For the past 2 weeks, Vincent had been getting back into exercising. Even with pain from his injuries, he didn’t slow down or take any unnecessary rests. That being said, he would’ve continued to work out without taking necessary rests, but Fang would force him to.

Slowly, he and Fang began to work together as a well-coordinated team, making use of their small space to train. Fang would always be in his ear, telling him to push through, and Vincent would always make sure Fang kept him honest.

“Phew, I don’t know why, but that one kicked my ass,” Vincent said, finishing his set of handstand-pushups.

“What are you talking about, you still got a whole other set to do,” Fang replied with a devious smile.

“What? I was sure that it was the fifth one.”

Fang just laughed and slapped Vincent on the back. “I’m just messing with you, you’re done with those for the day.”

Vincent sighed with relief and said, “Don’t do that to me, I thought I miscounted for a second.”

“Haha, don’t worry, I watched you do each and every one of those seven sets.”

“Ok, thank goodness.” Vincent then shook his head for a second. Something wasn’t adding up, but he wasn't sure what. “Wait, did you say seven?”

“You know, I’m glad you’re using your time before the tournament to train,” Fang said, completely dodging his question.

“Oh, uh, yeah me too,” Vincent replied, still feeling that he was not getting something. He shook the feeling off, regardless. Thoughts don’t last too long in his head if they just lingered there. “You know, Fang, I think I’m gonna treat myself tonight.”

Fang raised an eyebrow and asked, “Meaning?”

With a surprised look on his face, Vincent replied, “A bath! I haven’t had one all week. That shit’s too expesinve.”

Fang chuckled a bit. “Oh I’m right there with you. You smell awful.”

“Hey! I’m not the only one here who’s been sweating up a storm. You reek, too!”

“Oh I know, and I think I’ll join you.”

“Alright, but you’re paying for your half.” He then looked down at his almost empty pouch of copper coins. “I don’t think I have enough for the both of us.”

“I got enough to cover me, don’t worry,” Fang laughed.

They both began to make their way towards the bathing house in the Collider. They had to pay the usual “toll”, which was really just a bribe to a guard, and then pay for the actual service of the bath.

When they got to the shoddy, wooden structure that was the front of the bathhouse, they saw the usual old lady who collected the coins sitting in her booth.

“Which one will it be?” the old lady said.

Vincent looked up at the two doorways, one painted blue, saying Men, and the other pained pink, saying Women. “The Men’s.” He then looked at Fang and said, “And they’ll take the…”

Fang just looked at both signs and sighed with disappointment. They then looked back at Vincent and answered, “I’ll, uh, just take the Men’s.” His voice was a bit defeated and deflated.

“Private or public?” the old lady asked, almost robotically.

Vincent answered, saying “Pub—”

“Private,” Fang interrupted.

Vincent shot them a confused look, and they just responded by putting their hand up in a very Don’t worry, I got it kind of way. Vincent then placed his coins on the table-booth and so did Fang, and they paid the difference of when it came to Vincent’s public bath and the now private bath.

The lady took the coins, looked at them for a few seconds, and then hit the blue button on her shabby control console. The light above the blue door lit up and a little buzzer went off.

“Room 3E,” the lady said, not even looking at them.

Vincent and Fang entered and made their way towards their room. The inside of the bathhouse was not as scummy and thrown together as the outside would suggest. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s the most extravagant thing in the world, but it could be described as “a little better than functional.” The walls were made of stone and wood, and there were puddles of water that gathered in the uneven divots in the floor. Steam floated out of the fancier doors, while people seemed to shiver when entering the public baths.

Vincent strode his way through the various hallways, efficiently making his way to his room. Fang, on the other hand, had a paranoid and meek look to them as they walked through the bathhouse. It was a slight uncomfortability that was plastered over their body, which made them hurry along to the speed that Vincent was taking.

Eventually, they both made it to room 3E and swung the door wide open. In front of them was a bath that was circular and built into the stone floor. There was no steam coming from it, and the dryness of the floor around it suggested that it hadn’t been used for a while.

The bath, itself, was probably big enough for 3 or 4 people to comfortably fit in there, but no more than that. There were wooden benches on the outside of it, with nothing on the inside. The bath seemed to be about 3 feet deep and about 6 feet wide.

Vincent immediately threw his clothes off and proceeded to jump into the water. After the initial splash, about a fourth of the water was thrown over.

“Ya comin’ in?” Vincent asked Fang.

“Oh, yeah, give me a sec,” Fang replied. They stripped down out of their clothes, and slowly lowered themselves into the tub. They shivered a bit upon touching the water, then looked at the water confusingly, and then looked up at Vincent.

“It’s a weird temperature, ain’t it?” Vincent commented, understanding the emotional journey that Fang’s face took.

“Very,” they replied. “It’s cold at first, then it’s barely lukewarm.” They looked around the tub and back at Vincent. “That’s gotta be a metaphor, somehow.”

They both laughed for a while before simmering down again.

“Ahhhh,” Vincent said, finally relaxing a bit. “You know, you’re not so bad.”

With a cocked smile, Fang laughingly replied, “Not so bad? Is that all helping you train gets me? Hahaha”

Vincent laughed a bit and rested his arm on the side of the tub. “Ah, I’m just messin’ with ya. I’m glad to have ya as a friend.”

“Same here,” Fang replied, raising their hand as if they had a bottle of beer in it. They looked at their hand and then back at Vincent. Vincent and Fang both realized how dumb it looked and they both cracked up into a roaring laugh.

This laughing fit continued for a solid few minutes. When one of them would start to stop laughing, one look at the other was enough to get them started again. It wasn’t until they both managed to calm down at the same time that they were able to have a normal conversation again.

“Ohhhhh shit, man,” Vincent said, his laughing coming to an end. “I needed that.”

“Yeah, I’m with you. We need this before the tournament,” Fang replied, wiping a tear from their eye.

“Dang, yeah, I can’t believe it’s in a couple of days.”

“Speaking of the tournament, Vince,” Fang said with a more serious tone.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I think we need to talk about strategy—more specifically, about Marezi.”

Vincent acknowledged the more serious atmosphere and replied, “You’re right about that. Although I have no idea what to strategize about, she beat me pretty quick.”

“Well...yeah, but there’s probably still some things to learn. Besides, I saw some things that I want to talk about.”

“Oh really? What’s that?”

“So, the first thing is how weird she moved.”

“You’re telling me!” Vincent slammed his fist in confused, half-anger. “That shit still boggles my mind.”

Fang rested both of their arms on the outside of the tub and looked up at the ceiling. “I’m right there with you.”

“Like,” Vincent started to say “it wasn’t just her that was speeding up—I was also slowing down.”

“Really?”

“Yeah! When I went to defend against her attacks—which I totally saw coming, ‘cause I’m that good—my arms felt like I was lifting more and more weight.”

“Hmmm, that’s weird.”

“I know! It really hurts my head trying to think of what her power is.”

There was a bit of silence as they both seemed to sit back and think. After a few seconds of idly sitting in the lukewarm water, Fang spoke up.

“Maybe it has something to do with speed?” they proposed. “She did seem to go pretty fast. Not to mention you slowed down a lot.”

“Hmmmmmm,” Vincent replied. There was an intense concentration behind his eyes, one that was pretty rare for him. “I don’t know. I don’t think someone can just control speed. That’s kinda broad.”

“Then what were you thinking?”

“I mean, yeah things got faster and slower, but it wasn’t a sudden shift. It actually reminds me of some of the experiments we did back in physics class.”

“Physics Class?” Fang’s eyebrows couldn’t have been raised any higher even if they wanted to be.

“Oh yeah,” Vincent started to say, looking past Fang in a reminiscent way, “what a fun class. We would do pendulum tests for speed, momentum, and friction. And Zander would always mess up because he couldn’t figure out how to set up anything. He could do the math, but he sure as hell didn’t understand what it meant.”

Fang just stared at Vincent with a look of confusion and surprise. When Vincent’s eyes finally met theirs again, he snapped back to reality.

“What?” he asked.

“I, uh, just didn’t expect you to describe a class as ‘fun’ or really remember anything about it. At least based on what Eliot told me about you.”

“I mean,” Vincent said, his face turning a light red, “I only really cared about physics and astronomy—everything else sucked and I don’t remember a damn thing about it.”

“I see,” Fang replied, nodding a bit. “But why did you bring that up?”

Vincent looked at them, a bit confused, and then said “Oh, right, that’s because the way she moved and the way I moved reminded me of some of those experiments. More specifically, the ones about momentum.”

“Momentum?”

“Yeah, ‘cause when she sped up, it wasn’t sudden, it was exponential.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah! Like, she started off slow, but then got faster and faster. Same with how my arm slowed down. It wasn’t like she stopped it, it was just like it kept getting slower.”

“So, you think her ability is to control momentum?”

“It seems close enough for me. I’m sure I’m right about this.”

“Let’s hope you are.”

They both laughed for a bit and spent the rest of their time talking about small things. It was a moment of levity, of ease, like a calm before the storm. Even though there was some serious talk about the future and the fights ahead, most of the banter was mild and harmless.

Towards the end of their time in the tub, Fang looked at the clock above and said, “Whelp, I guess we have to start getting ready to leave.”

“Aw man, why?” Vincent protested. “We can stay here just a little longer. No one will come—I can tell this place hasn’t been used in a hot second.”

Fang, who already was starting to get out and dry themself, turned around and looked at Vincent. They took a few seconds before directly answering his plea.

“Fine,” they said with a smiling sigh. “But, on the condition that I can ask you a more personal question.”

“Haha! That’s more like it!” Vincent laughed, slapping the floor with his hand. “I can tell you whatever ya want to hear.”

“Alrighty,” Fang said, submerged in the tub once again. “What are your goals in life?”

“Uhhhhhh…” Vincent started to say, his lack of thoughts clearly showing. “I’ve never thought about it.”

Vincent then narrowed his eyes a bit and started to genuinely think about the question at hand. “I would say that my goal is to find a goal in life. I’m not really good at anything. Man,” he chuckled, “this is hard.”

Fang raised an eyebrow and asked, “Has no one asked you this before?”

“Honestly, I don’t think anyone ever has. I guess people just assumed I never had any,” Vincent laughed.

“Why do you think that is?”

Vincent looked up at the ceiling and replied, “I don’t know. Prolly ‘cause I never showed any interest in something for more than a day. Robert would get on me about that, although he was barely home.” He then sighed. “To answer your question, I guess it’s ‘cause I’ve never had anyone, like a family, to push me.”

“And who’s Robert?”

“My, uh, dad.”

“Oh, I see.” There was a pause. “Yeah, fathers can be a lot.”

As the steam continued to rise in the air, some of the room became a bit obscured. Both of them lingered in that mist, allowing their mental and physical muscles to relax. Vincent closed his eyes and just basked in the warm atmosphere.

After a few minutes, Fang spoke up again. “What about the obelisks?” they asked.

“What about them?” Vincent replied, opening up one eye.

“Well, since you’re the Chosen, why don’t you make finding all of them your goal?”

Vincent opened his other eye and sat up a bit. “Oh yeah, that's right, I am the Chosen.” He smiled a bit. “Yeah,” he nodded, “that sounds like a good goal.” He laughed a bit to himself. “It kinda feels good to say that out loud.”

“Saying what?”

“Just saying that I actually have something to look forward to; an actual end goal.”

“It really does feel good, doesn’t it? Not having to go back and forth deciding on something, but to just have something to do, even if it’s something that someone else told you to do.”

Vinecnt stretched a bit and replied, “I guess, but I feel like the only person that should tell you what to do is yourself.”

“That’s fair, but,” Fang countered, “having a purpose means more to me than where it came from.”

Vincent then inquisitively looked at Fang and asked, “Speakin’ of purpose an’ shit, what about you? What do you want to do?”

Fang recoiled back for a second in surprise. Their face showed some confusion, but their expression quickly shifted to interest. “Huh,” they responded. “I always wanted to explore the world and understand it better, like my father told me to. Although, I’ve already seen a lot of it”

“I mean yeah, you said that before. Is there anything else you want to do? Something that’s not what your dad told you to do?”

Fang opened their mouth to answer, but quickly shut it. Their eyes drifted to various corners of the room and the condensation from the hot bath started to stream down their body.

After a minute of watching Fang think, Vincent interjected, “Ah, don’t worry about it if you can’t think of anything. Besides, I just found one today.”

“Alright,” Fang said. “Well, I think I’m about done for the day.” They then started to stand up.

“Ok, ok,” Vincent agreed, throwing his hands in the air, playfully. “Let’s get ready for this tournament.”