"No." Nova didn't even lift his head from the table.
Asher, poised dramatically above them, faltered. "No? What do you mean, 'no'?" The rejection clearly caught him off guard.
"I'm not trading Gala," Nova's voice was muffled by his folded arms. "Not unless there's a damn good reason, and even then, I'd still fight for her."
"Admirable, coming from you," Asher sneered, his spider-like appendages twitching behind him. "But I know your type. You don't protect your sectmates out of loyalty."
Nova lifted his head. His eyes, cold and sharp, locked onto the arachnid humanoid. "What's that supposed to mean, spider boy?"
A murmur rippled through the cafeteria. Students abandoned their lunches, quickly forming a circle around the confrontation. Phones emerged, screens glowing as they started recording. Whispers of "It's Asher," and "Who's he fighting?" cut through the air. The table had become a stage.
Nova sighed. "Get out of here, spider boy. You're drawing too much attention."
"Hey now," Asher said, placing his human hands on Nova's shoulder. "Call me 'spider boy' again, and I'll make you into a spindle."
Nova swatted Asher's hands away. "Don't touch me, Spider. Boy."
Asher's smile vanished. He closed his eyes and took a deep, theatrical breath. "Okay then." When he opened them, two more eyes had opened just below his human pair, lidless and black. All four eyes locked onto Nova.
In a blur of motion, he lashed out with his foot. A wet, sickening crunch echoed throughout the cafeteria, followed by a sharp intake of breath from the crowd. Several students flinched back, their faces paling.
Hot, searing pain exploded behind Nova's nose. He recoiled, clutching his face as blood streamed between his fingers, spattering the table. He stumbled out of his seat, his bearings lost in a wave of agony. He quelled the pain by channeling his rage, pushing it deep down until it sharpened into clarity.
"Huh," Nova said, his broken nose dripping with thick blood, "are those steel-toed shoes?"
"No~" Asher smirked.
"Gods," Nova muttered. He raised his fists into a guard, hopping lightly on the balls of his feet, readying himself.
"What are you doing now?" Asher asked, annoyed.
"I learned these techniques from Will. I believe he called it boxing."
Asher reached into his palm and began to pull, drawing out a thick, shimmering rope of off-white silk. "Well, if we're showing off, I learned a new trick for this occasion as well," he boasted.
"It's clearly not 'how to not look weird with that mysterious gunk in your hands'," Nova shot back.
A wave of sudden laughter erupted from the crowd.
"So annoying," Asher hissed. He stomped on a nearby plate, shattering it into jagged shards. He rolled the end of his silk rope into a sticky glob and pressed it into the ceramic fragments. "Look what I've got~" He let out more slack, and a tiny, spiked ball now dangled menacingly from the end. The laughter from the crowd died instantly, replaced by uneasy murmurs. This wasn't just a fistfight anymore.
Nova mocked him. "So you've got junk attached to a fat blob of… what even is that? I feel like you know what it looks like."
"Shut up!" Asher retracted the rope until the spiked ball was a foot from his palm. He held the line between his thumb and index finger and began to spin it into a blur. "Prepare yourself."
Nova rolled his eyes. "Just hurry up and do whatever you're going to do."
"You know, I learned these techniques from some crazy guy who called himself a king," Asher boasted.
Gala raised an eyebrow. "Sounds like a madman," she whispered to Bishie.
"Mmmph," he mumbled, still bound by the webs.
Asher finally attacked, whipping his arm forward and releasing the rope. The spiked ball tore through the air with a whistle. Nova dodged, the weapon missing him by a few inches. "You went through all that just to miss."
Asher's grin stretched from ear to ear. "Did I?" he said through his teeth. He snapped his wrist, retracting the rope and guiding its path back toward Nova.
"What the—" A cold, tearing sensation ripped across Nova's back. Half of the spiked ball had burrowed into his skin like barbed wire. He grunted, every movement sending waves of agony through him. A dark patch of blood was already spreading across his grey t-shirt, but Asher wasn't done. He kept pulling. Nova winced, gritting his teeth as he felt his own flesh being torn away. The pain was hot and cold simultaneously, and the blood loss made him light-headed. He began to sway back and forth. Knowing he'd pass out soon, he muttered one last thing.
"Everyone has a counter." He looked Asher in all four of his eyes before his own went dark and he collapsed onto the floor with a dull thud.
A collective gasp swept through the onlookers, followed by a shocked, heavy silence. "Oh, now you all go quiet when I win!?" Asher shouted, his voice ringing with indignation. But their stunned silence wasn't for him. Their eyes, wide with a new kind of terror, were fixed on something behind him. A faint crackling sound reached Asher's ears. He turned around to see Ourania standing there, perfectly still.
"Hey," she said.
Asher yelped, "Ourania!" He scrambled away from her, the blood-soaked flail still clutched in his hand.
Ourania's gaze fell on the weapon. "Whose blood is that?"
Asher frantically hid the ball behind his back. "None of your concern!" he barked.
"Actually," she stated bluntly, her voice chillingly calm, "it's all of my concern." Asher began to tremble.
Ourania stretched, the soft popping of her joints filling the air. "If it's a fight you want," she said, "I'm ready to be your opponent."
She rushed forward, her palms open and aimed at him as if preparing for the fiercest hug of his life. Asher tried to backpedal but tripped over his own unretracted rope, falling in a heap. "No!" He shielded his face with all his arms, human and arachnid.
Ourania slowed to a walk and strode past him. The crowd gasped, a few people taking involuntary steps back, their eyes wide with disbelief and awe. Asher, noticing he was unharmed, looked up to see Ourania standing with her hands behind her back, looking completely innocent.
She smiled sweetly. "How does it feel down there?" she asked, bending down toward him.
"Please don't hurt me," he whimpered. "I-I'll leave."
"Yeah, okay."
Asher crawled away, then broke into a sprint for the door. Before he could escape, Ourania called out to him.
He looked back, horrified. She was waving an arm across the cafeteria. "Isn't this yours?" she called. The arm she held was still clad in a gold-accented sleeve.
He saw the trail of blood leading from where he had been standing. It wasn't Nova's blood on the spiked ball, but his own. He looked down at the mangled, bleeding stump where his arm used to be. A few shrieks pierced the air as the crowd finally understood what had happened. The shock hit him all at once, and just like his opponent before him, he passed out on the spot.
"Well, that's something," Ourania said. She walked over to Bishie and, with a finger, cut his makeshift muzzle.
He took a deep breath. "Gods, finally."
"Great job, Ourania," Sam cheered, patting her on the back.
Her personality flipped from stern fighter to calm and reserved again. "I couldn't just let someone be bullied. Why did he want to fight this time?"
"You know Asher wants me to join his team or something, and Nova, or one of us, needed to put him in his place," Gala chimed in.
Bishie pointed out three girls in leather jackets. "Hey, look." Katie, dressed in purple, was carrying a patched-up Nova over her shoulders. Cheri, in pink, carried Asher the same way. They exited through the same door Asher had tried to escape from.
Meanwhile, Lili, the girl in green, gathered bandages and other medical supplies, then handed a slip to Gala. "Show this to the support staff to retrieve your personnel. Have a nice day, Ms. Gala."
With that, she departed, and the crowd, left with nothing to watch, resumed their meals.
Gala asked, "I'm surprised, Bishie. You're not asking questions about why everyone is so nonchalant about this."
"Because I know if I asked, I'd be met with a bullshit answer," Bishie shot back.
"I'll check on Nova at the infirmary," Sam said, pushing his chair back with a scrape against the floor.
Bishie, still wiping the last of the sticky webbing from his chin, quickly rose to his feet. "I'll come with you," he said.
He wasn't sure if he wanted to see the extent of Nova's injuries, but the thought of staying in the cafeteria, where the ghost of the brutal confrontation still hung in the air, was worse. He needed to understand this place, to see how it functioned even in the face of such violence. Walking alongside Sam, he glanced back at the remaining two members of their group.
"I'll stay here with Gala," Ourania said softly, The adrenaline from the fight was starting to wear off, her voice returning to its usual gentle tone. Gala managed a weak smile, her eyes still fixed on the doorway where Nova had been carried away.
As Sam and Bishie walked away, the noise of the cafeteria faded behind them, leaving them in a hallway that felt unnervingly quiet.