Chapter 18: Crash Course!
『"Putting the crash in crash course."』
Amara’s device buzzed at exactly 5:47 AM, as did everyone else’s.
TRAINING RESUMES IN 5 MINUTES. REPORT TO COMBAT ARENA.
She wore her training attire, designed with a protective mesh woven through the fabric. Flexible enough to move freely and tough enough to absorb a certain degree of blunt force impact.
It had been recommended... no advised that they wear full protective gear when it came to Yelena’s sessions.
She stepped out of her room at the same time Ethan emerged from his, and their eyes met across the hallway.
"Morning," Amara said, keeping her voice controlled.
"Morning," Ethan replied, his tone equally measured. Then, after a while, he added, "you sleep okay?"
"Fine. You?"
"Fine."
The uneasiness sat between them like something neither wanted to acknowledge.
Sophia joined them, yawning wide, and Raj emerged next, rubbing his eyes.
The awkwardness of it all seemed to permeate through the entire group as they all walked in uncomfortable silence toward the designated location.
"You think something happened between them?" Hiro leaned close, whispering to Raj.
"Between who?" Raj replied in his usual volume.
"Keep your voice down!" Hiro hissed, grabbing Raj’s shoulder and pulling him down to a whisper-appropriate height.
But there was no need for whispers anymore. Amara had heard them perfectly well. She acted like it didn’t bother her. Why should it? Nothing had happened. They’d just... talked. That was all.
She decided to act more normal. Pretend if she had to. With that resolve settled firmly in place, they headed toward the combat training arena.
***
The arena sat just beyond the main training grounds, accessible through a doorway that Amara was certain hadn’t been there yesterday.
Inside, the room was surprisingly normal compared to ARTE’s impossible dimensions. There were no control rooms above for anyone to subtly observe. Just an open space with high ceilings and excellent lighting.
A white circle marked the floor. Thirty feet wide, maybe more.
Practice weapons like staffs, training swords, spears, even some exotic weapons Amara didn’t have names for lined the walls in organized racks. Crash mats were also stacked in one corner, looking ominously well-used.
And in the center of the circle, waiting with the perfect stillness of a predator, stood Yelena.
Amara searched instinctively for Maya or Dante—some buffer or additional presence to make this feel less like walking into an execution. But they weren’t there.
Just Yelena. Alone. Waiting.
Amara swallowed.
"Sparring session." Her pale gray eyes swept across all five of them. Then she pointed. "All of you. Together."
Hiro blinked several times. "Wait—seriously? All five of us against you?"
"Da." Yelena folded her arms behind her back. "You attack as team. If even one of you lands clean strike, I consider this session success."
Raj cracked his knuckles, grinning. Clearly he’d learned nothing from yesterday. "Oh, we got this."
"We?" Sophia looked at Raj. "You know what that sounds like? That sounds like famous last words," she said, already eyeing the exit.
Ethan had that look he got when he was thinking, the one where his eyes went slightly distant as he calculated. "I agree with Sophia. Let’s not be rash. We should approach this with a planned formation—"
"LET’S FUCKING GO!" Raj was already running, his massive body accelerating toward Yelena.
"—or we could just... not do that." Ethan pinched the bridge of his nose.
Amara, Hiro, and Sophia hesitated for maybe a second, exchanged glances that said we’re really doing this? Then summoned their weapons and sprinted after Raj.
Ethan sighed with his entire body. "So we’re just going in without a plan. That’s what we’re doing."
"Just go with it, man!" Hiro shouted over his shoulder as he blurred forward in a red streak.
One moment, Raj was throwing a devastating right hook. The next, Yelena was driving her elbow into his kidney so hard that it made Amara wince just watching.
Raj grunted, stumbling forward but spinning to face her, already recovering.
Amara’s eyes widened. She hadn’t seen Yelena move. One instant she’d been in front of Raj, the next she was behind him.
Like a ghost, she was already gone again, circling around to Raj’s blind side.
Raj spun to face her, throwing another haymaker. Then another. Timing his punches with his whole body behind them.
Yelena sidestepped both without effort. Then her leg swept his feet out from under him with a move so fast it left afterimages as he crashed down hard enough to make the floor shake.
"You fight like refrigerator with legs," Yelena said calmly, raising her foot. Then she stomped down directly into his breastplate, and Raj’s entire body was forced into a crater in the ground. "Defense is good. But brain would be nice addition."
Raj struggled to push himself up, rage and embarrassment warring on his face. "I kind of prefer when you weren’t talking."
A red blur materialized behind her. But her hands were already thrown up in a guard stance.
Hiro’s punch connected with her crossed forearms hard enough to send her skidding backward as her boots scraped against the floor.
Hiro grinned. "Got you!"
Hiro had actually moved her and Amara felt a surge of hope.
Following that punch, spears and training blades began raining down from above thanks to Sophia using her telekinesis.
She turned every weapon in the arena into a projectile aimed at Yelena’s position.
"Predictable." Yelena backflipped, avoiding them all while they buried themselves in the floor around her.
She kept avoiding the raining weapons with minimal movement, never wasting energy with each dodge she made.
She also had to deal with Hiro, who took advantage of Sophia’s bombardment and came at her again in another red blur.
But this time she was ready.
She sidestepped at the last possible instant, watching him streak past with his fist stretched out. Then her hand shot out and grabbed him by the collar of his training uniform, bringing him to an abrupt, physics-defying stop.
"Straight lines are for trains," she said after catching him. "You are not train."
"No... I am not train..." Hiro repeated slowly, already bracing for the punch he could see coming.
Yelena’s fist moved—
Just in time, Ethan’s shield manifested between them, a flat plane of translucent blue energy that absorbed the impact.
"Ethan! Am I glad to see that shield!" Hiro vibrated his entire body so fast he shook off her grip, dropped to the ground, and scurried away like his life depended on it.
Ethan stood fifteen feet back, hand still raised. "Someone needs to be rational."
Sophia tried to read Yelena’s mind next. Amara saw the concentration on her face, the way her eyes focused slightly.
But all she could perceive was calm focus and cold intent. No surface thoughts. No emotional tells.
"Fuck," Sophia muttered.
"Hm." Yelena made a soft sound of acknowledgment.
She must have noticed what Sophia was attempting because she grabbed one of the spears that had embedded itself in the ground and moved with that same blinding speed directly toward her.
Sophia threw up her hands, trying to halt Yelena with pure telekinetic force, but she walked through it like it was a light breeze.
She stopped directly in front of Sophia. One finger extended.
Tap.
Right between her eyes.
"You’re dead."
Sophia froze, then exhaled shakily. "Yeah. Okay." She backed toward the corner, hands raised in surrender. "I’m done guys. Guess that’s it for me."
She moved immediately to the corner of the arena, clearly relieved she’d escaped the session with only a head tap and definitely not planning on returning for more.
In the meantime, Amara was pulling Raj out of his crater, offering him a hand. "You good, big guy?"
"No," Raj answered with sad eyes that resembled a puppy’s. "I think something other than my ribs is bruised. And I don’t think regeneration is gonna help with that."
Amara gave him a soft smile and squeezed his shoulder. The grip on her blade tightened as she turned her attention back to the fight.
Just like Ethan, Amara had been watching, studying, waiting for openings. But Yelena didn’t seem to have any openings. She wasted no energy and left no gaps in her defense.
Raj approached next for round two. He threw multiple heavy punches in rapid succession, each one probably capable of bursting through walls.
Yelena slipped through them all like water, then slammed the spear she held into the ground to free up her hand and jabbed two fingers into his right bicep with pinpoint accuracy.
Immediately, that entire arm went limp.
"The fuck?" Raj stared at his useless arm in disbelief.
He lifted his other arm for another punch, but she jabbed it too, same spot, same result. Now both arms hung beside him like noodle strings, completely unresponsive.
His regeneration was already working on whatever she’d done. Amara could see his fingers beginning to twitch as the effect slowly reversed.
But Yelena was already delivering a dozen more precise strikes in the blink of an eye, targeting more nerve clusters.
And just like that, Raj dropped to the ground, twitching.
"You hit like truck," Yelena observed clinically. "But move like truck with flat tire."
"She fucking paralyzed me!" Raj announced in an angry, bewildered tone to anyone who would listen.
Yelena then grabbed the spear and pulled it from the ground like she was anticipating something.
She threw it straight up into the air, caught it as it fell, then immediately hurled it toward Hiro who had been building up speed for another charge.
The spear moved like a guided missile, stabbing through his uniform and pinning him to the wall without actually piercing his skin.
"Still like human on railway," she said, already turning away.
Her predatory focus shifted to Amara next.
Amara blinked once and Yelena was gone.
Her hands were already a foot from Amara’s throat when Ethan reacted on pure instinct.
Bastion manifested into a full dome around her just in time to block Yelena’s palm strike.
CRACK.
Spider-web fractures spread across the entire dome and Ethan’s eyes widened... that had never happened before.
"Back off." His jaw clenched.
Yelena’s eyes moved to him, and she smiled.
She stepped away from Amara deliberately... and went after Ethan instead.
"They say man without mother’s affection grows up either very strong or—how you say—very empty." Yelena’s pale eyes locked onto Ethan. "I see which one you chose."
Something flickered across Ethan’s face. Too fast for most to catch, but Amara saw it. Yelena clearly struck a nerve, and for Ethan, that was rare.
Instantly, multiple barriers pushed outward like battering rams of compressed force that cratered the floor in three places.
She dodged two easily, then twisted and vaulted over the third one in a flawless yurchenko that made the deadly obstacle pass harmlessly beneath her.
For the first time since the session began, Yelena’s eyes gleamed with something like delight.
She exhaled slowly, her hands drifting to her back. The sound that followed was like unsheathing a blade.
Shing!
Twin swords were summoned into existence. They looked like dao broadswords, but was more slender and elongated with subtle curves.
The hilts were wrapped in dark leather and ending with pommels. Two identical blades designed to be used together, separately or combined.
"Sekunda. Tempest–Pyra," she called forth her Spirit Weapon.
Just like Amara suspected, everyone in Unit 11-B were most likely Vessel Awakeners.
One blade hummed with wind, while the other crackled with flame. Opposing natures singing in perfect harmony under her control.
She slashed once, almost casually, and Ethan’s shields shattered like glass.
"This is what three months headstart gets you?" She taunted.
Amara had been watching this whole time. Analyzing. Waiting for an opening that never came. And seeing Ethan’s shield shatter made something click.
Maybe Raj had the right idea. Maybe it was time to stop overthinking this.
"Hey!" Amara stepped forward with Angel’s Bane raised. "How about you let your blade do the talking."
Yelena turned, pale eyes assessing. "You believe you’re different no?"
"I’ve been watching." Amara took her stance, pointing her sword at her. "I learn fast."
"Hm." Yelena’s lips curled into something wicked. "We’ll see." The ground cracked beneath her foot in preparation to move.
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