“The fact that common Vesper still pretends to be a unified language annoys me. ‘They’ as in ‘multiple people’; she had a companion. I do not have a strong preference and Kamin will refuse to provide one.”

“We should totally spar.”

" - I'm glad our inter-party cohesivity is already strong enough that you trust me not to take offense if you imply I don't understand extremely basic vocabulary when I was clearly asking for additional information, Mr. Omniglot.  Let's go spar."  She levitates herself out of the corner and heads for the inn's door.

“Mmhm.”

Jade and Zeke follow.

She doesn't go fast enough that they can't reasonably keep up.

Zeke could keep up with her top speed without much fuss; Jade could not and does not particularly care to try, although he’s very very quick by more mundane standards. 

They encounter a small delay, in short order - some random baker notices Zeke, starts crying, and asks for his autograph, which Zeke enthusiastically gives. But they can find an empty field within a few minutes after that; most cities are mindful to keep several close to hand, since otherwise adventurers tend to make do with busy streets and storefronts full of terrified civilians and so on.

This one looks... weathered; there are odd little patches of stone, stray pillars and spikes that seem entirely out of place, carved out puddles, queer trees in twisted shapes, scorch marks, and more dents than solid ground.

”- nice! Did you wanna have, like, ground rules, we super probably shouldn’t murder each other but I dunno what else you had in mind?”

"I definitely prefer not to be murdered twice in as many days, yes.  To the first broken bone or severe blood loss?"

“Sure. Jade can go in a corner and referee and stuff, he’s, like, squishy. Count of ten?”

"Do we really need a ref - what if he can attack either of us but we don't hit him."

“Then I wouldn’t have a loss condition.”

"Are we actually caring about winning and losing here?  And here I thought this was going to be a fun team-building exercise.  Not that I have strong, irrepressible feelings on the matter if you just wanna sit out."

“I dunno that ‘Jade’ and ‘fun’ are super compatible words.”

“I take myself very seriously. I built an entire glittery magical girl transformation sequence out of how seriously I take myself, even, I hear that’s all the rage. Have fun.”

He slinks over to a nearby pillar that’s a touch taller than he is, hops up on top of it with a careful leap, and lounges.

"I definitely want to see the glittery transformation sequence later - ten.  Nine.  Eight."

He counts along with her. “Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.”

- aaand then he pounces with startling speed - but she’s already flying upward, very quickly, his momentum is all wrong - he does a backflip in the process of stopping himself, recalibrates, and leaps up several stories in height in an attempt to land on her.

She anticipated something like this and dodges - time is moving slower for her now; it would be enormously tedious to go through most of life faster than everyone else but obviously you want the edge in combat - at the top of his arc she doubles gravity.  She forms the earth below him into a very large and pointy spike, then transmutes it into a substantially smaller but much pointier stone one.  Gravity turns off completely once he hits the ground and she gets ready to dodge his next attack.

This manages to actually hurt! If he had a less convenient boyfriend he’d get a pretty bad bruise on his back and if he weren’t a high-tier brute he’d be splattered all over the ground.

He breaks off the spike from the ground - not that it’s very firmly attached, after the collision - and throws it at her like a spear, and then once again leaps a ridiculous distance and attempts to land on top of her.

She dodges the spike with a clear margin, but doesn't then manage to get clear of his air-tackle; she has both her hands up in a vague defensive position and gets both her forearms cracked in multiple places for her trouble, as well as a few of her ribs.  " - y - ield," she manages to choke out with what breath she has left.

He mostly lets go, although he holds onto a bit of her sleeve. Zero-G is pretty neat, he can just sorta float in place.

”Cool! - if you turn the gravity back on I’ll be, like, fine, I can land on my feet. And then you can float down in your own time and Kamin can patch you up and stuff.”

She nods and kicks him away - telegraphing it beforehand; it's clearly not an attack - and doesn't do anything to alleviate the knockback; they float apart and soon the distance between them is enough that he's out of her radius and starts falling.  She takes a breather for a few seconds and then starts her descent, not at her top speed but certainly not slowly, and comes to a stop next to Jade's pillar, hovering at his level.

He stands on top of it and twirls.

”By promise of night, I wait, until -“

Sparkles, sudden sunset motifs, and a revised color palette ensue -

“- the promise of dawn has since been fulfilled. Hello! I, um, probably shouldn’t use a saturation approach, since we’ll be adventuring later, so this’ll take a minute or so I think...”

He stares at her and she gradually ceases to be injured.

The transformation is enough to make her grin; on the whole she seems quite unaffected by her level of injury, although she doesn't try to speak until she's relatively patched up.  "Nothing to cheer a gal up like a sequins sequence from the comically-dour party member - let's go again.  You want in, blondie?  Same offer; promise I won't hitcha."

“I’m a pacifist! Or, well, not by enough of a margin that I won’t indirectly help with all the gratuitous violence that Zeke gets up to, but still. I’m sure you’ve met the type before, I’m very cliche.”

“My violence is super ‘tuitous,” says Zeke, having wandered in their direction. “I only kill people if I don’t like them.”