PSTH: Chapter Fifty-Five

Just as a reminder, there will be no chapters next week, since I'm not writing this week in order to spend time with family and friends.

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Gimmick teams are some of the most common threats for low-level tournament competitors. If the new Tamer doesn’t have the right spells, knowledge, or Primals to handle a gimmick, even some of the sillier ones like the Dance Dance Die gimmick can result in a loss. At higher levels, these gimmicks tend to be less pronounced, as the experience, raw power, and deeper pool of potential spells expands, but less pronounced isn’t nothing. Indeed, a sufficiently clever tamer can still use a gimmick team to great effect, if they also take the current trends into account. This is most well known with the somewhat infamous…

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Intro to a video essay series about assorted tournament trends and their respective weaknesses, 453 Modern-Era

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I woke up slowly, my head slowly pulsing from dehydration as I blinked and looked around. Near as I could tell, I was the first one awake, my friends mostly scattered out across the blanket. My head was against something, propping me up, so I could only see Laurel and River laying back-to-back, but I could also hear Rane’s soft snoring from behind me. The only one I couldn’t see was Gawain. 

I must have still been in the grip of my headache and half-asleep state, because in that moment, that felt right. He’d woken up earlier than me, despite my usual habits making me a very early riser. It took me several more moments of darting my eyes from place to place without moving to figure out that the reason I couldn’t see him was because the lump that my head was resting on was Gawain. He was laying on the ground, limbs contorted in the strange angle that always seemed to happen when sleeping, and my head was on top of his shoulder and part of his chest. 

I leapt to my feet and looked around for a water fountain, my head complaining that I’d gotten up far too quickly. It wasn’t as easy as it normally would be, since several other tamers had already started to create a line down the street. There were those who had gotten here early, like we had, but also some that were clearly new arrivals, holding cups of coffee or tea in their hands. I eventually spotted a water fountain some ways down the street, and went to go take a  long drink. Scales materialized next to me, taking a sip from the bowl that was meant for animals set beneath it. I ran my hand through my hair, grunting in displeasure about how greasy it had gotten over the course of the night. 

After returning to my friends, and leaving Hex there to protect them, I tracked down a public restroom and washed my face and arms off with a recyclable towel, then ran wet hands through my hair to try and get it at least decent. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out what had possessed me to think that going and sleeping outside of the arena, instead of returning to the hostel, showering, and sleeping there, was a good idea. 

Feeling at least a little bit better after that, I checked on my sleeping friends once again, but all of them were still out, while Hex was glancing around at the passerby. According to my augpad, the ticket station wouldn’t even open for another forty-five minutes, so I left to find a coffee shop and purchased five coffees and mulberry muffins. I’d never had a mulberry before, but they looked, smelled, and tasted somewhat like a blackberry with faint hints of figginess in the background. Needless to say, my muffin was gone before I’d even made it back, and most of my coffee was as well. 

By the time I’d made it back, I almost felt human again, and started to rouse my friends so that they could get ready as well. Rane was the first and easiest to get up, and after about fifteen seconds of nonstop chugging, downed her entire coffee, before giving me a thumbs up and sprinting in the direction of the restrooms. I just watched with an amused smile on my face, shaking my head as I went to wake the rest up. 

Thankfully, everyone was able to get up and put themselves into a semblance of living people once again before the arena lobby doors opened, and one of the workers stepped out, speaking loudly enough that their voice carried through the street. 

“Thank you everyone for your enthusiasm! I’d like to remind everyone to form a neat, orderly, single file line while outside, and I will direct you to what line you should go to once you get here! For those of you who purchased disability-friendly tickets, this is not your line! That will be around this corner here, where one of my co-workers will assist you. Please remember, you can at maximum purchase one additional ticket for someone not here. No more. And…” 

The man continued to rattle off disclaimers for a while, and it vaguely made me feel like a peasant from one of the early pre-Arrival medieval periods, sitting around and listening to the town crier or heralds or whatever they were called. Eventually, the doors were opened, and people were allowed to move in. Thanks in part to our early arrival, we didn’t have long to wait, and I was directed to line H, where there was only one person ahead of me, seemingly locked in a furious debate about being allowed to purchase ten tickets because ‘he needed them for his co-workers’. He started to rant about how he’d be fired if he didn’t get the tickets, he’d lose his job, and his children would starve.

I just rolled my eyes at his childish antics. For one, If he’d really needed an exemption, he could have applied for it. For another, his children wouldn’t starve, even if he did lose his job. There were more programs for ensuring kids’ health than there were for adults, and his kids would be auto-enrolled in them after he lost a job. Finally, the ticketing rules were pretty standard. If his job would really follow him for failing this request, he’d be better off reporting him to the bureau of labor, so they could do an audit. No, I suspected he was trying to sell the tickets for a profit. It was illegal, and there were attempts like limiting number of tickets per person to help prevent it, but it still happened. 

Eventually, he purchased two tickets and left in a huff, and I was able to get my own. After a quick scan of my Tamer ID, my standard government ID, and indicating I was part of a larger party, I was sent through to another door where I waited for my friends to come through with their own. We made our way inside, scanning our new tickets, and then headed up and toward where we would be seated. Despite having eaten a muffin not too long ago, my stomach was rumbling in hunger, and during the pre-match warmups, I went to go get breakfast, a stuffed roll with greasy sausage, heat-blasted eggs, and sauce-like cheese. Despite it being far from my usual fare, it tasted amazing under the circumstances. Once I’d scarfed it down, I took my seat, sandwiched between Gawain and Rane, with Laurel and River in the seats just ahead of us, and settled in to watch the warmup show. 

Though I called it a show, it was really more of the same, but different, which was the sort of thought I could only concoct while worn out like this. In short, it was more battles, just between less-famous tamers. It was most commonly used as a way for up-and-comers who’d placed well at a tournament or two, but who hadn’t gained a substantial following yet, to get some eyes and attention on them. Despite not having the notoriety of a Regent or Councillor, a lot of the people down there were exceptionally skilled. The levels on display ran the gamut from as low as level twenty to as high as sixty-eight, but despite what amateurs often tended to assume, the matches weren’t always decided by level. 

For one thing, elemental advantages were a massive boost, hitting twice as hard as they would if they had no advantage, or cutting the damage a pneuma shell took by a proportionate amount. Hypothetically, that meant a level thirty could hit a level sixty on equal terms, if the elemental advantages lined up. But that was ignoring other strategies that could be used. Gifts were always a wildcard that could radically empower or weaken a Primal, synergistic spell effects could make someone hit much harder than it would seem on first glance, and the Tamer’s own pools of anima and pneuma could be used to reinforce a Primal’s, meaning the relative strength of the Tamer played into it as well. Levels were a good general judge, but only that, not an absolute rule. 

One of the most interesting fighters I watched was a lightning element specialist. Magians rarely tamed – they could only bond with Primals of their own element, after all – but specialists were something of the exception that proved the rule. They intentionally forewent the advantages of raw essence, compressing a core, and using more efficient essence gifting through the bond thanks to the same type. The lightning specialist was capable of empowering his team of lightning element Primals to a truly absurd degree, and I thought he had to be close to level sixty himself, despite his Primals mostly being in the mid-thirties. It was enough that he wound up even taking on a tamer who had a pair of earth elementals. In the end, it was a gimmick team who took him on and won, utilizing a team consisting of three Primals with Essence Explosion, a spell that sacrificed all of your anima and pneuma for a single massive shockwave of force. They’d been paired with a Adapadog, whose gift gave it temporary immunity to a copied spell, and the dog-like Primal had been left standing without so much as a crack in its battle form. 

“What would you do against that gimmick?” Gawain asked, and I let out a thoughtful hum. It was impossible to plan for every possible gimmick that existed out there, but thinking about how to deal with specific ones was a good training exercise to help think on your feet if you ever did come across one in a tournament or something of that sort. 

“Well, for one, Hex would be able to disable the spell copy, probably. That would result in a draw at worst, as all of both of our Primals had their pneuma shells broken,” I said. “Other than that, I think the best thing would be to have Zale try and Light Dash out of the area of the explosive magic. If he can dodge even one, or take one hit, or some combination therein, I’m guaranteed a victory. You?” 

“Gryphon would use its Light Flash spell to hopefully stun the tamer and stop the spells long enough for him to also hit the Adapadog with lightning or fire. The reflection of damage from Gabis would hopefully finish it off, as well as weakening whichever explosive Primal he threw in next enough for him to take the hit. Other than that, I could try and get the Primals to not use Essence Explosion with fear magic, or something like that…” 

Laurel must have caught snippets of our conversation, because she turned around in her chair and added her own two cents. 

“I’d rely on Procella. She’s a windstorm, so if she was able to ride the shockwave, it might not do as much as it ought to. Of course, that depends on her shifting her pneuma in conjunction with the attack, but it’s my best bet. Other than that, the simple solution is just to focus down the Adapadog. Maybe Beak could get high enough in the air to be outside of the range of the explosion?” 

I nodded my agreement to that, as did Gawain, but all of our attention was pulled away as they began to clear off the arena floor, emptying it out for the main event.