Round Two, Bracket A: Napalm Artisana v Body and Mind

[Christoph]

Congratulations for making it to the second round of the Tournament of Champions. Both teams receive three Fate Points for making it this far! The battle closes after 11:59 PM EST on March 16th. Good luck to both teams!

Arenas were arranged at random, and your prompt is as follows:

You will do battle within an empty steel mill crammed with industrial tools and deadly furnaces.

[Christoph]

The Journal of Jacob Rivers – Entry Two

Being someone who played football for the worst high school team in the state, and who by cruel twists of fate always wound up on the losing side of every team competition while growing up, victory was a sensation that I seldom experienced. So today, I’m enjoying every drop of it. I’ve come to the proverbial Big Leagues, the Tournament of Champions, and I walked (well, crawled) away from my first fight in victory.

Master Silas and I stepped into an infernal battlefield of fire and ash. There, we did battle against a pair of sinister otherworldly beings and we disproved the common cliché that Earthlings are always inferior. Explosively.

For once, victory hinged upon my own prowess, and I didn’t have to stand aside and watch my teammates cost me yet another victory – because my teammate was Master Silas Gesse. Regardless of how irritating and mysterious he can be, that old man is one badass bastard. As much as I’ve been loath to put faith and trust in the competence of others, I definitely believe in Silas to not let me down. And I trust in myself to make him proud.

Most importantly of all, for a while, I could ignore my illness. I lost myself in the excitement of battle and forget that I was dying. It didn’t matter that I had maybe a year left to live. Pardon the cliché, but for that moment, I felt truly alive. Gesse warned me to not covet the thrill of combat, but if he knew about my condition, he would be more understanding. Then again, he would also surely leave and take me back with him, so I’m willing to put up with a little disapproval now and then.

* * * * *

From their first challenge to the next, Jacob and his sensei passed from one sulfurous, fiery wasteland to another. This time, instead of a hellish wilderness, they found themselves in a filthy, blistering industrial complex. Mighty crucibles brimming with red molten metal towered over master and student, suspended above massive, glowing furnaces. They belched enough smoke and heat to burn flesh from bone and melt eyes from their sockets. Cranes, lifts, and other machines cluttered the mill’s concrete floor in a jumbled mass of gears, cranks, and hydraulics. It was all sprawled out before them for hundreds of yards, standing as a testament to the raw power of human industry.

“A steel mill?” muttered Jacob. His sickly lungs burned from the heat and smoke; he stifled a cough. He rubbed irritably at his eyes as stinging sweat trickled down his brow. “I don’t know if this is an improvement or not from the last round.” Even in its dormant state, the abandoned mill pulsed with a dull hum of ambient dissonance as the dim rumbling of the blast furnaces melded with bubbling metal and the hissing of cooling hydraulics and grated discordantly in the young telekine’s skull. “It’s a far cry from a peaceful meadow with chirping birds and fresh air. The Cabal running this tournament must not believe in pleasant arenas.”

“It is nothing more than a battlefield with its own unique challenges, challenges we must overcome and master to achieve victory,” stated Sensei Silas Gesse, his voice discreetly quiet. “Do not fret over aesthetics. Instead, look around and tell me what you see. What can you tell me about this place?”

“I see a steel mill, master – what else would I see?” sighed Jacob, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “It looks like the one my dad used to work in. The workers must have cleared out all of a sudden, though.”

“That’s a start, but look beyond what it is in terms of labels,” Silas replied. “Tell me what it is to us right now.”

“Well, it’s loaded with a lot of potential weapons,” he answered.

“And?”

“And hiding places. Clearly, the Cabal did not choose this arena with a swift, mindless battle in mind. Victory here will hinge as much on cunning and wits as it will power.” He glanced around, examining his surroundings with a different purpose in mind. “There are a lot of hazards that we will surely need to contend with, but if we can do it on our terms, we’ll have the advantage.”

“Go on,” Gesse prompted, the faintest smile appearing on the old man’s face.

“Ugh, always a lesson with you,” Jacob grumbled. “Fine. Unless we’re fighting a pair of ninjas, we should be able to hide in this metal jungle and get the drop on our opponents. We need to be the ones who find them, not the other way around.”

[Gesse]

All bunnying between my partner and I is approved through the duration of this thread.

"Very good." Silas nodded curtly. "Of course, that plan of action begs a question; where should we hide?"

The industrial complex sprawled out around them was literally, in Silas' eyes, a maze containing a thousand ways to die. Super-heated metal, moving vats of molten steel, automated mechanical lifts, and a constant shower of sparks and embers; get too close to anything in particular in this place, and one could find themselves in a world of hurt. It was a daunting realization, and the knowledge that his student and he himself would soon be fighting people in this place did not comfort Silas at all.

"Follow me." Master ordered student as Silas moved to his right. The two men made their way into the convoluted maze of machinery in single-file, careful not to touch anything lest it be hotter than it appeared to be. Snaking through the lifts, chains, and pipes, Silas led Jacob towards the far wall of the complex. Over there, ahead of them, was a metal staircase that climbed parallel to the wall. The stairs ended at a catwalk that spanned the entirety of the complex, following the path of the I-beam rails that carried the large vats of liquid metal from Point A to Point B. The catwalk wasn't the most interesting part of the world upstairs, however - it was the corrugated metal office that stuck out off the wall like a box-shaped bump in the concrete. With big windows and the best vantage point in the whole building, the office would probably serve as the home of the mill foreman.

If this was a real factory, Silas contemplated, that office would be the perfect place from which to keep an eye on my employees. It will make an excellent place from which to spot and track our opponents as they move through the mill.

That sentiment Silas had, that the factory wasn't real, was something he carried over from their last battle. Whether it had been yesterday, an hour ago, or a week ago, Silas couldn't say - time seemed to move differently here; wherever here was. He remembered standing with Jacob on a hellish landscape, battling two men they'd never met before as the sky rained fire down around them. It was all so bizarre and unknown - much like the portal Jacob had found to bring them here - that Silas was having trouble accepting it as reality. There was this little piece of the sensei that told him he was going to wake up at any moment in his temple home, and that this was all going to be just some wild dream.

Still, the warrior decided, better to treat this as reality for now. Progress far enough through whatever challenge it is we're here to face, and perhaps some answers will be revealed to us. Why are we here? Where do these arenas come from? The questions bothered Silas quite a bit, but there was one question that irked him far greater than the others...

How is it that I know this is meant to be an arena, and that I am to fight to the death?

As he mounted the stairs, Silas decided that was a question he didn't really care to know the answer to.

[Inkfinger]

Any bunnying on the part of my partner is assumed permissible from here on out.

If someone were, at a later date, to ask Cael what had just happened, he would have been forced to fall back on that old, hated, far-too-simple adage of "magic, probably." He didn't really know how to better describe the disorienting experience. One moment he was outside, surrounded by green forest, roaring river, and the wide, welcomingly open sky.

The next moment...

The next, he was decidedly not. The sky was gone, replaced with rust and chains and smoke. The ground beneath his feet rang out whenever he moved, though the sounds were small against the roaring and hissing that reverberated in his good ear like the internal workings of some great dragon, and that made his bad ear buzz, high and piercing. He reached up to rub at it, absently, as his eyes darted over the landscape.

If, he thought wryly, trying to stomp down on the rising panic before it got a true foothold in his mind, it can even really be called that.

The air itself was stiflingly hot, and it smelled: the rank, almost-blood scent of super-hot metals, so strong he could taste the copper tang of it clogging the back of his throat. He took one whiff, and resorted to breathing through his mouth instead.

“I wouldn’t stand there, if I were you.” The calm, measured voice shocked him from his examinations, and he spun on his heel, hand automatically going to his naginata, harnessed, again, across his back. I didn’t ever pick it back off the ground back in the forest splashed across his mind even as he recognized Aeraul, the same time that his fingers recognized that the harness’s buckles were hot.

“Why?” He asked, automatically, as he let go, shaking his hand as if that would make the smarting in his fingertips fade. Aeraul’s face kept the same, impassive mask as it had previously. This time, it read as don’t ask questions.

Cael didn’t ask again, but he didn’t need to. The floor beneath his feet shivered as if it were coming alive, and Cael let out a brief yelp, scurrying towards Aeraul as a chunk of the floor seemed to rise, pulled away upward on the chains in an ear-splitting grind of protesting metal.

“That’s why.” Aeraul said, rather unnecessarily, turning to walk further into the labyrinth of glowing hot slag and grime covered gears. Cael hung back for all of a moment, staring after the disappearing floor before he followed, swallowing hard.

They were going to have to find the others in this mess, and before those others found them. That much was certain. He pulled sheets from his notebook almost at random as they walked, and worked as quickly as he could, folding and creasing until he had a flock of cranes in his pockets: each no bigger than a single section of his ink-smeared fingers.

Their bright cheerful colors were incongruous in this world of steel and flame, and he tried to let that reassure him as, crane by crane, he inked the symbol that would call them to their imitation life.

And, one by one, they came. Folded paper rustled like so many dry leaves as the birds took to the air, leaving the back of his mind buzzing. The cranes circled him, tiny little satellites around his head, before he wordlessly ordered them to scatter through the factory. They weren’t much, but they should be able to find their opponents…

First water, now fire…something out there really doesn’t like paper.

[Christoph]

Jacob followed Silas as the pair made their way silently up the rusty staircase. As they ascended, the air grew thicker and hotter; the heat and smoke from the day’s work still hovered in the higher reaches of the mill. Jacob glanced around, scanning the abandoned mill like a nervous stag. His master had always taught him to ‘keep the mind of the predator, not the prey’, but the tension before a fight always made Jacob anxious and jumpy. He couldn’t catch a glimpse of their opponents, which only made him nervous.

“Can you see anyone else, Master?” asked Jacob as they reached the high catwalk overlooking the mill.

“Quiet…” replied Silas, holding a finger to his lips in an unusual manner of calm urgency. The old man tilted his head and closed his eyes, seeming to listen intently. The young student did the same, trusting his teacher’s instincts. At first, he detected nothing over the dull dissonance of the dormant mill. “Listen.”

“I don’t… wait!” He heard a faint fluttering rustle and a soft crinkling sound, like a distant newspaper lost in the wind. He opened his eyes to see a tiny, brightly colored bird fluttering around him. Only, it wasn’t a real bird. Without thinking, he snatched the strange flying object. “What the… it’s made of paper, like origami.”

He turned the odd animated paper crane in his fingers as it struggled to escape his grasp. He couldn’t find any sort of mechanical parts that would have allowed it to fly around like a real bird. It must have been animated through mystical means, he concluded. He held the struggling artificial creature up to his eye level and probed at it with his mind, sending small, subtle pricks of psionic energy through it. He could sense the supernatural nature of the object and the pale mockery of life and intelligence it contained without much difficulty. He knew that there was more to it, though.

He probed deeper and more forcefully, past the functional factors of ‘how’ the paper creation had been able to move and fly on its own to the infinitely more important ‘why’. As he gazed deeper with his mind’s eye, he could feel another pair of eyes peering through the origami bird at him, clouded and distorted, but still seeing. That makes sense, he though.

“Master, I…” began Jacob, about to share his new revelation with his sensei.

“This paper crane was meant to find us, and it succeeded,” said Silas in an obvious tone, as though her were telling his student that wood came from trees. “The best we can do now is wait for them to come to us.”

Jacob just grumbled. Master was always one step ahead of him.

[Inkfinger]

Cael continued after Aeraul’s broad back, naginata at the ready, mind buzzing with the dispatched cranes. One by one, the twelve were sending him images, flat and scratchy and, ultimately, deserted. The cranes didn’t see their opponents. All they were really seeing was more of this man-made volcanic place.

“They’re not finding anything.” Cael tried to keep the relief out of his voice, fingers shifting on the smooth black wood. Maybe I won’t have to use this.

Aeraul looked back at him, over his shoulder and around his massive broadsword’s hilt. His lips twitched in a brief, grim smile. “Keep them looking,” he rumbled, barely audible. “I don’t think we get to go home until we’re done with all fights, which means we would need to get past this one.” His boots rang on the bottom rung of a ladder that disappeared into the smoke-tinged darkness above them.

Cael watched him climb with a suddenly-desiccated mouth that, try as he did, he couldn’t blame on the heat. Home. I hadn’t even thought…What if I don’t want to go home? He kept the thought to himself as he carefully took the rungs, naginata still clenched between his sweat-slick fingers, but the treacherous realization lay in the back of his mind, gnawing at the edges of the cranes’ territory. Unless they won everything, he would still, ultimately, lose.

He was, despite his mental battling, almost lost in that thought when one of the cranes sent a surge of images that overwhelmed his real sight for all of a moment: different ladders, and chains and metal, followed by fingers and a feeling of being caught tight and fast and –strangely- of not being able to breathe.

“They found them,” he gasped out, suddenly finding the motivation to take those last few rungs, breaking the images away so he could breathe. “They’re…” He stood still, eyes half closed, scanning the factory like a compass needle seeking north. “That way.” He pointed before he opened his eyes. He saw two things the moment he did: Aeraul looking faintly, if not truly, amused – and what, exactly, lay between them and their targets: the towering space beneath the factory ceiling, connected by chains and catwalks and dead, open, lung-clogging air.

“Oh…hell.”

“Yes. That.” Aeraul’s lips twitched again. This time, it was less than a smile. He drew his dao, waving the one he held ready in his left hand at the nearest catwalk. Cael tried not to notice the fact that it didn’t have railings. “I hope your sense of balance is better than your sense of when not to talk.”

Cael swallowed the retort that threatened to form on his lips, and stepped onto the narrow metal pathway, the naginata held out like a tightrope performer’s pole. With Aeraul behind him, he couldn’t really take the time he wanted to, but that also made it easier to not look down.

“I wonder,” he found himself saying quietly when he estimated he was halfway across the factory, the wall still far before him a mottled mosaic of firelight, smoke and fumes. “I wonder if I should have told you that I think they saw me through the crane. They knew I was watching. They’re probably expecting us...”

He said it soft enough that he thought it would be eaten by the ambient noise, lost in the echoes and ringing. There was a sensation of sudden stillness behind him, and (against all better judgment) he turned, fearing the worst. Aeraul’s eye twitched, his hands shifting on the hilts of his swords. Cael was suddenly, horribly aware of just how long a drop lay beneath him, and of just how much smaller he was than his partner in this.

“That…yes.” Aeraul’s voice was still quiet, but it had an edge that hadn’t been there before. “That would have been good to know.”

“Well, I’m sorry.” Cael shot back, resuming his careful slide-shuffle across the catwalk without turning. “We can’t all be perfect warriors. This is the first time I’ve ever been in a situation like this, I’m not used to it, I’m not even supposed to be here...”

Aeraul rolled his eyes again, waving forward with a dao. “Look. You can have your little meltdown sometime else. Right now, know-we’re-coming or not, we need to get off this catwalk.”

The scattered, fuzzy thoughts were beginning to converge in Cael’s head, the images of two men consolidating from multiple viewpoints. It took more concentration to hold the scratchy pictures at bay now, and Cael found himself staring at the metal beneath his feet as he walked. He started speaking again, simply to take his mind off of everything. “Need to get off the catwalk, ha, need to win is more like it, because if you’re right and I get placed back exactly where I came from, I am, quite literally, fu-”

“Cael?” Aeraul's voice broke through his thoughts and he stopped, pointedly looking at the dull, filthy metal beneath his boots, and at his boots, and not at the darkness.

"Yes?" He tried to keep his voice as calm as Aeraul's, though the word came out a bit strained.

“Duck.”

Cael reacted without thinking, throwing himself flat against the surface of the catwalk. A hissing ball of fire whistled through the space where his head had just been, rocketing from the tip of Aeraul’s back-hand dao. The sword hummed by so swiftly, steel ringing, that it sent a wave of air wooshing over Cael’s back, rustling his clothes.

He stayed down; fingers curled around the edges of the catwalk heedless of the dust and soot, and watched the fireball hit the platform, their destination. He couldn’t tell, in the dark and gloom, if there were people there, but it certainly seemed to match what the cranes were sending him. Though, again, if they were there? The fireball meant they certainly knew Cael and Aeraul were on their way.

“Stay put.”

“Stay p…are you serious?” Cael managed to make it to his hands and knees, face indignant beneath the smeared soot and sweat already there. “What do you mea-” He let out an aborted yelp and hit the floor again as Aeraul, with a grace that belied his size, took a running leap that just-barely cleared Cael’s head.

He landed with a thud that vibrated the whole catwalk, and he didn’t pause before he was off running again, ducking and weaving here and there as much as the narrow pathway would let him. Cael watched for just a fraction of a second, just long enough to feel jealousy reawakened (he makes it look so damn easy!) before he climbed to his feet and followed in the other man’s wake…

Right up to the point where Aeraul jumped off the catwalk, heedless of the empty air beneath them, to land on the platform, disappearing from Cael’s natural sight before he had a chance to breath a word of protest. Cael huffed, slightly annoyed, though he knew that the warrior would probably be better off without him. There is no way I am even going to try that. The cranes still knew where he is, anyways. It’s not like I won’t be able to find him again…

The darkness ahead seemed to be moving, a bit, and that implied the people they were looking for were there. Cael tightened his grip on his naginata, held it out before him in what felt like the correct way, and focused on getting off the catwalk before things went any further downhill.

[Gesse]

"They are here." Silas intoned almost needlessly as Jacob instinctively acted on behalf of their defense. Using his telekinetic powers, of which he grew more and more comfortable with each and every passing day, Jacob yanked the office door off its meager hinges and sent the flat metal object hurtling into the path of the fireball rocketing towards them. The two missiles collided with the bang and commotion of light and smoke exploding into existence, and the remnants of the office door fell clattering into the man-made hell below.

He's growing bolder with that. Silas found himself thinking of his student. Until recently Jacob had made a point of keeping the extent of his psionic powers under wraps - a natural reflexive action to the berating yet mindful objections of his master. Silas didn't like his charge's strange gift - the energies it caused the boy to expend always seemed to take a hidden toll on the young man, causing him to waste away from the inside out. Could he have, Silas would have taken the time now to reprimand Jacob - chastise him for his reckless and assuredly detrimental use of the strange gifts with which he'd been endowed. Recently however, ever since they'd stepped through that strange portal into these challenges, Jacob hadn't paid any mind to these reprimands. It was as if here, where the threat of death by combat constantly hovered over them, Jacob felt he could unleash his telekinetic prowess with ease and impunity.

It was bold of him - exercising those powers when he knew Silas would be unable to take the time necessary to scold him. It was a boldness the Master had never encountered in his Student on Earth. These trials were changing Jacob before Silas' very eyes - shaping him, molding him somehow. The young man was growing in confidence and power, and the fire that burned the boy's emerald eyes was both dangerous and unnerving.

I'll deal with your indiscretions later. Silas thought forcibly, almost convinced that his psionic charge would pick up on the context of the thought. That particular ability - the one which allowed Jacob to press his thoughts into the minds of others while picking up their thoughts - had saved the pair at least once thus far along this tumultuous path.

Silas could only hope that Jacob would listen.

"I'll take the large one." Master informed Student out loud this time, his words punctuated by the heavy landing of their more brutish foe on the platform near them. The man, if you could call it that, was considerably taller and broader than any of the foes they'd encountered thus far. His skin also had the strangest green complexion - giving him an orcish appearance. "The smaller one on the catwalk is yours."

[Taskmienster]

A day late, but I'm on it now....

Thank you for participating! Someone will be along shortly to judge this thread for you!

[Ebivoulya]

Greetings and salutations. Despite the fact that this battle defaulted due to the non-involvement of Inkfinger’s partner, I have collected a number of notes in reading the thread that I will provide you with. These notes do not necessarily reflect the scores given, and are mainly to assist you in determining which of your goals as a writer were accomplished. The inclusion of scores was to give you guys an idea of where you stand this round. Since it is later in the tournament, I have become a little more strict with the numbers to represent the improvement in the ‘average’ writing over last round. Feel free to PM any questions you have on this judgment to me.


Napalm Artisana


Inkfinger:

You begin your post by diving into a casual description of how your character had been transported. Though this left several questions unanswered, it seemed to fit the casual air of your character. You can become rather poetic and metaphorical when describing your environment, but you do so sparingly. This almost makes the reader lose sense of the environment when you’re conversing with your partner. Your narration flows into internal monologue effectively, each finishing the thoughts of the other, and that keeps the train of thought going.

Your posts read generally quickly, but there seems to be more qualitative fluff than information in them, and this leaves the reader almost confused as to your character’s purpose. You keep a sense of the world around you through the sights, smells, and sounds, and I was impressed by how aware of them your character was. He also seems to notice the small things about the tournament, such as his weapons being returned to their sheaths.

You keep a good sense of humor about your writing style, and I have to say that an origami warrior is one unique character type. Your dialogue maintains a distinct realism and common flair, and you describe the setting more in your second post, and give it a bit of a more real feel. Your character’s thoughts about the tournament and not wanting to return home explained some things about him, but there are still unanswered questions. However, you portray the unlikely relationship between you and your partner well, despite his absence.

Sometimes your wording is unneccessarily verbose, though you show a good command of metaphor usage and personification. Cael’s inflection is displayed well in his dialogue, and helps highlight his irritation, and you really showed how uneasy their partnership is. I liked your description of the effects those cranes had on your character, and how their vision almost forcibly intermingled with his own. The scene on the catwalk when your character ducked was also well done, and humorous, though the fact that he ‘reacted without thinking’ was a little cliché.

Your character’s reaction to being told to stay put on a catwalk was pretty funny, too. You employ good imagery, especially in the interaction between your character and his partner. Though you sometimes start your posts at strange points, you always wrap them up in a conclusive manner that feels right. The pacing of your posts is fairly strong, but slow enough to allow for a lot of imagery and poetic wording, which adds another dimension to your humorous writing style. Sometimes you string together a few too many complete thoughts into one long sentence with a bunch of commas, though. There were occasional errors in your post, but nothing overwhelming.

Story: 18.25/30

Storytelling: 2.75/5

Setting: 6.5/10

Pacing: 9/15

Character: 23.25/35

Dialogue: 7.25/10

Action: 9.25/15

Persona: 6.75/10

Writing Style: 21.75/30

Technique: 6.5/10

Mechanics: 7.75/10

Clarity: 7.5/10


Wildcard: 1.75


Total: 65/100

Since you did not meet the posting requirements, you are not elligible for any rewards.


Body and Mind


Christoph:

Your initial journal entry brought the reader up to speed effectively, and it sounded a little more realistic this time around. Some of the language was still rather thick for an informal journal entry, though. Your scene changes are well denoted,which helped the clarity of your posts. You also manage to work some good imagery into your description of the arena, and you maintain a strong awareness of all senses, especially visual and aural stimuli.

The pacing of your posts is relatively fast, but you tend to slow down and go off on a tangent when describing the world around you. You exhibit a strong command of personification, metaphor use, and other ‘advanced’ literary techniques, however. Your dialogue is as realistic as ever, and you do well to avoid entire conversations with no narration, though it does get dialogue-heavy in some parts. The conversations between Jacob and his master display both his youthful cynicism, and his master’s aged wisdom and demeanor. Your description of tone in your dialogue helps convey the unspoken meaning.

You explain your character’s thoughts and emotions well in the narration. You lose a bit of the scenery immersion in your second post, and switch to a more narrative-heavy style. You describe your probing of the spying origami crane well, and you explain how you discern its purpose. You display the relationship between Jacob and Silas, but don’t get too much into why you’re at the tournament in the first place. There were very few errors in your posts, but I did notice a couple.

Gesse:

Though you did not cover much of your character’s story prior to this battle, you did touch on it. You pick up your posts exactly where Chris leaves off, increasing the pacing of the thread, but perhaps sacrificing some immersion and explanation. Silas’ thoughts on the tournament as a whole are very unique, and his distrust of such ‘magical’ things speaks about his experience and mental state. What little dialogue Silas has in your posts always seems to be precisely and carefully worded. His reflections on the changes he had noticed in his student since entering the tournament fleshed out his character more and added to his personality.

Your second post further explained your character, and his relationship with Jacob, but it was at the cost of some realism and immersion in the scene, as you lost a good deal of sense of the setting around you. You intersperse a good amount of internal monologue in with your narration, though, and the two flow together rather seamlessly. Your description seems to touch on the most noticeable aspects of the arena, only getting technical in the positioning when it’s necessary.

Your writing style leans more towards general mood and feeling rather than raw information, and this gives a good deal of realism to the thread. However, it also makes it a little harder to follow the story of you two. Also, though it’s a small matter, Inkfinger stated that the fireball collided with the platform, while you circumvented that and stated that it collided with a door. Your grammar and vocabulary are both very good, and this allows you to state complex things effeciently. There are very few, if any, errors in your posts.

Story: 21/30

Storytelling: 3.25/5

Setting: 7.25/10

Pacing: 10.5/15

Character: 24/35

Dialogue: 7.25/10

Action: 9/15

Persona: 7.75/10

Writing Style: 24.75/30

Technique: 7.5/10

Mechanics: 8.75/10

Clarity: 8.5/10


Wildcard: 2.25


Total: 72/100


Body and Mind win by default, but are not eligible to receive any rewards.