K'shalt Chronicles - Iceflame (B1)

Kam

Pyro

Ching! Clash! Bam-clatterr...! 

     I heard the loudly clashing weapons from across the wall as a background noise, concentrating instead on defending myself.  My opponent had chosen no weapon, only a shield, he was aloud because it was his first day. Bad choice, buddy, I thought.  I was weaponless, as usual, but his shield was giving me leverage. 
     I toyed with him for a bit; dancing around him faster than he could swing.  I tapped him on the shoulder every once in awhile, enjoying the way his face flushed in frustration.

But I always kept my rules in mind.

     After maybe five minutes, he tired noticeably, so I decided to finish it.  Starting to get boring anyways, I sighed and darted in behind him to lightly shoved his back.  Unbalanced, he turned to swing the shield at me, but I didn't bother moving out of the way.  Time seemed to slow as I reached over and twisted one of his hands off the shield.  With my other hand, I grabbed its edge and used its weak momentum to propel it away from our fight.  In this time, my opponent regained his balance and faced me.

     The boy, now weaponless and defenseless, seemed to find strength in desperation.  He snarled viciously and charged the few feet of distance between us.  He head-butted me in the stomach, using his superior weight to overbalance and pin me to the uneven, rocky ground.

I grunted, the air going out of me, but I wasn't done yet. I tried regaining my breath - gasping - and Coach began his count to three.

"One"

     I tried bucking the larger boy off, but he was too heavy for that. Instead, I struggled to unpin my hands.

     "Two, c'mon Pyro! I know you can do better than 'at! Just shove 'im off!" 

      Even as my mind translated Coach's thick accent -or lisp, nobody was quite sure- one hand came free from beneath me and I grasped the larger boy's wrist.  He looked down, his eyes showing how confused he was. Of course, this was his first day!  He was a newbie!  'Newbies' always got to choose who they wanted to duel first, and got a weapon or shield for sake of fairness.  Guess that explains the shield, thought Coach finally decided that I needed a challenge.  The kid chose me, so I guess that nobody had told him about me, and my somewhat... heated, personality.  Coach let out an exaggerated sigh before continuing,

"Thr-"

     The boy leaped to his feet and started hoping around, cradling his wrist and frantically blowing on it. I hopped up after him, and looked around at the ring of people watching our fight, most of them stifling snickers, although some still reached my ears.

"Oh, Pyro, not again!" Coach sighed - the same sigh as the last time this happened - tossing a glare at the snickering audience. " I'll grab the bucket of water, er... whatever yer name is just hang tight, 'kay?"

A popular jerk, that everyone simply referred to as 'C', called out "What, Kam? Can't take the heat?" earning a couple of laugh from his buddies. 

   Coach rushed off to grab the bucket of water - kept for such occurrences - for Kam's 'burnt' hand.  It wasn't as if I tried to hurt people with my fire, in fact, my fire helped more often than it hurt, and it only caught if I wanted it to.  In the training area, I'm supposed to fight without it, but that's hard when it is a reaction to things around you, a defense mechanism triggered usually, by panic. Earlier, it might not have been pure instinct that brought my hand to Kam's wrist, but I didn't have to think about it. Now he was hurt in the place  of my pride, I should have felt bad, but I didn't.  Pain was a part of our training.  Sure afterwards we got help for anything serious, but otherwise we needed to learn to deal with it.