Jason got the alert to prepare for the next match so he returned to the preparation room where he found Xev waiting for him. She patted the spot next to her on the couch. Acting like he saw nothing, quickly turned and went into the shower room. Her finger went to her lip playing like she was thinking about following after him to an invisible audience.

Mittana entered the preparation room in a hurry. “Jason here yet?” she asked excitedly hoping to get his ARMS back to him before he went out to the next match. She didn’t want a repeat of what happened last time and the best ways that she knew how to stop that was to push his ARMS to the best that she could make them. Xev moved her finger from her lips and pointed towards the shower. Without thinking, Mittana ran into the shower, looking for Jason. As she went around the corner he came into her field of vision. He was naked. She hadn’t seen Jason or any Human naked before. Normally nudity wouldn’t have bothered her, but she hadn’t been expecting it and she knew that Humans generally didn’t like being seen naked. She took a deep breathe and let out a loud high pitched scream before running out of the room. “I didn’t see anything!” she shouted back over his shoulder.

Left in the shower shocked by what happened, Jason blinked in stunned silence. He had more than enough of the violation of privacy that this world offered so he had long since been accustomed to random nudity and people seeing him naked. A moment after the crazy cat girl ran away he continued about his business, taking a shower, before exiting the shower room fully dressed in his ARMS armor. “So… Got my ARMS?” he asked. Mittana shyly handed the ARMS over to him before running out of the room and wanting to get away from the two of them, but more so she liked to watch from the audience seats rather than the monitors in the prep room.

Jason activated his sword and dagger as had now become normal for him now. He felt off without them activated and prepared now after the month training and living with Xev. If he didn’t have them at the ready it would be impossible to fend her off even when she was playing with him and not at all being serious even for sparring and training. He stretched a few times and then began to walk towards the Arena, but then he stopped just passed the door. “Hey, you’ll have to tell me some time why you said to call you Hanshi instead of Xev. I don’t get it,” he told her and then ran down the hall to the Arena.

In the Arena, as Jason came out, he was confronted with a feminine alien covered in an ARMS armor suit. The differences in body structure were moderate having flares at the elbow joint and her hips. Her legs were sleek and Human-like, but had an internal structure more like that of an animal who walked on their toes. Although the ARMS suit ended at her shoulders her skin was of a similar appearance and he believed that the suit ended due to the hood-like structure that attached to the back of her head which was crested. Her face was smooth, more like a helmet than face, but he could tell it was her natural appearance as he could see her luminescent blue eyes and a split in her lower face that Jason assumed was her mouth, or at least the equivalent of whatever she had. Her skin was black, but this was offset by symmetrical splotches of yellow on her face, on the crest of her head, and from what he could see, down the center of her torso. Jason felt intimidated despite the creature only being about the average size of a normal grown Human woman and his time with xev. Something about her seemed dangerous.

Jason unsheathed his sword and noticed no difference in its appearance, nor did it feel different. He approached this alien woman cautiously prepared to defend against anything that came his way. She looked at him, turning her head to the side. Jason was feeling anxious the closer he got to her. He hadn’t fought anyone who appeared to be at about the same place in their journey as he was. The Goblin was seemingly just a crazy creature that Debris threw at him. His brother was older, more experience in fighting, and seemed to have a natural grasp of ARMS even though he neglected wearing it as armor. This alien though, she was wearing her ARMS armor without any sort of modifications, he thought, and no weapons that he could see which meant that she didn’t prepare them beforehand or she didn’t realize that they were weapons meaning a lack of experience.

Her arm lifted and hand stretched forward, one her three digits pointed at him. “Enemy?” a cute feminine voice with some sort of aquatic resonance asked.

Jason blinked, but then he stood at ease, “Not an enemy, but your opponent here in the Arena.”

“Opponent is not enemy?” she asked.

“Sometime they are, but I have no ill will against you, but we’re both here to fight and win against each other so opponent, but not enemy.” he explained.

“Friend?” she asked.

“Uhhh…,” he was a bit taken aback by this turn of events. In his ear he heard Xev laughing. He didn’t know how to turn it off so he just tried to ignore it. “We could be, but we’re here to fight. I don’t think we can die here so why don’t we fight and if you want to be my friend afterwards, come find me. I won’t be upset at you if you win. Deal?” he sheathed his weapons and walked towards her with his hand stretched out to shake on it, forgetting that these actions were rituals and symbolic in ways unknown to non-Humans.

She looked at Jason’s hand, then to Jason’s face. The alien pulled two ARMS devices from her storage and placed one on each of her hips, activating them. Two short swords formed on her hips. He grew a bit nervous, but then she pointed to his hand. “What are you doing?”

Jason looked at his hand and then facepalmed. “I’m stupid. It’s a gesture to indicate agreement between amicable parties that we Humans do. I forgot everyone in the universe doesn’t know do the same thing.”

She giggled, “Ahhhhh. I agree so…,” she put out her hand waiting for him to react.

Seeing that the alien wanted to be friendly made him happy. He reached out, took hold hand, and shook it, but when he tried to pull away he found that it was not that easy. He didn’t feel any pressure as though she was keeping hold of his hand, preventing him from retracting it back. However, he did feel a seemingly light suction that he presumed was what was keeping him locked in place. The alien once more looked at his hand and then back to his face, her eyes seemingly getting wider, “Waaaaaa… What are you doing? This is not my fault!” she said obviously trying to keep Jason from thinking that she was trying to fool him.

He stopped trying to pull his hand away. “I know. I probably should have explained that there was the grip and shake involved there. Lesson learned,” he said scratching the back of his head with his free hand, “So… how do I get free?”

“This has never happened to me,” she said worried that they might be permanently stuck together. She suddenly spit a gaseous black cloud at Jason and tried to run away, but neither her hand nor her went anywhere. She pulled as hard as she could against the suction that was holding her in place, running in place. After a few minutes she was forced to give up. She stood with her back to Jason, her shoulders slumped, and her head looking down, “What are we going to do?” she said sadly.

“I know I don’t have anything that could do this. Do you?” he asked.

“Yes, but they shouldn’t be doing this…” she said in what seemed like a sob.

“If you’re nervous that might be the cause. You should try to relax. Could also be a reaction between our skin. If worse comes to worst, could always just cut off our hands. Should be healable,” he said half jokingly.

“Nooooo!” the alien woman said and tried running once more. Jason took the opportunity to add his force to the mix, pulling in the opposite direction. Moments later, whatever was holding them together let loose and both tumbled to the ground. Jason looked at his hand and saw several circular red marks. The woman shot up to her feet and started celebrating. “I get to keep my hand! Yay!” she shouted excitedly.

Jason got to his feets and brushed his hands off on his pants. “Hey!” he shouted to the alien girl which caused her to stop dancing about and look at Jason again. “There might not be a chance after the match to tell you so... My names Jason and I’m based in the town Gondaluke. I hope when I beat you there’s no hard feeling. You seem like a nice person. It’d be great to have a friend like you.”

The alien nodded her head, “I’m Sexia. Nice to meet you. Please don’t beat me too bad,” she said before unsheathing her short swords, holding them in a practiced ready stance as if she had been trained how to handle her swords or at least seen someone who was familiar with dual wielding swords, unlike Jason who had no training whatsoever nor had he watched very many martial arts films and of the ones that he had seen he didn’t remember any that had that duel wielded short swords.

Watching her, Jason followed suit. He unsheathed his blade and began approaching Sexia. They both tensed. In the next moment both launched themselves at each other. In the moment after that all three blades clashed against each other, before pushing apart. Sexia was landed on the back foot. Jason didn’t let the first failed attack to bother him and took a horizontal swing at her. Instead of blocking she unexpectedly bent her body nearly in two under his sword. Instantly, a look of confusion crossed his face. He looked down to see what had happened only to have the foot of Sexia slam into his jaw, knocking him off his feet.

Jason rolled back to his feet and charge forward, thrusting the point of his sword at her center mass. The metal of the three swords rang out once more as they collided, stopping his momentum. He quickly spun his sword to the side appearing to Sexia that he was going to attempt another cross cut. She moved to perform the same trick, but Jason used the momentum of his swing to spin around, dropping into a sweeping kick in order to trip her. His tactic paid off. She she flopped to the ground. The force of the fall caused her to drop her swords. Jason lunged on top of her, pinning her arms to the ground with his knees. He raised his sword over his head and got ready to plunge his sword into the chitinous flesh of her exposed torso.

“I’ve beaten her. End the match with my victory,” he said to the ones controlling the Arena who must be watching the events and knew what was going on, “There’s no need to draw blood to know who is victorious!”

Jason was not expecting to suddenly have Sexia’s legs wrapped around his throat. There was nothing he could do to defend against this action, He dropped his sword and it dug into her skin, but fell away without doing any damage to worry about. He was pulled away from his mounted position on her torso to being held prone against the ground and being stretched when she grabbed onto his legs leveraging his own bones and muscles against.

“Who’s victorious?” Sexia asked with a giggle.