"So there's gonna be trees, right?" Archie asked. He opened and closed his hands repeatedly, circulating both blood and essence through his body.

Peach grabbed a chunk of his hair and yanked and curled it. "Yes. Several."

Archie yelped as Peach yanked another piece of his hair. "Do you have to do that?"

"This is a big fight. We're selling scopes, and if you want a future fighting here, you better look good and get some new fans. Ambrosia me, your hair is a mess. Curl or don't!" She yanked another piece.

"So you think I can keep fighting next year? And are the trees tall? And what are the branches like?"

Peach yanked another piece of hair, but Archie suspected she did that just to shut him up. "People like your fighting style, Archie. We made sure to accommodate it. But if you want my advice, stay grounded. You go up the tree, you gotta come down. Makes you predictable."

"Wait, are you allowed to give fighters advice?"

Peach yanked and curled harder than ever and grinned. "I'm allowed to do whatever I want to produce a good fight. Now come on, I gotta get you two to Pomary. Hey! Where's Yarrow? Get him to Pomary!"

"She prefers Pomegranate," Archie said as Peach pushed him toward the hallway.

"Sure she does, champ. Go put on a show for me."

Archie jogged to catch up to Yarrow halfway to Pomegranate's witchy dungeon. "Yarrow! Wait up."

Yarrow glared as he turned. He was always glaring before the turn. He never looked at Archie and then glared. It was like he had a sixth sense to be mean to Archie.

Archie had learned to power through. "You nervous?"

"You don't know me." Yarrow's glare deepened to a scowl. He turned and walked away so that Archie wouldn't walk beside him.

"Yeah. Hey, you remember how you said you owed me a favor? For walking with Julienne? I was wondering if I could redeem that offer and have you go easy on me."

"Not a chance."

"Yeah." Archie sighed. "I thought so."

—

He just had to keep moving. Keep moving. Use the trees. Don't get hit. Keep moving. Don't get hit. Keep—

"Fight!"

Archie had been too in his own head to hear the countdown. Luckily, he heard the starting announcement. Yarrow had already pooled enough essence to send a plume of acid arcing through the air at him.

A noodle shot out of Archie's arm on pure instinct, wrapping around his forearm and one of the lower branches of the nearest trees. He didn't have time to pick his spot. He only had time to get out of the way.

The stream of acid followed his movement with surprising speed. Archie had only ever seen Yarrow's acid in a training context—to see it released full blast had him reassessing every strategy he had come up with. But before he could make a plan, he needed to survive the opening attack. He kept his feet grounded as he contracted the noodle, skidding in the dirt so that the dust could obscure his next movement—a well-placed noodle on a tree farther back so that he could cut diagonally across the arena and get some distance.

The acid continued to flow even after Archie was several feet out of reach. He noted the distance. If this was truly Yarrow's max, he could shoot across about a third of the arena. That meant that while Archie had a range advantage, if he gave up the middle of the arena, he'd only be out of range on the very edge where there were no trees. He needed to make sure Yarrow couldn't get position.

They both had the same idea. As Yarrow shot his acid, he stepped forward. Archie figured he had no chance to get a shot off on Yarrow, so he pivoted his strategy, shooting several blueberries in succession that exploded into a fine blue film that covered the ground between Yarrow and the center of the arena. If he stepped on it, he'd slip, and Archie would have him.

But Yarrow was a better fighter than that. He whipped his stream of acid around and dissolved the field of blue along with a few extra inches of dirt. A foot-deep trench had formed where he had shot his initial acid. The essence used must have been immense.

Too immense. Archie watched as Yarrow continued shooting acid onto the ground despite having already neutralized Archie's plan. There was something to that. He filed it away and focused on the matter at hand.

Yarrow dashed toward the middle. Archie countered with another greasing blueberry. But this time, as Yarrow lifted his hands to conjure acid to dissolve the blueberry slime, Archie shot a hard blueberry right at Yarrow's chest. Yarrow barely managed to react in time, whipping his hands around and summoning a wide splash of acid that dissolved the blueberry.

Almost.

All of the hardness had been burned out of the blueberry, but it had left its blue mark on Yarrow's yellow jacket. Both fighters realized and came to the same conclusion. Archie shot again, and this time, Yarrow held his hands in a wide circle and summoned a dense ball of acid that hovered in the center. He moved just in time to splash his acid to hit the blueberry, dissolving it.

Archie needed more information, but he had to make a choice. He could either control the middle or get a read on Yarrow's defenses. He chose the latter, loading up another hardened blueberry into his noodle slingshot. But just before letting go, he eased up on some of the hardness, leaving latent essence in the blueberry.

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Yarrow took the more central position without hesitation, relying on another dense splash of acid to dismantle Archie's blueberry. And while it was a successful defense, Archie noticed a difference. This time, the acid disappeared along with the blueberry. He theorized that unaltered essence disrupted the essence of the acid, dismantling it. Another thing he had to file away while running for his life.

Archie used his sugar rush to move in unpredictable diagonals, afraid that his linear paths with noodle contractions would be too easy for Yarrow to read. He had to keep moving. Don't get hit. He took two leaping bounds toward Yarrow and backed away in anticipation. Yarrow took what he thought would be his chance, releasing a burst of widespread acid that sizzled into the ground.

Dust kicked up where Archie had leapt forward, and while they kept sightlines of each other, the rolling cloud kept both of them too afraid to make a move. Yarrow inched toward the center. Archie inched toward the edge. He could hear Clover commentating over the dead moment, but his focus remained entirely on Yarrow. He couldn't get distracted. Not for a second. Not when—

Yarrow waved his arms around in a circle and then thrust them forward, sending another constant plume of acid. Archie quickly realized the worst had happened.

He had underestimated Yarrow's max range.

The essence forced him back until he had nowhere left to go but along the edge of the arena, and to use a tree meant getting closer. He shot a noodle to slink around a tree to his left but dashed to the right. Yarrow bit on the feint, giving Archie just enough clearance to avoid the attack. The acid arced up and around, splashing into an invisible barrier that kept the crowd safe. And while the main stream never hit Archie, that giant splash from up above proved troublesome, showering microdrops that burned his skin like cooking oil jumping out of a hot pan. One or two oversized drops hit his shoulder, but he had no time to tend to them, using all of his speed and strength to circle the arena and avoid Yarrow's acid.

It might have worked if Yarrow weren't so clever.

He stopped aiming for Archie entirely and aimed high, using the barrier formed by Competitive Spirit to his advantage. It splattered wide and unpredictably, threatening to shower on Archie no matter where he went.

But Archie was clever, too.

He released all of his sugar rush, and in a feat that he had been training for since his first day with Picea, he channeled essence into three places at once. His left hand formed the slingshot. His right hand formed the blueberry. And just after he took his shot, he used the essence in his mouth to blow a tight, dense minty fog directly overhead. Clover yelled and the crowd roared and both fighters suffered.

Archie's shield of fog cut into the acid, little fractional droplets stinging his skin for a microsecond before becoming inert. But his lungs burned. Lacking experience with mint, he had only time to master volume, not efficiency, pouring out excess essence and breath to defend himself.

Meanwhile, the blueberry hit Yarrow's knee with a crack! He swung his arms around as he did everything in his power not to fall, the acid still spewing without slowing down even a bit. He gave up the middle, and Archie had the chance to blow a concentrated puff of mint onto his burning shoulder, neutralizing the acid that had put a hole in his jacket. Even just the surface burn hurt badly enough to overload his nerves. He couldn't imagine what an acid bath would feel like. He wouldn't let it happen.

Despite the chaos of the fight, Archie tracked everything well and formed a few conclusions that he would risk everything on. First, Yarrow was slower than Archie was at accumulating essence, but could build it up to a great amount. Second, when Yarrow launched his acid, it spread out and lost some potency, making him most vulnerable while attacking. Third, once Yarrow started his sustained attack, he couldn't stop it voluntarily, instead having to use however much essence he had accumulated.

Archie needed to verify. He shot a steady barrage of blueberries, not caring if they did damage or not. Yarrow met each one with a new splash of acid. Archie moved forward to see if Yarrow would attack, weakening his shots so that he could put a sugar rush into his legs in case he needed to escape. But Yarrow didn't attack. He couldn't. Archie forced himself into a rhythm, then disrupted the rhythm, taking an extra second on one shot before going back to his typical timing. Yarrow's defensive splash was more potent and travelled farther. Archie was right. Yarrow wasn't measuring. He was just throwing everything as quickly as he could conjure it.

That left Archie with two options, one safe and one dangerous. If he wanted to play things conservatively, he could keep his distance and continuously launch attacks to prevent Yarrow from generating enough power to reach him. Alternatively, Archie could move in until Yarrow attacked, then capitalize on the rigidity of the attack while avoiding its lethality.

On another day, in another situation, Archie might have played things safe. But in the arena? With his blood pumping and the crowd cheering and the threat of death rendered irrelevant?

He was going to put on a show.

He shot several times high into the air, the blueberries exploding into a thick smoke that dropped on Yarrow, but not before giving him a chance to see Archie charging forward. Yarrow reacted by jumping backward to give himself a bit more time, then launching another continuous plume of acid forward into the smoke.

Just as Archie predicted. He had already moved diagonally into the cover of another smokescreen and launched a noodle forward. It was a risky gambit—if the speed of Archie's noodle didn't exceed Yarrow's reaction time, he'd be wide open and burned to a crisp. But pastamancy was Archie's first love, and he had trained hard to satisfy that everlasting passion.

The noodle looped around Yarrow's ankle just as he started to turn. Archie contracted it with a force that would've sent the elevator from the greenhouse to the lounge in two seconds. For Yarrow, that meant he was on his back and being dragged through the dirt before he even knew what hit him.

Yarrow's hands went high, sending his acid above the trees in an arc that would splatter down on Archie in just a matter of seconds with nowhere to hide. But that wasn't good enough for Yarrow. While he still spewed acid, he would attack. He lowered his hands to blast horizontally, taking a new trajectory that would kill Archie within a second.

But for as fast as Yarrow's plume was, Archie's contraction was faster.

Yarrow's plume sprayed out as it collided with itself. The acid folded over and smothered him, making him scream. And just before the acid hit Archie, it all disappeared.

Yarrow still screamed for another second before realizing that it was over. Archie stood in stunned silence, still expecting to get hit any second. In the sudden tranquility, he could finally understand what Clover was saying.

"And Archie wins! What a fight! Short, but explosive beyond belief! And the strategy! Come on, let's hear it! The winner of this year's amateur tournament!"

Cheers rolled in like the unceasing waves of the ocean, washing Archie in glory. Tens of thousands of people weren't just watching. They were adoring. They knew his name. They celebrated his talent. He held his arms out to soak it all in, spinning around to see all of his admirers. He spotted the royal box where Sutton and Oliver and Benedict jumped around hugging each other, Nori in the row beneath them watching and laughing.

Adrenaline pumped his urges out of control. If only Clover would give Archie whatever tonic amplified his voice. He'd dedicate his win to Nori. He'd ask her then and there if she'd be his, and she'd answer yes, yes of course, because everything in the world was for the taking, and Archie had the means to achieve anything he wanted.

But as the cheers grew, so too did something else. An accumulation of essence rose behind Archie. Rose from where Yarrow had fallen. The hair on the back of Archie's neck stood up, and he turned with a mouthful of minty fog.

He turned to catch Yarrow glaring with flexed hands. The essence disappeared from Yarrow, and Archie's euphoric high was brought down by wondering whether or not Yarrow had intended to attack him or not. Yarrow glared at him, and he glared back, stepping away before turning to accept the crowd's praise once more.

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