The blast of green energy traveled across the arena like a missile.

Gaby tried her best to get away from the ponytailed girl that was pinning her against the ground, but her limbs wouldn't stop itching from all the pain she absorbed and were having trouble responding to her commands.

She looked away by reflex as she was about to take the hit, but all of sudden Kurt's voice echoed inside the dungeon.

"DOROTHY!!!!!" he cried with horror.

Gaby opened her eyes and saw the strange grey creature that kept resting above her head jumping in front of her and taking the full power of the energy beam into herself.

The purple-haired lass could only watch as Kurt's small pet was knocked against the ground and started to shiver non-stop.

"Damn..." the blond girl commented while lowering her hand, "Stupid thing got in the way..."

Gaby glanced at the jail cell where the rest of her allies were residing and noticed Kurt clutching onto the bars while falling to his knees and sobbing as he watched his own twitching in pain.

She then proceeded to look at her two opponents, the blond girl who was preparing to break another finger in order to charge another attack, and the ponytailed lass who kept holding her don with a blank expression.

"What you looking at?" she asked.

Gaby felt something snap inside of her. Neither of them even flinched. They harmed that creature who was completely unrelated to their situation and they both were acting like they didn't even care.

"Ah... I'm such a moron..." she mumbled.

The glasses-wearing girl then glared at the one holding her down and decided to stop trying to hold herself back and finally released a blast of energy that fried both of them.

"Ugh!!!"

"Kyaaagh!!"

Gaby felt immense pain from the shock coursing through her veins, but she still tried to fight it off and charged after the girl proceeded by grabbing her by the forehead and delivering a right hook directly into her nose.

"Ooooouchh!!!" she cried while covering her face with her palms.

Gaby didn't stop. Even though her palms were killing her at that moment, she still delivered a second and a third punch, finally knocking the girl down completely.

She then dropped her on the ground as her hands continued to tremble due to the pain of her blast, and turned around to stab her second target with her gaze.

"You're next..."

The lass with long blond hair gave a step back without even realizing it, "H- How is that possible?? I hit you enough times to paralyze an adult dragon!! How are you still moving?? You should be frozen by the pain right now!"

Gaby smiled at her, "You're not the only one who can turn off your pain sensors..."

"Wh- What!??"

Kurt, Saramin, and Trevor also watched in confusion as Gaby lifted her right hand and pointed at her brain.

"There are a lot of things you can do with electricity... All I have to do is surround the nerve inside my brain that receives all my pain with my power and block all of it."

Kurt looked at Saramin with a lot of skepticism, "Sara, is she serious...? We can do that?"

She simply shrugged, "Human probably can't. But dragons? Who knows..."

Gaby looked at Dorothy one more time on the ground and raised her gaze back at the lass that injured her.

"What's your name?"

"Eh...?"

"Your goddamn name! Tell me what it is!" Gaby repeated with an irritated tone, "This whole thing is about nobody knowing who the heck you are, right? Well, there you have it! I wanna know who you are now!

I wanna know exactly who was it that managed to piss me off this much!"

A lot of pressure started to take over the atmosphere. Looking at Gaby made the blond lass feel like a prey staring at its natural predator.

She was counting on the girl not using her talent to fight at full power as the electricity could backfire and cause harm to her own body, but now that her pain receptors were turned off, there is no telling what she could do.

"Ga- Gabriella..." the girl replied.

"What...?"

She clenched her fists and answered again, "Gabriella!! My name is Gabriella! The same as you!! Okay?

I'm... I'm that Gaby that isn't worth remembering!! Everywhere I go, nobody knows who I am! Every time I say what my name is, I just get compared to you!! Everyone just looks at me with those same eyes! Always drawling parallels between us and always thinking that I'm a lesser version of you!"

Gaby stared in silence at Gabriella's rant.

"You get it now!? Because of you, I have to always get reminded of how much I suck!! Always getting reminded that no matter where I go or what I do, I'm just the lesser Gaby and you are the better Gaby!

All because we share the same stupid name!!"

Gaby stared at Gabriella for a few more seconds thinking about how she should reply, proceeded by slowly rubbing her forehead, gently facepalming herself, and eventually covering her mouth with her hand.

"I..." she finally whispered, "I think that might just be the dumbest justification for a grudge I ever heard in my entire life..."

"Excuse me!??" Gabriella gasped, "Do you have any idea what my life has been like so far because of you?"

Gaby then started to cover herself in a cloak of electricity and started to charge after her opponent like a living bullet, closing their distance in a matter of seconds.

Gabriella saw her coming with a raised fist and tried to dodge her, but she wasn't fast enough to escape her speed and ended up getting smacked in the cheek by an electric right jab.

"Gaaaaghhh!!" the girl shrieked as she flew over the ground before dropping like a rock.

"Not really... " Gaby replied, "And no matter how much I think about it, none of it is really my fault, so honestly I couldn't care less..."

Gabriella tried to stand up while rubbing her face and proceeded to channel her pain into another blast to strike Gaby, but the purple-haired lass reacted much faster and got out of the way while approaching her and delivering another jab on her other cheek.

"Uughh!!!"

"You think having some sad backstory means I have to feel sorry for you? Wake up to reality, dumbass... Everyone has problems. Everyone has stuff that they have to deal with. You being sad over the way people treat you gives you no excuse to vent out your anger on me or those close to me!"

Gabriella realized she was at a disadvantage. Now that Gaby was using her talent again, defeating her was going to be nearly impossible.

"Shut up!!" she screamed while charging five beams at the same time from the pain of the jabs she received by channeling the energy through her fingers, "If it wasn't for you, nobody would keep comparing me all the time!! If it wasn't for you, I might actually have been someone!"

Gaby prepared to move out of the way but then realized that Gabriella wasn't aiming at her, she was aiming at Dorothy on the floor.

"All the misery I went through all these years by being in the same class as you!! I'm gonna make you eat every last piece of it!!"

Gabriella finally unleashed her five blasts of energy at the fallen owl, forcing Gaby to jump in front of the beast in order to protect it.

She then channeled her energy herself and created a wall of electricity that repelled the beams away from her, making each fly towards the walls of the dungeon and dispersing upon contact.

"I don't have to take your pain..." Gaby stated, "I never compared you to me, I never attacked you, or tried to make you feel like you were some sort of lesser version of me."

"Shut up!"

"If you wanna be angry at someone, be angry at the dragons that kept forgetting who you are and comparing you to me... Or at least get angry at yourself for caring so much about what these idiots have to say!"

"I said shut up!!!" Gabriella shouted as she began to channel another blast after breaking every single one of her fingers and biting her tongue in order to use all her pain to charge the biggest blast she could.

"Just look at you!! You're so desperate to take your anger out on me you don't even realize how much you're messing up your own body!" Gaby stated while also charging at her energy into her palms.

"What about you then? Aren't you also messing yourself up by shutting off your pain? How's that any different from what I'm doing?? Why is it so bad that I don't want to suffer anymore?" she yelled while finally releasing the biggest beam of energy she could, with a size as big as her entire body.

"I'm not running away from my pain or dropping it on others! I'm just keeping it in for now while I finish helping out someone that needs me!" Gaby responded while glancing at Dorothy behind before unleashing her own blast.

Gabriella's green energy beam and Gaby's electric energy blast collided with each other and started to illuminate the entire dungeon.

"I'm more than ready to take on all my pain once I'm done here, but I'm not selfish enough to assume that it matters more than the pain of others!"

Gaby's blast started to push Gabriella's beam back at her.

"Someone like you who laughs while making others cry, who enjoys seeing others in agony, has the gal to talk about being upset that nobody cares about your suffering?? Don't make me laugh!!

You can just go ahead and keep all your pain to yourself!!"

Gabriella tried her best to resist but in the end, her power just wasn't strong enough, and both blasts ended up combining and being returned to her. All the pain she was trying to channel and all the power of Gaby's fury ended up blowing up all over her with no means of escaping.

"Kyaaaarghhhh!!!!" the blond girl cried in immense agony as she fell to her knees while covered in smoke from the explosion.

Gaby finally reached her own limits and was forced to turn off her talent, making so that all the pain from her own electric attacks started to affect her at the same time.

"Gaaaghh!!" she moaned while trying to hold herself.

The two girls kept staring at each other, waiting to find out who would fall first from all the pain and fatigue.

"Why..." Gabriella mumbled.

Gaby could barely keep her eyes open but still tried to focus on what she was saying.

"Why do you try so hard to be on top...? If only you weren't on top... Everyone would just leave me be..."

Gaby gazed at Kurt and Sara who were still watching them in shock, as well as all the devices that Hugh had set up in order to make the entire class be able to watch their fight.

She was hesitant about coming clean with it, but her patience had reached its limit.

"Screw it..." Gaby uttered, "You wanna know why?

You all wanna know why I try so hard to be on top? Why I try to be the best fighter? Why I like to study about poisons all the time? And Why I have an obsession with winning?"

She tried to fight off the pain and stood up once more.

"It's for my family! Okay?

My parents were both killed in the crawler forest! They went there to perform some dumb research but never returned! Leaving me and my brother alone!

But eventually... He couldn't stand not knowing if they were alive or not anymore... And decided to also go look for them!"

The entire place went silent as Gaby continued her explanation.

"It's been three years since then... Three years that I haven't seen my family... I don't even know if they are alive or dead, or if they are imprisoned, or if they just left me...

I just know that I lost them all to that stupid forest!"

Gabriella looked at her with her eyes wide open.

"Yeah! I have problems too. Weird, isn't it? I also have reason to be upset... But you don't see me going around and taking it out on others...

The reason I study, the reason I train, and try to be better... Is because I'm gonna face that forest myself! And I'm gonna make sure I come back from it!!

So excuse me if I can't be bothered to cry a river over some worthless group of students who don't remember who you are just because you have the same name as me! I kinda have my own garbage to deal with!"

Gabriella began to lose all strength in her body after hearing that statement. She really couldn't beat Gaby at anything. Even her problems were bigger than hers.

This entire time Gaby was carrying her own burdens and scars, and yet she never used them as an excuse to inflict harm on others, unlike Gabriella herself who placed all the blame on literally the only one that never tried to hurt her.

"But you know what?" Gaby continued while glancing at the black-haired ponytailed girl who was still knocked out behind her, "At least you managed to get someone to be by your side..."

She paused and looked at Kurt and Saramin.

"I've been at this academy for years, and it was only this week that someone finally bothered to ask if I'm okay... If I needed help... If there was anything they could do for me...

Was your situation really so bad when you stop to think about it? Especially compared to mine?"

Gabriella finally had nothing else to say and just accepted that she had lost to Gaby in every possible way.

"I... I surrender..." she mumbled before falling unconscious.

Gaby also had nothing else to say and proceeded to walk towards Dorothy in order to take her back to Kurt.

"Hey, girl... Thanks for saving me..." she whispered while picking up the grey bird, "Just keep resting for now, okay? You earned it!"

Dorothy opened her eyes and released a weak sound at her "Hoot... Ho- elcome'

"Eh!?" Gaby gasped, as for a mere moment, she could swear she heard some female voice speaking inside her mind.

The owl fell asleep in her arms as she kept looking left and right in order to find who was it that talked to her.

"Wha- What was that...??"