The Gemini Age: Book One

[12-4] Under the Spotlights - Part Four

    "No! This is not how I go down!"

    Jade felt the words in her mind leave her lips as she funnelled her remaining energy into her wet hand. Taking on the concrete weights was beyond her strength right now, yet accepting the fate they promised her was forever out of the question. She was nothing if not persistent.

    The pool of water across the ring froze at her touch, and without picking herself up Jade lifted the chunk of ice and swept it at Marcus' body. In her mind, it slipped beneath him to bear him to safety, yet the reality was far more agonising to witness as the jagged ice battered Marcus' side and propelled him across the ring. The first concrete slab fell in the space where he had been, and the crowd's collective call verified the narrowness of the escape.

    Marcus rolled onto his back and shielded his eyes. "Jade..." he mumbled, prying himself from the canvas. "Jade!"

    A shadow engulfed Jade's shape, yet she refused to watch the concrete fall. Instead, she threw herself forward and launched the ice into the woman's extended arm, knocking it off-balance. As Jade predicted, the woman's fingers fired an explosive shot that skewed from Marcus' fallen body to fly into the core of the stone slab hurtling into Jade's back. The flare buried into the cracks in the stone, then burst apart to send dust and debris into the crowd stands and across the arena floor.

    Jade staggered to her feet and flicked her hair. "Nice shot."

    The woman growled as she lobbed a battery of fireballs across the ring, but the tails of each projectile peeled away under the force of a side wind from Marcus' sprinting legs. He caught Jade as she stumbled out of his path and drove her around the edge of the ring. "Are you alright?"

    "I'm pretty sure this is how a tennis ball feels mid-rally, but I'm getting by." He did not carry her as much as guide her clumsy steps, even as she let herself fall limp in the air current for a moment. "Are you?"

    "I've been better. I don't think us beating each other up is going to win this fight for us, you know."

    "Good point. How about we make them hit each other instead?" Jade placed her hand on Marcus' chest to stop their flight. She nodded over his shoulder, indicating the man collecting the stone fragments from the canvas. "Get him cornered for a second. I'm going to load our loose cannon again."

    Jade winked, then pulled the water from the floor and hopped over the ring rope. An ice platform formed under her feet as she fell, and to a chorus of gasps from the crowd she began to glide around the fencing on a frozen slide towards the woman. 

    Marcus let his arms drop at the sight, then noticed the man metallicising more stone and stomped on the ground. A trail of fire blasts blazed through the canvas to interrupt the process, cutting the man off from his partner. Following up with continuous suppressive fire, Marcus scorched the canvas by the man's feet until he could back no further into the corner to escape the swelling smoke cloud.

    The woman's eyes tracked the tail of Jade's ice slide, tempted by the large, strikable surface of its broadside. Her arm reeled back, then flew forward to unleash a concussive shot. Jade smiled as she rounded the corner of the ring and disappeared behind the fire blasts. "Marcus! With me!"

    Connected by invisible threads, Jade and Marcus leapt to the far side of the ring. The bright fire and thick smoke dropped to reveal the man pinned in the corner of the ring in front of the broadside of ice. As the woman's eyes snapped open, she cast her explosive shot into the metallic clusters around his arms.

    "¡Alexia, auxilio!" ["Alexia, help!"] The man's voice was hoarse as he tried to shield himself with the metal fragments, but the shot shredded his defences like tissue paper. His body contorted as he flipped over the ring rope and cracked his face on the concrete slabs on his way down.