"Oh come on. I totally would have done the full fight if I had the chance," Elise said while waving her hand dismissively. "I didn't need help or anything." She followed Yuna to the courtyard, where the seniors were waiting. Elise blushed when Rose started laughing, embarrassed that she would find her so humorous. "Didn't have time to dry off my own clothes, so...Yeah, I knew this would happen. Ugh."

The laughter didn't last for long, though, when Rose suddenly went serious and revealed Emiri was murdered, and in her own house, no less. It didn't really surprise Elise; from what she remembered of her from yesterday, she really seemed like the weakest magical girl out of the seniors, if not the whole city. It was expected that the rules of nature would apply, and she would bumped off by a stronger opponent sooner or later. She had no tears to share for weaklings.

Later, when they went back to the taco party room, Elise went to lean against one of the walls of the room with a exhausted expression on her face. It looked like another boring group discussion was starting, and Elise hated those. Still, she had a bit more patience than the last time she was in there; you don't easily forget the places where you got your teeth proverbially kicked in.
So she waited and listened with half an ear to what Yuna was rambling about. She seemed to be a traveler like her, which was something at least. When she explained what actually happened to Emiri and others like her, she decided to throw her voice in the crowd:

"The weak fall to the strong. That's how it is, and how it'll always be. No surprises that she would end up dead out of all of us. But the fact she was done in by a backstab disgusts me. Whoever could betray someone in cold blood like that is a cowardly bitch. Mark my words, If I ever see her out there I'm going to make sure she dies as painful a death as possible."

"I wouldn't say that," came Yuna's reply to Elise's survival of the fitest rant, "There are only a handful of magical girls that I ever knew that are stronger than Kyouko was. Truth be told, there's only two, Akame and the Mitakihara Guardian. And Emiri wasn't as weak as you may perceive her either. I'm sure that whoever killed then used somekind of trick that we can't anticipate as of now."

However, it was then that Yuna actually addressed Elise specifically, and apologized.
"Hey, there's nothing to apologize about. It wasn't like that, I just..." She trailed off, trying to make it play out like it wasn't a big deal, but her hesitation in her words told a different story. "Forget it. And I'm not a brute, I'm a professional." Elise was surprised to then hear that Yuna wanted to fight her. Her eyes gleamed and her previously morose disposition changed into a smiling one. "Now that's the kind of language I'm speaking! You're on!"

"Well then, you may pick the place where we'll be fighting. I hope you use that advantage well."

Yuna then turned to address the other girls in the classroom. "I know it's the middle of the schoolday for some of you, but would you care to indulge us just this time, please?"

---

With Elise's lead, the group jumped from rooftop to rooftop as they travelled through the city. Yuna gave her the choice in choosing where their match would be at, and Elise had the perfect arena planned. They ended up at a smelting facility. They stepped inside, and Yuna and Elise hopped up to the catwalks above the main processing hall of the facility, where many vats, furnaces, conveyor belts and channels delivering molten metal were situated, and under them were corridors and tight spaces filled with machinery. The place was very hot and dry, not helped by the burning cinders that still sit in the massive furnaces.

In a place like this, her ice magic is sure to be less effective. And when the going gets tough, I can retreat to the lower levels and use the tight spaces to my benefit. This time I won't be so careless.

Once they arrived at the factory, and Elise showed them where she wanted to start the match, Yuna took her time to carefully analyze her surroundings, before looking Elise in the eyes and saying, "It's a fine place you've chose indeed, It's been ages since someone fought me with such cunning. Though, I gotta say that I didn't take you for the dramatic type, Scarlet." Yuna decided to change the way she called Elise, after the earlier incident, since the topic of blood could probably bring back the memories the other girl seemed to want to forget.

Fight Music

Elise asked one of the senior girls to announce the fight to begin and took a defensive pose with her swords like last time. She learnt a lot from the time she fought Akame, and one of the mistakes she did was taunting her, which only resulted in her getting an offensive push on her. This time she would start a lot more composed, still focused on learning the fighting patterns of her opponent, but not stay completely passive. She would also keep an eye out for her ice magic. As soon as the fight started, she threw one of her dual swords at Yuna to observe her movement when reacting to it, and summoned another one to take its place in one motion.

Nevertheless, when the proverbial bell rang, Yuna dropped the pleasantries and summoned her weapon into being. Now, her her gaze turned cold and unforgiving, like the mightiest of the glaciers, she wouldn't be giving this fight for free to the sword-wielding magical girl.

When Elise threw her sword at Yuna, she simply deflected it with the shaft of her spear. It was clearly an attack meant to gauge her reaction time, and Yuna wouldn't fall for such an easy lure. Instead, she countered by dashing forward, building enough speed just to turn it all into force when she came to a sudden stop and spun her weapon horizontally, trying to break Elise's ribcage.

Elise's test didn't yield as much as she hoped for, but she did find out that Yuna preferred using her spear instead of dodging the attack, making her less likely to jump around the area. This was not something Elise would have preferred, since she would have to contend with the longer reach of her opponent's weapon. She did expect a quick charge at her, as happened with Akame, but instead of simply stabbing her she spun around. Elise attempted to block the attack, but she was sent flying from the impact, the blade of the spear scraping a bit of Elise's thigh armor, cutting it up like it was aluminum. She met the wall of the factory with her feet, took leverage from it, and bounced back. She snarled as she flew at Yuna, and performed a vertical spin attack of her own. Again she showed signs of aggression not typical for Elise, even at her angriest.

Yuna watched as her swing sent Elise flying like a ragdoll towards to factory wall, she expected to hear the sound of a body smashing against the concrete, but instead, Elise spun around and used the momentun for her own favor. That was a fine display of instincts, but the crimson-haired girl lacked finesse, as her next attack showed.

Yuna set her spear in front of her body, but turned it a little to her side, in a diagonal pointing towards the ground. It was impossible for her to hit anything with the blade from this stance, but neither was it her intention.

When Elise's attack connect with Yuna's weapon, she would find out that all of this setup was a trap, Yuna had covered the side of her weapon in a thin layer of rimme and once Elise hit her, she would use it to redirect the force of the attack and throw the brute of balance. However, such a brash move was bound to hurt her with the recoil too, so Yuna clenched her teeth in anticipation.

Elise's attack was countered with a crafty move, and she fell down from the catwalks down to the machinery below due to losing her balance. However, before she hit the floor, she combined her swords into her greatsword and stabbed one of the furnaces, slowing her descent as metal screeched and sparked due to being cut by her weapon. Elise looked up at Yuna with her teeth bared in an angry expression, but it soon turned into a smile as she let go of her weapon and dropped down, under the machinery and into the tight space there. She summoned new swords and prepared for her pursuer to follow her.

"That's much better, she seem to have calmed down again," Yuna tought before jumping from her perch atop the catwalk and landing graciously above one of the steel presses. She looked around, to find out that the floor of the factory was even more chaotic than it seemed to be from above, her spear would be of little use if it got jammed into the machines and her speed would serve her nothing with some many tight turns to make. However, she still had a few tricks up her sleeve as Elise would soon find out. She kept her confident grin as she hopped from the press and waited for Elise's next artifice.

Elise suddenly appeared from around a corner the moment Yuna dropped down, and launched numerous attacks at her with fury that turned more and more bestial with every swing. With Yuna's long weapon at a serious disadvantage due to the cramped space, she would be unable to parry her relentless attacks effectively, making her prey for Elise's growing frenzy. Elise herself was foaming a bit around the mouth at this point, as the beast in her, previously subdued, was awakening.

The moment Elise popped out of nowhere and ambushed her, Yuna was really surprised. That fact that you expect an ambush to happen doesn't trun it into something much easier to deal with when it indeed happens. She was cut, once, twice, three time before she could recover from it, but once she did, Yuna placed her next plan into action.

With a small sweep of the tail end of her weapon, Yuna fetched a bucket full of lubricant that was laying next to a random machine, and smeared it on the floor in front of Elise, causing the raging girl to slip. "There might not be enough water for me to create large patches of ice here, but in this place I may not even need it, Scalet." Yuna stated before she lifted her right foot high above her head and let it fall on Elise's stumbling frame, smashing her with an axe kick, that was aimed at her exposed collarbone.

Elise slipped on the lubricant that she didn't realize was sprayed on the floor. However, as a testament to her wild style of fighting, she stabbed the floor with one of her swords, and used it as leverage to spin around and kick Yuna off her feet before she connected with her axe kick, sending her falling down. Elise took this moment to get back up and leaped on top of one of the machines, and roared at Yuna.

"I'm gonna kill you for that!" Elise then teleported behind Yuna, and delivered an overhead swing with her greatsword with enough power to crack the concrete.

Yuna barely had the time to roll to her side when Elise came charshing down on her. If she took even a split second more to react, She could have been seriously injured, perhaps even dying for real. She gazed at the other girls who still were at the catwalk, they looked like they wanted to interfere, but Yuna shouted just as she did a backwards sommersault to regain her footing, "I'm ok! I don't want any of you meddling in this fight. It's a business between us two, only!" Those who knew her, would realize how rare it's for yuna to show some real emotions while fighting, but the smile in her lips was a clear sign that she was enjoying the brawl even if things didn turned out the way that she expected.

"Teleportation is a nice trick, Scarlet, but let us see what you'll do when you can't see!" Yuna said as she threw her spear at the fire prevention systems above their head, causing the sprinklers to activate. As soon as the water touched the molten metal and hot machinery, it would turn into vapour, and as soon as the vapour rose Yuna would freeze it, turning the whole lower level into a foggy mess.

The moment the water touched Elise's face, her memories of her battle with Akame outside in the rain were triggered, and it caused the beast within Elise to finally awaken, causing her to howl in a bloodcurdling way. Her bloodlust blinded her from rational thinking, but at this point Elise welcomed embracing the savage inside her; the beast could sniff out her prey, and Elise used that to target Yuna in the fog. She rapidly teleported to Yuna's location before spinning her two smaller swords around in a dance of death, too unpredictable and crazed in its patterns to counter in a straight fight. Elise continued howling as she thirsted for blood that she seeked to reap.

Yuna had predicted that outcome, but now she was blinded by her own fog and Elise seemed to rain a barrage of steel upon her trying to make this become a bloodbath. Or so she thought, since the thing that she hit was actually an 'ice clone', in fact on of the many that Yuna had created all around the factory's floor. To camouflage her presence, hoping to ambush the ambusher. This, however was only half of her strategy, as even now Elise was falling into an even more elaborate trap, as long as she stayed in that freezing fog, her body would lose heat and soon hypotermia would start to work it's magic.

Yuna used that chance to try and stab Elise from behind, because the more the redhead struggled, the faster her body would freeze. Delivering a blindingly fast barrage of trusts from her spear, Yuna pounced at Elise hoping to end this conflict once and for all, "It's a shame someone as you is taken by such a fury, Scarlet. But at the very least I can say that I like you now that I've seen your true colors, all you need is to find the right path to thread." Yuna said in a wistful voice.

Elise's fighting style did not aim to parry or counter Yuna's attacks at all, which did result in Yuna taking hits even as Elise was getting slashed and stabbed; an insane move for any other fighter. Her body was getting slower by the second as she was freezing up; if Elise would have still stayed as her regular self she would have jumped up to the catwalks, where the fog was less condensed, but frenzied as she was she only knew to hunger for the flesh of her enemy. She finally stopped, but not before Elise jumped at Yuna and bit deep into her neck, ripping a chunk out of her and sending her falling down as she finally went unconscious.

---

Yuna couldn't believe what had just happened. Has that other girl seriously bitten of a piece of her flesh, just like an enraged Primordial? The pain was unbelievable, but somehow she felt that the one suffering the most wasn't she...

"Uh? What was that?" Yuna woke up, in the middle of the night, after having the strangest nightmare she had in a long time, however when she placed a hand to her stiff neck she felt a sharp pain coming from a bandaged patch, "So it wasn't a dream, huh?"

The white haired girl looked around and found out that she was laying at an unknown bed, and staring an unknown ceiling, "Where am I?" she asked as she tried to find her music player and headphones, luckly they were right besides her as she soon found.

Yuna hopped of the bed and walked around aimlessly for a time until she figured that she was still inside the school, but there was no one else there now. "Probably one of the other girls placed me there while I was unconscious, " she mused as she made her way to the roof.

Elise was already on the roof, having recovered from their fight sooner than Yuna did, and was sitting at the edge of the building when Yuna arrived. She spotted the white-haired girl, and gave her a thumbs up. "That was an awesome fight, Snow White. Thanks for not holding back, I apppreciate that." She then cringed a bit when she spotted the bandage on her neck. "I guess I went a bit overboard, huh? Sorry about that."

Once there, Yuna found a nice place atop one of the air conditoners that weren't on at this time, and simply laid down gazing at the stars while listening to her music, "What am I doing anyway?" she questioned, not really hoping to find an answer.

Yuna turned her head to see that no one other than Elise was there by her side. The frost magical girl, looked into the readhaired one's eyes, indeed they had a look she had seen many times before, on many places, but there was only one thing that connect they, every time Yuna saw those eyes, she was looking at her own reflection.

"Coming to think of it, you never told me your name, huh, Scarlet?" Yuna asked turning back to face the stars.

"Yeah, right, hehe," Elise gave a bit of a laugh as she had one of her hands behind her head. "I'm Elise Augermann, but you can call me Scarlet if you want to. I don't mind."

"Scarlet, then it'll be. Your actual name is kinda pretty, but Scarlet really fits you better. Anyway, here..." Yuna said as she threw her precious headphones to Elise, hoping that the other girl wouldn't let them be smashed against the floor.

"Ooh, what's this?" Elise let out in surprise as she caught the headphones. She put them on, and picked out a random track to listen to. It was pretty nice music, not something Elise would listen to, but good nonetheless. It was actually refreshing to hear something new like this. "Hey Snow White...you're all right in my books."

--- Rain---

"The sound of my soul..." Yuna answered in a quiet voice once she was sure Elise couldn't hear her reply.