"This sucks." My girlfriend groaned as she slumped down on the couch. "I'm an Ascendant. A powerful G-ranker who is probably going to hit F-rank before I turn nineteen, and I have to WORK to make money to pay my own boyfriend. I became a superhero to avoid this kind of nonsense. I hate hunting monsters. I can't even bring you along to help because if we earn the money together it doesn't COUNT."

I just snickered at her. "You're lucky I already confirmed that I could take cash for wishes. Not that it's surprising. I think that's where most of the WCP's startup funds came from. And honestly, you're ranking up much faster than anyone else our age could even dream of. Four days and you're already only five points from hitting three hundred perception, and forty points from the cap. Can you really complain?"

She turned her head to glare at me, but there was no heat, it was just sulking. "I can complain about ANYTHING. And you're supposed to listen. I'm being petty, didn't you tell me to do more dumb things for myself? You're supposed to listen to me vent and say how bad you feel for me." I would have, but at seventy five G-ranked chits I was quickly saving up enough of a nest egg to replace my weapon. The cane was getting a bit old. Not that I'd do it during the tournament since they banned F-ranked offensive gear, but that just meant I could save more and get something really nice.

"I do feel bad. I have to listen to you whine every day, it's a terrible feeling." Callie pouted and hurled a pillow at me, which I easily dodged, sticking my tongue out at her. "But honestly, it's fine. You're almost capped, and then you can just focus on training. Speaking of which, the big fight is tomorrow. Did you manage to dig up any more background on the others?"

She scoffed. "With my copious free time? Do you know how much work I've been doing? Without a team I have to take smaller missions and making enough to pay off my stats is breaking my back." Then her face lit up. "So of course I did. In fact, I found out something absolutely huge."

I rolled my eyes at the misdirect, but urged her to continue. She looked around dramatically, as if someone would be listening in while we sat in the living room of the house we shared with a B-ranker. "Apparently...mop guy is a Master Candidate."

"Bullshit." I spat. "There's no possible way. Didn't Megan say they're stupid rare around here? I mean, I knew there would be some maybe showing up in the tournament, but there's no way the guy is at peak Intermediate in MOPPING." There were limits to how ridiculous Skills could get, and that stretched the limits for me. Like, how would you even train that? And what the fuck was his original ability?"

Callie just shrugged. "So my sources say. Which is to say Celine. Which is to say the information hall at the Academy." She saw my horrified expression and giggled. "Oh calm down. We have our own Master Candidate to counter him." Her expression turned serious. "I admit though, I am a bit worried, so I already talked to Abel, and he's giving us special training today."

I blanched. "SPECIAL training? Abel's training is already about as SPECIAL as I can take without dying. If it gets any more special they might not find all the pieces of me."

"Yeah." She said with a wince. "I'm not looking forward to it either. But if it needs to be done it needs to be done. It's not like the other team will go any easier on us. And while Abel can keep him busy, going up against someone like that, there's no telling if he might manage to get a stray shot in on us."

She stood up, holding out a hand. "Wait, NOW?" I grimaced. "I'm not mentally prepared. You mind if I go hide under my bed for a few hours?" Raising an eyebrow at me imperiously she just left her hand out. "Alright fine, I'm coming." I grabbed her hand made her physically pull my body off the couch as an expression of my discontent. She just rolled her eyes but didn't complain. If she could whine about nonsense I could too.

In reality I wasn't...THAT worried. I knew he wouldn't really kill us. This would likely suck a lot. But if he thought it would make us safer I was all for it. We met him down in the training room, and found Mel sitting off to the side nursing a hot cup of tea...WITHOUT her mask. We just stared at her blankly. "I...what?" I said in confusion. I'd never seen Mel's face before, It was so jarring.

She grinned at us. "Welcome to the team kids. For real. We were impressed with the last fight, and we figured since we're in this together we'd show a little sincerity." She jerked a thumb at Abel. "Drama king over there only takes his mask off when he's going to kick some serious ass, but mine I just leave on our of habit. So...hello." She waved casually. "I wouldn't let it distract you too much though. This is going to be rough enough as it is."

Abel cracked his neck, starting to stretch and loosen his muscles in a way that utterly terrified me. Abel didn't stretch. Abel didn't need to prepare to fight anyone. This warm up implied he was taking us seriously. Deep down though, I felt a thrill of excitement. My teacher had always been a mysterious existence. We'd seen him get pissed and ruin someone's day, but we'd never seen him get serious. He'd never needed to.

"This next fight." He said calmly. "Is going to be different than the last. I can't tell you that the opponent will be as strong as I am. But I can't tell you that he won't. I am not going to allow you two to participate in this fight until I'm satisfied that you can survive a battle with someone like me. This training is going to force you to adapt to combat on the Master Candidate level, at least enough to live through it. Are you willing?"

He obviously had no plans whatsoever to let us continue if we said no, he'd just made that clear. I personally didn't want to though. I had plenty of heals in reserve to use, and I wanted to see what would happen. Still, I felt the need to at least ask. "Are you sure we can? We don't have any Intermediate Skills between the two of us."

The solemn demeanor slipped as he rolled his eyes, looking to Mel in exasperation. "It's like they haven't ever heard a word we've said? Do I just have an ignorable voice? The first thing you should have learned at the Pavilion is that combat is more than Skills and stats. Sure, you two aren't at Intermediate, and that's going to hold you back. But battle isn't just numbers. I trained my Ragam to peak Intermediate because I love the art, but I was still a member of the Titan Twenty before I was a Master Candidate. I won't say I can train you to beat someone like me in a few days, but surviving should be doable."

That little thrill had sparked and become an inferno. THIS. This was what I wanted. The reason I craved combat. There was still fear, I wasn't a moron, but the idea of being able to fight above my weight class, to be more than my stats. If I had a chance of walking further in the candidate race it would be like this. I had to evolve. To adapt. To learn. I nodded slowly at him, readying myself.

I felt the fierce determination in my gut echoed in the bond as Callie took up her own stance. Abel grinned. "Now THAT'S what I like to see. You kids will bring a tear to this old man's eye. But don't think being proud means you don't get beaten. Spare the rod spoil the child and all that." Without an ounce of hesitation he unleashed a fist at us, the manifestation easily the size of a fucking bus.

He'd chambered the punch from his hip, so while it wasn't overwhelmingly strong it was FAST. I panicked for a split second as it approached, freezing under the pressure, before forcefully dragging my attention to the attack. I grabbed Callie's hand, and she pulled up a shield in front of us. Rather than using my skills alone, we shared the burden, just like we'd been shown in that invocation, only much faster and easier. Stone Limb, modified, Consecration of Flame, modified.

The dome of darkness hardened into black magma, and it stayed stable just long enough for me to trigger Cloud Step and Leaf on the Wind and drag Callie out of the way. We barely avoided the shattering earthen darkness. The pressure knocked us flying, and I hit the ground, already dragging her up to move again as another massive fist bore down on the two of us.

We erected another shield, dodging again, and Abel clicked his tongue as he watched us madly scramble. "Your foundations are too unstable. I said earlier that Skills and stats are only part of the equation. Using soul strength to constantly toss out powerful moves to counter my casual punches is a good way to get exhausted to death. You might be able to survive an intentional attack, but if you need to mobilize that much power you'll get crushed by the first sneak attack."

I panted as I palled Callie to her feet. "You're a Master Candidate using your fist manifestation. How the hell are we supposed to survive it without Skills?"

He just shrugged. "Your business. I'm just saying that isn't sustainable. Skill use is fine, but you need to take your long term survivability into account. I'm not going to let up anytime soon. You've got dozens more of those to survive if you want to make it through this."

With a grimace I adjusted my stance, I shot Callie a meaningful look and flicked my eyes at a spot, she seemed confused for a second before finally nodding. He mentioned that Skills were fine, but had specifically told us that using soul strength would wear us down. He was probably right, honestly, I'd built up more soul strength with my training, but even sharing the burden with Callie I couldn't keep doing that indefinitely.

When he confirmed we were ready, he chambered another punch and a massive fist image hurtled out of the void right at us. Without a second thought, I hauled on Callie's arm, and used Balam to flip her over my head, creating a foothold for her with Cloud Step. She used her own Balam Skill the same way, using the step off point to pivot me, and the two of us floated out of the way on the still active Leaf on the Wind.

Another fist fired out, and another Cloud Step allowed us to dodge it by a hair, but the third hit me in the shoulder and cracked my arm bones and several of my ribs. I triggered a heal burst and a scan heal together. Callie looked terrified and barely dragged me out of the way of the fourth blow, but I was already healing.

Luckily Abel wasn't punching rapidfire or we'd both be dead. I was surprised Callie's safety wish hadn't triggered, so he must still be holding back, even if I couldn't tell. Finally he let up for a minute, letting us catch our breath. He didn't say anything, just waiting for us to be ok to go again. Once we reset our stances the training resumed. Gods this was going to be a long day.