Ch 2.91: Open

“The fuck is a chemical… restraint,” Shein said, right before she dropped to the ground for the second time.

Prisma stood there, still looking baffled at what was going on as Carly attended to the other Mirage employees. “Okay, but yeah, what actually is that?” she said.

“Something Elaina really shouldn’t be mentioning in front of the enemy,” Tira answered with a slightly pointed glare.

Elaina winced at that, shaking it off and then picking up Shein’s limp body. “Right, sorry. I’ll explain later, we have to go for now.”

“Go where?” Prisma asked as she looked down the streets. “We can’t really carry her body through the town, can we?”

“Nope!” Flora walked over to Elaina, quizzically looking over her. “We’re going somewhere else for now. Elaina, I can take her off your hands, assuming that’s her you picked up? I still can’t see her.”

“Yeah, here.” Elaina did her best to shrug Shein onto Flora’s shoulder, the latter shaking her head in disbelief as she took the, to her, invisible burden.

“Wild, but doable! Carly, those five’ll be fine?”

“Yeah,” the girl said, biting her lip as she walked away from the groaning people.

“You won’t get away with this!” one of them said. Elaina recognized her now that she’d drawn attention to herself, Mille, the bouncer she’d fought in the second to last round of the tournament. “We know who you are now!”

Elaina’s party had started to move off, but they all stopped at that. “We did talk about this,” Tira said.

“We’re not just going to kill them,” Elaina said. “Not unless we have to…”

“What defines ‘having to’ though?” Tira looked askance, obviously uncomfortable with the conversation herself. “This one here is going to hold a grudge at the very least, obviously. They know who we are, our aspects, where we live…”

“They can’t do anything with that though, right?” Flora said. “I mean, maybe there are some people with weaker aspects that could get through the barrier, but the school’s already on high alert.”

“We leave them,” Elaina said, starting to march off. “There are at least a dozen other bouncers that have to have seen us and know the same things. Killing five of them is just going to cause problems.”

There was a certain benefit to being the de facto leader, even if it was only because she’d happened to have touched Temmie first. She wasn’t sure it was the right call to make, but she knew the choice would fall on her, and it was still the only call she was going to be able to make. If Tira or anyone else had further protestations, they kept them to themselves as Elaina made her way outside the town, save Tira ordering Flora to put her outfit back on. Why was she naked at all? Elaina was tired, and that question could wait.

She was a little worried as they walked on, actually. They weren’t in the streets anymore, but they did have a little ways to go before they reached their destination, and any late night travelers would have some questions. We’ll probably have to answer some regardless.

“So, now that they’re gone, what were you talking about?” Prisma asked. “What did you do to her?”

“Been wondering that myself,” Tira said. “How’d you get it to work?”

“Chemical restraints,” Elaina began. “Carly found them in her medical textbook. They’re medicines and stuff, make you sleepy, or unconscious. I had planned on using it in round two when we thought it was actually poker, slip some into someone’s drink, make them play bad. Everyone’s drink, preferably, except Carly and me.”

“That’s— that’s cheating though!”

Elaina winced at that. She hadn’t liked the first time Prisma had accused her of cheating, back in their first fencing class, and back then she hadn’t been, not really. This time though, there was no denying it.

Carly was, unexpectedly, the one to come to her defense though. “Shein stole the subcore, the Temmie. From the kingdom by all rights, and this point from Elaina too, more so. She’s the Administrator, after all. We needed to get it back at all costs.”

“Yeah, what she said… Anyway, when Shein took me to her office, she made us both drinks. I forced her to trade bracelets again, made some of the medicine in my hand, and dropped it into her drink. It wasn’t enough though, not strong enough to take her down, but once it was in her I could feel it. I asked to swap again before the duel, and then used all the mana I had to strengthen it. Still took a little longer to take effect than I was comfortable with…”

“You really can make them stronger in the first place,” Carly said. “A little more study of the chemical makeup should do you wonders.”

Elaina shook her head. “Maybe.” She doubted she’d ever reach the realms Carly thought she could with chemical restraints—they were already difficult enough for her to wrap her brain around even the basics of—but she did appreciate the extra weapon in her arsenal, as hard as it was to rationalize the concept as a legitimate restraint to herself as it was. “I was afraid of killing her, an overdose or whatever the textbook called it.”

“How’d you know to do it to her though?” Flora asked. “Like, I get that it was lucky she took a drink in her office, but you couldn’t have known it was her in the final round, right?”

“I didn’t know that, but I knew she was lying about the bracelets. When I first put one on and ripped it off cause I got scared, I was aware of it, cause it definitely is a type of restraint. But the one on her wrist wasn’t, so I asked to trade then. I don’t know exactly how, but it was somehow a restraint for me, but not her? That time was just trying to catch her in the lie, but it still made me realize she had an aspect, and that she was going to somehow use it to cheat us. I later figured out she’d either be the last opponent or try to mess with me while I fought one of her cronies. It was honestly lucky she tried to mess with me herself though. She could’ve made me lose to Mille before I ever even got to her, but she got cocky…” That thought was terrifying, how close they’d come to losing. “But yeah, it was lucky catching her taking a drink, even luckier that enough of the stuff was still in her body that I could sense her when she was trailing Carly and me, otherwise I wouldn’t have known she was there.”

“I think it was a fake bracelet,” Carly said. “Like Flora did for me and her in the bathroom. Her aspect has to be something like Senses, or Perception maybe, external targeting. She probably just makes everyone see the bracelet on her, but since it wasn’t actually there you could tell it wasn’t restraining her.”

“And didn’t you say something about the cave?” Flora said. “That she was—”

“We’re here, quiet down,” Tira said.

They had walked only a few minutes into the night, finally finding the carriage parked off the side of the road. “Hey ladies!” Char said with a wave as they rounded the corner, before leaning forward and then jumping off the carriage. “Bloody stars, is that girl alright?”

“A little too much to drink,” Elaina said. Close enough to the truth. “We’re still headed to the same place though; she’ll be fine.”

“Alrighty,” Char said, eyeing the limp woman as the relatively spindly Flora lugged her into the carriage, letting out a gasp as Flora accidentally banged Shein’s head onto the side door, but a groan that escaped from Shein at the blow at least proved she was alive. “You sure she’s okay?”

“Yup!” Tira said. “Carline here is a doctor, basically. Says she’s fine.”

“Alright then… And who’s this?”

“Prisma Fireguard,” Prisma responded, giving a slight bow, suddenly acting as if nothing was amiss at all. She’s really good at playing up the propriety. “A pleasure to meet you, Miss…”

“No ‘Miss,’ just Char,” the carriage driver said as she extended a hand. “Pleasure to meet you. Any friends of Elaina are okay in my book, I reckon. But hop in, and let’s get the six of you students home for the night!”