"At least long enough to see Third and Ninth's fight."

"Okay everyone! Congratulations to all our first-round winners! Now, since we didn't get a full turnout, I think rather than doing a full elimination, we'll just do a couple more rounds and mix up the matches!"

Gideon doesn't might more chances to fight. 

Nor does Angerona.

Great! Then they can start again. This time, let's do Second and Fifth, Fourth and Sixth, and Third and Ninth.

The anticipation of going last will only make the payoff sweeter, or something like that. 

Magnus's next fight goes much like his first, but he's as genial as ever.

Jeannemary is practically vibrating in place when her turn is up. (Angerona may not be as obviously cool as Gideon, but her fight against Naberia was pretty good.)

She won't insult the Fourth by going easy on her, but she does fight in a way that lets Jeannemary learn from what she's doing. 

The teen's a little too hot-headed to realize that's what Angerona is doing, at least in the moment, so she comes away from the fight happy enough.

"I'd tell you to wipe the floor with her," Ellyn murmurs to Gideon before her match, "But that would get you a foul. So just win."

"As you wish, my chiaroscuro queen."

Babs is ready and waiting for her. Four of five isn't nothing; she's still going to have to try for this one.

She shows off her chain - and opens similarly to last time, taking a second first to spin up her chain in her off hand. 

The chain is certainly a challenge, and her trident knife is, as she thought, not what she'd want for this fight. The Ninth has a longer reach than Babs does with her offhand, and the flexibility means more space is effectively threatened than a rapier manages.

Naberia is quicker than Magnus was, but she doesn't make nearly so many attacking moves over the course of the first minute as she'd like.

She survives the first minute, though, which is pretty impressive in the face of Gideon's rather aggressive onslaught (though she does at least succeed in baiting out Gideon's attack patterns) -

- In fact, she survives long enough to activate Boss Fight, Phase Two: where Gideon shifts to attrition mode, initially trying to bait Naberia into wasting energy and then just settling in for the long haul, needling her and deftly aiming to keep out of her range. 

The thing about being very good is that most of the time when you try something, you can get it to work, which makes it obvious when something you're trying is not working. Naberia's approach to this fight is not working.

So. Time to try something different. She disengages, backing up to the other side of the dueling space.

She makes Naberia defend herself even as she's disengaging - but she doesn't close, and she lets the distance between them grow slightly. (At this point, she's settled in to wait until Naberia tires out, or forces her to shift her own strategy.)

She leads with her left when she darts back in. And when the chain flashes past, she lets it wrap around her arm unflinching, and slides her dagger through one of the links for an extra point of control.

She'll give a perfunctory attempt to pull Naberia off balance, feinting with her rapier in the same motion. 

She dodges and twists to counterpull on the chain.

She lets the chain go with a little nod of acknowledgement - and a flick in, just in case Naberia lets the sudden slack throw her off balance. 

She's lived with Phoedelia, it'll take more than that to unbalance her. She shakes the chain off to the side, letting the knife go with it, and closes with her rapier.

She very clearly has Gideon on the back foot, now.

"I'll admit it - you're better than I am at this," she says with a bright grin, as she barely fends off Naberia.

"Then why are you so happy?" she asks dryly.

"Because I know something you don't."