ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX: We’ll See

126

***

“Now my brother’s flying. He looks happy!”

“I think he looks a bit bored,” said Finlay, watching Lexi cling to a hoop of fluorescent yellow paracord that was swinging him upwards in a steady arc toward the top of the wall. “Especially for a person dangling from a string that high in the air.”

“No, that’s one of his happy faces.” Kon was standing. “Look at the drone view footage and zoom in instead of watching from here. There’s this tiny smirk.”

Despite the fact that their class filled only a small fraction of the bleachers, voices echoed around the gym, competing with the shouts of the people on the floor. As soon as the first players had made it over the finish line, the tension had started to build. Kon wasn’t the only one who’d been driven to his feet by nerves or excitement.

“Febri! Febri, man! How could you walk into a trap that obvious?” someone on the other waiting team—sitting in a group together several meters away—was shouting.

Another person groaned. “Shrike wasted that attack! He wasted it! He’s an S-rank Meister! He should’ve gotten both of them!”

“It’s a good thing they can’t hear us down there,” Kon said.

Tuyet winced. “I wish people wouldn’t assume Meisters and S-ranks were flawless at this game. It’s so stressful.”

“You know it’s partially your fault, right?” Kon said.

“Me! How?”

“You just stand up there on the wall, demolishing the other teams one dart at a time. Raising the bar higher for the other Meisters.”

Down on the course, Lexi reached the top of said wall, and Reinhard gave him a hand.

“He’s limping,” said Kon, as his brother stepped past a length of extra paracord that Alden had sent up with Astrid earlier. Lexi dove into the water tank. “Movement restriction from that knife he took to the shin.”

“It would’ve been much worse than a restriction if Alden hadn’t yoinked him up into the air right then,” said Jupiter. “By the way, why can’t we have a Crafting Castle? Maricel gets a Crafting Castle.”

“They’re calling it a workshop, aren’t they? I think that’s what they shouted,” said Finlay.

“What would you craft, Jupiter?” Tuyet asked.

“Picture a wall of spiky protectors made of plant life. When the enemy approached, they would leap to your defense. Some noble flora. Like holly maybe…”

They all groaned.

Instructor Marion had been down on the floor having a quick discussion with Principal Saleh and Instructor Klein. He headed toward their group.

“I think…” said Kon, “we’re having too much fun. I bet he wants us to analyze what just happened with a ‘strategic mindset.’ Quick. Someone think up something smart to say about the trap the girls set.”

“Oh I’ve done that already,” Jupiter announced. “Here are my notes.”

They all tapped the air in front of them to accept the message she’d just sent.

Crafting Castle!!

Crafting Castle (for Killing?)

Crafting Castle of Maiming

Artists:

Maricel (S-Ground Shaper), Everly (A-Ice Spells), Njeri (A-Water Shaper)

Materials:

bags of dirt (reminder: I owe Mari potting soil because I borrowed some without telling her)

sand emptied from 120 kg sandbags

water

Happenings:

1. Everly uses multiple casts of Glaze Object to turn the fire obstacle into a frozen box. Her eyeshadow is blue today.

2. Maricel creates a large, thin rectangle out of dirt. Excellent shaping. They use Glaze Object again to ice the rectangle over. Water and ground elements in balance mean it should be movable by both Maricel and Njeri.

3. After all of their teammates have passed through the obstacle, the artists move the ice-dirt rectangle into position over the exit of the frozen box, making the interior invisible from the enemy course. I would like a similar fort on our next run.

4. Drone footage shows artists rapidly crafting small solid ice balls (x11), a large dirt ball glazed with ice (x1), and a large, highly compressed cylinder of clay and sand (x1 – still in progress). I think these all have multiple potential uses. They are making whatever their team might need.

5. Sanjay crossed the finish line! I bet the artists are disappointed it happened so soon, forcing them to halt their crafting, but they leap into action at the sound of the enemy bell. Njeri and Maricel are fleeing the fortress! Going into the pipe!

Don’t forget Everly! Why are you leaving her?

Ice balls, sand, and dirt follow them into the pipe.

6. That’s a lot of sand, Mari. Some might say a greedy amount. How much do you need in there?

7. Febri is the attacker. He’s going to attack Alden probably. He should have waited until Alden had someone up in the air again. That’s what I would have done.

8. No! Febri is obviously too curious about the crafting team to resist! He’s assaulting the castle instead.

9. Lucille tries to intercept and tackle, but she’s too slow. I think she could’ve moved faster than that.

10. It’s a cannon!!!

11. I was right! I realized it was a cannon before Febri did! He tried to enter the frozen fort to attack Everly, not knowing she had just cast her extra slippery ice trap. It only slowed him down for a second, but a second was enough.

Everly ducked behind the sphere and cylinder crafts the Shapers left in the fort. Then, Maricel used her maximum power to push all of the sand and the ice balls out of the pipe at high speed. Very high speed.

I am sure I was the inspiration for this attack.

One cannonball hit Febri in the shoulder. While he was suffering a blinding penalty from all the sand, Everly escaped the fort through the shattered back pane and ran for Lucille’s protection. Njeri climbed out of the pipe and smashed some of the ice from the fort’s ceiling and walls on top of Febri. The fire jets restarted. Battered, burned, and overwhelmed, he opted for retreat. But I’m sure he didn’t mind since he got to see the hard work of these dedicated artists in person.

They deserve to celebrate their victory, but instead, they must rescue their remaining creations from the flames.

Final Thoughts:

Establishing a protected base on the indoor course was smart. The location they chose was perfect, and it has the benefit of protecting the object creation tablet located at the end of the pipe. Protecting the tablet limits the enemy’s methods of assault.

Their success proves that the hero program should accept a higher percentage of Shapers.

I volunteer to be on this team for their next run. The addition of a Life Shaper to their group would be educational for all of us. And I believe Alden Thorn would be happy to help me carry my preferred supplies. Unlike some people.

******

Vandy Carisson leaned forward with her hands on her knees, watching the teams below her avidly.

“The assault on Lexi and Alden might have gone differently if Shrike hadn’t been distracted by what happened to Febri. He obviously wanted to assist his teammate, but turning his back on Lexi was a mistake. I wonder if he misjudged the range of Mind Writher?” She turned to Marsha. “I also wonder what Febri’s strategy was. Maybe he thought getting a look at Maricel, Njeri, and Everly’s position was worth the risk. Or he assumed that his agility and his skill would allow him to escape no matter what he found. He didn’t account for the time they’d had to prepare.”

“He probably just wanted to take out Maricel,” Marsha said. “He could have if she didn’t have double backup. She’s not quick enough to stop his subclass. There’s no reason to be scared of her in a one-on-one fight.”

“You think all the S-ranks are as focused on each other as you are on them,” Mehdi said with a snort. “Do you even know the names of the other members of our class?”

“Don’t take it personally, Mehdi,” Marsha said dryly. “I don’t have anything against you A-ranks. I just don’t see the point in these mixed combat classes. I train better against stronger opponents, and they train better against me.”

She stood. Her polearm, in its glaive form, lay on the bench beside her. She lifted it and tipped its head toward the runners on course. “This is a game. You know it’s a game because Shrike lost versus the Rabbit and the whip boy. One attack at a time? I guess it makes us learn to plan better, but it’s nothing like a real duel. In Superlatives, our practice fights are completely different.”

Mehdi crammed his lips together as if he had no intention of continuing the conversation. But then, half a minute later, he asked, “How are they different?”

Marsha smiled at him. “When Shrike really fights, he throws one of his Meister knives like you just saw. His blade collection follows it. Then, he recalls while the lead knife is still in the air, and all the knives turn to chase it back to him. The second he catches it, he whips it in a different direction, before any of the following knives have the chance to fall. He can keep them airborne for ages. Like he’s directing a swarm around the battlefield. Here, he’s not allowed to do that because it counts as more than one attack.” She let the butt of her weapon thump against the bleacher. “Duels will be different. I’m sure they’ll make it S on S. And A on A. So don’t worry about it.”

Mehdi sat up straighter. “I wasn’t worried about—”

“He chose a stupid color for his rope.” Winston was on his feet with his arms crossed over his chest, watching Alden Thorn greet Haoyu Zhang-Demir as the Brute rolled off the beam into his section of the obstacle course. “How much of an idiot do you have to be to bring neon yellow rope? It’s like he’s saying, ‘Look at me! Look at me! Attack right here.’”

“Maybe bright colors help him visualize what he’s doing more clearly,” Vandy suggested. “I’m sure for some things he needs to see exactly where the tip of the line is.”

“He’s been using dark green a lot until now.” Mehdi squinted down at Alden. “Maybe he ran out of it and had to grab the neon stuff on the way out the door.”

Marsha stared at them. “Why are you two memorizing the B-rank’s rope colors? What’s wrong with you? If you need to fight him when we go up against them, dodge the rope—you’re an Agi and a speedster; you can handle that much, can’t you?—and hit him. Or kick him. It’s not that hard.”

“Huh,” said Max.

Vandy was the only person on the team who looked over at him. He smiled at her and shrugged.

A bell rang.

“Whip boy’s over the finish line,” Marsha said. “And this game is basically done.”

******

This is going entirely too well, thought Alden as the bell rang. Surely we’re about to run into some trouble.

The weights had been moved for what might be the last time if nothing went wrong. Lucille was climbing the rope with Njeri on her back to speed things along. And Everly was refreezing the fire obstacle for what was definitely the last time; she’d need to save plenty of casts for their next run.

And it was their turn to take an attack.

“My plan is an obstacle modification,” Maricel was saying. “It should slow them down a lot. I’m almost ready. ”

“I’ll cross the finish line next,” Njeri said. “As soon as I’m over, Reinhard will take out Olive. She’s their slowest runner. If you’re sure you picked the right one earlier, Haoyu.”

“I’ve kept an eye on the one he pointed out,” Reinhard said. “She’s the one sitting on the platform at the end of the bar swings. I can’t tell any difference between them, and I have enhanced vision. If he’s wrong we’ll be wasting the shot.”

“No pressure or anything,” Haoyu murmured beside Alden. They stood in the opening Lexi had defended from Shrike a short while ago, looking across their course toward what they could see of the opposing team’s side. Haoyu was trying to view the three identical girls in hot pink sweatbands from a different angle than Reinhard, in hopes of noticing something else.

“She glanced up with a curious expression earlier,” he told the team. “It was only a second, but it didn’t look like one of those pre-planned actions she gives the illusions to make them more realistic. I think she was distracted by Alden flying Lexi through the air like a kite.”

Alden didn’t reply. Instead, he was watching the Olives. Two on the bars. One sitting on top of their team’s wall. All very temptingly arranged and easy to shoot.

The Adjuster would need help from a second teammate out on the track, so she was an obvious person to send all the way back to start. But she was good with her illusions, and after running the course on Wednesday, she’d gone from good to incredible. From what little Alden understood about her power, the illusionary girls moved over obstacles and struggled realistically because Olive had been able to craft them based on memories of these specific tasks instead of relying on general memories of her body in motion to do it.

She even had a spell to prevent people from targeting her.

Alden still knew which one was real. He’d realized he knew how to tell last time, and he’d been trying to decide how to be fair about it ever since.

Ask me, he thought. Ask me which one I think it is.

This was what he’d settled on. He’d find Olive for his team if he was assigned to find Olive. If someone directly asked, he would pick her out and pretend he just had a feeling she was the right one. Otherwise, he’d act clueless.

It would be mean to repeatedly screw her over in a way nobody could possibly have a defense against. And I’ll have to make up excuses for how I knew every time.

When people correctly identified Olive, she asked them how at the end of class. So that she could improve. Alden could only use “it was luck” and “not sure, maybe I noticed something subconsciously” so many times before she thought she had some subtle tell he wasn’t revealing and started to agonize over it.

“I’m almost positive I picked the right one,” Haoyu told the team. “Second-guessing doesn’t do any good unless we see some sign.”

He was right.

Alden knew because the gremlin said that particular Olive was a no-no. Alden couldn’t eat her without her permission.

“What are you sighing for in the middle of an epic battle of magic and wits?” Haoyu was raising an eyebrow.

“I wish I was less weird sometimes.”

Before Haoyu could reply, Maricel said, “Ready!”

She sounded excited.

“With Heloísa’s positioning right now, I think I can do even better! I’ll have to start farther from the target, though. And once I’ve made the Shaping gesture that qualifies as the official attack, Principal Saleh will give us a penalty if I make another gesture to adjust my dirt’s position. I might miss. Maybe I shouldn’t try for more if it’s risk—”

“Always try for more,” said Astrid from her spot at the finish line.

“I agree,” Njeri said. “Give Victory her sustenance.”

“If you all don’t mind…okay!”

A moment passed, and then Maricel came into view. She jogged up the ramp at the end of the weight challenge. She didn’t have any dirt with her.

Yet.

“Do you know what she’s doing?” Haoyu asked Alden.

“I don’t. We talked about knocking people off the top of their wall with sandbags, but it’s obviously not going to be that.”

Shrike was headed for the wall again. He would probably perch there with his “severed” leg for a couple of minutes, hoping they would get careless and knock him off so that he could get a fresh start.

The other team was cautious. They knew an attack was incoming. They just didn’t know what it would be or who would deliver it. Reinhard had an arrow nocked, and that was drawing most of their attention toward him.

Maricel was pretending like she was just repositioning herself. She wasn’t looking toward the enemy team at all, not even Heloísa, who was shifting her weight from foot to foot and staring at Reinhard like she fully intended to dodge an arrow if it came her way. She was grinning eagerly.

“She knows I’m an Avowed, too, doesn’t she?” he groused. “I’m not a kid playing with a toy bow, and she’s not Febri.”

“Don’t shoot her just to prove you can,” Haoyu said. “It’s not your turn.”

Alden watched Maricel. Good luck, he thought as she suddenly stopped and lifted her arms. You’ve been doing great since school started. Get them.

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