The Student Coaches soon arrived to let their students inside. Calista thought she saw Reilly Campbell’s icy blue eyes shift towards her for a second, but she was sure it was her imagination. He wouldn’t care about her sparring with his girlfriend, would he?
Calista’s uniform changed to orange as she entered the training room with Harrison. “I’ve got a lot for you to do tonight,” he said. “We’ll probably be staying way overtime.”
“What is it?” She smiled excitedly. She was so ready to move on from the basic Earthian disciplines and bar stretches.
“First off…” Harrison turned to her with a small, orange box in his hands, ‘KF’ glowing on the top. A bit confused, Calista took it and tapped it, melting the orange box away.
Inside was a pentagon-shaped, orange badge reading ‘Kappa Favorite #1’. She ran her fingers over the smooth surface.
“I think you deserve it after yesterday.” Harrison smiled at her. “The program will say you’re a Favorite by default, but you won’t actually be one until you acknowledge it. They’ll say you’re an ASC, but it’s just the two of us here, so you’ll really be a regular Favorite.”
Calista momentarily pictured herself with the badge. Her, a Favorite. The other students would have to respect her, whether they liked it or not. She could go so far with just the title alone.
And yet… it didn’t feel right. Not yet.
Harrison ‘Cheater’ Smith has asked you to be his Favorite
Accept?— +30 Intelligence, -30 RP
Reject?— No perks, possible Rel-P loss
She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she wasn’t worthy of a badge yet. Rosalina was right; she had to truly earn it. She had to Level Up and lower her Weakness.
“Thank you, Harrison. I’d love to… but I can’t.” She tapped the badge, closing the box around it again, and held it out to him.
“Why not?”
“I want to work for this. Yeah, I survived a spar with Hothead, but I still have way too much to learn. When I put this badge on, I want people to think I really did earn it. I need to fight like a Favorite— fight like an ASC.”
Harrison gazed at her, then smiled, taking the badge back.
+5 Rel-P
“Good answer.” He tucked the box into his pocket. “In that case, we should go over today’s lesson plan.”
Relieved that he wasn’t hurt, Calista followed him to the AIDA screens. “I think I have your preferred style figured out,” Harrison told her. “So far, we’ve been working on karate, jiu jitsu, boxing, and kung fu. Even some wrestling.”
“I hate wrestling,” Calista muttered.
“Yeah, it needs a high Strength Level, which you don’t have yet, but practicing it increases it. Even if you don’t like it, it’s really useful. You’re doing pretty good with karate and kung fu.” He showed her the Discipline Levels she’d developed.
Karate— Level 2 (23/50 DP)
Jiu Jitsu— Level 1 (34/50 DP)
Boxing— Level 1 (20/50 DP)
Kung Fu— Level 3 (33/50 DP)
Wrestling— Level 1 (45/50 DP)
“DP?” Calista inquired.
“Discipline Points,” Harrison clarified. “You hate Wrestling, but you’re almost to Level 2. Not bad. But you see, it’s sort of slow progress, so I figured those wouldn’t be your preferred disciplines. I was really wracking my brain on this one.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “There was something about the way you fought that I recognized, and I couldn’t place it. I really thought it was Kung Fu at first.”
“Well, then, what is it?”
“After watching your fight with Hothead, I finally recognized your style.” He brought up a separate holo-screen, then played a recorded scan of a Versus fight. It was an old-style arena, with nothing but sand and some structures. The Games incorporated the ERMM maps only two decades ago.
The two fighters were women, one an Emitonian and one a green-skinned Paeseoan. The Emitonian wore the blue and green colors of Earth and the Paeseoan had Kwantan’s white, orange, and beige.
“You recognize that fighter on the right?” Harrison pointed to the Kwantanese Paeseoan. Calista stepped closer to her moving figure, watching her deliver a well-aimed spinning kick to the Emitonian’s head, which was narrowly blocked.
Catching a glimpse of her face, which was exposed, her eyes widened. “This…” Looking above, the title read: ‘Versus Interplanetary Peacekeeping Games 2314: Final’. “Irenna Kalley?” she whispered.
“The very same. That’s Cruella Chrisman she’s fighting. Our beloved academy president.”
Calista shook her head. Of course it was Josephine Chrisman on the opposing side. She’d placed second that year, triggering a long-standing rivalry that made many question whether she had anything to do with Irenna’s murder.
She didn’t like the woman, being quite the biased and mean person, but she highly doubted she was involved.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
How did Benson Kalley work alongside her as VP knowing how much she and his sister hated each other? How did he handle the speculations? Even he was accused of possibly being involved in a cover-up of his own sister’s death, every expression, word, and movement from him scrutinized closely by Irenna’s loyal fans and admirers.
The evidence showed that Irenna was killed by the Emitonian fighter Hombit ‘Smasher’ Pairen, but Calista felt like there was a lot missing. People were right to ask questions, but she didn’t think Benson was involved. He’d grieved harshly for his sister, and his pain was exacerbated by the outrageous accusations as well as the Socializers’ mockery.
“You remember her call sign, right?” Harrison asked, breaking Calista out of her thoughts.
“Uh, yeah. La-la-say? I don’t know how to say it,” she said.
“Lah-lah-sah,” Harrison corrected. He tapped the hologram so the two fighters’ names appeared above their heads. Irenna’s said, “Irenna ‘Lalaasa’ Kalley”.
“I know that call sign, but what does it mean? It’s from Paeseo’s language, right?” Calista asked.
“Correct. Lalaasa doesn’t really have a translation. It’s a dance-fighting technique developed in Kwantan. Used to be for performance, but after the Treaty, it evolved to be more for combat.”
“Dance-fighting?” Calista’s ears perked.
“Take a close look at how she moves.”
She studied Irenna Kalley’s movements closely, her emerald green eyes widening in realization. Every strike she dealt was graceful, yet sharp. She slipped away from Chrisman’s counter-strikes with ease, spinning and twirling. Her body flipped in the air and her toes barely touched the ground.
She was dancing. Actually dancing.
Calista’s toes itched to copy her. She could already make out a sort of rhythm to her fighting, swaying back and forth as she tried to pick a song out of her mental soundtrack that she could match to it.
“Dance-fighting kind of fell out of vogue in the past twenty to thirty years,” Harrison explained. “I guess people like the rougher, sharper disciplines better. They tend to take grace as something soft and docile instead of something beautiful, but deadly. At least, that’s how I see it.”
“So, this is the discipline you think I should do?” Calista asked.
“Not necessarily this one. It’s more tailored to a Paeseoan body. You know, they have those really strong bones that are almost impossible to break— except for the nose. It’s still difficult, but breaking their nose is easier than anything else. You just shouldn’t do it with your bare fist. Anyway, I got to looking up human dance-fighting, and it took a while because it’s pretty dead, but I finally found this one.”
He went to the screen on the left, which displayed a person-shaped hologram posed in a graceful kick. Its leg was high in the air, the toes pointed, and the arms stretched back, the fingers open like flower petals. Its other leg was standing right on its pointes.
The figure was painfully familiar… Calista couldn’t place it. She’d seen something like it before, but where?
Above the holo-person was ‘Ninja Ballet’. She read it aloud: “Ninja Ballot?”
“Ninja baa-lay,” Harrison corrected. “It’s a combative version of ballet— that’s a dance humans used to do way back before the Utopia. It kind of died out after other planets accused us of copying some of their cultural dances in the first years of alliances.” He brought up a recorded scan— was it one? This one was strange; the people were flat figures instead of 3D holograms and their faces looked weirdly blurry. They were small figures, as if they were playing in an AIDA band holo-screen rather than a large holo-screen.
Calista could make out a woman with her hair in a bun, wearing some sort of purple dress with a skirt that stuck out stiffly, sort of like a flower. She wore white leggings and ribbon-like shoes. She stood on her pointes, flowing her arms through the air and doing graceful spins. She practically floated as she moved, every movement executed with such softness that Calista felt like doing the same, swaying back and forth to the gentle music that played. It was strange music, nothing like the electronic beats from AI she was used to. It was… better. She couldn’t describe it.
“That’s ballet,” Harrison said, pointing at the woman. “It’s probably around seven… eight hundred years old. No one’s seen it since Generated People did dancing for us. The dancers were called ballerinas.”
Calista’s eyes opened wide. Ballerina. Looking at the frozen holo-figure with its pointed foot in the air, she remembered where she’d seen it. Her hand unconsciously went to her chest, as if expecting to feel the small, delicate figurine on the silver chain she’d neglected to wear for nearly two years.
My little ballerina, her father had said when he gave her that necklace. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten it. Her mother’s demands to show off that iconic ‘CM’ necklace to please the fans had left the ballerina necklace unused, locked in her clothing selection archive.
“I spent all night last night looking through the Hub and finding these old clips. It’s a shame it died out; it’s really pretty. Ballet all by itself as a dance requires insane core strength, leg strength, stamina, balance, pain tolerance— pretty much every stat you see as a fighter. The difference is that it’s meant to show grace and beauty instead of defending yourself in combat. Ninja Ballet combines the two.”
“So you think I can do this?”
Harrison brought up Calista’s stats to review them.
Calista Elise Medley
First-Year One Student
Level 2
XP: 90/100 Level Up Incoming
HP: 100/100
EP: 78/100
Reputation Status: Ridiculed— -129 RP (updated 3 seconds ago)
Strength: Lvl 4 (17/30 pts)
Stamina: Lvl 6 (28/30 pts) Level Up Incoming
Pain Tolerance: Lvl 0 (6/15 pts)
Agility: Lvl 17 (13/30 pts)
Speed: Lvl 6 (13/15 pts) Level Up Incoming
Intelligence: Lvl 9 (7/50 pts)
Self-Control: Lvl 4 (15/50 pts)
Weakness: Lvl 19 (11/20 pts)
“It fits your style pretty well,” Harrison replied. “Some of the stretches you do in class are ballet stretches, believe it or not. Your flexibility helps a lot. You have pretty good balance standing on your toes, your reflexes are better, and your Strength stat leveled up pretty well. This sort of discipline may be outdated, but it plays to everything you need. All I need from you is discipline.”
+10 Rel-P
Achieved: Good Friend Status
+Interactions VI
+Association VI
+Meeting V
+Gossip III
“You’ll teach me how to dance, then,” Calista said with a wide grin. “I can’t picture you on pointes doing those spins and stuff.” She snickered at the thought.
Harrison gave her a look. “Very funny.”
“Hey, it’s your idea.” She threw her hands up innocently.
+3 Rel-P
“It’s going to be a challenge for me, too. I can’t dance for cache,” he chuckled. “But I can teach you to fight. You’re a good dancer; I’ve seen you. As long as you work with me and have confidence in yourself, we can get you to progress in it.”
Calista gazed at the dancer in the old recording as she continued her routine, spinning on her pointes like a top. So graceful, beautiful… strong. Exactly who she needed to be.
As her dad said: a ballerina.
