I was in pain. So very, very much pain. I was considering inventing a new word to describe this sensation actually, because pain seemed like it was underselling exactly how much this sucked. Not even agony was enough. I raised my head from the dirt to glare at my tormentor, seeing his ever present grin shining down at me as if in mockery of the state he'd left me in. I peeled my lip back in a snarl. "Die."

Well, I tried to say die. It come out more like "duuuuuh". I like to think my eyes made the message clear though. My hatred was clearly visible. It had to be. I rolled over as best I could to check on Callie, who was lying on the ground staring up at the ceiling. "Ugh." I moaned, finally managing to speak language again, even if the attempt was hoarse and barely understandable. "How are we in this much pain? And why can't I heal us?"

The snicker Abel had been holding back finally burst forth, the rabbit masked man howling with laughter at our pain. "Impact. Vitality has less effect against higher ranked opponents. We're the same rank, so it's not so exaggerated, but there IS a wait, and that shit adds up. I've just hit you so many times today that your bodies literally can't keep up with the repairs. I didn't use any Skills or anything, so it'll fade. As for healing, because it disrupts the learning process. No pain no gain and all that."

"Listen." I said seriously. "I hate you." He glanced down at me quizzically, clearly expecting my declaration to have more to it. I just stared at him for a second. "That's it. I hate you. Message over. Die." That one got enough howling attack of laughter as he turned to walk over to a small table off to one side, picking up a bottle of water. My sore throat convulsed looking at it. "That look's...good. Can I have some?"

"What?" He said in confusion. "But you hate me? I can't share water with you since I'm supposed to be dead." I just glared at him so viciously it probably would have killed him if it had been an attack. He rolled his eyes. "Oh fine, you huge baby. Here. Drink up." He walked over and stood above me, I opened my mouth to ask what he was doing and he poured the water right down my damn throat.

I hacked and coughed and gagged, rolling over and pounding the ground as my soaked face dripped into the dirt. He sucked his teeth in sympathy. "Pretty sure you're supposed to swallow that stuff. Doesn't do much if you spit out. It's your show though. You do you." I turned to fix my furious gaze on him, only to see him walking away. I caught a slight smirk on his lips as he turned, but I knew that it didn't matter.

He came back a second later with a towel he tossed me, and I groaned hard as I sat up. Then I mopped my face clean as Callie sat up with a loud groan. Abel chuckled at the performance, but eventually trailed off. "Alright you two. It's just after noon. I want you to go and have some fun. Enjoy your day. No training. As important as working is, you also need time to adapt to the changes. Especially for your awareness of each other, spending time together casually will be a huge help as you learn. You earned some downtime anyway. Go enjoy yourselves."

That hadn't been what I was expecting him to say. "Oh. Um...ok? Sure. We can do that." I turned to look at Callie. "What do you say babe? want to go on a date today?" Callie let out a wheezing puff of air that couldn't be described as a word or grunt of affirmation even by the most generous of people, but I decided to assume it had been a yes. I rolled over a few times, back and forth, to build up the momentum to get up on my hands and knees so I could crawl over to her. Slowly. I moaned. "Oh gods, please let me use some healing."

"Nope." Said Abel callously. "Enjoy your downtime. I suggest going to get food. It should help. Trust me, you should be glad I didn't let you eat when I had breakfast. You'd have puked it all up ten times over by now. Never do really hardcore exercise on a full stomach. Anyway, I'll leave you to it. Meet me back here tomorrow. You should be healed up by then, and we can move on to fighting team vs. team."

I refused to think about that as he left. The idea of Mel joining that beating was too awful. I dragged myself over to Callie and pulled her head into my lap, stroking her hair. "Hey love. How are you feeling." She wheezed out another small sound, that may have been the word 'bad'. I winced. "Yeah, I think he went harder on you to compensate for your higher Vitality. Never been so glad I don't focus on that stat enough." She glared at me. "Sorry. Here, lets sit you up, maybe that'll help."

I pulled on her, ignoring my body's groans of protest. Luckily lifting something human sized was literal childs play, even when I was this sore. It was such an infinitesimal effort that my condition literally didn't matter. Huh, I guessed the suppression was gone. Which made sense since we were allowed to leave. Guess he wanted our Vitality patching us up so we didn't die.

"Ow." Callie said as I get her vertical. "Ow. Ow." She paused. "Ow, wait, no. I meant bastard. I need to relearn the words for things. Ow is for how I'm feeling, bastard is for Abel. How about you sweetie? How are you feeling? You don't look much better than me."

I grinned at her. "Well you look like a goddess, so that leaves me in great shape. But to answer your question ow works for me too." I forced myself to my feet with a wince, helping pull Callie up by the hand and letting her fall against me. "I decided if we were going on a date, I didn't need my mask, and she didn't either if she didn't want to wear it. "So, before we leave, I figure we split up and change into our civvie clothes. The pavilion keeps work out gear around, we can change into that and take a walk around the circus. What do you think?"

Callie was thrilled at the idea, even if the execution was tough, and we both hobbled off to the locker rooms to get showered off and changed. Being a giant clubhouse for battle maniacs, an area to change and clean up was essential. It was one of the many spots we'd discovered when looking around when we first toured the Pavilion after we got control of it. The place was much bigger than it looked at first glance, with large sections underground (well all of it was technically underground, but large chunks were under THIS ground).

So I knew where to go to find the shower and rinse off. It only took me fifteen or twenty minutes to get ready, stash my gear in a gym bag, and bring everything back up to the ring to meet up with Callie who looked...amazing. Granted, Callie always looked amazing, whether it was an Ascendant thing or she was just naturally beautiful, my girlfriend was kind of a shock every time I looked at her. Something about her now though, in workout clothes with her wet hair up in a ponytail, just made me stop and stare.

She noticed me there and raised an eyebrow. "Come on, I don't look that gross do I? I cleaned up at least, so I know I don't smell." She gave a sniff. "Neither do you, which is impressive. They must have good soap here. You usually smell like guy." At my offended gasp she just gave me a warm smile. "Downsides of high Perception. It's not noticeable unless you look for it. But we should find out what kind of soap they use. Most of the ones that are thorough enough to counter high Perception are overwhelming. This is kind of neutral, I like it."

"Okay." I said helplessly. "I'll see if I can get a few bars. For the record though, YOU don't smell, and you look gorgeous, that's why I was staring." I frowned down at myself. "You could really smell me all this time? I don't see how that could not be in a bad way. Nobody wants to smell."

She limped over, wincing at the motion, before standing on her tip toes to give me a quick kiss. "Stop that. It's not some sort of weird character defect. Everyone smells like something, unless they use special soap like I mentioned. Your scent isn't bad or anything. Kind of...papery. With some ink maybe? And leather from the armor. It's hard to explain if you aren't at the point where you pick it up. Scents are kind of unique. I don't focus on it much. I know people who literally track using scent, but I'm definitely not one of them."

I waved her off. "Ok, this is getting off track. We can do the smell lesson later if you want. For now, I'm clean and showered and ready for a day out at the circus with my girlfriend." I put an arm around her, starting us toward the entrance. "You got the worst of it today, so why don't you pick what we do? Anything you want, as long as I'm spending time with you I don't care one bit." I paused. "Well, nothing physical obviously. But other than that."

She let her head slump against my shoulder softly as we walked. "I don't care much either. It'll just be nice to be together. But I am pretty hungry. How about we hit the corn dog stand. They have those pancake and sausage ones. I know it isn't exactly breakfast time, but who cares?"

"Seriously." I said with derision. "I'll eat breakfast whenever I want. Anyone who has something to say about that can suck it. I'm a grown ass man, no one but me decides the timing with which I consume whatever food I see fit at the moment." I stared off into the distance stoically for a second before winking at her to show the pompous declaration was just a joke for her benefit.

She rolled her eyes, but her lips were quirked in a smile. "You aren't nearly as funny as you think you are. But despite what a huge nerd you are, I still love you." She poked my side. "Being a giant wall of muscle DOES help kind of offset the terrible sense of humor though. Just don't start making bad puns and we should be fine."

I gave her a scandalized look. "There are no such thing as BAD puns, you philistine. But fine, I see how it is. I can lower myself to your level for the sake of my affection for you." She giggled at that and I pulled her close, reveling at the sense of serenity in my heart. Something about being here with her, especially when I was so fresh from training, just felt...right. This was where I was supposed to be.

I'd expected to be nervous or anxious about the coming tournament, but oddly, I wasn't. I'd been training my ass off non stop, and I hadn't even realized how exhausting it was because it had been so engaging. This though...this was relaxing in a way I hadn't know I needed until now. I smiled down at Callie and then around the busy circus as a whole. The tournament was months away, for now, time with my girlfriend was the order of the day, and I had absolutely no problem with that at all. My stomach grumbled a bit. Those corn dogs were definitely the first thing on my list though. I wondered if they had syrup for dipping?