TTT: Standoff (part 2)

Neon's hooves clicked over the paved cobblestones of the wide road. As she trotted, she balled and unballed her fists — both to stave off the chill of Dewclaw's night air but also to expel some of the anxiety that had built up.

She hadn't thought to ask what the war was about before hastily agreeing to join in, foolish, over-eager idiot that she was. And that meant...

She turned the corner, and there was Jasmaby. It was a perfectly casual moment, which was so removed from their typical encounters that it bordered on the absurd. He was hastily dressed, a light jacket thrown over a simple shirt and plain skirt. (Although clearly some thought had gone into exactly how his neckline hung, and where the hem of his skirt fell...) There was no entourage, no crowd of paparazzi, no fireballs hanging overhead. 

There was just... Jasmaby, waiting for her.

He beckoned her over, making her realize that she had been hesitating right at the corner's edge. She swallowed her trepidation back down into her gut and approached him.

"Kit," he said simply as she approached.

"Jasmaby," she responded.

"Charthur and Shizu have been attending for six minutes," Jasmaby informed her, waving his compact at her. "Are you prepared?"

"I guess," she responded with a shrug. There was no choice but to just get it over with.

Jasmaby regarded her, gaze suddenly piercing. He suddenly leaned forward to seize her shoulder firmly, bringing his face in line with hers. 

"Kit," he said sternly, "This one is important. I need to be absolutely ascertain of your dedication. Convince me."

Neon pulled away, but not enough to break Jasmaby's grip. A response came to her immediately — but she knew better than to let it slip through unguarded. Instead, she went with the safer option: "Charthur is cuter by the social metrics of Dewclaw culture, as well as the vast majority of cultures on the Owel continent. You simply don't compare," she intoned.

Jasmaby's eyes narrowed. He pulled her closer. "Are you saying I'm not cute?" he demanded, his voice like gravel.

The response leapt out of her throat before she could restrain it, the rush of an imminent War and this invasive intensity dragging it out of her. "I don't see how anyone could consider a stuck-up prick like you 'cute,'" she snapped.

Jasmaby's gaze felt as though it would burn a hole right between her eyes. Then his grip on her shoulder tightened, his thumb now uncomfortably buried under her shoulder blade.

He spoke again: "Perfect. I knew I could count on you, Kit," he said, giving her an encouraging squeeze. He held up his other fist. "Together, we'll show that adorable little runt exactly how cute she really is."

He pulled away, tapping a brief message into his compact before tucking it neatly into jacket. "It's begun," he announced. 

The air around Neon suddenly went thin and dry. She found herself taking a gasp of air, as if her breath had been pulled from her lungs. She glanced to Jasmaby, and saw that his eyes had gone distant. At a dozen points around the empty square, pools of flame were forming, bubbling upward to form fireballs, which danced and wheeled through the sky.

Neon wasn't paying attention to the spectacle, though. Her eyes were on Jasmaby's fingertips, dangling at his hips. His posture was relaxed, his arms loose — but his fingertips twitched ever so slightly, hardly perceptible. Neon had missed it, the first dozen times she had rewatched that segment of the footage, the single clip she had with the resolution to pick it out. She hadn't been able to be certain it wasn't just an artifact of the recording — until now.

She had wondered about how effortlessly he had always made it looked — face placid, gestures calm and easy, while calling down a torrent of flame from the sky. She realized what it was now — an act. A facade put on to disguise the incredible concentration that his powers had to require. She had suspected as much from early on, but now she had proof.

She couldn't suppress the grin rising up. This was an excellent discovery already. She glanced over to Chip; it would be scanning the area on every magical frequency, using every relevant sensor, exactly as instructed. She could hardly wait for the War to be over, so she could start delving into that delicious data, ever more certain she'd uncover the mechanism behind his control; the first step in developing a counter-measure. 

I see through you, she thought to herself. And you don't suspect a thing.

"Kit," Jasmaby said sharply.

"What?" Neon shouted, grabbing her heart in surprise.

Jasmaby didn't respond right away. He didn't seem to have even noticed her outburst. When he spoke again, he asked, "Your skill is scenario analysis, is it not? Well then, analyze."

Neon took a few deep breaths, trying to convince her heart to stop pounding. All according to plan, she assured herself. "This one should be no contest. Despite the colder air giving Charthur a slightly more favorable environmental edge, her record in direct confrontations with you is still poor, even excluding your initial, um, exceptional encounters." She fought off thoughts of Charthur hurtling herself unthinkingly towards her desired prey, and moved on. 

"Shizu's impact will be minimal, given the lack of distractions during which she might sneak a puppet past our defenses." She arrived at the home stretch: "Chip and I will be more than sufficient to hold off whatever she sends while you take care of Charthur, after which you'll have no trouble cleaning up." 

Neon crossed her arms. "Their only hope lies in a successful ambush. And with Chip's scanners active, that's impossible. We'll know well before they make a move where they're coming from." She brushed her hands off, having completed taking out the metaphorical trash. "We need only wait. Our victory is guaranteed."

Jasmaby took this in. Again, the strange, unfamiliar pause before he spoke, unsettling Neon from the comfortable groove that came from laying out a sound rational argument. But finally, he asked: "How long?"

"What?" Neon asked. "How long what?"

Again the brief pause, grating on Neon's nerves. "How long do we wait?"

"Uhh." Neon shrugged. "As long it takes?"

The beat, again. Was it deliberate? "How much sleep did you get last night?"

Neon bristled. "I don't see what that has to do with..." she started, but her voice trailed off as the implication hit her. She had been feeling frazzled; but Jasmaby's question wasn't an insult. Taking a less sharp tone, she responded, "Uh. Not much. Why, what's the time limit for the War?"
Jasmaby huffed, but said nothing.

No. It couldn't be. "You didn't set one??" Neon exclaimed.

"We weren't thinking," Jasmaby snarled, a few fireballs dipping in their flight before recovering. "No," he said more calmly. "I wasn't thinking." An uneasy smile settled on his face. "Oh, she was so reluctant to be warmaster, wasn't she? How could not I have seen it sooner?"

Neon groaned. "To answer your question: not enough. I've got a few hours in me at best."

"More than I," Jasmaby answered, thankfully no longer pausing before each sentence. "You most definitionally have more experience with late hours than I. This is not my scheduble."

Neon sighed, reworking her analysis. She grit her teeth, suddenly feeling trapped. "It's a standoff, then."

"This is no mere stalelock, Kit," Jasmaby warned her. "If it comes to it, those two can sleep while Shizu's dolls keep an eye out for us." 

"I don't think I've ever seen Shizu be tired," Neon realized.

"Neither have I. It seems she has the advantage of inenvitability in this contest. She has the advantage of being the only one of us who can fight while being dead on her feet."

Neon shot him a meaningful look.

"Ah. That was rude." Jasmaby gave Neon a stiff pat on the head, flattening her mohawk in every direction. "Dead on our feet or hooves," he corrected himself.

"That's not what I... I just meant, even if she was— never mind. So? What do we do?" Neon asked, trying to reruffle her hair back upright.

Jasmaby puffed out his cheeks. Then, with a dramatic sigh and flourish of one paw, he dismissed his fireballs, letting them wink out one by one with a harmless hiss. "Walk with me, Kit."

"Are you crazy?" Neon hissed. "And make ourselves even more—"
"Walk with me," he insisted, and began to strut off. 

Seeing no other choice, Neon hurried first to catch up to the departing flowercat, then to keep in line with him. She wasn't sure if she was more chagrined about having to play the role of Jasmaby's entourage, or how easily she fell into it.