Dimas returns to his locker room. Lilee has already laid out the necessary ointments to clean Dimas's wounds. While Lilee's Brío Arts can heal small wounds, they're not so good at cleaning them. Hence, the ointments.
"Yay Dimas!! You did it!" Lilee goes in for a hug but Dimas holds her back.
Dimas walks past her and sits down at the table. His chin rests on his hand and he takes a deep breath. Had Lilee not seen the match, she would've believed that Dimas was reacting to a loss.
"What's wrong? You won!" Lilee watches their team go up in the bracket.
Her heart does a couple of backflips but she remains calm, it would be insensitive to be cheering while Dimas is upset.
"It was a crap fight. All I did was crash into him." Dimas says.
Sure, it was an easy victory, but it wasn't satisfying. He felt cheated having to spend this long waiting for a fight against someone so weak.
"If it makes you feel any better, I thought it was impressive that you managed to hit Daniel at all. I'm guessing that the dark ball around your head blocked your vision, right?" Lilee says.
"Yeah…"
"How'd you do it? Did you hear him?"
"Nope, I couldn't hear over the stupid crowd. I noticed that he would try scratching me whenever I blocked and only threw rocks if I wasn't blocking. So, I let him hit me with rocks since blocking was doing absolutely nothing. That way I could figure out his pattern of attack. He would jump left, then right, and right again."
"Hopefully you'll have a better plan than letting yourself get hit with rocks against Clarke." Lilee wipes some of the blood off of Dimas's face with a handkerchief.
"Right…" Dimas forgets about the awful match he just had and focuses on the upcoming one. "Let's go, I need to train." Dimas stands up.
Lilee pushes him back down. "Training can wait, we need to clean those scratches first."
Dimas finally notices the ointment on the table, it smelled like the one Lilee had used on his head when they first met. Dimas tenses up.
"Do you have to use that one? It stings like hell."
Lilee grabs a handful and begins to rub it on Dimas's wounds. "Don't be so dramatic, it's for your own good."
Dimas tightly grips the table, the pain nearly bringing him to tears.
[When have I ever been dramatic?]
Dimas touches the weird substance covering a wound near his forehead. It feels slimy like gel but was beginning to harden, currently it was somewhat malleable.
"Stop touching it!" Lilee gently slaps his hand. "Keep it on there while my Brío regenerates, it'll keep it clean in the meantime."
"So it's like a band-aid?"
"What's a band-aid?"
"Nevermind, here." Dimas hands Lilee all the rocks he collected on their way to their usual spot, the small area behind the hills.
Lilee accidentally drops a few rocks, her hands are smaller than Dimas's hands and aren't able to hold as much. "Are you sure this couldn't have waited until after the other matches? I really wanted to see the rest."
Lilee had always watched a tournament to completion, a sort of 'tradition' that she had hoped to continue.
"The other matches don't matter, at least for now." Dimas takes a ready stance. "Alright, try to hit me."
"Are you sure about this? What if I hurt you?"
"Then you'll heal me. Now go!"
Lilee throws a rock. Dimas catches it.
"You gotta throw it faster and harder."
"I'm trying!"
"Try harder!"
Lilee proceeds to throw rock after rock and each time Dimas becomes more disappointed.
Dimas takes a deep breath. "Maybe… try getting a little, or a lot, closer."
"This feels like I'm getting more training out of it than you are…"
"Yeah… This might be your worst idea yet."
"I said it as a joke!!"
"Sounds like there's trouble in paradise." Leon walks down the hill.
He's alone this time around. Maybe his team was out celebrating and soaking in the, unearned in Dimas's opinion, adoration of fans or maybe Scott left them behind to avoid any more unwanted prying into Lilee's past. At least, that's what Dimas assumed. It was actually a mixture of the two.
Dimas gets distracted and takes a hit to the neck by one of Lilee's rocks. Luckily, it was the size of a marble.
"You're supposed to dodge them." Lilee sticks her tongue out at Dimas.
"Is this your training for your fight against Clarke?" Leon asks.
"If you can call it that." Dimas says.
"How are you going to train for our match? Hopefully you find me more threatening than a few rocks."
"That's if you win."
"There's no way I'm losing before I get to fight you."
"We'll see."
"Oh yeah, congrats on your match Leon! You took that guy down like it was nothing!"
"Thanks! If I can be honest with you two, I feel kind of bad taking him down quickly, hopefully it doesn't bother him much."
"He can only blame himself." Dimas says.
"That's kind of harsh." Leon smiles. "Especially since you'll lose too."
"I won't." Dimas grins, not to reciprocate Scott's friendly smile, but to show how confident he is.
Leon turns to leave. "Good luck with your match tomorrow." He waves once and disappears over the hills.
[I still gotta figure out his Brío Arts.]
"I hope the match won't ruin your friendship." Lilee says.
"He's not my friend."
Dimas wasn't one for friends. He didn't really see the point of it. At least, not anymore. Scott was a stepping stone, at most a worthy rival.
"Ready to keep going?"
Dimas wants to return to 'training'. While it may be stupid and probably inneffective, it's better than nothing.
"I can't…"
"You're not going to hurt me."
"I know that," Lilee shows her empty hands. "I'm out of rocks."
Dimas sighs and proceeds to help Lilee gather the rocks.