Inhibition

Chapter 27

The next opponent was a red haired girl with pigtails. She skipped right up, and at first Cat thought she had found her twin. Then the girl smiled.

Cree-py. Cat thought to herself as the girls wickedly sharp canines were revealed. The teeth totally didn’t go with the innocent school girl vibe the red head was trying to pull off. Other than the pigtails, the girl was wearing a mid-thigh length black skirt, a button up white shirt, an orange tie, and a pair of tight, black, knee-high boots.

Cat had plenty of time to analyze what the girl was wearing, because all she did was stand there. She’d twirl a pigtail and smile her creepy smile. That was it. Then Cat felt a sharp pain in her cheek. She raised her hand to it, and the tips of her fingers came away red. Disbelieving what she was seeing, Cat rubbed her thumb across her fingers, just to confirm that she really was bleeding.

The red head’s smile just got bigger. Confused, Cat looked back up at her. A flicker of movement caught her eye, the object too small or too fast to see. She refocused her eyes, and looked again.

Hundreds of shards of rock, too small to be visible, were floating in the air between the two of them. Each was razor sharp, and pointed towards Cat. As she watched, the red haired girl gave a finger twitch, and five shards flew at her. Cat disintegrated them before they got closer than a foot. As the girl fired shard after shard at her, Cat could feel the magic flowing around her. It automatically formed a shield between Cat and the girl, a wall of crackling purple in Cat’s vision.

As the girl kept throwing shards, and Cat kept not getting hurt, the girl started to notice something was wrong. She started to send shards from different directions, but Cat’s shield shifted to block them. Cat didn’t even have to expand her shield; it moved effortlessly to wherever a shard was coming, even before Cat consciously noticed that it was coming. The girl started throwing more at one time, noticing that Cat had a shield up, even if she couldn’t see it. Each piece was blocked, no matter how many she sent across; Cat’s magic was just too good.

The girl was visibly frustrated by now. Sweat had beaded on her forehead, and her sweet school girl persona had faded. Her smile was now more of a grimace. Giving up on technique, she sent every shard left at Cat. Hundreds flew in at Cat from different directions, the numbers now so great that everyone could see what was happening.

They all hit Cat’s shield . . . and fizzled out. With so many being disintegrated at a time, there was a literal fizzling noise as Cat’s shield finally expanded to completely cover her.

At the end, Cat was the one smiling, even if she didn’t have pigtails.