I was exhausted by the time I got up to the seats to drop down. I was  the first one up, so none of my friends were here yet. I was alone  watching the show, but to my surprise one of the nearby revelers offered  me a drink from a cooler he had with him, shooting me a grin. "Good  showing my friend, that mirror trial is the most difficult one we have.  Not many make it through. Do you want something while we wait?" I  blinked at that, but smiled and accepted. I rifled through the cooler  and found a soda, since I wasn't one for alcohol.

He  chuckled at that. "Not a fan of beer huh? More for me I guess." He held  out a hand. "I'm Alden. I've been a member of the Starburst Pavilion  for about four years now." I took the offered hand, noting his firm but  not excessive grip. Controlled. I could tell just from the measured  squeeze that Alden spent quite a bit of time on controlling his  strength. Another follower of Abel's philosophy. Considering where we  were that made perfect sense. Still, for battle maniacs they seemed like  nice enough people, bear fighting not withstanding.

I  popped the bottle and took a sip, enjoying the sweetness and the bit of  the drink. The soda was unusual, a watermelon flavor that I'd never had  in a drink before, but it was delicious and refreshing. I felt my body  flood with energy as a sipped it, and I realized with a start that this  was an H ranked drink. I had never seen ranked food in prepackaged form  before, and I cocked my head at Alden in curiosity. "Where exactly did  you get this? I've never had a drink like this before, and I figured I'd  have seen it around."

Seemingly unphased by my mask  opening up into a mouth to allow my sip he took a long pull of his own  drink as Callie stepped up to the mirror. "Macintosh. He has a brewing  skill. He synergized it with Alchemy at G rank and has recently opened a  boutique specializing in bottled Ascendant drinks. They have some  interesting properties, though the H rank versions mostly just give a  really effective sugar high that you don't crash from. Still, they taste  divine. Best beer in the whole WCP you mark my words."

I  raised an eyebrow at that, it was a fascinating thing to hear. I wanted  to see if I could pick some of this stuff up after, but sadly the  question would have to wait since Callie stepped back and her double  followed her away from the mirror just like mine had. I watched with  bated breath, and after seeing my own battle everyone else quieted down  too. They'd seen a winner today, and that gave them some hope. They  weren't taking the chances for granted now, so they could only watch  carefully.

Mirror-Callie stepped forward slowly, and my  own Callie stepped to the side, angling herself away. She wanted to draw  her double out further or open up some space. Mirror-Callie, just  smiled and flicked a finger. Spikes of shadow tore up off the ground  splitting the air in a wave as my girlfriend watched on impassively. The  double had made the first move, and Callie was going to need to counter  it or get seriously hurt. Callie flicked her coat up, reinforcing it  with her shadows so it could tank all the damage.

As she  did she hopped into the air, taking what had turned from sharp into  blunt impact and using it to fling her further away. She flicked her  coat out, snapping it into a wing configuration and using it to glide  further away, and Mirror-Callie snarled in annoyance as she tried to  bolt after the fleeing original, Callie let herself drop as she did,  turning to face her double and falling the ten or so feet to the ground  into a roll the sent her flashing toward the other her. She flicked a  hand as she rolled to her feet, using the momentum to slip into a Balam  stance, the forward roll being a type of circular motion, and drew a  rapier made of shadow from nowhere.

Mirror-Callie sneered  and conjured her own, stepping to meet her, and they began to duel.  Watching them battle was...jarring. Pitch black blades flickered and  blurred through the air, between Balam mastery and her Perception she  was moving like an artist, and her body was flickering at such irregular  intervals because of her new gear I was having trouble tracking her.  The circular motions made slipping into blind spots much easier, and I  kept losing track of her, of both of them.

Despite that I  had no clue what the hell she was doing. This was impressive, but she  needed to create some kind of gap between them to take advantage of for a  win. She couldn't just match her clone head on. They were made for that  situation. This was an exercise in futility. Still she pushed on,  clearly going all out, and the clone did the same, and though they  weren't exactly perfectly matched, they were pretty close. Callie was  improving, but I didn't see what that had to do with anything, because  the clone was improving too. This fight wasn't going anywhere at all.  She might as well be doing nothing.

And then I caught it. A  slight slip of the clone's arm as Callie licked out her blade to slash  her opponent's side. She managed to deflect it, but it wasn't perfect. I  couldn't figure out what she was doing for a second, and then it hit me  all at once. She was learning. Or rather, training. She had this absurd  Beginner level Skill for Balam Mastery, but hadn't been able to use it  to its full extent on anyone. She had the knowledge, but not the muscle  memory. So she was using the differences in the situation to force the  clone to adapt differently to the knowledge to create a difference in  their styles.

It was brilliant actually. Not that I should  be surprised to see that coming from Callie. My earlier thoughts about  even small differences making a huge difference in the perception of a  fight were being applied here in a completely different way. Not only  was Callie pressuring her clone to develop differently, she was matching  herself against that clone. She had a chance to actually win this, and  when she did she would be able to remember all the ways her clones style  had differed and try to recreate it.

The differences  weren't, as one might expect, huge. They were mentally the same person,  and while changes in positioning, placement, and initiative, might have  caused a slight deviation, the major change was that with every passing  blow, the clone was facing someone with a slowly changing style as those  differences added up. Still, even with that, it took a solid thirty  minutes of constant high speed output before Callie was able to slowly  whittle down her counterpart, and it was a damn close thing.

She  staggered up to drop down next to me, absolutely exhausted, and I  handed her my soda to take a sip of. Her eyes flew wide as she took a  sip, but she seemed to enjoy it, clearly loving the energy boost. "Wow,  this is almost as good as life energy. Plus it tastes pretty awesome."  She cuddled up to my side. "That was exhausting. I don't think I could  pull that off again, I barely managed to win. So, any ideas on how our  teammates might pull off a win? Because I don't think the tricks either  of us used will work again."

I winced at that, shaking my  head because she was right. Sadly we didn't have time to discuss it as  Benny stepped up in front of the mirror. He stepped back, drawing out  the opponent, and once he did, he turned his head to Jessie and whistled  to get her attention. She'd been frowning at the area where the bear  had gone for some reason, but at the sound her head jerked up and she  reached into a pocket, pulling out a small gold device and tossing it to  him. He gave her a nod, then pressed it against his chest.

It  vanished into his flesh like a stone submerging into water, and I  grinned in realization. He'd had Jessie hold his new device so the  mirror clone wouldn't have it, then he integrated it into himself. Since  he was using what amounted to a Skill or ability now as opposed to just  a spare artifact this SHOULD count as part of his capabilities. I  looked over at Callie who was grinning at me. "Well, that's one way to  do it. I wonder what this one does?"

I did too, but our  question was answered as he turned to look at the mirror clone and a  pair of razor sharp gold spider legs emerged from his shoulders, arching  up and over to poise above him, ready to strike down at his enemy at a  moments notice. I was curious if Melissa was going to stop this, since  it would be easy to call foul, but it seemed like having the  intelligence to come up with the scenario meant it was within the rules.  These people were actually pretty easy going when it came down to it. I  was finding myself liking them more and more, with some notable  exceptions in their behavior like the bear thing.

Unsurprisingly,  it didn't take Benny nearly as long to end the fight. With an entirely  new element of combat he was able to take his clone apart pretty fast.  It was kind of hilarious seeing how pissed off the clone got as he  dismantled it too, because I could really imagine Benny looking like  that as he was losing, though admittedly it was less jarring because the  clones didn't really bleed so much as leak a mercury like fluid when  injured. If I'd had to watch my best friend punch bloody holes in  himself I imagine I'd have been less amused.

He  jogged up to join us, absolutely giddy from the experience. "Wow,  what's it like to take so long on such an easy test? You guys really  dragged it out there huh?" He plopped down next to us, staring down at  the dirt circle. The others went one at a time, but Jessie didn't  volunteer, and after a while I got a bit worried. Noticing my unease, he  clapped me on the shoulder. "Don't worry. Jessie has a plan too. She  was worried about it at first, but she had an idea, when I did, and I  trust her judgement. This should be a good show."

Jessie  finally came up in the rotation, everyone else having already gone, and  I watched her stand up to move over to the mirror. At some point she  had knelt down where she'd been spacing out, her eyes staring off at the  bear's exit point. As she stood up I notice her kick some of the dirt  on top of a single green vine snaking across the ground toward the spot  she'd been staring. She walked over to stand in front of the mirror and  repeated the same process as the rest of us. As she stepped back another  version of her stepped out as well, staring at her intensely. The clone  took up a stance, getting ready to attack, but before it could there  was a loud crash.

Everyone looked  over to see the enraged form of the huge F ranked bear. It had torn free  of its chains and ripped its way through a spot in the seating where  there were no watchers. We all watched in shock as the massive animal  charged forward and smashed its paw down on Jessie's clone, smashing it  into a mercurial paste. Jessie stared impassively at the scene before  calling it over. As it walked over to her she reached up and scratched  under its chin before looking at a shocked Melissa. "This is Randall.  He's mine now." I couldn't help it. I burst out laughing.