Kadir didn’t bother with the stairs (like he had with his first match) and simply teleported down to the arena opposite of me. It was the first arena, the one with the most obstacles, just to make things difficult (for a moment I had misread it as the fourth and nearly wandered into the wrong arena).

  “Oh wow, you’re actually kinda hot,” he commented breezily as he took a proper look at me. “How about we don’t fight; I’d hate to mar a pretty face like that. If you just make this fast and surrender, maybe we’ll have time to... get to know each other better.”

  “Excuse you?” How dare he say those kinds of things about me? And only ‘kinda’ hot? I glared at Kadir icily. “I’m sorry, I don’t go for boys with massive egos and tiny-”

  “Yeesh, you coulda just said no.” He stretched his shoulders out a bit before craning his head up at a teacher nearby. “We ready to start this or what?”

  “What indeed,” Mrs. Sevrein mumbled, shaking her head at him. In a louder voice she continued, “It seems you two have gotten your 'introductions' out of the way. The match between Camila Einsburgh and Kadir Kartenski will begin now!”

  “Alright, I’ll make this quick,” Kadir said, the last word coming right behind my ear as he teleported over, behind me, with his arm cocked for a punch. Something I clearly saw from the eyes staring at him from the back of my ‘uniform.’.

  Kadir aborted his punch at the last moment, locking onto the eyes, and teleported back away, narrowly dodging the spikes I sent shooting out of many angles from my back towards him.

  “Prickly as a porcupine, ain’tcha?” He said, keeping his distance from me.

  I didn’t have anything to respond to that, so I simply retracted my spike with another ripple (though I left the eyes there - they didn’t take much mass or energy to use and were a good counter to his favorite tactic of hitting people from behind). I waded ahead with a flurry of punches and a loose, flexible boxing stance when I got near him, but he teleported away again.

  The teleporter made a dizzying series of attacks against me, darting in and out faster than I could react to properly. Any change made to strike at him with limbs or spikes or anything like that was dodged while Kadir struck at my kidneys, my liver, my joints... but none of it worked. I had already moved those internal weaknesses away.

  The body was a delicate system; I couldn’t just ‘get rid of’ organs. Not without some serious consequences, either immediately or very soon depending on what I got rid of, but I could change their locations somewhat. Give them extra padding or hypertense muscle to dampen any blow nearby, etc. Kadir was decent- no, excellent - at picking out a person’s weak points, but only based on a regular human’s body.

  I grinned as he tried to break my arm, teleporting by a fist I sent his way and clapping his hands on my wrist and elbow to snap it. It extended well beyond what a normal arm could without pain, the elbow inverting before I pulled it back to a regular shape with a hook that clipped him on the chin.

  He grimaced a dozen paces away, rubbing his chin. “That smarts. That power you have, it’s quite, uh, annoying,” he said, his quipping obviously somewhat hampered by the smarting blow he had just taken.

  “I don’t think you’re in any position to tell someone else their power’s annoying.”

  He let out a chuckle. “Too true. Alright, so you’re tough, but let’s see if you can keep up.” Kadir lashed out with a roundhouse kick to take out my leg, though all it did was sting slightly, not move the limb. He bounced around faster than before, striking and teleporting more rapidly than he had at the start.

  He danced backwards, striking and pulling back from my counters, a half step, a full step, then two strides away. I moved forward to meet him at the same pace as ever. Controlled, never overreaching, or running towards him, even when he seemed only just out of range. Because he wasn’t, not really.

  No matter what obstacle he ducked around, or if he was right in front of my face, fighting a teleporter changed all the rules of engagement. Two feet away might as well be on the other side of the arena, which was almost the same square footage as half a city block. He was trying to tire me out, get me to waste my energy when he could teleport freely (if his teleportation cost him anything, I couldn’t see it).

  “C’mon, aren’t you going to even try and catch-” His taunt was cut off by my arm splitting in two, a new one growing out from the ripple and clasping on to his wrist after a punch of mine had missed.

  “Got... you,” I finished lamely, as before I could begin to drag him towards me, he had teleported out of my grip and was across the arena again. Grappling won’t work either. I wondered if that would be a way to lock him down, but it looks like not.

  Kadir looked at her, something darker in his eyes now. “Darn, and here I thought everyone else was just going to be a brat without any skill,” he muttered, barely audible even to my hearing. Is he like me? Louder, he said, “Looks like I’m gonna have to take it seriously with you, and that’s just a drag. Like I said, I hate hurting a pretty lady.”

  “Shall I give you a more punchable target then?” I asked before shapeshifting my outward features to look almost identical to him, save the spare eyes on the uniform.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  To my surprise, Kadir rolled with it, and actually burst out laughing. “Hahahaha, man, you really are a riot; the gang would love ya.” He shook off any levity and looked straight at me, serious again, but whatever anger or negativity he had a glimmer of before was gone. “You can make yourself pretty tough there, but I think I’ve got your number.” He lifted one leg slowly in the air to kick from some angle, his arms raised in the air. It was that pose, and the number of eyes I had all around me, that allowed me to see the next move coming.

  The teleporter jumped forward on one leg, teleporting through the motion on the wall behind him. He was going for that move. It had been in the climax of a dumb (yet popular) martial arts movie that even I had seen once or twice, and it was a flipping axe kick aimed at my head. I sent a ripple up to protect my head, mentally cursing at the (relative) slowness of my transformation. It didn’t reach the skull in time to reinforce it... but my neck was already enhanced, which is where it mattered.

  A head blow tended to knock people out, not from the initial force going through the skull, but through the neck whipping about and the brain rattling inside. By strengthening my neck muscles, I could take the blow without shaking, though it still hurt like heck, sending a bright flare of pain through me. I doubted it was anything compared to the pain Kadir was feeling, though, as he screeched out in pain, having fallen and teleported away.

  Before any more banter could be given, Kadir let out a scream of rage and tele-lunged towards him, hand outstretched. It wasn’t any sort of fighting move, just an attempt to grab me, but some deep-rooted battle instinct told me not to counter but to dodge, and I did, flowing out of his way. I whirled back and forth for a moment before I realized there would be no follow-up.

  Kadir had teleported away, behind one of the obstacles, before he had even landed, taking in some ragged breaths. He got up slowly, and I looked at him warily as he seemed to regain his composure, steadying himself with the obstacle to make up for his injured leg. Then he turned to the teacher and said, “I forfeit. Can’t fight with my leg busted up like this.”

  She nodded approvingly at his decision to bow out when injured. Is that part of this ‘test’ too? To see when we know to give up or ’retreat?’ “Then the winner is Camila Einsburgh!”

  “Your skull is way too tough, you know that?” He asked me rhetorically as I shifted back to my usual body.

  “Everyone’s skull is tough,” I retorted. “It’s one of the toughest bones in the human body.” All true, not that it didn’t mean that my skull was tougher than most, just as a base state I left it in. The human brain is so complex, so fragile, I don’t dare change or shift it around too much. Even the slightest mistake while shifting and I’d be dead, or worse, even vital organs like the heart stopping, I have a second or two to work with. For him to have figured out my weakness so quickly...

  The teacher called out again. “It’s good to see you getting along with your classmates, but please continue the conversation up here and vacate the arena so your fellows have a chance to use it.” I immediately started walking towards the stairs, but Kadir didn’t move.

  He called out above him, “Hey, is there going to be anything else for me in this test now that I’m out?”

  The woman looked a little flummoxed. “Well, no, but this is a good chance for you to see what your classmates are capable of and forge tie-”

  “Nah,” he said, waving her off. “Sounds like a snooze fest. Imma chill in my room now, k?” He ‘asked’ before teleporting away before she could give an answer.

  “Why the nerve of some- he didn’t even stop to get any healing from Miss Fontaine...” Remembering my presence, she cleared her throat. “Congratulations on a match well fought.” It was said in a perfunctory tone as the woman moved on to inspect the other matches, but I thought there was a note of true respect in there. Though that might just be my ego talking.

  The next rounds went by faster, with fewer students involved in each as they got knocked out of the ‘tournament,’ which led to bigger audiences for each fight. A lot of the waiting or already lost students took it upon themselves to cheer on their fellow classmates while I observed, whenever I wasn’t in a match. I won my next two fights far easier than my fight against Kadir.

  Holly Hart had thermokinesis and some basic self-defense training under her belt, but nothing compared to my well-honed skills. She had at least been serious about our fight, even if she was weak, using the terrain to her advantage to hide as she turned up the heat, though it wasn’t enough. Percy had some kind of telekinetic power from what I had seen in some of the previous fights, but he had underestimated me completely, failing to push me back when I braced myself and then got taken out with one punch.

  If he had had some dignity afterwards, I could have accepted him as new and still learning, but he had to curse and make baseless accusations of cheating (which Null ignored) because he ‘wasn’t ready,’ even after he had surrendered almost immediately after the first punch. What a sore loser.

  I watched the other fights, trying to take in every weakness and strength they had, but paying close attention to my... friends? I didn’t make true friends easily, and it had been a long time since I’d had any fellow superhuman friends.

  No, they aren’t friends yet. Trevor and Alex were nice, but I can’t let them get too close. It only leads to betrayal and disappointment. But they were acquaintances, and pleasant ones at that, and that was something I appreciated. I didn’t have much of a chance to see most of Trevor’s fights, but his blindness sphere actually worked pretty well and seemed to really disorient most of our classmates. Meanwhile, Alex’s fights...

  Well, it was hard to call them fights at all. She dominated them easily, taking out any of her foes in a single shot (heck, one of them got taken out by Alex just jumping towards her foe, trying to brace with her wings, and the wind force lifting him off his feet and into the wall). She was fast too, even with the obstacles in her way, smashing her opponent's back as soon as she got a straight line to them. All of her foes limped off to get healing after a round with her while she ended up spotless, but her smile faded a little each time.

  The afternoon faded away with the fights, and it was getting close to dinnertime (according to the clock above anyway; no natural lights in the underground cavern) by the time the semifinals rolled around. I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been starting to get tired and hungry from all my shifting, so excited I was from the fights. It had been a while since I had experienced this level of fighting without mortal peril on the line. Honestly, it had been a while even with that.

  “First match of the semi-finals, Alexandra versus Camila,” Gunther announced. There was a slight curl of distaste to his lips, but a spark of joy in his eyes. He must not have liked the fact that two of the people who had spoken up against him on his ridiculous original setup had made it this far, but at least now he’d get to see one of us lose. I walked past him, not bothering to look at the hateful man as I stepped down the stairs to my toughest fight.