ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SEVEN: Let’s Feed Her to Victory

  127****** Winning felt good. No surprise there. But the jubilant, giddy atmosphere among the members of the team kept ratcheting higher and higher, and everyone was behaving like they’d accomplished something much grander than winning a race against their classmates. They grabbed a spot together on the bleachers while the other two teams prepped for their own runs, and Alden basked in the victory right along with the rest of them. “We need to figure out how to make the pipe into an even stronger cannon!” Njeri said. “Did you see my ice ball take out Febri?! His arm didn’t work for the rest of the race!” Everly nodded eagerly. “Is there something we could do to make pressure build up inside it? So it was more explosive?” “I should try out for the school team in January,” Reinhard was saying. “Ranged Meisters are so good at this game, and it would give me lots of practice time in the gym.” “You know the rules are different for different courses,” said Haoyu. “So they don’t always favor Meisters so heavily…” “Lexi, you’ve got to be relieved you finally got the chance to use Writher on a person, right?” Reinhard asked, clapping Lexi on the back so hard that Lexi almost dropped his water bottle. “The way you put that sounds dark,” said Astrid. “Meisters need to train our weapons on the rest of you. That’s just how it is!” “I was pleased with Writher’s performance,” Lexi said. “He was really pleased,” said Haoyu. “You can tell by his smirk.” “There’s a smirk?” Astrid, sitting on the other side of Alden, leaned around to examine Lexi’s face. “You have to look close,” said Haoyu. “Stop staring at me that hard!” Lexi protested. “It’s just a face.” “Do you not smile much because it would make you look like Kon?” Astrid asked. “Of course not. I’m just not a smiley person. And technically Kon looks like me. I was born first.” “Thank you for carrying my dirt,” Maricel said to Lucille. “And you Alden. And Lexi.” Alden nodded at her. “Are we going to do it that way again?” “Oh, we don’t have to!” Maricel said. “Didn’t we agree we’d try it for one run and then on the next we’d try something different so that everybody—” “I don’t think any of us minded your efforts this time. And Alden did great getting people over the wall fast,” said Haoyu. “So we don’t have to have you for that necessarily. As long as he’s not on the verge of wearing out his skill—” “I’m fine for another run as long as it doesn’t turn into a big drawn-out mess like we had on our Wednesday attempts.” Alden had planned to use his handicap before the next race. He usually ate the preserved breath mint in the middle of class so that he could double run the skill and burn himself out just about on schedule every time. I don’t have to do it that way, though. It might be nice to have a little extra power at the right moment. And I can still feel it out when I’m close to where the limit should be. When he was close to what he deemed half-exhausted, he would quit. If he pushed it a smidge… A Boe-like voice in his head told him that every time he did something like this he was risking people asking questions. I know, I know. Suspicions stack up over time so you have to be careful from the beginning. I’ll only do it the smallest bit. Only if it really counts. He wanted to win again, not just to keep this good feeling going but also because their final run would be versus Team Vandy/Marsha. It wasn’t like he had a rivalry with Winston Heelfeather, but the speedster had been putting so much effort into being a shit since school started that Alden was sure letting him win would be inviting even worse behavior. Or maybe I’m slightly more spiteful than I should be. “Jeffy, you make the water obstacle so fast for us,” Reinhard said suddenly. “We get through it way more quickly than any other team.” “That’s right,” Njeri agreed. “Without you, our runs would take so much longer.” Their voices had both turned encouraging to the point of being sugary. They’re definitely going to try to get him to agree to stay in the tank for the whole next race. It would be the ideal situation for the team. And Njeri and Reinhard were their most vocally competitive members. Alden suspected that Everly and Lexi were just as interested in winning, but they tended to be quieter about it. “You do make things so much easier for us, dude,” he said to the Aqua Brute. Jeffy was toweling off his hair aggressively, like he thought he could bring the waterlogged mohawk back to life. “I’m looking forward to seeing your…land moves…on our next run, though.” The wattage on Jeffy’s smile made up for the glare Reinhard shot Alden. We promised him, Alden silently mouthed at the archer. Njeri slumped in her seat. “I’m gonna use my spell impression so hard for you guys!” Jeffy announced. “I’m gonna attack everyone on the other team with it.” “I don’t think you can use a spell impression hard,” said Everly. She sighed. “But we all look forward to seeing how it goes.” “I can use it hard. It’s like this feeling in your head. Like determination and wanting it real bad!” A crease appeared between Everly’s brows. “That’s the spirit!” said Astrid. “And maybe, after you’ve used it once, you can use your land moves to get back to the tank fast. Like, speedster fast. That would be cool.” “Yes!” said Reinhard. “After we let you attack the enemy, let’s see how fast you can run back to the tank.” Jeffy tilted his head and looked at Reinhard. “Are you scared of swimming by yourself?” Reinhard fumbled the jar of protective coating he’d been applying to his arrow tips and almost dropped it. “What?!” “I mean if you are, I’ll stay in the water for you. You could’ve just told me you were a bad swimmer.” “You…” Reinhard’s face was twitching from offended to exasperated. “He’s not a bad swimmer,” Alden said, before anyone could decide to stuff Jeffy back into his goldfish bowl with that little excuse. “None of us are bad swimmers. We do work faster as a team when you’re helping us with the water obstacle, but we all agreed that we could try things out on the course, so don’t worry about us. We—” “Alden, come down here for a minute!” They all quieted at the sound of Lesedi Saleh’s magnified voice. Alden stood. “Tell me if she says anything about me,” Jeffy called after him. From behind him, Alden heard Haoyu, voice amused, saying, “Do you think she’d call Alden down there to talk about you?” Alden hopped down onto the gym floor and approached the head of the hero program. Principal Saleh was standing with Instructor Klein, murmuring and pointing toward Tuyet’s back as she headed out toward the track with her team. I’m sure Tuyet’s a big part of the reason their team has to fight back to back today. Unlike the first day, when winners had fought double matches, the run order for this afternoon had been pre-decided. The next race would be Finlay/Tuyet/Jupiter versus Vandy/Marsha, then Finlay/Tuyet/Jupiter versus Febri/Shrike. Finally, Alden’s team would go up against Vandy/Marsha for the last run. “Sorry to pull you away from your team right after such an interesting win,” said Principal Saleh as Alden reached them. “You were moving well out there.” “Thank you.” “Instructor Klein says you’re learning a movement wordchain?” Alden nodded. “My roommate’s been tutoring me.” “Which wordchain is it?” Klein asked. “Well, it’s….” I guess I should use the official name? <<My Body Becomes My Assistant>>, he said. Klein blinked at him. The principal lifted an eyebrow. “It increases my awareness of my own body and my control of it. By a lot. The System mentionec it also increases situational awareness the first time Lute passed it to me, but I don’t know that I’ve noticed that much. I’m still getting the hang of it. Lute says there’s a learning curve.” “When you say ‘by a lot’…?” the principal asked. “The other day I unblushed with it. Like I was blushing, then I stopped. That was cool. I haven’t been able to repeat something like that just yet, but the chain’s making moving easier in general. Balance seems to be a big thing. I’m really aware when it’s off, and it’s very easy to correct. Lute says Keiko Velra calls the chain ‘Gracefulness’ so that makes sense.” He thought of mentioning how Lute used it—to gain control of his own facial expressions for acting. But since he hadn’t tried that out himself yet, he left it off. “That sounds like a very useful wordchain,” Klein said. “Lute’s a good tutor. He had to get permission to teach it to me, though.” “Well, it’s obviously working for you,” said Principal Saleh. She gave him a wry look. “So well that you’ve been anonymously reported for drug use.” For a few seconds, Alden just stared at her. “Me?” he said finally. “What kind of drugs?” “Non-specified performance enhancing ones.” “I’m not on drugs!”   It was such a stupid accusation that he was on the verge of laughing…which he belatedly realized was probably not the appropriate response. “I’m not on drugs,” he said again. Calmly and maturely. “We know,” said the principal. “I was just informing you in case you wanted to get a drug test to nip the matter in the bud right away. Or you can wait. Every member of your class is scheduled for random testing before the end of the quarter. We can just ‘randomly’ test you now instead. If you want.” I guess they’re thinking that if someone throws it in my face, it might be better for me to be able to prove I’m not high on alien stimulants right away? Not the worst idea. And if it was the same test they’d all taken before it was only a few minutes and no big deal. “Okay. I don’t mind.” “Head toward the labs room, then,” said Principal Saleh. “One of the instructors will join you in a moment.” Before he left the gym, Alden accessed his roommate chat. [Alden: Hey, I’m going to be drug tested! :)] He looked up to see Haoyu and Lexi’s startled expressions from the bleachers. [Haoyu: You’re happy about that?] [Alden: I’m so amazing someone in our class thinks I’m a criminal.] Haoyu rolled his eyes dramatically. Lexi was scanning the class. [Lexi: I bet it was Heelfeather. He’s already gone out to the track, but I bet it was him.] ….yeah, he’s the most likely suspect. [Lute: Is this because of the wordchain?] [Alden: Probably. The teachers seem to think so. I’ve become a source of envy with a single chain.] It made him want to learn dozens more and apply them all at once to see if Winston’s head exploded. I need to figure out how many hours I put into learning this one altogether. I feel like it was a really good return on my investment. He added it all up while he left the gym and headed toward the room where they’d done his last drug test. There were all the lunch time tutoring sessions. I could count the in-class tutoring as half since we were only partially focused on me, the time we spent in the privacy booth, all the practice during breaks and in the evenings… More than forty hours probably. Studying the wordchain had taken over his life when he wasn’t in school or practicing spell casting instead. But he had it now. If he made sure to cast it at least once a week, he shouldn’t forget all the little gestures that went into it, and if it always landed for him… It’s more than worth it. I wonder what Lute really ought to be charging me for the tutoring. Even if we ignore the fact that he had to vouch for me with the Palace of Unbreaking to teach this one, there aren’t a lot of amazing wordchain tutors available for the uncommon chains. What do S-rank Avowed charge to teach you things only they can teach you? By the time Foxbolt arrived to test him, Alden had looked up the hourly price for S-rank personal trainers at North of North. They were the kind of people who worked with you in the heavy-hitters gym when you yourself were a beginner heavy-hitter who needed someone to give you one-on-one advice about proper technique for headbutting pickup trucks into submission. He figured it was the best equivalent he could come up with. Lute was only a teenager, but he was a Chainer. They were a really rare commodity. “Let’s get this all squared away!” Foxbolt said, walking down the hall toward Alden with a spring in her step. “Excellent work mastering your new chain so quickly!” She winked. She winked a lot at everyone. It made her eyeliner do the color switch from blue to orange and back. According to Reinhard, who kept track of all the faculty members’ hero careers, it had been a cute camera habit for the instructor when she was a full-time superhero. Now that she was taking a break to spend more time with her family here on Anesidora, she still hadn’t stopped...