ONE HUNDRED NINETY-ONE: Flashes III

191

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From where Alden stood now, he could see, and appreciate, all of his classmates’ efforts to resist the wind. He and Everly were in a minority who’d made it to safety, but most of the others weren’t far behind.

Finlay and Winston were both over. Marsha was here, shifting her Mutable Haft into spear mode and eyeing all the new superheroes she was allowed to attack like Christmas had come early. And Heloísa was standing just a few feet away from Alden and Everly with both of her arms fully functional.

Alden hoped that was an indicator that injured people could get a mobility reset by returning to the start and not a one-time thing for the beginning of class. Getting hurt and having to deal with it for two hours was instructive, but not the kind of instructive he wanted this evening.

“I’m going to go ask her what the pain realism setting felt like,” Everly said. “I only got some bumps, and the readout didn’t appear. She’ll know better. Thank you for getting me here.”

“Thank you for getting me here,” Alden replied.

Still on the floor, but approaching steadily, Haoyu was looking cool as heck. He was serving as a point of stability for Kon, Lexi, and a few other fortunate souls he’d collected on the way. One solid rock whose feet wouldn’t come off the ground was a valuable resource in a nearly barren gym under assault by a Shaper of Sky.

If we’re going to be attacked frequently or constantly by Galecourse during this class, I’m going to need a good shield.

A whole person wasn’t the ideal choice. The easy bird nest shield method wasn’t going to be awesome in high winds either; if he lost preservation for even a second, it would all go flying like streamers. And making something would take at least a little while, so…he needed to get moving. The starting line was on one of the shorter sides of the massive rectangular gymnasium, and his duffel bag was on the long side near the midline, where everyone usually dropped their stuff if they weren’t sure they were allowed to have it on the floor.

He ran for it.

What are the rules exactly? he wondered as he pounded around the perimeter toward his bag.

There wasn’t a countdown for them to obey, so it seemed like they were being given as much time as they wanted to form teams and strategize. That was exciting, but at the same time, he thought everyone would probably want to get going as soon as possible. The promise of a very desirable prize for reaching the finish, the fact that the Instructors weren’t known to go easier on people toward the end of class…

Obviously I have to do something with rope. The “practice with your chosen tool for the quarter” rule was a given. And if Big Snake was going to be throwing additional materials onto the battlefield, Alden could use those, too. But are we allowed to do something ridiculous like use my supplies to tie a whole team to Haoyu? Is that cheating?

Just then, Vandy’s mother passed by him, running on the dangerous side of the barrier. She looked a lot like her daughter. Alden was almost positive he’d seen her on a perfume commercial that had played all the time when he was little—that one where her wind kept carrying the fragrance around a city, and at the end of the day she turned around and there were like a thousand people chasing her and she made the shocked face.

Yeah, that was her. And perfume commercials are weird.

He was sure Galecourse could run faster than she was right now. He was also sure she didn’t need to reposition at all to blow people around the gym in whatever direction she chose.She was limiting herself on purpose.

So there are lots of rules for us to discover. He grabbed his bag and ran back toward the others. And take advantage of.

Good. He would try to understand what all of the attackers’ self-imposed limits were and think of this class as practice for his nightmare correction. Traveling across a dangerous landscape, under assault by chaotic entities that were stronger than him and behaving in ways that were difficult to predict…but not completely impossible if you knew a little something about what they had been before they became your enemy.

He remembered Haoyu a few weeks ago, telling him what his mom had said about the CNH instructors training students’ eyes by having tells—real or false—that could be discovered. Possibly, they were doing the same kind of thing here. Klein had said, “Figure it out.”

The first part of this is a brain game to learn what the rules are.

The second part would be beating those rules. And the third would be winning the prize.

A private lesson would be phenomenal. If I picked the right person, I could explain some of what I’m working on with Yenu-pezth and get help with that specifically.

It would be an upgraded version of his practice at North of North, and the right teacher or volunteer wouldn’t care that it was a personal goal he was after rather than general improvement.

They’re giving us two days. That means they want us to have a real chance of success. We work on any flaws we find today, and then on Friday, we come back ready to defeat the challenge.

“They’re giving us two days,” Njeri was saying grimly to Everly when he reached them. “That means it will be hell, and they have no intention of letting us have victory today.”

Njeri had arrived with Haoyu and the others. She’d been riding piggyback on Haoyu the last Alden had seen. Now, she was glancing toward the middle of the gym, where stragglers who weren’t lucky enough to have abilities that could handle the high wind—or to have been standing near friends who did—were struggling.

Olive was getting rolled. Literally. She’d been trying to inch toward them all on her stomach, but she’d looked up, realized she was one of the last students on the floor still, and tried to shift to a crawling position.

Alden winced as the wind caught her and flipped her.

“I was just thinking the same thing as Njeri…with a more positive take,” he said, dropping his bag and squatting to unzip it.

Teammates means I’ll have plenty of entrusters. I can shield them and me from the wind, so I need something biggish for a shield. And if I’m working with rope…

He wasn’t the only one trying to gear up. Tuyet was zipping over to check the supply room.

“They didn’t tell us we could use weights and equipment from there,” Vandy protested.

“They didn’t tell us we couldn’t either!” Everly said, her eyes lighting up. She took off, and Njeri was right behind her with a couple of others.

A second later, shouted reports of a locked closet and a single pile of elemental weights outside it caused more than half the class to stampede in that direction to claim the limited resources.

Haoyu and Kon dashed off. Lexi was watching Alden weave his widest rope option—straps of flat yellow webbing—into a mat with only a few narrow visibility gaps.

“Do you want me to cut that for you?” Lexi asked.

“Yep.”

Writher flicked toward the piece Alden had been about to cut through and sliced it neatly.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

“Do you want me to help you tie—”

“Yep. Are we a team?”

“Haoyu told a couple of people that we were already.”

“Me, you, him…Kon and Everly?”

Lexi nodded and started tying. “Febri and Shrike wanted either you or Haoyu for their team.”