Disaster, unsurprisingly, was quickly followed by her sisters, and the rest of the people at our table were clear within seconds. From what Callie told me, Ascendant clubs tended to be incredibly dramatic by nature. Random brawls weren't unusual at places like this, and everyone knew exactly what to do in the event of a fight. They couldn't have been gone faster if they had teleported. The triplets stalked across the intervening space, eyes glued to Callie, who was smiling quizzically at them, head cocked in a textbook expression of puzzled confusion.

We got out of the table, since having it in the way wasn't likely to help much, and stepped out to face them in the empty space between the table and the dance floor. I didn't really feel like bickering, so I just stood behind Callie and crossed my arms, trying to look menacing, which was admittedly not hard when you're six foot four and made of solid muscle covered in expensive powerful armor.

Stopping a few feet short of us, Disaster glared at Callie. "I am so fucking glad you took your boy toy and fucked off to the capital you holier than thou bitch. Do you know how nice it's been not having to deal with your constant show boating and cries for attention?" She put on a high pitched voice. " 'Oh, I'm Nightstrike and people fear me because I'm such a badass, they definitely don't pay attention to me because of my ridiculous oversized ass and skimpy leotard. I'm the strongest heroine in the city.' Fucking gag me, Calliope! We were all so relieved you were gone and you had to ruin it by showing your snooty face again."

Callie's puzzled frown melted into an angry sneer. Using real names was considered terrible form. Callie's identity wasn't really a secret considering her parentage, but it was still an asshole thing to do. "Oh, how shocking, the perpetual second place doesn't like how much attention I get. Grow up Ashley. We're Ascendants. We're all trying to get attention. And I'm not even going to dignify that costume remark with a response. Maybe if you spent half the time you waste throwing tantrums about how people should care more about you actually trying to improve you wouldn't be so far behind."

I was starting to really dislike this girl. The insistence that Callie was coasting on her looks was insulting as hell, especially to someone like me who trained with her constantly. No one put in as much effort as my girlfriend, she was the most driven person I knew. The two sisters stood back, watching carefully but not actually moving. The redhead jerked her eyes to me. "Oh, and how about the arm candy. You do know she's only with you for the glory right? How convenient that you got together right after you got famous and got a ride out of this dump. Or did you think she actually liked you?"

My mask was convenient in this case because it hid the barely contained laughter on my face, which probably would have made things worse. Callie could have gone to Rajak any time she wanted. She was furious about needing to give in to her dads pressure, and had only gone because she cared about the team. If Disaster wanted to sew dissent, she had picked the exact wrong string to pull on. It was actually kind of funny seeing her misread the situation so badly.

Despite the wild inaccuracy though, Callie seemed to be furious at the accusation, and I saw the shadows around us start to literally bubble as her ability reached out to take hold of them. My eyes widened and I put a warning hand on her shoulder. "Honey. I think maybe using our abilities on them directly is a bit overkill. We're not here to hurt anyone, and that seems like it might be a step too far."

It was the subtlest way I could say 'what are you doing, we don't want to kill them'. After weeks of training against Abel, we could take the three of them with barely any Skill use and a bit of elbow grease. Using Callie's shadows directly was like swatting a fly by collapsing a building on it. These were incredibly low tier G-rankers who couldn't have been in that level more than a year at most. Without our advantages in training and stats I doubted any of them even had a specialized stat that equaled one of my evenly distributed ones.

Releasing a deep breath, Callie relaxed, and the shadows pacified. She'd definitely done that on purpose, but I wasn't sure if she was showing off to make a point or was genuinely so angry she'd been about to hurt them. Disaster, for her part, didn't seem to care. She snarled at the pretension of my comment and Callie's concession and blurred forward toward us without a second of warning.

Unfortunately for her, 'without a second of warning' from someone at her level, might as well have come with an engraved invitation to a fight with a time and datestamp attached. Disaster was glowing with green energy, shot through with the blue glow surrounding the dark haired one, and the red glow surrounding the blonde. Calamity and Despair, though I didn't know which was which.

Whatever the order was, they had clearly juiced her up already, and while it didn't bridge the gap between us stat wise, it gave her enough of a bump that I could see her doing alright against some of the lower level Pavilion members. Unfortunately, it was ONLY the lower level members, and I groaned in annoyance as I stepped back. Callie didn't need help with this. As much as I'd been itching for a fight I'd just be stepping on her moment.

I wasn't really sure what the beef between these two was, but Callie clearly hated Disaster enough to fight all three of them alone. She wanted to work out some aggression, and the point of this whole thing was for her to have fun and do something stupid and selfish for a change. I knew she would be aware of me backing up given our combat awareness of each other, and she was more than willing to step up based on the lunge she made at the other woman in response. I just shrugged and walked over to sit down at the table again, picking up my blueberry smoothie and taking a long sip as I watched the show. Seeing Callie fight was always amazing.

Disaster, for her part, was pretty impressive. Her hands came up and she lashed out with a pair of punches crackling with green flame, which made my eyebrows shoot up. Since I knew her ability, that was either a trick she managed through synergizing or she had an actual fucking fire fist Skill. I knew Skills like that existed, but they were insanely rare on Callus, Unique Skills like my DS mastery notwithstanding.

Callie was surprised too, but to her credit , she also had much higher Might and Perception than I did. Picking up and processing, then reacting, to that attack was childs play for her and she barely hesitated for an instant as Disaster came in at her dropping to a one legged crouch, Callie planted a hand flat on the floor and spun herself in a circle, using the circular momentum and her Balam skills to take Disaster's feet right out from under her.

She rolled to the side just fast enough to avoid Calamity's stomping attempt to smash her face in, went up onto her hands and arched into a graceful backbend to get back to her feet. I had to stifle a laugh because it was such a showy and obviously frivolous move that literally no one could mistake it for anything but blatant mockery. She was playing with them, and she wanted them all to know it.

With Disaster getting back to her feet, I saw them all take a moment to stop and re orient themselves before spreading out around her in a loose triangle formation. The next attack, when it came, was a perfectly synchronized assault from three angles that was much more difficult to dodge than any of the singular attacks would have been. I could see what Callie meant, the three of them had good synergy. If we hadn't been undergoing the training we had I'd probably have needed to help her out of this.

We had, however. These three rookies couldn't hold a candle to the coordination we saw sparring with Mel and Abel. They were probably about as good as we were after the first week of Abel beating our mistakes into us. Still, that wasn't good enough. Callie was easily able to identify the small gaps in their cooperative assault and slip through them. Even if she hadn't been more skilled she had a stat advantage they just weren't good enough to compensate for.

Disaster came at her from the front, aiming to lock her up, the one I suspected was Calamity(red) from behind on the left, aiming low, and Despair(blue) from behind on the right, driving a blazing kick at the back of her head. I watched with interest to see if the hits would land, with Callie's armor it wasn't like the attacks could do any real damage. Might hurt a bit, but she wasn't going to get injured.

It never even got that far. As Despair's foot swung at her head, my girlfriend spun in place. One hand lashed out, using the momentum of a full rotation to life the blue glowing Ascendant off her feet, as the other clamped down on her thigh, lifting her bodily off the ground and swinging her along the trajectory of the kick. Calamity, noticed the move too late and tried to pull out of her attack, but had already committed too much, and her low blow slammed into her sister as she was swung around along the ground, tangling the two of them up and sending her sprawling.

Callie, no longer in the same spot after the movement, avoided the direct assault by Disaster by putting the tangled forms of her sisters in her way with a quick yank, and the three of them ended up in a head on the floor, groaning at the impact. Callie casually strolled over to where I was sitting, plopping down in my lap and snatching up my smoothing to take a long sip as I yelped in protest.

Oh course, they weren't down and out or anything. She hadn't seriously hurt them, even if I doubted that had been much fun. She was just giving them time to sort themselves out and make a plan, or decide not to engage again. Her display just now had effectively proved that she was WAY out of their league. If they were smart they would back off. This had been their own idea anyway, at least from an outside perspective.

Disaster looked just about ready to explode, but her sisters were whispering to her hurriedly, clearly trying to avoid letting the whole mess escalate. She forced herself to take a breath, but once she did, she started to calm down a bit. She'd been outmaneuvered here, and so she needed something to help her save face, but she knew she couldn't win a direct fight. I couldn't hear what they were saying, so they must have been using some kind of Stealth Skill.

She strode forward, shoulders back, head high, and stalked up to point at Callie. "Ok, that was kind of impressive, but really, this isn't the place for combat anyway. We wouldn't be able to let loose for fear of damaging our business, you understand." That was a decent excuse, but they weren't going to leave it at that. I was sure of it. They needed a way to change the narrative. I considered dozens of scenarios, but in the end, I was absolutely floored when Disaster pointed directly at us and shouted. "We challenge you to a dance off!" Wait...what?