[RiddleRose]: 298.Contest Entries.fiddle wars

   Pahn glared bloody murder at Shae. Shae glared bloody murder at Pahn. Both held fiddles. “You think you can fiddle you bigoted son of a she-goat! You couldn't fiddle if your life depended on it!” shouted Pahn.
   “I could out-fiddle you any day you poor turkey!” Shae's accent came out very strong when he was angry.
   “Never!” said Pahn furiously, “never will I admit defeat to you! I challenge you to a duel of fiddling! Whoever can fiddle the longest, fastest, and with the least mistakes shall win the tournament!”
   “It's on!” agreed Shae, and without further ado they both put their fiddles to their shoulders and began playing for all they were worth. 
   The sounds clashed horribly, as Pahn was playing a rollicking sea shanty, and Shae was playing a wailing gypsy tune. The girls all winced and stuffed their fingers in their ears.
   Several hours later it had gotten no better. Both contestants had long since run out of breath, so at least they were no longer swearing and insulting each other. However, both had also long since run out of any sense of timing and rhythm whatsoever, so the music was terrible. Indeed, it could hardly be called music at all. Unfortunately neither showed any signs of slowing, much less stopping. 
   An hour or so later Ace came back. By this time their were more screeches and horrible squeaky sounds coming from the fiddles than anything else, and both rivals had switched sides. This made everything even worse than it had been, because neither Pahn nor Shae knew how to play left-handed. In other words, it was a complete disaster.
   “STOP!” screamed Ace, “STOP THIS AWFUL RACKET THIS INSTANT! You disgrace your names! How can you call this music! How can you possibly do this to your instruments!” he went on in this vein for some time.
   Shae and Pahn looked at each other, shrugged, and put down their fiddles. “En guard!” said Shae, brandishing his bow.
   “Ha!” said Pahn, “a duel! I shall flay your worthless hide from your back you worm!”
   Ace simply sighed. The two circled each other warily, thrusting and parrying. Then Shae began a lightning fast series of sharp jabs and thrusts. Pahn gave ground, parrying as well as he could.
   “I have been trained in the art of the sword since I was a tiny boy, merely three years old! You cannot hope to defeat me you incompetent!” said Shae scornfully.
   And indeed, Pahn was disarmed in the next moment, and Shae stood triumphantly over him with the bow at his throat. This presented a ridiculous picture, since most of the bowstrings had snapped, and they were trailing down Pahn's chest like a very thin, long beard.
   “Not so incompetent as you might think fool!” said Pahn hotly, jerking the bow out of Shae's hand suddenly, and throwing it contemptuously aside, “Defend yourself if you can!”
   “Ha! You think you can beat me with your body alone? Idiot! I have been trained in martial arts since I was eight! Try your luck little boy!”
   “Ah, you may have been trained since you were eight, but I have trained since I was five, and if you think you can beat that then you are even more of a fool than I thought you were!”
   The two squared off, and began fighting hand-to-hand. They seemed evenly matched at first, until you looked closely and noticed that Pahn seemed to be hardly even trying, and Shae had already broken a sweat. Indeed, Pahn was toying with Shae, making him think he had the upper hand, allowing him to tire himself. About ten minutes of this passed before Shae realized and disengaged.
   “Fight you bastard!” he shouted furiously, “stop holding back! Let's see what you can do!”
   “As you wish,” said Pahn, who was standing at ease.
   He moved so suddenly that everyone watching jumped. A flurry of kicks and punches came at Shae, who managed to block only about half of them. Then Pahn was somehow behind Shae, and standing at ease once again. Shae whirled around with a strangled sound of pure fury. Pahn grinned and waved. Shae came at him, but Pahn was no longer there. He seemed to have disappeared completely. Then he dropped out of the tree he had been standing under just behind Shae. Shae did not see him, and stopped, confused.
   When he turned around there was Pahn having a nice drink of water that had been provided by Mika. He called insolently, “Care for a drink Shae? The water's fine!”
   This time Shae did not come at him in a rush, approaching instead slowly and cautiously. He was tiring now, and more careful. When he was very close he suddenly sprang into motion, but Pahn simply blocked him with one arm and sipped his water at the same time. Then he placed the half-full glass on his head, and continued to fight with both hands again. The glass never spilled a drop.
   Then Shae threw a rock and knocked it off, flipped over Pahn and tackled him from behind. After that it degenerated to your average bar brawl. Both contestants emerged bruised and aching. And there was no sympathy to be had from the girls. Mysti threw a little jar of bruise balm at each of them and stomped away with a glare. Twig shouted for a while then stomped away to join Mysti, Serena hadn't even known that they were fighting because she and Cal had been making out through the entire thing, but when she heard the story she just snorted. Ali said sarcastically, “and just what did that prove?” before going off with Mysti and Twig. Mika was the only one who was even remotely tolerant, and the only difference was that she didn't show her displeasure so openly. 
   The other guys were far more understanding, although none took sides. They commiserated about the hardheartedness of girls and helped to apply bruise balm. The balm worked wonders, although it couldn't get rid of the ache created by being pounded basically everywhere for quite some time while rolling around on rocky ground. 
   Ace did repairs on the terribly mistreated fiddles, and refused to let either Shae or Pahn touch them for several weeks. Everyone was glad of this, because the memory of that terrible fiddle battle did linger horribly in ones memory.