Chapter 256: Chapter Two Hundred Fifty Seven

Disaster, unsurprisingly, was quickly followed by her sisters, and  the rest of the people at our table were clear within seconds. From what  Callie told me, Ascendant clubs tended to be incredibly dramatic by  nature. Random brawls weren't unusual at places like this, and everyone  knew exactly what to do in the event of a fight. They couldn't have been  gone faster if they had teleported. The triplets stalked across the  intervening space, eyes glued to Callie, who was smiling quizzically at  them, head cocked in a textbook expression of puzzled confusion.

We  got out of the table, since having it in the way wasn't likely to help  much, and stepped out to face them in the empty space between the table  and the dance floor. I didn't really feel like bickering, so I just  stood behind Callie and crossed my arms, trying to look menacing, which  was admittedly not hard when you're six foot four and made of solid  muscle covered in expensive powerful armor.

Stopping a few  feet short of us, Disaster glared at Callie. "I am so fucking glad you  took your boy toy and fucked off to the capital you holier than thou  bitch. Do you know how nice it's been not having to deal with your  constant show boating and cries for attention?" She put on a high  pitched voice. " 'Oh, I'm Nightstrike and people fear me because I'm  such a badass, they definitely don't pay attention to me because of my  ridiculous oversized ass and skimpy leotard. I'm the strongest heroine  in the city.' Fucking gag me, Calliope! We were all so relieved you were  gone and you had to ruin it by showing your snooty face again."

Callie's  puzzled frown melted into an angry sneer. Using real names was  considered terrible form. Callie's identity wasn't really a secret  considering her parentage, but it was still an asshole thing to do. "Oh,  how shocking, the perpetual second place doesn't like how much  attention I get. Grow up Ashley. We're Ascendants. We're all trying to  get attention. And I'm not even going to dignify that costume remark  with a response. Maybe if you spent half the time you waste throwing  tantrums about how people should care more about you actually trying to  improve you wouldn't be so far behind."

I was starting to  really dislike this girl. The insistence that Callie was coasting on her  looks was insulting as hell, especially to someone like me who trained  with her constantly. No one put in as much effort as my girlfriend, she  was the most driven person I knew. The two sisters stood back, watching  carefully but not actually moving. The redhead jerked her eyes to me.  "Oh, and how about the arm candy. You do know she's only with you for  the glory right? How convenient that you got together right after you  got famous and got a ride out of this dump. Or did you think she  actually liked you?"

My mask was convenient in this case  because it hid the barely contained laughter on my face, which probably  would have made things worse. Callie could have gone to Rajak any time  she wanted. She was furious about needing to give in to her dads  pressure, and had only gone because she cared about the team. If  Disaster wanted to sew dissent, she had picked the exact wrong string to  pull on. It was actually kind of funny seeing her misread the situation  so badly.

Despite the wild inaccuracy though, Callie  seemed to be furious at the accusation, and I saw the shadows around us  start to literally bubble as her ability reached out to take hold of  them. My eyes widened and I put a warning hand on her shoulder. "Honey. I  think maybe using our abilities on them directly is a bit overkill.  We're not here to hurt anyone, and that seems like it might be a step  too far."

It was the subtlest way I could say 'what are  you doing, we don't want to kill them'. After weeks of training against  Abel, we could take the three of them with barely any Skill use and a  bit of elbow grease. Using Callie's shadows directly was like swatting a  fly by collapsing a building on it. These were incredibly low tier  G-rankers who couldn't have been in that level more than a year at most.  Without our advantages in training and stats I doubted any of them even  had a specialized stat that equaled one of my evenly distributed ones.

Releasing  a deep breath, Callie relaxed, and the shadows pacified. She'd  definitely done that on purpose, but I wasn't sure if she was showing  off to make a point or was genuinely so angry she'd been about to hurt  them. Disaster, for her part, didn't seem to care. She snarled at the  pretension of my comment and Callie's concession and blurred forward  toward us without a second of warning.

Unfortunately for  her, 'without a second of warning' from someone at her level, might as  well have come with an engraved invitation to a fight with a time and  datestamp attached. Disaster was glowing with green energy, shot through  with the blue glow surrounding the dark haired one, and the red glow  surrounding the blonde. Calamity and Despair, though I didn't know which  was which.

Whatever the order was, they had clearly  juiced her up already, and while it didn't bridge the gap between us  stat wise, it gave her enough of a bump that I could see her doing  alright against some of the lower level Pavilion members. Unfortunately,  it was ONLY the lower level members, and I groaned in annoyance as I  stepped back. Callie didn't need help with this. As much as I'd been  itching for a fight I'd just be stepping on her moment.

I  wasn't really sure what the beef between these two was, but Callie  clearly hated Disaster enough to fight all three of them alone. She  wanted to work out some aggression, and the point of this whole thing  was for her to have fun and do something stupid and selfish for a  change. I knew she would be aware of me backing up given our combat  awareness of each other, and she was more than willing to step up based  on the lunge she made at the other woman in response. I just shrugged  and walked over to sit down at the table again, picking up my blueberry  smoothie and taking a long sip as I watched the show. Seeing Callie  fight was always amazing.

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Disaster, for her part, was  pretty impressive. Her hands came up and she lashed out with a pair of  punches crackling with green flame, which made my eyebrows shoot up.  Since I knew her ability, that was either a trick she managed through  synergizing or she had an actual fucking fire fist Skill. I knew Skills  like that existed, but they were insanely rare on Callus, Unique Skills  like my DS mastery notwithstanding.

Callie was surprised  too, but to her credit , she also had much higher Might and Perception  than I did. Picking up and processing, then reacting, to that attack was  childs play for her and she barely hesitated for an instant as Disaster  came in at her dropping to a one legged crouch, Callie planted a hand  flat on the floor and spun herself in a circle, using the circular  momentum and her Balam skills to take Disaster's feet right out from  under her.

She rolled to the side just fast enough to  avoid Calamity's stomping attempt to smash her face in, went up onto her  hands and arched into a graceful backbend to get back to her feet. I  had to stifle a laugh because it was such a showy and obviously  frivolous move that literally no one could mistake it for anything but  blatant mockery. She was playing with them, and she wanted them all to  know it.

With Disaster getting back to her feet, I saw  them all take a moment to stop and re orient themselves before spreading  out around her in a loose triangle formation. The next attack, when it  came, was a perfectly synchronized assault from three angles that was  much more difficult to dodge than any of the singular attacks would have  been. I could see what Callie meant, the three of them had good  synergy. If we hadn't been undergoing the training we had I'd probably  have needed to help her out of this.

We had, however.  These three rookies couldn't hold a candle to the coordination we saw  sparring with Mel and Abel. They were probably about as good as we were  after the first week of Abel beating our mistakes into us. Still, that  wasn't good enough. Callie was easily able to identify the small gaps in  their cooperative assault and slip through them. Even if she hadn't  been more skilled she had a stat advantage they just weren't good enough  to compensate for.

Disaster came at  her from the front, aiming to lock her up, the one I suspected was  Calamity(red) from behind on the left, aiming low, and Despair(blue)  from behind on the right, driving a blazing kick at the back of her  head. I watched with interest to see if the hits would land, with  Callie's armor it wasn't like the attacks could do any real damage.  Might hurt a bit, but she wasn't going to get injured.

It  never even got that far. As Despair's foot swung at her head, my  girlfriend spun in place. One hand lashed out, using the momentum of a  full rotation to life the blue glowing Ascendant off her feet, as the  other clamped down on her thigh, lifting her bodily off the ground and  swinging her along the trajectory of the kick. Calamity, noticed the  move too late and tried to pull out of her attack, but had already  committed too much, and her low blow slammed into her sister as she was  swung around along the ground, tangling the two of them up and sending  her sprawling.

Callie,  no longer in the same spot after the movement, avoided the direct  assault by Disaster by putting the tangled forms of her sisters in her  way with a quick yank, and the three of them ended up in a head on the  floor, groaning at the impact. Callie casually strolled over to where I  was sitting, plopping down in my lap and snatching up my smoothing to  take a long sip as I yelped in protest.

Oh  course, they weren't down and out or anything. She hadn't seriously  hurt them, even if I doubted that had been much fun. She was just giving  them time to sort themselves out and make a plan, or decide not to  engage again. Her display just now had effectively proved that she was  WAY out of their league. If they were smart they would back off. This  had been their own idea anyway, at least from an outside perspective.

Disaster  looked just about ready to explode, but her sisters were whispering to  her hurriedly, clearly trying to avoid letting the whole mess escalate.  She forced herself to take a breath, but once she did, she started to  calm down a bit. She'd been outmaneuvered here, and so she needed  something to help her save face, but she knew she couldn't win a direct  fight. I couldn't hear what they were saying, so they must have been  using some kind of Stealth Skill.

She  strode forward, shoulders back, head high, and stalked up to point at  Callie. "Ok, that was kind of impressive, but really, this isn't the  place for combat anyway. We wouldn't be able to let loose for fear of  damaging our business, you understand." That was a decent excuse, but  they weren't going to leave it at that. I was sure of it. They needed a  way to change the narrative. I considered dozens of scenarios, but in  the end, I was absolutely floored when Disaster pointed directly at us  and shouted. "We challenge you to a dance off!" Wait...what?

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