His father opened Marroo’s door a week after the night of butchery to issue the same order he’d issued then. “Wear black.” He grated, and stood with his hand on the door gazing down at his son with cold silver eyes while Marroo’s heart hammered in his chest. He looked up at his father with the book he’d been reading still in his hand and didn’t move until his father snorted and turned away. “Cab’s out front.” He said as he left. “Don’t keep it waiting.”

Towers cast long shadows across the city’s streets when Marroo joined his father in the cab. They joined the other airtraffic streaming above the city and Marroo watched the buildings pass below and around him to distract himself from the fluttering panic in his chest.

His heart slowed when they arrived at a gymnasium tucked into the middle of a suburban section of three and four story tenements, dotted here and there by gardens with actual trees in them. The gymnasium was huge. The voices and footsteps of the crowd moving into the gym echoed off unadorned beige walls while tables manned by a handful of individuals stopped those moving towards the dim interior of the building.

There were far too many, Marroo thought as he followed his father towards the doors, far too many for his father to kill.

Darro strode through the front doors and hesitated only briefly before purple eyes found his and he went up to a table manned by a dark skinned clerk in the same martial uniform Marroo and his father wore.

“I’ve brought my son to compete.” Darro grated.

“Name?” The man behind the table asked as he slid paperwork around on the table.

“Boh-lay.” Darro replied, “B.O.L.L.E.”

The registrar’s familiar flipped out of his shoulder clip and he examined the holographic list it displayed for him. “I don’t see him on the list.” The man replied. “Was he registered?”

“No.” Darro growled.

As Marroo’s fears calmed, he looked around at the others moving slowly into the gymnasium past the registration tables. Boys his own age, mostly, dressed in black as he was, or white, crossed by half a dozen different colors while colorful holographic familiars darted around their shoulders in a hundred different shapes and dour adults shepherded them through the registration process into the interior. Everywhere he looked curious green and purple eyes, and the occasional pale blue, found his. He felt conspicuous, with his pale face and silver eyes, and he hovered close to his father’s back while he argued with the registrar.

“If you’re not with one of the schools, I can’t let you in.” The registrar told them.

“Who do you think you are?” Darro growled.

“I don’t make the rules.” The man behind the table replied. “But they’re in place for your own good. This is an interschool event, those are the rules.”

His father’s voice grated incomprehensibly for a moment before he growled. “Bring me someone in charge.”

The registrar sighed, but left and Marroo felt even more conspicuous than before as other students came and went from the registration tables around them with little more trouble than it took to find their names on tags scattered across the tables and pass on into the larger gymnasium beyond.

“No respect.” Marroo’s father spat as the crowd streamed into the gymnasium around them. Marroo looked up at his father who scowled at the passing crowds. “Think they’re better than us for where we came from.” His silver eyes met Marroo’s. “When you get in there.” he growled, “I want you to hurt them. Understand?”

Marroo’s quailed inside, but he pushed away the memories of blood and nodded obediently. He hoped they wouldn’t be allowed in.

It took three arguments, but eventually they collected a fee from Darro in silver and added their information to the list.

“The rules are there for your own sake.” A wrinkled old patriarch told them. “If you aren’t part of a school, then your son won’t have received the same training. If he’s too far behind others his age, he could get hurt.”

“Let that be my concern.” Darro growled, and a short while later, they were presented a registration form.

“Where are you from?” The man who finally let them into the event asked.

“Does it matter?” Darro replied.

“For the registration.”

Darro snorted. “The Dregs then.” he said, “The dregs proper.” He didn’t offer them a school for the listing.

Marroo was finally issued a name tag for his familiar to display and the registrar gave him a program with a few instructions on how to read it before they collected a tournament sanctioned rubber training sword and entered the stadium section of the gymnasium.

“Didn’t even think I could read.” His father muttered under his breath as they marched through rings of light that hovered a few feet above the polished wood floor of the gym. “Arrogant bastards think they’re better than us.” He looked around as they looked for the ring they’d been assigned for the first match. “Think because they didn’t have to fight for everything they’ve got their kids are going to be better than mine.” He looked down at Marroo. “We’ll show them.”

They did.

Marroo’s first match was scheduled for noon. Warnings across the back of the information sheet informed them that if he was late to his match he would automatically forfeit and he spent an hour or two following his father around as they tried to locate the proper one. Eventually an old man with a tightly braided gray beard showed them how each ring was numbered in a grid and they finally found their spot. Through the long walk Marroo watched other children his age sitting in the same breathing position he used, or performing elaborate stretches or katas. Some of them looked nervous, while others seemed serene and emotionless, or keyed up with excitement. A few practiced among the rings with other members of their school or obvious friends. The realization that he would have to spar with them while his father looked on made the anxiety he’d choked down on realizing they weren’t here to kill anyone stir again in his chest.

Their ring was near the middle of the gym floor, and they stood waiting while the crowds of onlookers and fellow competitors surged and roared along the edges of the floor.

“They want to teach us a lesson.” Marroo’s father growled as they waited. “Scare us off early.” He turned to Marroo whose heart hammered in his chest as he stared at the crowds milling in the seats around the gym floor.

“Sit.” Darro grated. “Do your breathing exercises.”

Marroo pulled the sanctioned sword from his belt and set it in his lap as he sat to fight with the breath swirling nervously inside of him.

“Calm yourself.” His father growled. “Close your eyes if you can’t look like you aren’t terrified.”

Marroo closed his eyes and schooled his expression while adrenaline still ran through him like fire.

“This is a tournament.” His father growled. “If you can’t handle the strain of this performance you’ll hardly be able to defend yourself when it comes to blood.”

The insult doused Marroo’s anxiety about the crowds and he felt his breathing stabilize as his breath moved into the channels running between his opened meridians.

“This is tournament fighting.” His father went on. “These, children” he spat the word “only know how to dance and tap with the toys their fathers gave them. They would hardly know what to do if they found themselves facing a real killer.” He snorted a laugh. “They only think about points. You won’t make that mistake.”

A buzzer screamed from the ceiling and Marroo nearly jumped out of his skin. Other boys swarmed the rings while referees in the white and green of the tournament’s colors followed.

A thin dark skinned boy with a wolfish grin arrived opposite the ring from Marroo and Marroo stood to face him. The name displayed in glowing letters across the boy’s chest read “Kapel”.

“Don’t worry about the points.” Darro said as he stared at the boy. “Incapacitate him.” His silver eyes looked like laser beams directed at the ten year old boy across from them before he turned to Marroo. “Remember,” he said, “What is the purpose of the sword?”

“To cut.” Marroo replied on impulse.

Marroo’s father nodded with an approving grunt and Marroo stepped through the ring of light to face Kapel.

“Bow.” The referee said as Marroo paced towards his opponent. Marroo stopped, saw others in the nearby rings bowing, and stepped back to follow their example. He stared at the boy across from him, uncertain how to proceed until the boy took up a ready stance, still grinning fiercely. Marroo followed suit.

“Begin!”

The referee barely finished before Kapel threw himself across the ring at Marroo.

The rubber sword cut for Marroo’s eyes and Marroo responded on instinct. He slammed the sword aside and shoved forward into the first steps the kata his father taught him when he opened his Extremis Meridian, that tangle of channels that poured breath into his limbs and gave him speed and strength far in excess of the capabilities of merely physical strength. His feet slid forward with the precision of long practice and his sword moved as though of its own accord.

Kapel’s sword flew from his hands at the first strike. The return cut slammed Marroo’s rubberized blade across the other boy’s neck, and if he’d held a sharpened sword, the following series of cuts would have removed his arms at the shoulders while the final blow would have skewered him through the belly. Marroo froze in shock as Kapel staggered backwards and clapped his hands over his gut. He looked down as though unsure if he’d actually just been skewered then stared at Marroo while Marroo stared back.

He’d never landed a blow like that before. In four years of sparring with his father, he’d only ever struck the man when allowed, and always just to face a follow up attack meant to throw him off guard.

Marroo stared at the other boy, then down at the rubber sword in his hands.

“Round two.” The referree announced, and when Marroo didn’t immediately move, he barked. “Back to your starting place!”

In the second round Kapel didn’t charge. He raised his sword over his head and hung back. Sidling towards Marroo’s left side. Around them Marroo saw other children slapping at one another with their swords, grappling up close, or poking away at one another from a distance. They seemed slow and clumsy now that Marroo watched them, like they thought they were holding wooden poles or foam tubes instead of hardened steel. They weren’t really holding sharpened steel, but Marroo didn’t know how to act as though he held anything less.

When Kapel made a testing jab Marroo’s parry sent the blade spinning over the barrier into another fight where it bounced off of another duelist’s head. He and Kapel both froze, and Marroo was about to step back and let the boy retrieve his sword until his father roared at him from the sidelines.

“Get him!”

Marroo lunged forward on reflex and jabbed the boy in the chest.

In the final fight Marroo tried to pull his blows and move at the slower speed that was all the other boy could reach, but even so he defeated Kapel with ease.

“Bow.” The referee said after Marroo followed through on his Kata by tapping Kapel on the head with the tip of his sword.

Marroo felt a flood of relief as he returned Kapel’s scowling bow. He’d done it, and without giving his father a reason to be ashamed of him. The relief lasted until he stepped from the ring to face his father’s criticism.

“Did you call that fighting, boy?” Darro demanded when Marroo was again seated in his breathing position on the edge of the gymnasium. “In a real fight, those blows wouldn’t even break the skin, and you followed your Kata so closely that anyone familiar with your style would know your next move before you’d even begun to make it. A fight is not a dance. You must treat your kata like a foundation to draw inspiration from, not a map to follow to the last step.”

Marroo breathed in and expelled the air from his lungs. He focused on the movement of breath within his channels and the tiny bonfire in his core that swelled marginally with every cycle of the exercise.

“You are a weapon.” his father growled. “You are not here to coddle them. Strike with force, or you’ll regret it when you find yourself facing a real knife.”

Marroo thought of the door shattering a week before and the man who’d stumbled back with blood flying from a cut across his collarbone. He twitched and scrunched his eyes tighter. The buzzer came as a relief to pull Marroo from his enforced breathing exercise.

Darro summoned his familiar from its clip at his shoulder to look at the ring number displayed there. He dismissed it with a wave of his hand and looked down at his son. “Come.” He grated then marched into the rings towards Marroo’s next match while Marroo trailed along behind him.