An Odd Situation

Queen Bee might have felt overwhelmed by her first duel in a group setting, but that did not render her helpless. Though very different, many of the principles of battle still applied. 

The floating duelist had retreated under the first onslaught, but that interchange had given her a lot of information. 

It had told her that Sleepless and Paradise had not been fighting for very long together. If they had, the enraged Sleepless would have aimed in such a way that his teammate would never have been hit by friendly fire. 

That was a weakness she intended to exploit.

As Fireshing and Snowmobile continued their catastrophic mayhem, Bee began to form an idea. 

'Fire, I need your help…' 

'I'm a little occupied.' Fireshing's eyes widened as Snowmobile sent a new form of energy her way. It was blue and sizzled like acid while it ate through the billowing floor. The hem of her tunic became riddled with holes from the splash against the ground. 

'I know,' Bee bit her lip. 'But can you be occupied a little to your left?'

When the fiery Awakened did not immediately respond, Bee assumed her teammate would try her best. 

In a whirlwind of hits from both Paradise and Sleepless, the Queen parried back and forth between her two opponents. It was an intricate dance, but one that would end the woman if either of her dance partners were allowed to lead. 

The two men attempted to surround her, but no matter how hard they tried, the Queen refused to be cornered. She slipped out of their grasp, stinging each of them in turn with the tip of her blade. 

Bee hesitated to dig her blade too deep into either of them just yet. For one, it would make an opening for the other to strike. And secondly, she was testing a theory that she had noticed the third time Paradise had used his voice to undo a severe blow.

It was strange. The young man did not stop every hit from landing. Only the most catastrophic injuries were reversed the moment they occurred.

'It is like he knows how bad something is going to be beforehand…' Pushing her mental and physical capacity to the limit, Bee prepared for the moment of truth. 

The battle was becoming more heated by the second and not just because Fire was lighting the cloudy world with her flames. 

Any moment, Bee's defenses would break and either Sleepless or Paradise in Red would take the opportunity to cut her down. So she would have to cut them down first.

The warrior in red's espadon moved sideways with frightening speed. His diagonal angle meant that ducking was out of the question. 

Which was exactly what the floating Awakened had hoped for. She pretended to leap, letting the large sword whoosh below her feet. Left unguarded, Queen Bee lifted her estoc and thrust it into a weak point in the vermilion armor. 

The razored tip dug deep beside the man's clavicle, sliding until it punctured one of Paradise's lungs. 

But not before the man in red uttered the fateful word, "Now!" 

Bee found her estoc was suddenly sliding through the air. Paradise had adjusted his body in anticipation of her strike and would now only receive a minor nick on the leg of his armor from her downward thrust. 

… Except Paradise was never Bee's real target. As soon as the Queen had felt air instead of muscle, she, too adjusted her trajectory.

Sleepless, who had lifted his sword to give Queen Bee a fatal strike from her back, instead received an unexpected kick in his chest from Bee's sabaton. 

The man staggered backward just as a gaping hole appeared in an explosion from Fire's spear. Before the clouds could heal, Sleepless tumbled into the azure void below. 

Bee felt immense relief, but Paradise did not. "Now!" he screamed looking to Thorai with no small amount of urgency. 

The Queen held her breath. The clouds receded momentarily before beginning to heal once more. The man who had fallen through the hole did not return. 

"Sleepless has been eliminated," the voice of the Dreamscape confirmed Bee's hopes. 

 'Very interesting.' 

The series of events had been most enlightening. The time warp, or whatever it was, was conditional and limited to a very short span of time. By how close Paradise's words had been to the actual event, the skip backward could not span more than a second or two. 

Paradise gritted his teeth as he looked briefly at the disappearing hole. "That's not possible. It goes against…" 

'The odds?' Bee silently filled in the words that the man in red was reluctant to admit. 

Every move the man had made had been the most logical, as if he were constantly running the numbers in his head to calculate the odds of success. It turned out that was exactly what he had been doing. 

This was why only the most dire situations had made the man give the signal. For that is what Paradise in Red's 'nows' were: a signal. His look toward the only woman on his team confirmed this point.

The reason Thorai was not engaging in the battle was because it was her job to keep Dawnbreak alive. Silently pulling at the fabric of time, she had undoubtedly saved her teammates countless times…and failed once. 

'Time to even out those odds,' Queen Bee lunged at the man in red. 

Paradise would protect Thorai at all costs, and she still seemed content not to engage the other ladies head-on. Bee knew what she needed to do. 

The espadon and estoc clashed together in a bone-jarring collision. 

For the next minute, the two duelists moved around the field in a blur of motion. Combined with the two sorcerers, the entire arena was being torn apart and slowly mended in a never-ending cycle of destruction and healing. 

Unable to follow the tornado of action, the crowd cheered indiscriminately at the display. 

Only Thorai seemed to be keeping her cool, drifting here and there to avoid the explosions or fury of blades. She still had yet to summon a weapon, much to the audience's delight and bewilderment. 

The man in red was skillful, but he felt the tide shift as soon as Sleepless had tumbled from the platform. None of Queen Bee's moves made sense. She wasn't being logical in the placement of her blade or the movement of her body. 

Yet every hit felt like a mountain was falling on the young man. Cracks formed in the arm of his vermilion armor as he kept Queen Bee's hand from slicing his neck.

"Not my head!" he said, much to Bee's confusion. The desperate cry caused him to shove Queen Bee back from decapitating him. 

Sliding to the edge, Bee saw the unending blue in the gap between the edge of the area and the stands. It was as beautiful as it was frightening. 

Seeing his moment, Paradise used all of his momentum to fling the Queen from the platform. 

His success was assured. Only he hadn't figured in one very important detail. 

Bee could float. 

The hovering Awakened shifted to the side, playing the same trick on him that he had done the entire duel. One second she was in place, and the next Bee was beside him watching him fall. 

His face twisted into a smile as he fell into the azure void. 

"What are the odds?" he whispered wryly. 

Bee peered down as the Awakened disappeared into a rain of sparks. 

"Paradise in Red has been eliminated."