Evert Kallstrom sure was a funny guy. In a frying your brains funny way, but I liked him. Just this morning he had my favorite pastry, was real nice, and didn’t make any comment about the scar on my left ear. Hell, he didn’t even look at it funny, which was something. I suspected he was a stalker, though he was on the young side for me.

Then, he rang into the district tourney and beat his first two opponents barehanded. Frankly, I kind of understood that. If I was a brawler at the top of the F-ranks, I would have done exactly that.

Except, he claimed his primary weapon was staff and sword. Or was it sword and staff. Whatever. That was crazy. Who uses two primary weapons as their primary weapon?? Either you used a two handed weapon, or two one-handed weapons, or a one-handed weapon together with a shield or equivalent. The latter wasn’t that common since your aura would take care of that at a higher level. But a staff was prototypically a two-handed weapon. And while I hadn’t hefted the weapon himself—or really, knew anything swords—I suspect that was a two-handed longsword on Evert’s back.

Maybe Evert was just a little slow in the noggin—he seemed to confuse himself multiple times today. But he had packed snacks and lunch, which even I couldn’t remember to do every year. And he immediately picked up on how the high striker separated E-rankers from F-rankers by taking advantage of their relationship with the Second Stage of Spiritualism. And he remembered how to pronounce my last name after only hearing it once, which immediately put Evert on my to-be-a-good friend list.

But then, he went up against Thomas Vandernberger, who was not only E-ranked, but considered a prodigy at staffwielding at his dojo. And when he finally pulled out a weapon, he pulled out a staff. No one actually fights fire with fire! That was the end of Evert’s run in the tournament.

Except Evert matched Thomas strike for strike. Now I wasn’t one to count—it was 47—but that was incredible. It was this beautiful staccato that you rarely got except in matches between masters. And then on the 47th strike, Evert knocked Thomas’ hands away leaving him wide open, but then didn’t attack. And then they just stood there staring at each other. I thought I felt a little spiritual pressure coming from one of them, and then Thomas surrendered, claiming he couldn’t defeat Evert.

All in all, I was both conflicted and confused. My new friend and I were both going to the City Tournament, though I can’t seem to understand Evert in the slightest. And I wasn’t real keen on being beat by a 21 year o—wait, how old actually is Evert?!

These and other thoughts were going through my head as I walked up to the fighting stage. Evert was there, armed with his staff again, and seems to have finally taken off his sword from his back. I hadn’t done it before solely as a matter of politeness, but now that we were matched up against each other, I took a real close look at Evert using my spiritual perception, and I could feel him looking at me, even as I heard the bell ring. Evert appeared to be E-ranked to me, and maybe just a little bit weaker than myself. There was something funny about his ki—it seemed so crisp and clear, which was a little unusual when I was using my spiritual perception, but I shook away that nagging thought. “Ready?” I asked politely.

“Set,” Evert replied.

I immediately started the movements for Snowball, and launched two torso-sized balls of snow left and right off center at Evert. Evert though had started his own movements for a spiritual technique—though I didn’t recognize it. I hoped it wasn’t fire. Fire users were the worst.

I was surprised when a wall of water formed up in front Evert. Both Snowballs smashed into it and fell into a mushy lump on the ground. Evert apparently stopped the technique—it sure looked funny for Water Wall—and the water splashed down over a good portion of the arena. Good, he was a water user, and he must not have known Hot Water Wall or he would have used that as his counter.

I hadn’t been entirely idle during this time either, and almost immediately, I completed Tundra. Tundra wasn’t an attack per say, but instead was an environmental modifier technique which made any cold spiritual techniques more effective. It wasn’t cheap, but I figured it would give me another 2-3 attacks and, as Evert hadn’t shown any Thermal affinity yet, the advantage should be more than enough.

Just as Tundra took effect, I found a ball of water shooting at me. It didn’t seem to be heated or chilled, but surprisingly one cannot take a hammer to a ball of water. Fortunately, it was a little high and right, so I spun and ducked underneath it, and immediately began the movements for Ice Wave. As I did so, I noticed that Tundra had frozen over the water from Evert’s collapsed Water Wall, and he was sliding back and forth a bit and it looked like he was attempting another Waterball. The nice part about Ice Wave is that once the first three moves were completed, the last two moves could be repeatedly in order to quickly send out multiple Ice Waves. And seeing that Evert was on less than solid—or maybe too solid—ground, I saw my chance.

Down the middle! Evert ducked under it. Angled left! Evert slid backwards and to the right a meter to dodge it. Angled right! Evert slid backwards and to the left to dodge it. Low and in the middle! Evert jumped over it, but landed funny and barely maintained standing. Down the middle!

The last Ice Wave caught Evert in the chest and knocked him, sliding, the last two meters off the edge of the fighting stage.