First Fight

Lyra wakes up still kneeling beside her bed and grasping her knife. She shakily gets up with no emotion seen in her tear-stained face. Slowly dragging herself to the bathroom, she takes a bath. After her bath, she brushes her teeth while looking at her reflection in the mirror. A face of a young girl with swollen brown eyes and a stuffed nose stares back. Without doing her mourning routine which she always does, Lyra heads out towards the kitchen. In the hallway, the twins accidentally bump into her.

"Oh, sorry Lyra didn't see you there~" they chuckle while taunting Lyra. Lyra just looks at them with disinterest and pass them by without looking back at them. The twins are piss off by Lyra's indifference. When Lyra passes the twins, Claire the twin with shorter hair grabs Lyra's wrist and hurls her. Lyra without any resistance slams on the wall close to the kitchen's door. The twins are alarmed. Lyra slumps down clearly blood trickling down her forehead and at the side of her mouth. Her eyes were unfocused and slowly closing.

The loud *bang* on the side of the kitchen door startles Nina. She immediately heads out from the kitchen to see what caused the noise. Immediately when she opens the door she sees the twins dashing away, puzzled she looks around only to see Lyra slump on the floor unconscious with blood clearly flowing from her mouth and forehead. Nina without a moment to lose rush Lyra to her own room to give the first aid.

After half an hour Lyra regains her consciousness. Without being aware of it Lyra lifts her hand shakily to her head and seemingly tries to massage it. When she finally realizes what she is doing, she tries to move her head to look around only to suffer quite a headache. "Ouch."

"You're quite lucky you know, Lyra dearie. Only suffering slightly worse than minor head injury from being slammed on the wall with great force." Nina seriously states. "So, what happens?"

"Nothing. I'll be fine." Lyra answers placidly.

"Lyra, don't lie to me please." Nina insists.

"Really, I'll be fine Nina. Sorry to worry you." Lyra gives Nina a weary smile.

Nina sighs and says "Lyra it's okay not to be fine. You don't have to force yourself to be strong you know? I'm worried. It's my job to worry since I'm older and stronger after all." Nina didn't notice Lyra's slight frown when she was talking.

"I'll get stronger, Nina. No need to worry." Lyra adamantly replies.

"Lyra, Really you-"

"I will be okay Nina." Lyra cuts off Nina.

"Lyra." Nina looks at Lyra with concern showing on her face. And Nina, afraid of making Lyra upset, stops her nagging and offers Lyra a bowl of soup to eat. Lyra thanks, Nina. Nina gives Lyra a warm smile. Lyra unfortunately doesn't return her smile.

After a couple of hours resting, Lyra gets up from the bed and proceeds to the kitchen to help Nina. Nina tries to let Lyra rest more only to be rejected by Lyra. Lyra stubbornly insists to help Nina and finish all the chores that Madam has assigned to her. Nina remembering that Lyra has to fight in the arena tonight persuades Lyra to rest in the afternoon. Lyra hesitatingly agrees.

Evening approaches, Nina hesitates to bring Lyra to the arena seeing Lyra's pale appearance.

"Lyra are you sure you're fine fighting with your injury? we could cancel it you know." Nina asks.

"I'll be fine Nina. You said it before that fighting with your life on the line makes people stronger."

"I know I said that but-"

"Really, I'll be fine Nina. It's not good backing out for my first fight. I wouldn't want you to lose face." once again Lyra cuts off Nina.

Nina sighs as she replies "I see." Nina again leads Lyra to the arena.

This time as they enter the telephone booth and greeted by the colosseum and floating widescreen, Lyra passes them without curiosity. Herold was the first to greet them as they enter. Herold immediately notices the different attitude of Lyra but proceed normally in instructing Lyra about her account bracelet. Herold thoroughly explains how participants in the arena gain money from fighting through sponsorship, bets, and popularity contests. Throughout Harold's explanation, Lyra hardly made any comment and occasionally answered yes or no when asked.

Only ten minutes left before Lyra's first fight in the arena. Nina has been fidgeting constantly for the past minutes like she's sitting on pins and needles. Herold couldn't help but laugh out loud attracting nearby passersby and making them whisper to each other. Nina glares at Harold. Harold only shrugs.

Since the colosseum splits the stages according to the rank of the fighter which ranges from Rank F the lowest to Rank S++ the highest, Lyra is escorted to the stage for Rank D as previously discussed by Harold and Nina. At the stage for rank D, the overseer for that rank platform further explains how the stage works to accommodate at least a thousand fights a day only using one stage platform.

"Contestants please be at ease. The stage has a unique design that allows time to pass differently than that of the real world. A year in the stage is approximately equivalent to an hour in real-time. Meaning a day in the stage is approximately 0.2 sec in real-time. The cameras on the stage are also unique which sync the stage time with the real-time providing you a good coverage fight showed in the rank D wide screens. All fights can also be downloaded but different ranks mean different costs to download them." The overseer adds with a grin on his face. "Ah, but let's move on from the technical and boring stuff and get on with the fights!"

As soon as the overseer finishes his speech Lyra's bracelet lets out a notification displaying her arena number 00092 and the message "00092 vs 00098 please proceed to the stage!"

Lyra still pale in appearance proceeds to the stage for her first fight. As soon as she enters the stage she hears "Ready-set-Fight!" Before she could even register her surrounding she already felt a presence near her. She quickly crosses her arm and steady her footing. Exactly at the short moment, it took her to guard up, a jab squarely lands on the side of her left shoulder threatening to unbalance her. She bit her lips and quickly stabilize her footing and tries to move away. Unfortunately, a kick immediately follows the jab making Lyra unable to counter or shift position. She bites her lips once more and tries to see through the attacks that blatantly comes at her without a stop.

The constant barrage of attacks leaves Lyra unable to counterattack. All she can do was maintain her guard up and block as long as possible until an opportunity arise. But as time passes she can feel the searing pain all over her body. She grits her teeth.

*Bam!* A roundhouse kick caught her off guard since the pain momentarily took her focus away. That kick almost sent her flying. She couldn't help but fall over. As she hits the ground, she twists her wrist. She lets out a half-stifled yell while she rolls away. Shakily, she stands up with her arm crossed with her left hand slightly dangling.

Her opponent, a man with a macho figure mockingly says, "Give up, Girlie~" and he even added as he looks over Lyra's whole body, "I don't want to be labeled a bully."

Lyra with great effort retorts "I still can fight, Old Man."

"Tsk, Don't blame me if you die since your clearly asking for it!" the macho man rashes towards Lyra ready to tackle her down full force. Lyra eyes sharply follows her opponent's movements. When the her opponent is only a milliseconds away from tackling her she swiftly and slightly moves out of the way and trips her opponent magnificently! Her opponent loses his balance forward slamming his head on the floor. It was effective but she also broke her ankle in the process.

Her opponent suffers blurry vision and ringing of his ear for a few minutes. It was long enough for Lyra to limply move away from the opponent. It's also long enough for her to inspect her body's condition. She's been having sweating quite heavily trying to endure through the pain. Multiple bruises and maybe some bone fractures judging from the burning pain that's been intensifying every second. She looks at her slightly dangling left hand and broken ankle. She could could not deny the fact that she will definitely lose if the fight continues. With great hesitation she presses the button to quit in her bracelet. Tears silently falls down her cheeks the moment she press the button.

She lose. She was completely overwhelmed by her opponent. She wasn't strong. She finally realizes how weak she is. It was all true no matter how hard she try to deny the fact that she is weak. This fight prove that she really is weak. That realization hurts more than the physical pain she receive from the fight.

She wasn't strong at all, clearly not strong enough to stay by her uncle's side forever.