Lia's punch connects with Tamia's forearm, who returns the favor by throwing one of her own. Lia dodges, side stepping and landing with a kick to the liver. However Tamia blocks it.
Like a ballot dancer, Lia swings around her leg that head directly to Tamia. Similar to before, Lia's kicks are blocked. Tamia grins, tossing a bullet of a punch. Sorry for that bullet it misses by a huge margin.
With rapid movement Lia turns to hold on to Tamia's arm, lifting her up and smashes her on to the ground.
Without even letting the pain surge throughout her body, Lia uses her hand as a rope to send Tamia upwards.
Now above Lia's head, Tamia backflips standing behind Lia and the students are wowed at what Tamia just did. Lia still holding her arm tries yet again to smash Tamia, but she quickly unsheath her hand from Lia.
Lia spins around to face Tamia, unfortunately she is to slow and Tamia kicks her liver sending her a few meters away from herself.
"You ain't bad." Tamia says.
"Thanks. Neither are you." Holding her stomach she continues, "Even so that still doesn't change you're the weakest among your friends."
"Is the word "weak" a mechanism to deal with some sort of insecurity you have."
Lia fixes her posture, slowly walking to Tamia. She stands face to face with her and a smirk on her face.
"You can say that. It reminds me that I need to go easy on my opponents - in order for me to not hurt their fragile body."
Tamia chuckles.
"What's wrong? Do you realize you don't stand a chance against me?" Lia says.
"Nothing of thaf sort. It's actually the opposite."
In an instant the two girls simultaneously strike each. Like two balls colliding. Lia leaps backwards, asking herself why she is feeling more pain than Tamia.
Without giving her a chance to ponder on questions, Tamia propels herself towards Lia. She misses, though she quickly goes down, drifting her body and throws another bullet of a punch.
Surprised by the reflexes of Tamia, Lia hesitate. Luckily she prevents the punch from hitting her face.
"What's wrong?! Didn't you say I was weak?!"
"Yea! And you just proved my point!"
A month ago the two boys and Lia fought the three spies. Though they lost, Reiji blames her for quitting without a fight.
She refused to give a reason to the two boys, since she believes they would not understand her reason at all.
"In the ninja world, before you approach your enemy. You should first observe and understand them." These are the words she learned from Master Ryūkishi.
To this day she always follows them diligently. And that is the reason she chose not to fight the spies
"Out of your friends you are the weakest." Lia says.
Lia does the Rin, Hei, Toh and Kai hand sign that the students are caught by surprise. Notice this hand sign Tamia leaps back.
Sorry for Lia grab a hold of her legs, picking her up and smashing Tamia on the ground once again that it creates a crater on the ground.
Just like how Tamia did not give her a chance to think, Lia throws a jab straight immediately to Tamia's nose. She does it again and again and again and again and again until blood splatter everywhere.
Lia moves a few steps back satisfied what she just did to Tamia. Now she waits for Kaito to announce her as the winner.
Sad to say Tamia wakes up like a zombie out of her tombstone covered with blood from her nasel to her chest.
"Should have know you wouldn't go down so easy for a second time."
"You're right. Cause now I will be going all out."
Her eyes shine red like a crimson moon for a brief moment, she dashes towards Lia. Lia caught off guard by her speed - she is unable to move out of the way for what was about to happen.
Tamia punches her on the nose breaking the bone. Red mucus flows down Lia's broken nose. Regardless Tamia's not done.
She lands two punchs to both the kidneys, one to the stomach, one to ribs, one to the chin and one to the jaw. Following Tamia's last strike, Lia levitates in the sky.
She lands hard on the damaged ground of the arena.
"Now who's the weakest?" Tamia grins whipping the blood from he nose.
She glares at Lia, before she walks out of the arena.
"That's the second time you used it." Nero says. "If you get caught we don't know each other."
"You don't have to worry about that. My demonic ability is the passive type, compared to Faizan's one."
Nero side eyes her.
Meanwhile memories of the past crawl up inside Lia's mind. The time her parents sold her off, the time she had to fight heaven earth in order to survive the Hein training and the time she lost her best friend due to the same training.
This memories remind her she is not yet defeated. No matter how strong Tamia's punches are, they are nothing compared to the Hein training and no matter how much pain she feels right now - does not hurt as much as when her best friend was crushed right in front of her.
Just as Kaito is about to touch her pulse point. She smacks it away. Kaito bewildered, he moves away as Lia raises from the ground.
"Tamia!" She yells. "You better get up here! Cause me and you ain't finish yet!" Her eyes filled with blazing flames.
"This is why passive types never work." Nero slightly grins.
Tamia walks to the arena once again. Wondering if she should feel respect for Lia's tenacity or be irritated.
Now standing on top of the arena, she spring towards Lia. Notice her charge, Lia moves to the side hoping to avoid her. Her hope comes through.
Tamia turns around amazed that Lia could still move her body.
On the other hand, there's something plundering on Lia's mind since she saw Tamia fight Shiru.
It is true that Shiru did not use Sei during his entire match, so did Tamia.
Knowing that fact, the question is how come Tamia damaged Shiru so badly? She knows that punches would not inflict so much damage, unless you trained them. But ninjas would never do that since they can use Sei.
Even after Lia continuously punched her in the face all she could do is make her bleed. And when Tamia punched her she was able to damage not the skin but a few organs and break a few bones.
'So how come her punches are this strong?' She thinks to herself.
Tamia keeps on her barrage of punches, while Lia can only dodge some of them. In a pursuit of evading the punches, Lia stumbles and with no wasted movement Tamia lands a bullet of a punch on the broken nose of Lia.
She falls to the ground like a lifeless body. Her eyes as blank as white paper.
"It seems like this is the end this time." All the students mummer.
Since this morning she has been excited to fight the two remaining spies in order to get revenge for what happened to Victus.
"So why am not getting up?" Whispers to herself.
"Lia! Do not give up, do not be like me. Get up and fight!"
Kazuki's voice wakes her up. She hammers her head with her fist like a nail to clear her mind of all questions she has. Though her body is trembling viciously from the pain, it is nothing to make her stop fighting.
"To be honest…huh…Lady Zennyo will be pissed at me for using this." Mummering to herself.
"What?" Tamia ask.
"You have nothing to worry about. It will be over soon."
[DEMONIC ABILITY: KAGE NO UGOKU]
In a split second Tamia realizes that Lia is standing at the back of her. She tries to rotate but her brain is rattled and her eyes twick before shutting down completely.
The crowd are shocked at what just happened. One moment Lia is standing in front of Tamia and the other she is behind her. How? They do not know themselves.
Kaito walks up and notify everyone that Tamia is knocked out.
"The winner of this round is number 3." Holding Lia's bloodied hand.
Notice that Lia will not be able to walk for a while, Kaito ask one of his colleagues to assist her. They do so, placing her next to her two friends.
"Good job Lia!" Kazuki says.
"Th-thanks." She smiles back.
Reiji surveys that Lia will not be able to fight for the next round - considering where she has been hurt.
"Guess you weren't lying when you said you're strong." Reiji adds, "Good job for tiering us up with those guys." He gratefully smiles at her.
For the first time since Lia and Reiji have known each other. This is the first time Reiji has genuinely smiled and complemented her. Therefore you can not blame her for laughing.
"What's so funny?" Reiji ask.
"Have you perhaps fallen for me Prince?"
His cheeks turning red, he stomps the ground repeatedly.
"Now, let the next fighters come to the exam!"
Nero and the girl who won the previous match walk up to the arena. Nero scans her from top to bottom.
She has long sleek black hair, with hazel colored eyes and her body to well build for her age.
"At first I wanted to say hi to you, but I somehow I can't let it out." Her voice mainly tone to it.
Nero just stares at her like a statue.
"I don't know the reason why myself. Even if I did - it wouldn't matter to you is it."
Nero's expression stays the same. Kaito swings his hand to give the signal for Nero and the girl to begin their fight.
The students wonder why the two are taking so long. It has been close to 5 minutes and the two are have yet to throw any hands.
Nero finally breaks the ice.
"Do I know you?"
"Sort of." Nero sense a tiny bit of frustration in the girls voice.
"Meaning?"
A chill runs up on Kaito and Tamia. They can both feel the small amount of bloodlust escaping Nero.
"You don't remember." She chuckles. "If you wanna know…a place like this would be inappropriate."
"Who are you?"
"Thanks for asking." Claps her hand. "Sonya, no family name unfortunately."
"If you want me to remember it, better be strong."
The students excitement raises once more. They hope that this time they would be no more talking just action.
Sonya deeply focus her eyes in to Nero before bursting out in laughter. The students excitement goes down once more wondering what she is going to say this time.
"No, no, no. You got this all wrong." She walks away adding, "As I said this "This place is inappropriate." Because when you find out the truth, I want our match to be a no - rules match."
Everyone looks on as she leaves the training ground with questions of what she meant by a "no-rules match."
TBC.
NEXT CHAPTER: PRELUDE 19