"STEP AWAY! USE ANY MAGIC AND I'LL HARD-BOIL EGGHEAD HERE!" The Fire magic caster had woken up. Ilise realised with a shock of horror that they hadn't subdued their enemies properly - they'd simply left them on the floor. Rei was being held hostage because of their mistake. A Fireball glyph manifested on his palm. Rei was recoiling from the heat it emitted, and the stench of burning plastic filled the air. His glasses' frames were slowly melting.
"I'll trade the map and my team's safety for the egghead."
"Don't!" Rei shouted. He screamed in pain as the Fireball glyph got closer. His skin was turning an uncomfortable shade of lobster-red.
"H-hey! Isn't this breaking the rules? We're not allowed to use lethal magic! You're going to burn him alive!" Ilise stepped forward, her fists clenched.
The Promethean smiled nastily. "Who's watching us, anyway? That Marten prick and his chumps? Down here, it's just us. They've got healers up there. Who cares if I burn Mr. Smartypants a bit?"
"I do." Siegfried said.
The rules hadn't said anything about hand-to-hand combat, had they?
Without any glyphs or indication that he was about to attack, Siegfried lunged for the Promethean. The martial arts drills that he'd spent countless hours doing instinctively kicked in. One hand shot out and subdued the boy's arm, wrenching it aside and quite literally taking the heat off Rei. His leg hooked itself around his opponent's, and with a hard tug Siegfried sent him sprawling.
"Stupid low-tier!" The Promethean bellowed. He tried to send another fireball at Siegfried, but he was met by a brutal kick to the face and another chop to the arm. The sickening sound of his arm dislocating and nose breaking filled the air. Siegfried dug his knee into the small of his opponent's back, gritting his teeth and wrenching the boy's arm even tighter.
"Yield!" Siegfried roared. His voice had never sounded so guttural.
"Go die in a pit, you worthless good-for-nothing low-tier-"
Siegfried sent him flying into the opposite wall with a brutal roundhouse kick, warm blood sprayed out from his split lip. Nose bleeding profusely and blood flowing freely down his chin, he spat something white out. A tooth.
"You broke by bose! And by booth!" The Promethean cried. It was hard to understand him with his garbled speech, but Siegfried took it to mean something along the lines of 'You broke my nose! And my tooth!. Under normal circumstances, he would've apologised for hurting him that badly, but after the incident with Roza, he was less inclined to do so to people who mocked him. After all, he was their senior.
Instead, he left him to weep in his corner. All he said was, "You can cauterise your own wounds." He joined his teammates in tending to Rei, whose face was still lobster-red. His spectacles had been melted into a pathetic pile of steaming plastic . The tips of his hair were singed as well.
"Thank you, Siegfried. You didn't have to do that. I could've handled him."
"Don't listen to him. All of his 496 rating points go into using electrical signals to, like, stimulate his brain or something. He couldn't have done anything against the guy without you intervening. He can't even muster up a proper Discharge. Thank you." Roza hugged the boy who she'd so ruthlessly mocked not long ago without any reservation. "You saved my brother."
"D-don't mention it." Siegfried said, surprised by Roza's display of sincerity.
"And-" Roza gulped. "I'm sorry about what I said to you just now. I owe you one." She bowed deeply to him, her pink hair falling like a curtain. Siegfried thought he could make out a teardrop. His suspicions were confirmed by a wet 'plop' on the floor.
"Don't cry. I did what I had to do to protect a teammate." Siegfried raised his arms up and patted Roza gingerly. All she did was nod and bring her hands up to her face.
"I'm fine, sister. It's nothing the school nurse won't be able to heal." Rei assured his sister. Her sniffling subsided. "Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Pinky promise on that." Roza said.
"Pinky promise." Rei held out his pinky. Ilise couldn't help but be hit by a pang of nostalgia. The two of them reminded her of her relationship with Bianca. Of course, she'd never had the chance to make a pinky promise with her, but it touched her nonetheless.
"Aww... you guys." Toby snapped another photo. "Hehe. Sorry, couldn't resist."
And in that moment, in that tiny little backroom buried more than twenty metres under the ground, all five of them forgot that they were in an examination, and it was as if they'd known each other for a lifetime.
--
1500 HOURS
ALPHEIM
HELHEIM SUB-LEVEL B3
ONE HOUR BEFORE THE CONCLUSION OF THE SECOND EXAMINATION.
Rei might've been awfully intelligent, but without his glasses, his vision was horrendous. The team had spent the past few minutes fruitlessly stumbling through Helheim's endless corridors in search of the catwalk. It was only until Siegfried had stepped in that they found out Rei had read the map upside down the entire time, and had failed to notice simply because of his abysmal eyesight.
With the help of Ilise's Speed Augmentation spells, they'd managed to make up for all the lost time by heading for the catwalk at breakneck speed. They tore through the hallways, disturbing the piles of dust that had gathered in their corners for years on end and splashing cold drainage water everywhere they went.
Ilise was certain that Bianca would have a fit about how she'd ruined her uniform by getting what basically amounted to sewage water on it, but she figured that Bianca would understand given the circumstances.
"It's right through here." Siegfried said, suddenly coming to a stop. They stood in front of another door. Unlike the ones they'd previously breezed past, this one was thicker. Tougher. Ilise knocked on it, sending a bit of her magic through as she did so. It revealed three separate layers of solid, two-inch thick sheets of steel. Penetrating it would be a nigh-impossible task. Doing so without causing severe structural damage to their surroundings was unachievable.
None of them except for Ilise had the raw power required to breach the door. It would require her to tap into her Kaiserforce, something that she was staunchly against.
"I won't use my Kaiserforce," Ilise said resolutely. "It's too risky. All of you could get hurt!"
"We're not defenceless sheep, Ilise. We can handle ourselves. Well, maybe except for Siegfried there. But can't he, like, I don't know, karate-chop the debris out of his way?"
Siegfried rolled his eyes at Roza's suggestion. "It's martial arts, Roza, not magic. I can hit hard, but I can't hit nearly as fast as Ilise can. I'm bound to get brained by a rock sooner or later."
"Then whaddya suggest we do? We can't sit around here twiddling our thumbs. We've lost enough time as it is. Thanks a lot, Rei." Roza sniped.
"Well, I'm sorry that my eyesight isn't up to par. Tell me, who got me into playing computer games late at night?"
"Uh, guys, if you'd stop arguing, the door's wide open." Toby pointed to the melted control panel. His hand was releasing an excessive amount of steam, and the keypad was nothing more than a warped piece of plastic and rubber. The door had opened just wide enough for all of them to squeeze through. By the looks of things, it would be an awfully tight fit.
Rei arched an eyebrow. "That was... effective. I was about to suggest that Roza use one of her spells to short-circuit the keypad, but knowing the state of things around here, that probably wouldn't have worked either. Good thinking, Tobias. Let's be on our way, then-"
A blade forced its way through the gap in the door.
"Here's Henri, kiddos."
--