ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO: Obstacles

122   Alden had a suspicion that the day might be a bit different before he even left the dorm that morning. Jeremy didn’t usually video call him from inside a bathroom stall at seven thirty AM. “Hey! It’s good to see you instead of getting a text, but shouldn’t you be in second period?” Alden asked. He’d just pulled on a long-sleeved shirt, and he was tucking his laptop into his messenger bag. “People have been talking about you all morning,” Jeremy said. “I didn’t call earlier because you like sleep.” “I do like sleep. Thanks for respecting the time zone. Any chance they’ve been talking about how much they miss having me sitting in the classroom? Does that Goth girl wish I was still there to loan her pens? She owes me three. Don’t think I forgot while I was away.” “I saw the video.” Alden made a face. “Did you go to a party last night and tell a girl that she was sketch and you didn’t like her?” “Maybe…” “In front of her parents and her Grandma, who’s a member of the Anesidoran government?” “Aulia’s not on the High Council anymore. Also, there were a lot more people than that around. Also, that might not have been me. It could’ve been another guy who resembled me.” “Are you okay?” Jeremy asked. “Another Avowed used their powers on you! Isn’t that a crime or something?” “I’m fine. It wasn’t a huge thing. I just really didn’t want to have any more to do with Hazel Velra, and in the moment, letting it be known seemed like the best course of action.” “It sucks that I couldn’t be there,” said Jeremy. He grinned. “I’ll hate her for you from here!” “You rock,” said Alden. Jeremy was wearing a shirt with an eyeball and a rock on it. “More importantly,” he said, “did you sing a bunch of songs about an alien bird while wearing your gym jammies?” “That made it all the way to you, too?” Silver lining. Then Jeremy’s phrasing caught his attention. “Did you just call my highly magical, very exclusive, wizard-made protective Avowed gear gym jammies?” “That’s what Kimberly called them. It’s cute, right?” “It’s definitely unforgettable,” said Alden. “I know you’ve got to get to class but before you do, I had to check on you and tell you—” Jeremy pointed at him. “You’ve officially made it as a superhuman.” Alden’s brows lifted. “How do you figure?” “Alden, there are memes.” ****** It could have been worse, but Alden was sure it couldn’t have been weirder. As he went through the morning, he ran across several students and even one faculty member singing Finlay’s gokoratch songs, so that was good. Lots of people minded their own business or didn’t care about his altercation with Hazel at all. A few, unfortunately, felt the need to corner him and give him their personal analysis of the situation; it was obnoxious no matter what their opinion was since Alden didn’t remember requesting critique from other teenagers who thought they knew him based on a short video clip and some facts they’d found on the internet. But beyond all of that, most of the CNH students who wanted to interact with him because of the video wanted to talk about… “Did you get more radishes?” “Radish Rabbit!” “Not my radishes!” “You’d better make the Velras buy you a lifetime supply, mate! Can’t let them get away with costing a man his treats!” <<I am grateful most people aren’t taking it too seriously,>> he told Lute while he knelt on a too-thin cushion during their conversation class. <<But a university student I passed on my way here from the Wong building shouted, ‘Hey, Daikon!’ So it’s getting worse. Now they’re associating me with all varieties of radish instead of just the round, red ones I actually dropped. This is my future. This is my fate.>> <<I understand so small amount of what you say,>> Lute replied, correcting a finger position for him. <<But I understand we still speak of the gone-away vegetables from last night.>> <<We do speak of that,>> Alden said. <<Sorry. I’ll talk slower.>> <<How do you say ‘screenname?’>> Lute asked. Alden frowned. <<I don’t know. I’m not sure Artonans use those?>> <<I changed my screenname to ‘TheFirstRadish’. In its honor.>> Lute bowed his head and clasped his hands together in a prayerful posture. Alden didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh. Of the memes Jeremy had mentioned this morning, only two seemed to be gaining traction. The first was a clip of Hazel shouting about how she mattered on Earth and the Mother while her flapper headband’s tassel whipped around. The second was Alden hastily raising a china plate in front of him and sending eleven radishes—according to the people who’d bothered to count—to their deaths. There were slow-mo shots of them falling. In one edit, someone had drawn little screaming faces on them. Rabbit Drops his Radishes was by far the most harmless thing that could pop up when someone searched for him, so he was torn between wondering if it was okay for something so silly to be making him instantly recognizable on campus and kind of hoping that it would become a lot of peoples’ main impression of him before they dug into everything else. His roommates were right; the video didn’t make him look that bad. Some assholes were saying asshole things, and unless he was being paranoid, the moment when Aulia called him one of the Velras’ “family friends” seemed to be ever so slightly louder and clearer than the rest of the audio. But the family friend thing didn’t seem one hundred percent believable, he hoped, when he was in the process of complaining about a member of said family. And he looked calm and collected when he explained why he had a problem with Hazel. <<Why did your grandmother sacrifice your cousin to the beasts?>> Alden asked Lute as they put their shoes back on at the end of class. <<Doesn’t this situation reflect poorly on her, too?>> “Do you just speak Artonan all the time now?” Alden shrugged. “I hadn’t shifted gears yet. But it’s good practice for you, so don’t complain. I was asking why Aulia—” “I’ve got translations back on, so I understood. There are probably a hundred factors you and I can’t guess, but I assume Hazel’s been getting problematic in other ways. A few relatives mentioned that she’s become more of a menace since she started having free time. She’s used to being with a tutor, with Aulia, or asleep. Aulia’s not training her for hours a day anymore. You want to have lunch together?” “Sure,” said Alden. “But should you really skip your theater class as often as you do?” “No. Are you judging me?” “So hard.” ****** That evening, Alden’s gym group stood in a huddle together, waiting for Principal Saleh to arrive and officially mark the start of class. They were all staring at their fate. “Haoyu,” Alden whispered, leaning toward him without taking his eyes off the monstrosity the faculty had created. “Can you complete that whole course?” Haoyu was staring at it, too. “I cannot.” “Maybe it’s not finished?” Njeri suggested. “It looks unfinished.” “That must be it!” Astrid agreed. She had gelled her short hair into a mini mohawk “to promote team spirit.” She put her hands on her hips. “They’ve left off some ladders. And they must be bringing us scuba equipment!” They were all standing at the black line that separated the course from the rest of the huge gym. Jeffy stepped right up to the edge of it eagerly. “I bet I can do it!” “Really?” Lexi said in a dry voice. Writher’s short chain was twitching at the end of its handle. “How are you going to get over the fifteen-meter-tall barrier made of magic when there are no handholds?” “You think we have to climb that?” Jeffy asked. “Maybe we’re just supposed to walk around it. Like in the maze.” “Jeffy, my friend in mohawkdom,” Astrid said before Lexi could add anything, “let me explain how obstacle courses usually work.” “We’re probably meant to help each other,” Haoyu added. “That’s common for this kind of thing.” Alden stepped over to Maricel. She had a pensive expression on her face. “What are you thinking?” he asked. “I was wondering if they would let me ride my soil platform over obstacles or not. I saw your video…” “You and everyone else.” He’d arrived at the MPE building and gotten dressed early to avoid the locker-room takes from certain people. For now, he was blissfully unaware of whatever some of the more tedious members of his class might have to say. Maricel watched him for a minute. “You could’ve pickled those radishes,” she said sadly. “And they wouldn’t have died.” Startled, it took Alden a second to respond to the joke. He shook his head at her. “Shhhhh…don’t reveal my true power.” When Principal Saleh showed up, she was wearing her own suit and carrying a small metal triangle on a stick that turned out to be a magical megaphone. “Good to see you again, everyone!” she said. Behind her, Instructors Marion, Foxbolt, and Ivanova were all holding tablets and checking over various obstacles. Despite Astrid’s hopes, no ladders were making an appearance. “This is part of the course you’ll all be running today. The other first years have run this route several times in their own classes, so if you’d like to compare your team times to theirs or watch their videos we’ll make that available to you.” Only part of the course? Alden wondered. “Let’s go over the rules!” Five minutes later, he was standing outside in his group’s assigned lane of the MagiPhys track. They were getting one half, and the group of ten that would be running against them was getting the other. Alden listened to Haoyu and Reinhard argue over strategy and watched Lucille lace up a pair of dark purple boots that he found all shiny and fascinating thanks to Sympathy for Magic. In the gym, people who didn’t want to risk wearing out or destroying ordinary athletic shoes just took them off. The suits protected your feet, so it was fine if you wanted. But out here, some of Alden’s classmates were allowed to bring gear he didn’t usually see. Lucille’s boots were extra durable. Someone on the other team had complained about people getting special treatment because Wrightmade armor, but a raised eyebrow from Principal Saleh had shut the whiner down. Alden didn’t mind. None of the approved equipment was anything that should be a game changer, and there was no point in risking an injury just so that nobody would accuse you of having a tiny advantage. The team they’d be racing against to start with included Konstantin, Finlay, Jupiter, and Tuyet along with six others. The other half of the class was back in the gym, having school emergency procedure practice sessions with Klein and Fragment while they waited their turn to run the course. Their race would be cut off at the twenty-minute mark if they hadn’t finished. The losers would swap with one of the teams in the gym, and the victors would stay out here for one more round. The losing team would have another race before the end of class. And then two more on Friday. So every team of ten or eleven would have the chance to face each other once. As was typical of their gym periods, the explanation of what they should do had been brief and to-the-point, and they were expected to get to work and figure out the details as they went. Alden was going over the rules in his head again, too focused on not screwing up the basics to imagine what running the course would actually be like. They started out here on the morphable track, where they would run three laps with the same sorts of hurdles Alden had encountered on combat assessment day. At the end of the third lap, they ran down a flag-marked path to the gym, where the more dangerous and impossible-looking half of the course was. Their interfaces would give them instructions as they approached obstacles if necessary. Both teams would begin their run at the same time, with all teammates participating. That was all simple enough. But then the aspect of the race that Instructor Marion had called “strategic interference” came into play. Just so that he wouldn’t forget a detail, Alden typed a list for himself while he explained it all to Jeffy out loud again:   1. For a team to win the race, every member has to reach the end of the course. 2. A runner who reaches the finish line may not participate in the race except to offer advice to their teammates. 3. Every time someone crosses the finish line, their active teammates may take one hostile action to impede the other team’s runners. One hostile action is defined as a single talent use, obstacle modification, or physical attack by one team member. The hostile actor may enter the other team’s half of the course. On the outdoor portion of the course, only harmless attacks and obstacle modification may be used to impede runners. Within the gymnasium, all attacks, including lethal ones, are allowed. 4. Injuries will be simulated by movement restriction. 5. “Dead” runners must return to the start of the race. 6. No killing your own teammates. Reinhard and Haoyu were energetically disagreeing about a dozen different aspects of the race, and Alden could see why. The amount of strategy that would be needed to maximize a team’s speed was huge. Excelling at this game would take planning, practice, and careful teammate selection. They would be getting the opportunity to do that in later academic terms, but for this, their first time, they were flying blind. Alden liked the notion of an obstacle course, and he had a hundred and twenty feet of paracord weighted with a heavy-duty carabiner to contribute. It was fine with him if they all looked at this as an interesting opportunity to test their abilities, like usual. But he was getting the feeling that most of the others were more anxious and eager to prove themselves than they had been on Monday. “I can shoot Tuyet!” Reinhard was saying. “I know I can take her out. His preferred strategy was for Lucille and Maricel to plow through the course together and hit the finish line, so that they could get two attacks on the other team as quickly as possible. “I’ve watched uni obstacle course competitions,” Haoyu insisted. “It’s different because a lot of those people can complete a whole course without assistance, but in this kind of team run, you don’t send all of your strongest competitors to the end. You keep some of them in play so that they can help everyone else.” “He’s right about not losing critical players,” Njeri said. “Though I’m not sure Lucille is actually our strongest competitor.” She looked over at the quiet girl. “You’re literally our strongest of course. But you couldn’t run the whole route on your own if you got left behind, could you?” Lucille shook her head. Could any of us, though? Alden wondered. “Start in thirty seconds!” Lesedi Saleh announced. Maricel was shaking her hands out and staring at the track ahead of them. Reinhard made a strangled sound. Astrid bounced eagerly on the balls of her feet. “Save your energy,” Lexi said to her. “Who me?” He grunted. They all stood at the starting line. On the other team’s side, Jupiter was humming and glancing longingly toward the mound of freshly cut limbs and twigs she’d stolen from someone who’d been pruning the grounds. Her team had barely managed to talk her out of telekinetically hauling the whole pile with her during the race. Appropriate elemental weights were being provided for each Shaper to use here and in the gym, but if they wanted something special, their teams were required to transport it through the entire route. A couple of the others were carrying heavy branches for Jupiter, so that she wouldn’t be slowed down. [Race Start in 10…] “I don’t want to lose,” said Everly, getting in a ready position. “Your ice will work great for messing with the other team,” Njeri told her. “If we can get someone to the finish line.” “I don’t even know what we’re doing,” Reinhard muttered, checking the straps on his quiver one last time. “Just run as fast as you can and send back news once you hit the gym to report on the obstacles,” said Lexi. “Don’t be idiots.” “Nobody cross the finish line without consulting the rest of us,” Haoyu said. “The principal is watching,” Jeffy whispered. “We know,” three of the others replied at once. Reinhard scowled. “I’m more worried about the fact that they’re making this footage available to the rest of the first years. Two hundred other people will be trying to decide if we should’ve gotten into the school with them or not.” [3…] “It’ll be fine,” said Haoyu. “Only if we do well. This is going to be their first impression of us.” Alden preserved his cord. He was wearing it wrapped around him in loose, cross-body loops. Haoyu was his entruster, which was becoming a usual thing for gym class. “Win,” Lucille whispered. [1] Here we go. They took off. From the first few steps, Alden knew it wasn’t going to be anything like his last time running the track. For one thing, this was a race, and for another…these weren’t a bunch of B-ranks who’d failed to make the cut. Thank goodness running with my trait is one of the things I’ve practiced the most. It was a relief to finally have a ground element surface under his feet in class. He didn’t bother to look at what was going on with the other team since no attacks would be coming in yet. Instead, he focused on his form, his speed, and eating ground as fast as possible. One day, they’re going to give us something like mud to run across, and I’m really going to shine. This afternoon, he wasn’t doing badly compared to his own teammates. Lucille and Jeffy were ahead of him, but having the magical help from Azure Rabbit had put him ahead of the A-ranks and Maricel. It’s a nice change from being slower than most of them in the gym. The hurdles out here were walls of varying heights that rose from the track itself. He leaped the first easily, mentally thanking the trait for the height he got and Bobby for the fact that he could feel confident about proper form and knowing his limits when it came to making landings. He kept going. After climbing a steep hill near the end of the circuit, Alden jumped and pulled himself onto the top of a much higher wall than any of the others had been. He was relieved to find a mat waiting to catch people at the bottom. He hit it, ran a few more steps, and got the [Lap One Complete] notice through his interface. I feel pretty good about this. He thought he was pacing himself correctly; his body was moving well. He completed the second and third laps in exactly the same way as the first, bypassing Jeffy, who’d taken on the task of standing beside the high hurdle and boosting people over it. Chat on their team voice call suggested everyone was doing all right on their own or with the helping hand for the last jump. Lucille had made it through the first indoor obstacle and was reporting on the next one as Alden left the track behind and ran down the marked path toward the gym. Reinhard wasn’t very far behind him. Who’s ahead of us on the other team? Finlay and Tuyet were way out front. He thought at least one of the other Brutes was ahead of him. Alden flew through the open doors of the MagiPhys building and down the short hall into the gym. “Floor On!” Instructor Foxbolt called loudly from her post at the start of the indoor course. “Green line!” The obstacle course loomed in front of him. Green and red lines on the floor and the obstacles themselves indicated each team’s path. Alden had a momentary flashback to the children’s play area outside a fastfood restaurant he had visited when he was little as he got down on his hands and knees and started crawling through a long plastic tunnel. When he emerged from the other end, he found the obstacle Lucille had mentioned in her update from just a short while ago. [Go through.] Yes, that was obvious. It didn’t make the assignment look any more appealing. “So,” he said aloud for the benefit of the rest of the team, “the shipping container obstacle is on fire, as Lucille mentioned. It’s a little bigger than a regular shipping container, I think, and the walls shoot jets of flame. The floor doesn’t. Should I go through on my own or do you guys want me to stick around and shield you?” Haoyu answered first. “Be there in a sec. Lucille, how much damage did you take running through?” “Not bad,” she said succinctly. “Like a sunburn. Ten percent movement reduction. My suit got stiffer. ” “Ten percent is bad,” Reinhard said. “Take a penalty like that a couple more times and we’ll be moving like snails.” “I can probably ice the whole thing over!” Everly sounded slightly winded. “I don’t think that’s against the rules, but I’m not at the halfway point for my last lap.” That’s unlucky, thought Alden as the heat from the box in front of him made him take a step back. If Everly was standing where he was now, she could’ve handily solved the problem for everyone and then run on. I wish I’d picked the poncho now, don’t I? The point was to force himself to come up with non-obvious solutions, but he still would’ve felt cool waltzing through the fire obstacle. The sound of rapid thumping from the tunnel behind him made him turn, and he saw Reinhard emerging. “Carry me,” the archer demanded, before he’d even stood up. “Do your trick. You can right?” “Yes…should we just wait for Everly and get everyone else through without damage all at once?” “I’d like to go ahead,” Reinhard said impatiently. “It’s important to get people to the end as fast as possible. Finlay and Tuyet are way ahead of Lucille.” Alden looked down the course. Tuyet and Finlay were climbing the high magic wall by having her embed her darts in it and using them as handholds. “Can you do that with your arrows?” “I won’t know until I try to stab it with one and see what kind of settings they’ve got on it.” “All right, but let’s try to make sure I don’t end up with a huge movement penalty either.” It was less than half a minute before Lexi climbed out of the tube. “Shield me instead.” “I just put on my Reinhard outfit,” Alden replied, quickly shifting the archer’s weight. “Does this look easy to achieve?” Reinhard was draped over his back with his feet hanging almost to the ground, human-cloak style. His arms were stuck straight out past Alden’s ears, gripping the quiver to offer some protection for Alden’s face and torso. It was a very uncomfortable way to carry someone, but time seemed to be of the essence, so… Off we go. He hauled his human shield into the fire box, sticking closer to one wall and shuffling sideways as fast as he could along it with Reinhard positioned to take the brunt of the flames. He was through it quickly and feeling relieved as he dropped the other boy. “I really didn’t take any damage!” Reinhard slapped Alden on the shoulder and thrust his paracord back toward him. Alden took it. Reinhard was his target now, so it was formally re-entrusted. “It’s an all or...