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Garrick flipped the kid over without any hesitation, and the poor rookie just lay panting on the floor, wind knocked out of him. Garrick offered him a hand up and the boy took it, albeit while giving Garrick a distrustful stare as he walked off.
“You’re freaking the first years out,” I snicker as he comes over to me.
“As if you don’t do that literally all of the time.” He smirks. “You know what would really freak ‘em out?” Garrick raises his eyebrows. I start shaking my head already. Whatever idea he’s got—and especially if it’s what I think it is—I’m not sure I’m up for it right now. But it would be fun…
“Come on, they’ve gotta learn sometime.”
I sneak a glance over to the first-years gathered near the corner of the mat. They do look like they could benefit from a lesson… Nothing too scary, just something to remind them what punches with real power look like. Poor things are downright f***in’ scrawny. Of course there are a couple in every batch that are up for murder, but most of them this year are a little too timid for the tastes of Basgiath. They’re gonna get picked off if they don’t buck up.
I side-eye Garrick with a small smile tugging at the corner of my lip.
“So we gonna play it out?”
“Hm,” he considers our roles with mock scholasticism. “Shall we go with an ‘angry lieutenants with a score to settle,’ or a ‘you took my girl’ kind of a tussle?” He puts on some sort of accent he thinks makes him sound academic. It doesn’t; he just sounds ridiculous.
“Pissed lieutenants sounds good to me,” I say, putting my back to the first years and giving Garrick a wink. “As if you could land my girl anyway,” I scoff playfully, only quiet enough for him to hear. With a roll of my eyes, I pivot slightly away at least somewhat ready for what is to come.
“What the F**K did you just say to me?!” Garrick yells. I swerve around, wide-eyeing him. He’s winking back, and suddenly he’s shoving me to stumble onto the mat with a sizably forceful blow.
“You heard me!” I say, lacking the creativity in the moment to come up with more of a backstory for this fake-ass fight.
When I circle him I can see that the first-years are properly scared, pallid and staring. They don’t back off for fear they aren’t supposed to leave, but they look like they would rather be anywhere but right here. Is it a little mean? Sure. Is it hilarious? For sure. And it’s about to get better.
Garrick punches hard and fast, but I catch his arm and deliver a right hook to the ribs that elicits a grunt of surprise. Well… he asked for it. We both know we don’t pull punches with each other. It’s counterproductive to our training and our Wing.
To my surprise (which is hard to do, as you know), Garrick used some sort of wind thing? To almost step up on air and flip over my hold and my shoulder, knocking me down with a knee to my back.
“What the actual f—”
“Ain’t no ground rules for lieutenants, huh?” Garrick smiles, teeth actually showing, as I roll to my back, looking up at him in something between amazement and mock betrayal.
“Uh-huh. You sure you wanna mess with that?” I tilt my chin, a smile lilting with mischief.
A line of concern appears between Garrick’s brows as he considers, lip twitching once. After just a second everything’s swept into darkness.
“F**king Xaden! What the…. Why would you—Whoa!” Garrick yells as he topples. I, of course, can see everything, or, more accurately, I can feel everything.
“No rules, right?”
“You know that’s counterproductive,” he grumbles.
“Trying to scare ‘em, right?” I whisper.
I laugh as I bring the room back into light, and I hear the gasps of people on neighboring mats. That’s always one of the most satisfying parts—the surprise of the people around me. They always gasp when the lights come back on, as if waiting to make a noise until they know they’re safe. As if the room being light could keep them safe from my shadows. Or anything else for that matter.
I’m now on top of Garrick, but he was simply biding his time. He’s got a punch to my jaw in and a jab to the jugular that genuinely knocks me over before I can move on from thinking about the others in the room and the first years’ placement.
Instead of straddling overtop of me and just battering me fist over fist—which would be a totally valid move in this position, since he earned it by knocking me over in the first place (yes, we have a strange friendship, we know)—he flips me over to my stomach with an unnatural force and pushes my head into the mat while pinning my wrists together with an unbreakable hold. Though this is the more merciful of the two options, it still sends a shooting pain through my shoulders and I can feel a crick in my neck forming on account of the tension there. If I just could get myself to relax, maybe it would—
Garrick lets my head go and extracts one of my daggers from the sheath at my thigh.
“Oy!” I warn him.
“What? Fair game,” he says, clearly enjoying this. Also clearly knowing I could knock him on his ass with shadows if I wanted. But he knows that I won’t because I have to have these first years see me beat him without using signet strength… if I’m going to beat him, that is.
“You gonna tap out?” He teases.
‘Aight, that’s it.
Garrick’s half standing, an unstable position already, so when I reach a leg around and take his ankle out from under him, he topples easy.
That lands me on top. Again.
Buuuut…. He’s got my dagger. At my chest. Pointed… at my chest. A dot of blood has already appeared since I didn’t notice the blade at first, and I give him a look like, “Really?” He just answers with a shit-eating grin.
“What in tarnation is going on over here?” A familiar voice asks from the sideline. Before I can even look up, a gust of wind has placed me on my feet (I didn’t even know he could do that? What the f**k?) and Garrick is up on his feet before Imogen steps onto the mat.