine called in her best mock villain voice. She had a lot of practice.

"I'm so scared," Nicholas said, rolling his shoulders. His previous plan wouldn't work, so he would have to figure out the best way to do something new.

"On go again."

"Three."

"Two."

"One."

"Go!" Jasmine flew once again, this time going in a more circuitous route so that Nicholas would have a harder time figuring out when to use his ace. She figured he would want to try it out, and she wouldn't let him." Lullaby" Jasmine instantly slowed down slightly as a wave of drowsiness slammed into her. She wouldn't be falling asleep, and she could fight through it, but man did a pillow and blanket sound absolutely heavenly to her." Down" Jasmine raised an eyebrow as gravity shifted, throwing off her flight.

Nicholas remained in his starting spot, his concentration fully narrowed on the fight. With the amount of power he had poured into Lullaby, Jasmine would stay drowsy for the next minute or two. Normally not enough for anything special, but he had learned earlier Down screwed up her flight. Normally not enough to bother her, she could course correct without much issue, but that was when she was at her normal level of focus. Not when she felt like she had been up for thirty hours.

Jasmine flew like a drunk fairy trying to blink away the sleep as she drew closer to her target. She knew she wasn't going as fast or as smoothly as she could, which meant that he would almost certainly be able to react. Jasmine let herself go, letting the gravity warp cause her flight to go wild. So long as she was traveling towards her enemy she didn't mind if she had no clue where she was flying Nicholas wouldn't either. Nicholas nearly growled as Jasmine's flight went even crazier.

It was still predictable; the domain of his down affect was easy to feel and it was easy to predict where she would fly because of the change. But with her over exaggerating or under correcting, it made it harder, and she was flying faster again. Nicholas chewed his bottom lip as he stood still. He wanted to run away, but he couldn't. The entire room outside of his spot was under the effect of his working, and he would be a sitting duck.

With a brief exertion of will he shifted the direction of down again as he tried to buy time, how to make Jasmine move predictably again in a controllable fashion.

"Release." Jasmine flew into a wall as gravity reasserted itself to normal, and he moved away to build distance." Playroom" Nicholas lifted himself into the air with his telekinesis as he began moving the obstacles around the room to strike at Jasmine.

"Catch!" Jasmine called, and that's when Nicholas realized he had lost the grin in her voice was nearly savage. Green energy encircled one of the rocks he had been controlling, and it vanished from his connection to the playroom. It didn't vanish from his vision. He watched in horror as she launched it at him with her force powers faster than he could react. He hadn't had time to move things to him in defense, and he was too slow to dodge with his telekinesis.

The projectile slammed into his leg, causing him to spin in the air and fall, his focus broken from pain and the playroom collapsing. Nicholas closed his eyes, bracing for landing. He didn't land. He hadn't been that high up in the air, had he?

"That was awesome! How did you come up with that combination?" Jasmine asked as he opened his eyes to find she was floating in the air with him, both glowing with the emerald energy of her force armor.

"I put together multiple combos to try and figure out ways to either help or worsen your situation," Nicholas said as she set them both down.

"You want me to treat your leg or do you have it?" Jasmine asked, looking at his leg curiously. Nicholas tried to stand. Keyword tried.

"Can you take care of it?" Jasmine quickly changed into her healer and defender set up and let the remaining of her power flow into her friend.