Kress' final chapter for a while
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After that, the matches were… lacklustre. It was clear to Kress as soon as the next match got underway that the only people with a chance of winning were Willow and himself. The Romilda vs Willow match was a joke. Willow just sent the ball from one corner to the other, over and over again, forcing Romilda to constantly run from side to side until the dwarf woman made a mistake.
Once Willow got the first point… she just did it again. Romilda's shorter legs were a bit of an issue, but her shorter arms were a major problem. Thyme was taking notes, and mumbling something about 'longer paddles for dwarves' next time, but it clearly wasn't going to change the outcome of this match. Willow just kept up the pressure and managed a clean victory of five to zero. This is even with Willow starting to do slightly silly plays after she racked up three points. Romilda tried to prevent the fourth still, and completely gave up for the fifth, letting Willow take the win.
Vanya got her point for having a by and then all of a sudden Kress was up against Vanya. Kress had seen that the match between Romilda had been rather close, so he just played a solid match. No fancy tricks, no aiming for the face. There were quite a few shots to the corners, just to keep Vanya moving, but all in all? Kress didn't try to pull out anything nasty in an attempt to trip Vanya. Kress used his full effort, if not his full strength to close out the game.
With Vanya down, that just meant he had one more match. Kress sucked in a deep breath, before blowing air out of his mouth as Bonas and Willow stepped up for their match. It wasn't much closer than Kress' match with Vanya. Willow had seen Kress' tactic work against the wolfgirl and emulated it perfectly. Why fix what isn't broken?
Willow didn't get hit in the face this time, but it was a close thing. She managed exactly two points against Willow… but a large part of that was because Willow wanted to find out if she could manage the slice that Kress had attempted. The first attempt failed, the second attempt failed, but the third one got Willow a point and lead her to winning the match. Sure Willow could've just kept playing normally and likely gotten a 5-0 match record again, but where's the fun in that?
Romilda got a by this time, and that was nice for her. Not so nice was the next match against Kress where he stole Willow's strategy of forcing Romilda to run from side to side. This time, it got to three points and then Romilda asked, "Can I forfeit?"
It was Kress' serve, and technically he could sneak in an extra point right now if he wanted… but he held the ball. No sense in being a dick. *Just gotta remind myself of that more often. No sense in being an ass if it's not necessary. It wouldn't even be that funny.*
Thyme tapped his chin a few times, "Are you certain? I will allow forfeits because I'm sure Kress could just score too easy points if you're not interested in defending yourself, but is this something you're serious about?"
Romilda nodded, "It was a bad call on my part. We just didn't consider how much of a handicap my height would be in this. I see that you consider it at least somewhat, providing this raised platform for me so that I wasn't completely annihilated, but I'm just not likely to win any matches at this point. I'm pretty sure that second place is already impossible, and third place might be as well,"
Thyme revealed a wry smile. "I do apologise for this. I hadn't considered it to be such a problem either. I could mess with space so that your relative heights are the same… but then that would mess with both the size and perspective of the ball for both players, and likely cause its own problems. I clearly did not design this game with dwarves in mind… and I wonder how many other games I have created suffer from similar issues. I suspect twister might also present a problem…
"Alas, there is nothing to be done now I'm afraid. I'll likely be hearing a complaint from the dwarves on the committee… but in my defence, they didn't bring up any of these issues either when I presented the plan for this round. I even forced them to play a few matches and get back to me on the results… I suspect that the dwarves just played against each other… or once you get to that level of power, the height difference stops mattering.
"Now I think it's more likely the latter… positions on the planning committee are quite prestigious… and I cannot think of a single member below Rank 3 off the top of my head. So once again, I apologise for this. Would you like to forfeit this match? Or all remaining matches?"
Romilda thought about if for a few moments then looked down at her paddle and grinned. She looked over at Thyme, with a slightly raised eyebrow. Thyme, realising what she was hinting at winced a bit but nodded. Romilda grinned and then slammed the paddle down over her knee, snapping it in half.
Thyme sighed, "It seems that Romilda has broken a paddle, and thus she is eliminated from the table tennis section of this round. Bonas will receive a win in the following round as Romilda has decided not to contest it. Bonas and Vanya, you're up for the second final game,"
The fight kicked off and the first few rounds were tense. They traded points back and forth until they both got to three. They were both panting, and Vanya said, "Hey, you think you can go a bit easy on me? I've still got to fight Willow after this, who knows, I could win if you don't exhaust me firs!"
Bonas just glared back, flipping her paddle around in her hands. "I'm afraid I need to get at least one win. Otherwise I'll be a disgrace. If anything, knowing that you wanted me to just give up? It makes me want to win this round even more,"
Vanya grimaced as Bonas increased the power of her strikes. The paddle creaked as she did, but Bonas didn't stop, not even after she managed to get a good point from Vanya by slapping the ball quickly across the net.
Bonas was serving for the win. She looked over her cracked and broken paddle, and placed her spare hand behind it before serving, just to keep the paddle a bit safer. The rally between the two started up again, and Bonas wanted to push the limits on the equipment. The paddles creaked, the cracks spread. Bonas slapped the ball as hard as she could, and heard the paddle groan, but when Vanya tried to return the ball, Vanya heard it.
Her paddle gave out a crunching sound, and a few pieces chipped off, but Thyme didn't call the match just yet. She looked down at her paddle, it had a tiny hole in the centre and cracks all around it. Still, Bonas returned the ball once more, the cracks on hers growing larger. Vanya was about to return once more… but something twigged in her mind. She just had a feeling that if she hit the ball back one last time, her paddle would shatter. Quickly aborting the movement, Vanya raised the paddle out of the way, letting the ball bounce off the table, and then onto the floor.
"Vanya, do you want to take a break before the final match against Willow?" asked Thyme after declaring Bonas the winner.
Vanya grit her teeth, knowing that she really did need a break… and expecting it to make no difference. She looked over her broken and battered paddle… before reaching into the bucket and grabbing a replacement. Thyme made no comment, just stood their waiting for an answer. "Yeah, I'll take a short break," said Vanya.
It wasn't enough. Thyme gave Vanya ten minutes of extra rest, and it didn't help. Willow was ready for her, and Vanya hadn't completely recovered from her last match. It was mostly a mental thing, the fact that she lost three points in a row against Bonas. Once to tie it up, and then two to strong hits. Vanya cursed herself internally for letting her paddle break so much without stabilising it with her hand. Bonas had handed her the answer… and she'd ignored it.
In the end, Willow wiped Vanya out of the tournament, 5-1 using everything she'd learned up to this point. This marked Kress as the winner overall. The mini-tournament had all been decided in that first match, where Kress and Willow faced off. Willow was cursing her sweat, cursing her shoes, and cursing that fall.
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