"Back! Back! Left foot back, left foot, keep your right in front! Lead with your right!" Ix yelled, driving Charlotte backwards.

Charlotte was starting to flag, but she grit her teeth and raised her sword, blocking Ix's next blow with a resounding clang!

"Better!" Ix said, locking their hilts together and twisting. The sword was wrenched out of Charlotte's hands and fell to the floor, and she jerked her foot away before it could get hit.

"Can we take a break?" Charlotte panted, hands on her knees.

Ix sheathed her sword and wiped her forehead on her arm. "Break would be good," she said, pulling her wand from her belt and giving it a wave. The RC's furniture flew back into position, and Charlotte collapsed on the sofa. "You really are getting better," Ix added, going to the fridge to pour them glasses of pumpkin juice. "That was the best parry I've seen from you yet."

Charlotte grinned and pushed her glasses up her nose. "Heh. Thanks," she said, accepting her glass from Ix. She drank greedily, and Ix sat beside her, doing the same.

"Want to give it another go when we're done?" Ix asked.

"Ehh..." Charlotte leaned against her and sighed. "I don't know. I'm getting kinda discouraged about this. I'm never gonna be as good as you."

Ix shrugged, fingers tangling loosely in Charlotte's hair. "I wouldn't say that," she said. "I just had to practice a lot. That's all it is."

"I guess you're right." Charlotte sighed again. "Still don't really feel like practicing any more right now."

"Later, then." Ix pressed a kiss to Charlotte's cheek and stood up. "But next time, you have to disarm me—and then we'll take a break."

Charlotte groaned and just lay back against the cushions.


(Also, since it's a ways down the Board, I finally got around to doing last week's prompt here.)

The desert sun was beating down hard and Tiger was beginning to feel like he was melting. He had been a little thirsty for the last few minutes, but it was only now that he realised that he was probably dehydrated.

According to the safety lecture, what he needed to do was to get water as soon as possible and then sit in the shade to recover.

There were two problems with that: he didn’t have any water with him and there was no shade in sight.

He began to mentally curse himself. He had been rather incompetent in several ways: he hadn’t drunk enough water before leaving, he hadn’t taken supplies with him on his spying mission, he hadn’t even prepared for this situation.

And of all the times he could get dehydrated, it just had to be on this stupid training battle his dad had organised.

Not that he saw anything wrong with training battles in principle – a chance to beat his sister was always great – but he didn’t see why they had to be in such inconvenient locations.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he thought through his options. He needed to get water now or else he’d be in serious danger. He couldn’t use a Water-Conjuring Spell (well, he probably could do, but the effort would put him out of the battle) so he had to get back to base and use the supplies.

It seemed a lot further away than he’d remembered, but eventually he saw the little hollow containing a couple of tents which was the base. As he got closer, he could see that something was wrong – one of the tents had collapsed and there was no sign of any of his classmates.

He walked in and saw that whatever had happened was pretty catastrophic – Andy was lying on the ground, “dead”. Of course, no-one really died in these exercises, but Tiger’s dad liked them to maintain as high a level of realism as possible so he wouldn’t be able to talk to Andy.

It was pretty clear what had happened – Holly had paid a visit. It looked as if his carefully laid plan was in ruins, before it had even begun.

The flap of the remaining tent opened and a hand beckoned him in. Tiger crouched down to enter the tent.

Inside it was extremely crowded – his three remaining classmates, Robin, Tim and Matt, were all squashed inside.

“What happened?” asked Tiger quickly. It was Robin who replied.

“The girls came and attacked us as soon as you were gone. We tried to put up a fight, but without you we had no chance and once Holly killed Andy we had to… make a tactical retreat. The thing is, they took all the supplies.”

Tiger groaned. “Even the water? I’m so thirsty!” Having said that, he immediately regretting sounding so whiny.

Robin nodded. “So… Boss…”

“General Lion,” Tiger replied, with his usual insistence on using the proper codenames.

“Sorry – General Lion – what do we do?”

Tiger smiled a little. “Isn’t it obvious? We take the battle to them, and we win it. If they have all the supplies, we just have to win them back.”

Holly wouldn’t expect that – or would she? She’d probably say it was just the kind of reckless thing he’d do and that it was doomed to failure.

On the other hand, they were doomed either way, so they might as well just attack. Tiger got to his feet and marched out of the tent, trying to supress his growing thirst.