"Well." I said in shock. "That was...terrifying." I looked over at Callie. "Why do we even fight? Like, we could just have Apollyon carry the team through the whole first half of the tournament. Not like it would be hard for him." My tone was joking and light, but honestly I kind of wished she would agree. As much fun as some of these fights were for me, I could always get my fill of that in the single elimination rounds.

Abel just snorted. "No." We both looked at him and our mentor chuckled. "You're thinking too short term. We have four more rounds of practice to get you ready for the single elimination fights. If you waste them all using me as a crutch you're going to get crushed in the early rounds of the one on one fights and that removes a bunch of our chances to get first place in the tournament."

He was right, and honestly I didn't feel like sitting around the whole fight for the next few rounds anyway. I just shrugged. "I was mostly kidding. Anyway, maybe we should go and check on the pirates. We never got an introduction, and they were actually about as impressive as the mop team."

I expected him to snap or get pissed, but Abel just nodded. "True." At our surprised looks he just shook his head. "You assumed I'd be too pissed to talk to them? I was annoyed when they almost hurt my partner, but I already got my revenge, so now we're even. They actually did better than I expected, so I'm not against introducing ourselves."

The match was over, but it would be a while until the exhibition matches anyway, and even if it wouldn't...that wasn't our problem, we would leave when we were done. As we approached, the redhead saw us coming from where she was healing the metal guy (who was no longer metal) and reached for her weapon unconsciously. The captain, who was already healed and conscious again, albeit rubbing his chin gingerly.

"Ok." Said the captain sheepishly. "I probably deserved that, but dear gods man, you took that a bit personally didn't you?" Abel just raised an eyebrow at the man, who put up both hands. "Right, right, my apologies. That gas isn't normally quite so flammable, or rather, it combusts at absurdly high temperatures. G-ranker fire abilities aren't usually enough to set it off like that." He reached out a hand to bandage guy, who had already been healed, and let the smaller man pull him to his feet.

Mel rolled her eyes. "It's fine. No one got seriously hurt." Her tone was annoyed, though the trace of a smile on her face told me she wasn't exactly unhappy with Abel's extreme reaction to her injuries. I stepped over, putting a hand on each of them and releasing a heal burst. They weren't too damaged, but it didn't make sense to leave the two of them hurt for no reason when I could help, and Mel in particular seemed like she might be more banged up then she was letting on based on the way she was carrying herself.

The man nodded. "Glad to hear it. Fighting dirty is what we do, but we aren't lunatics. No one wants bodies dropping in a tournament." He held out a hand to Abel, who was the closest. "Teague Cromwell. The one in the bandages is Rum, the jumbo lad turning a lovely shade of plum from his teammates own poison is Ruffle, and the fetching lass with the blood colored hair keeping our sorry arses alive is Mallory. I know you lot are the Starchaser Pavilion, but I'm afraid I haven't heard any more than that." He said the last bit leadingly, obviously curious about who we were.

Callie smiled at that. "I'm Nightstrike, team leader. The terrifying thug in the silver mask who totaled your whole team single handedly is Apollyon, our resident hothead is Starbreaker, and the big lovable goon looming over me is my partner Solomon. Not a surprise you haven't heard of us. We're a local team, and a recent one at that. We were impressed how you handled yourselves though, and we were hoping you might want to grab something to eat and share information, given you're already out of the tournament and have nothing to hide anymore."

Teague burst out laughing. "Well, you're certainly an optimistic bunch, I'll grant you that. Not wrong though, sure, we would be happy to tag along. We don't really have anything on after this anyway. We were planning a little celebration dinner later tonight with just the team, but I suppose we can move it up to a lunch."

That struck me as a bit odd. "What do you guys have celebrate? You lost?" Everyone looked at me, and it took me a second to replay that in my head and realize how dickish it sounded. "Um. Sorry, did I say that out loud? I meant you...experienced an important growth opportunity?"

The grin on the scruffy blonde man's face told me he didn't have any hard feelings. "Right you are, mate. Lose we did. But it was a good fight. Maybe not the most impressive showing we've put on, but we hardly embarrassed ourselves did we? No reason to sulk about not making it. Only one of the ten thousand participants will with the grand prize, so our odds weren't exactly great. No shame in doing your best."

"Besides." Said Mallory as she approached with a now healed,albeit still limping, Ruffle (whose name made literally no sense to me). "We weren't the favorites in this by any means. My money is on those girls from Final Frost Heaven personally. Those ice queens are scary. Anyway, someone said something about food? Healing really takes it out of me."

That was interesting. I hadn't really contextualized Jessie's eating habits with her energy expenditure for healing and taming, but that made a lot of sense. Callie seemed interested in the comment as well, but as the leader her focus was on the bigger picture and she was less prone to drifting off on tangents (admittedly most people were less prone to that, I was a fairly flighty person) and refocused on the matter at hand. "We should get out of the pit." Said my girlfriend wryly. "I imagine they want to get another team in here, or at least clean this place up."

It should be noted that the sand pit was definitely a bit of a mess. Teague grimaced and nodded, waving his teammates over as we all filed out of the pit through the exit gate on our side. I wasn't sure if they were supposed to do that, but again, not really our problem. As we walked, Abel sidled up next to Teague. "So, I'm interested in your combat style, it felt sort of...haphazard, but in an unpredictable way."

His comment got a laugh from the pirate captain. "Because it's supposed to. Scallywag is a combat style designed to take advantage of a variety of environmental and situational factors to create openings in the enemy's form. The handful of powder, that variety of bullets, those make things easier, but natural dust or sand or improvised local weapons work just as well. Our Admiral created the style himself over centuries of traveling the cluster and getting in fights in all sorts of different locations."

Abel nodded thoughtfully. "Sacrifice power for versatility. It isn't a bad idea. The pit wasn't exactly your ideal fighting location then. Would have been better for the lot of you if we fought in the wild."

"Somewhat." Said Teague with a shrug. "But ANY location means even ones where there isn't much around. Hence the prepared armaments and tricks. I'm more impressed with your style. I'd heard there were Master Candidates in this thing, but I hadn't done much research into them. I didn't know one of you was local, being able to get to that level of Skill on a pseudo D-rank planet is pretty monstrous."

There wasn't much to say to that. It WAS monstrous, so Abel just gave a shrug of his own and changed the subject. "So, what's the deal with the bullets. Those enchanted?" I'd been wondering about that myself. It was almost similar to how I used my stored attacks, albeit less versatile and more cumbersome. I wouldn't be switching to a flintlock, no matter how badass it looked.

Teague drew said flintlock in a smooth motion, laying it across a forearm and aiming it at the wall as he closed one eye to sight down the barrel. "Yup. We have a dedicated Bulletteer in the Armada. His whole ability is a synergy between Enchanting and Ammo Creation, and he even experiments with Inventing and Alchemy for some of his formulas. It's amazing what you can accomplish when you dedicate yourself to a craft. Especially once you reach the Master ranks."

It certainly sounded like it. I couldn't wait to see what kind of things Benny would be making at C or even D-rank. Teague filled us in on some of the history of the Seven Seas Armada, which had one of the largest standing navies in the system and employed most of the highest ranking engineers who worked on ships at all. I'd have loved to be able to afford a ship that could take us off world, but I knew there was zero chance the money I had on hand was even approaching enough so I filed that information away for later use.

Mallory had a suggestion for a local steak house, and we decided to eat there at her suggestion, and as we emerged from the underbelly of the arena we met up with Rime and the others and introduced them. Benny gave me a subtle nod of approval, apparently making friends with pirates was a win in his book, and we all headed out for lunch.

As we headed out to the car, I felt a buzz on my finger and told everyone I'd catch up. I opened the call from my cousin, seeing her looking worried. "Shane, you're ok. Thank the gods." Her relief was not encouraging. "You need to be careful. There were attacks on six of the major faction teams within the last hour. Someone is making moves they really shouldn't be. I don't see what anyone gets from moving this early, but there's been huge bounties offered on several promising teams including yours and mine and they all went out around the same time."

My eyes snapped to my friends, who were heading for the car. Melinda and Alexander weren't there, nor was Zeke, they figured having high rankers around would ruin the vibe for lunch. The four and Rime were still with us though, so when the vortex of whirling grey mist slammed down on the group of them they weren't completely helpless. I barely had time to see the dome of fractal ice form over them all before they were swallowed by the mist.

Without a second of hesitation I bolted right at the mist, triggering Seek Hidden on Callie and harmonizing it with our bond to enhance the effect. I could see a glowing form a few dozen feet away and focused on that, trusting her to recognize I was coming and tell Rime so she could let me through the dome.

As I drew closer I detected movement behind me and without even pausing I used Leaf on the Wind and Cloud Step to send myself flashing up diagonally in a way that almost no one would be able to account for in an attack. A wave of acidic purple sludge hit the ice, hissing even as it came down. I thought for a second it had melted, but I saw Rime looking my way and realized she was opening the dome for me. I Cloud Stepped again and landed inside as she closed it up. Sadly though, ice wasn't exactly opaque, which meant we could still see the dark forms emerging from the mist. We were surrounded.