"We were friends by then," Anye pointed out. "It's not like you were a hired bodyguard. You took it upon yourself to out-bully my bullies." And there had been bullies aplenty, at least in the first years of elementary school. Eventually the other children learned it wasn't worth the hassle of bothering Anye, but it took a while. On her own, Anye was an easy target. Shy, and she stood out like a sore thumb. Crazy, curly bright red hair (usually extremely frizzy to boot), freckles, and glasses at an early age. Not to mention a name no one had ever heard of and even the teachers had to ask how to pronounce it before she started insisting to her parents that she spell it phonetically. Nick and her brothers had put a stop to the bullying within the first few years, and though the teasing picked up again in the third grade when she got braces, it was very quickly squashed again. Mainly by Nick.
Anye rolled her eyes a bit at Nick's proclamation, but was not in the least surprised by it. "That would only annoy me more," she said. "And I'm not talking about a knock-down drag-out death match, I'm talking about sparring." She noticed the way Nick positioned them, but had no reaction to it. She understood his tics on that sort of thing, and it didn't bother her to humor him about them. If it made him feel better, she was happy to play along.